Knife Ramblings

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Biggfoot44

Blackhawk
Joined
Sep 6, 2009
Messages
829
I have a serious curse ! An expensive ( to me ) knife will get lost within a week of daily carry . An already used cheap flea market knife will be good for 10 years at least .

( The one exception was a small USA made Case XX folder on my duty belt for about 30 years , until a rule change prohibited visible knives .)

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I'm old school , and as a catagory prefer Carbon Steel to Stainless . I Still think 1095 is the Bee's Knees . ( more on steels later)

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Since *Arms* include more than firearms , when I'm volunteering with my 2A org , I'm loaded down with knives as demonstrators of our knife laws . As in this is legal concealed everywhere , this is legal except in certain municipalities , this one must not be concealed , etc .

In that context , an " out the side " automatic appears little different from a spring assist . So I switched to an OTF . I ended up preferring the OTF s for my own use . primarily because of the one handed retraction of a double acting OTF .

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For years , I had been interested in Premium steels , but they were mainly used in $$ knives . But in the last few years , some have become available in medium priced knives .

A couple years ago for either Christmas or B-day , I circled it in a catalog and handed to the family , to recieve a Buck 110 , with S 30 V , and wood handles . this would give an apple to apple comparison of a proven design of which I was familiar .

Then came accross an OTF of my prefered blade design ( plain edge , clip point ) , of D2 steel , to upgrade from my 440C OTF . ( I'm also fine with drop point , don't care for tanto for general use blade.)

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Every year for Christmas season , instead of cards or whatever , I hand out knives to friends , co-workers , etc . Mostly whatever folders that were cheap from SMKW , as in less than $5 , often $3 . I clean up the edges to make them moderately sharp enough to be usable , and have the family wrap them for me .

Since the recent Zombie Apocalypse , the supply chain issues had SMKW out of stock of my usuals , I had to mostly use used knives I'd picked up cheap from gun show vendors .

In the modern era when very few muggles have any sort of pocket knife , most of my recipients are very pleased to get them , particularly since they're actually usable for light duty after I've sharpened them .

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Doing such mass sharpening of knives that often need much work to form a semblance of edge geometry , I discovered it was possible to wear out pull thru knife sharpeners . As in enough wear at the convergence of the two ceramic rods to significantly change the effective angles .

I changed to the Work Sharp model the size of a harmonica , that has flat diamond impregnated surface about 1/2 wide on one side , and ceramic rod on the other . Sells for about $15 , small enough for vest pocket to always have with me . And does well enough for 95% of my personal sharpening requirements . Heck , just writing this , I'll give whatever's in my pockets a touch up after I hit send .

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At the start , I mentioned my curse of loosing " good " knives . I get by with cheap edc pocket knives , by keeping the edges constantly touched up , before they get bad enough to need serious work . So I don't obsess over edge holding for light duty pocket knives , as long as I can give them a 60 sec touch up easily as required , on the spot .
 
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