Children and Beckers

B

BeardedNemophilist

Joined
Apr 10, 2014
Messages
269
I am proud to be a dad and can't wait to get my son into the Becker addiction and out with me chopping and carving. But he's three so it's a little early to put a knife (or sharp as my son calls them) in his hand.

Interested in seeing how the fathers around the forum have introduced their kids to knives and proper useage.

IMAG2949_zpsdrwimv7b.jpg

My boy and I hanging out at the park today.
 
Well...got introduced to knives thru my dad sharp as hell swiss army knife...4 stiches later,my mom bought me my first solingen stagg handle 7 inch blade hunting knife...never cut myself again since the 4 stiches...!
 
Thanks for the input man. I got my first knife probably around nine or ten but cut myself and strayed away for a long time. I hope I don't do that to my own kid knowing what I now know about how amazing knives are
 
I bought myself a used girl scout knife (for 50 cents) when I was 7. Used it to split a black walnut, and split my finger, too. Should have probably gotten a stitch, but my dad was still buzzing trees with a chainsaw and my mom wasn't around so I sucked it up. Still have the scar, but also the finger, so it's all good.

Began collecting shortly thereafter, and only went a couple years without at least small SAK in my pocket.

My daughters are 8 and 9. They don't have their own knives yet, but use mine under supervision. These are MUCH sharper than anything I used as a kid. Kinda freaks the wife out, but she's about as non-knife-person as I've met (sadly.) A couple close calls, but no blood loss as yet. I show 'em the proper way to hold and cut whatever media we're working on, and stay nearby. Sometimes I'll guide 'em with my hands a couple times, but usually after 1 instruction I let them finish their task while I begin mine.

I also teach them the proper way to hold and carry, set it down when you go to do something else, and hand it handle-first and say "thank you" upon receipt.

A 3 year old, I'd probably give a "safety" or "practice" knife first, and see how they do. If they can go through the motions without hitting flesh, and don't flail it around wildly, I'd progress to guided cutting. My less-coordinated daughter was successfully using pointy-tipped scissors at 4, so it's certainly feasible.
 
I'm in the same boat, my daughter's only 3. She knows she has a knife that I made with the help of T.M. Hunt but it's put up until she's old enough. She has adopted a play-doh knife that she carries everywhere in her backpack or purse.
 
Both of my children have a fascination with blades. My guess is it is because something that I show interest in and they are emulating. My son (3 turning 4) I have given hands on training with. We go over the rules before I let him handle the knife. I continue to stress to him that he should always keep his hands away from the sharp ends of the blade, if he is not using the knife for any kind of craft to keep his opposite hand behind or away from the hand holding the knife, how to properly hand off a knife, and if he is working to carve something that he always always always works away from him and never towards. While they are still young and lack the ability to understand consequence he takes instruction very well (you should see him with bb guns, we are working him towards his savage jr .22). The only instruction I ever received from my father was was to work away from myself. It worked well until I forgot to inspect the broken leather sheath one day and ended up getting 4 stitches after drawing the knife through my index finger.
WP_000576_zpse19659ad.jpg

This was the first knife given to me by my father. This thing is a razor.

I did make the mistake of looking at one of my new knives in from of my daughter (18 months at the time). I had just bought my ZT 0700 and was showing it to my son. She went to grab it out of my hand and I was not fast enough to pull it away and she nicked her thumb on the blade and took off some skin. Needless to say the wife was super unhappy about that one and I felt like crap. On the plus side, this hasn't detoured her from still wanting to learn or see them when I have been using them.
 
My daughters are 7 & 9.
I started them out a couple of years ago with inexpensive Multi-tools.
They then moved up to basic SAKs.
This winter I bought them both pink Moras; their first fixed blades.

I have not purchased them Beckers yet because, when I was their age, I had a tendency to, shall we say, misplace things...
They are both chips off the old block.
In a couple of years I can already see a tweener or two making its way into their collections, I'm just not ready to plunk down that kind of cash-ola on something that may not be in their possession any more at the end of camping season.
 
My oldest son will be turning three next month. I carved him a wood knife for him before he was born, and have been using it as a training aid since he was pretty small. I think he will be ready for a real knife in the next year or so. I might make him a training knife out of 1084 that is dull, but can be heat treated and sharpened when he is old enough.
 
