Are all knives in the same "class" basically" the same thing...

cchu518

cchu518

Joined
Mar 6, 2013
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Hi Folks,
New knife enthusiast here. I'm originally a city kid born and raised in Brooklyn. I'm married and live in NJ now. Not too long ago I picked up a gentlemen's knife for my brother as his bday present. We're both older so we stopped with the over the top gifts as there isn't much that we are generally in want of. That said some of my other hobbies are reptile keeping and paintball, watch collecting.

I've been finding that knife collecting/hoarding is somewhat like what happened with my paintball days. Lots of playing, trading up, trading down of equipment etc...etc...

In looking at knives these days and have picked up a bunch of knives in the same price range class for the most part. That said, are knives that fall into a basic category i.e. all 3" sub folders, lock backs, custom knife, sandvik steel 8CR13MOV, VG10, sub $50 knife, sub $200 knife etc... etc are all basically more or less the same. And the rest semantics. I think I have this hoarding, OCD, collecting habit that I fall into sometimes when I get bored. I know personally I love gear, whether its pistols, ebauches, or paintballs etc...etc... and owning them and learning about their intrinsic natures. But at the end of the day, I find that I learn that intrinsically a lot of it is all just BS. I.E. I buy 5 knives, I'm not going to cut 5 times more boxes that come in the mail or cardboard in my basement.

Do you sometimes feel compelled to purchase more knives than you actually need and why do you do it? Or does this come down to expendable cash and the freedom to own whatever you want?

With paintballing, I kinda deduced everything down to spool valves vs poppets (technology of the paintball gun) and ultimately decided I didn't need 20 guns at the end because I ended up preferring one type that basically did everything I wanted. Same with watches, practically all sub $5,000 watches were basically the same underneath their skins. With knives do the blade material or length or any unique aspect warrant the need to own more than a handful? I only ask this because I grew up a city person and rarely had a reason to own a knife besides a possible perceived threat of getting jacked. I'm not sure what happened but as soon as I went about trying to find a gift for my brother, and noticed all these little differences about EDC folders for instance, I immediately got hooked into that whole OCD collector mentality. When I am thinking maybe they are really all the same thing, that it's a tool that cuts things. And that's all.
 
A philosophy question.

They all cut, but some are better for different cutting tasks than others. Or so I tell myself. :o

Some "look" better than others. OR so I tell myself.

Oh to be able to always distinguish between "need" and "want" !
 
Depends how much you use one or how obsessed you are. It's good to have a nice build quality and dependability at a minimum in case you ever really need the knife, pistol, pack, etc.
 
I guess it depends on the extent to which each person decides that knives are 'the same'.

You could say that all knives are the same, because they all cut stuff, regardless of all the other junk involved. That's a pretty simplistic way to look at it, but if that's all the information you care to process about the subject, that's fine.

It's like looking at international affairs. Most folks don't have the time or interest to look at every nitty gritty detail of international affairs and become experts about them. Most people look at the news, see a snapshot of turmoil in Syria, and decide that "The Middle East is at war". Now, that statement isn't exactly untrue, because there is in fact a conflict going on in the middle east, but then it's not exactly accurate either, since the Middle East comprises a whole lot of different countries and cultures, only one of which (in this example) is in a state of conflict right now. It's all a matter of how much detail you want to take in.

So, yeah, to the average person, all knives are mostly the same, give or take a couple details here or there. To knife dorks, the differences are more apparent.
 
One thing I think is NOT the same about knives is the blade steel. I can easily tell that my 8Cr13MoV dulls substantially faster than 154CM. As far as everything else is concerned, if I didn't want more knives I could live the rest of my life with my mini griptilian in my pocket and never find it lacking.
 
Substitute "car" for "knife" and that's the answer imho. All cars drive but they have different attributes, and how important the differences are depend on the needs and discernment of the driver.
 
cchu518 said:
Do you sometimes feel compelled to purchase more knives than you actually need
Click to expand...

