Anyone else obsessed with “covering all bases?”

Variety is nice. I agree that it helps to have a "niche" to fit that you think an individual knife is going to fill for you i.e gentlemans carry for when you are in a suit, outdoors knife for camping, chopper for wood prep etc.

I have far more knives than I will actually ever actually "need" for all the cutting I will ever need to do with my time on this planet but I have long since gotten off of the worry to fill a need.
 
Bloodloss said:
Inquiring minds want to know about the party knife.
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In reality, the answer is quite boring I'm afraid. Just a Cold Steel Code 4 or Para 3 LW for me. Dunno, they just strike me as party knives. Someone needs help with tape on packaged food? The Para 3 makes short work of it.

But for cake slicing, a 3.5" blade just won't do.

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DangerZone98 said:
It’s good to have redundancies I suppose, especially in emergency use contexts
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I end up with multiples because I find several that I like, maybe I'll eventually pick one to keep and sell the others. I also want to have more than one to choose from, or a backup to the one that I like best. Sometimes I buy duplicates of something I like so if I lose/break one I'll have another that I might have trouble finding in the future. All this adds up to having a lot more knives than I need but I suppose that is OK for an enthusiast. I've always said that a person can have as many as they want within their budget, they only have to justify it to themselves.
 
DangerZone98 said:
If I were to be 100% honest with myself, I really only need two knives (maybe three) for my everyday context: food prep, general utility, and maybe a mid-sized folder for EDC. That’s it really.
But then I gotta have this for chopping. And this for “bushcrafting” (whatever that means to ya). And this for fighting. And this for parties. And this for traveling. And this for one-upping the only other knife guy within 100 miles of my house.
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It all depends on one's basic assumptions, going in.

These days we are very spoiled. Though we complain about the price of materials, steel for example, they are really quite affordable for most people. Modern blade steels are miracles of engineering science and our knives are so much better than those of ages long past. Given these, we tend to be dismissive of our knives in certain ways, many people not as careful in use and care as folks once were, most likely. We also can afford good knives easily enough that we can buy many whereas long ago people might be able to afford one decent one in their lifetime.

That said, we could all probably get along with one or maybe two knives, were we a bit more circumspect in how we use them. But we're not. We want to be able to take a knife and chop wood with it when camping. So we have something along the lines of a billhook for that and similar chores. We want to slice our kills thinly, so we have a fine chef's knife. We want to be able to gut a mugger like a fish, but being sane, we carry a 1911 to dispatch with bad guys... and yet, we still have on our persons defensive blades just in case things go even more seriously sideways. Then there's our whittler, perhaps a general purpose knife for common cutting chores like getting those miserable feed bags open when it's time to replenish the livestock stores.

And then, of course, we must be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that, much like gun owners, we buy knives we don't really need at all simply because we are all crazy and want more, more, more. Seriously, who can look at the art of makes like Stout and not want one?

But were I to think on it, I'd say three knives, or four, would be a good compromise minimum set: kitchen, defense, heavy work, and general utility. I think I can soldier on with so "few", but we all know how much it hurts.

Cheers
 
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