Yep. If I only purchased knives I needed, I'd own a couple of folders, whatever I need in the kitchen, and a light machete for yard work, and that would pretty much cover it. I certainly don't need karambits, or goloks, or parangs, or Bowies, or folding knives with 6 inch blades, etc, yet I own all of them. As for why...because I enjoy the aesthetics, the feel in hand, the style and designs...and since I have the money, no reason not to buy them. I could spend the money on movies, or CDs, or gaming(and in all those cases I sometimes do), or in collecting stamps, or coins, or baseball cards, or on many other hobbies or forms of entertainment. But since buying blades makes me happy, as long as bills/essentials are covered, I don't see a reason not to. Some guy may take his spending money and hit the bar and spend his cash drinking and partying, another guy might take his girl out for a nice dinner and a movie, and another guy may buy himself a new Spyderco...or a guy may do some combination of all those things, take his girl out one night, hit the bar with his buds on the weekend, then next week, stay in and order himself a Manix 2 and a Delica. As long as his bills are paid, he has enough money to cover his gas/food/living expenses, etc, rather he actually NEEDS those knives doesn't really matter.

As for all being the same, it's not exactly true either. Some steels do dull less easily than others, some dull easier but are easier to resharpen, so one person might prefer an easier to sharpen knife whereas the other prefers one that's harder to sharpen but needs it less often. If someone works in a humid/wet environment, they might prefer a steel with more rust resistance than someone who lives in a dry climate.
 
I'll put it simply, I carry three knives, because I use them for three different things :D my "main blade" as it's called will be my non-organic knife used to cut threads, boxes, mail, packages with other knives, trim my nails etc, also is usually my "worry stone" knife that I take out and fondle the most, or flick open and closed, very therapeutic. Tends to be my "prettiest" knife.

My second knife will be my organic knife, or food knife, i.e. my kitchen knife, I use it to cut fruits, vegetables, meats, shave my scruffly face when I'm desperately in need of it :rolleyes: of course it get's washed after every use but it still get's used for all those things regardless of which other knife I'm carrying.

And lastly my third knife, which is generally my smallest, will be my beater, meaning the jobs it completes will be scraping, prying, hammering, wedging, it's usually a knife that I don't mind if it breaks or get's lost, but every day after it's use I will touch it up and take care of/give it the spa treatment, it's also used for more relaxing tasks like wood carving, making feather sticks, cleaning under my fingernails, the dirty work :cool: also the most sheeple friendly knife on me and most likely the most important.

Even though I can probably get by with just one of those knives, it feels good to be organized and have multiple knives for multiple uses,and a whole lot cleaner if you ask me ;)
 
All art is basically paint on canvas, all objects are arrangements of molecules. It is the subtle, and not so subtle, distinctions that give some people pleasure in appreciation.

Can you sit around the house, or lay in bed, or go for a walk in the woods and play with your paintball gun? Do you get pleasure from flicking the trigger while watching TV.

With a well crafted knife, you can. You can derive pure enjoyment from admiring its lines, and opening and closing it, and from such mundane tasks as opening envelopes with it. You can open an envelop with a 5.00 knife, but with a beautifully crafted knife you get pleasure from doing so. If that makes sense to you, then you may have the makings of a knife enthusiast. If not, then you might just have OCD or something, like you yourself admit.

To derive the most enjoyment from knives, learning about their subtle differences makes a difference. Like any collector, you build a bank of knowledge that helps you make good decisions, and enhances your enjoyment.

Just some thoughts.
 
Locutus D'Borg said:
All art is basically paint on canvas, all objects are arrangements of molecules. It is the subtle, and not so subtle, distinctions that give some people pleasure in appreciation.

Can you sit around the house, or lay in bed, or go for a walk in the woods and play with your paintball gun? Do you get pleasure from flicking the trigger while watching TV.

With a well crafted knife, you can. You can derive pure enjoyment from admiring its lines, and opening and closing it, and from such mundane tasks as opening envelopes with it. You can open an envelop with a 5.00 knife, but with a beautifully crafted knife you get pleasure from doing so. If that makes sense to you, then you may have the makings of a knife enthusiast. If not, then you might just have OCD or something, like you yourself admit.

To derive the most enjoyment from knives, learning about their subtle differences makes a difference. Like any collector, you build a bank of knowledge that helps you make good decisions, and enhances your enjoyment.

Just some thoughts.
Click to expand...
Uh oh... I see...buy a good looking knife and then see how i feel about things. Trouble. Maybe will try to hit a knife show just for the fun of it when i can.
 
If by "class" you mean size and folder/locking, no. Different grinds, blade shapes and blade thicknesses give different functionality. A Russell Deerhunter is a giant scalpel for taking animals apart, a Cop Tool of the same size would make a horrible mess of a deer but will pry open a car door - a job that that would probably snap the Deerhunter. Go find the old newsgroups knife faq.
 
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