Thanks tj and Murph. Mine loves to use dull knives at restaurants to cut up food and with the toy knives Ive gotten him before. Definitely needs more coordination before I let him handle anything sharp as I can use. I will start gradually step him toward a sharp blade, probably a SAK.
 
if you're going young, i agree. some kind of practice knife first to learn safe handling without the potential for hurting themselve. i've seen (boy scouts?) websites that sell a wooden knife kit to build as a good project and good test of hand-eye coordination readiness?). my kids were 6 and 8 at first knives. the boy had interest WAY earlier than that, it just seemed like borrowing trouble to give a 4 year old a knife. you've got a 3 year boy, so you know what a group of 3 year old boys is like - the decision-making can be very sudden and is frequently suspect.


everyone's kids are different. for my kids, ownership of knives at 3 or 4 years of age would have been more because I wanted them to be a little woodsman with a knife and not because they were actually ready. day-to-day life - we didn't let our 4 year olds touch the guns, or use the sharp steak knives, or pour pots of boiling water into the cup-o-noodles containers. we didn't let them climb tall trees by themselves and we made them take a step back when we opened up the hot oven. not because they were bad kids (very much the opposite) but because they were only 4 years old and very bad stuff can happen to children in a heartbeat. once they got a little older and we felt like they could make smart decisions and not be so overwhelmed by toddler brains that they would do dumb in a split-second, knife ownership came into play. and it was at a little different age for each kid. Oh, I'd had their first knives for YEARS by that time, because i'm me, but it was a little later for my particular kids.

first child, probably overkill it but it worked great. i got a pocket knife and rounded/flattened (belt-sander) the sharp edge to dull. DULL. point was still a little pointy, but he would have been hard-pressed to break the skin with any part of it. it still cut butter, sandwiches, leaves, sort-of whittled, etc, but i took out the chance of him cutting himself when i wasn't watching. he was 6 and had wanted a knife like dad's for a long time by then, so i went that route and got him a real knife, just dulled it down. after about a year, started to gradually sharpen it over the course of another year or so.

second child was less fascinated. i got her a small keychain SAK (pink, with flowers on it :)) when she was 8 and showed more interest. so she got a smaller but sharp knife, but it was buried amongst scissors, tweezers, etc.. it was less 'knife' and more 'useful tool, part of which is a small penknife'. sharp from the get-go b/c she was a little older.


whoa, long answer, sorry about that. hope it helped?
 
My son built a fire with my BK14 when he was six. At the same age I gave him his first knife, a Mora Scout Classic Safe. It has steel finger guards and a blunted tip. He's 7 now, so still can only use it under my direct supervision, but he's done great with it!

Getting some shavings going:
20131021-IMG_5735 by Geektechnica, on Flickr

Fire complete:
20131021-IMG_5746 by Geektechnica, on Flickr

Triumphant:
20131021-IMG_5755 by Geektechnica, on Flickr

His first knife:
IMG_6384 by Geektechnica, on Flickr
 
My son is 8 and he has a KaBar Little Finn. I watch him close, and he always wants to help. He did end up with stitches once, from a different knife though, he asked to see one of mine as I was unboxing it from the mail, I said "Yes, let me show you" But at the "L" in let he was already pulling it out of the sheath across the skin at the thumb/index finger area, and I was within arms reach, so be careful. I think if you have them around you should introduce your kids to them in a safe enviroment. Otherwise they'll just look at them when your back is turned.
 
I received my first knife at age 6 as I was entering first grade. I had been using them under F/GF supervision for a couple of years before that. Safe usage was heavily stressed as I was trained the way they had been back when the nearest doctor was at least 3 miles away if you had an accident bad enough to warrant going to one and transportation was horse/buggy/ Model A.

Our safety rules were probably more strict that what many people follow now-a-days:
In addition to the standard rules (Cut away from yourself, don't stab it at folks, cut only what you intend to cut, etc)
we had:

If the knife wasn't being used in hand, it was in the sheath or closed.
No setting the knife down where you could accidentally cut yourself by bumping it.
Sharpening was only done by hand. (No power tools for sharpening hand tools - knives, chopping hoes, axes, picks. Grinders/belts were only for plow sweeps, harrow discs, harrow spikes, etc.)
At a workbench, cutting tools are in the knife block between uses.
Only the person swinging the ax was allowed in the cutting yard. Watching from beyond the fence only, which was a good 10 feet from the block.
(This was from a great-great uncle who nearly lost an eye from a splinter flying up.)

Sadly, I'll never have kids of my own to pass my knowledge to and any future nieces/nephews will be city-slickers.
 
No son yet, but I have a nephew who can spot a black knife clipped inside a black pen holder from across the room. We were helping my wife with some plants one day and he wanted me to cut the bag of potting soil with my knife. I showed him how you always cut away from your body. The next day, my sister-in-law said, "Baylor told me you're supposed to cut stuff like this (and she did a cutting motion away from her body) because if not, you can cut yourself." I was a proud uncle.

He is four and got one of the wooden CRKT knives this past Christmas. He isn't mine so I can't give him a knife, but I will sometimes let him hold mine as I keep repeating proper safety and then ask him to repeat it to me.
 
My dad started me and my brother cutting our own steaks when we were 3 and 4 with sharp knives. My kids aren't that good I have done some work with my 3yr but she needs Alot more work
 
I was gifted a BK14 from someone here for this very purpose. I have a little girl who's 6 now, and had showed interest towards my 16 during camping season last year. She loved to process the kindling and start up the cotton ball tinder with a firesteel. I gave her a few lessons already about knife safety - proper sheathing/unsheathing technique, direction of the blade when cutting, how to sit with your elbows on your knees when whittling to avoid slipping and cutting your leg, etc. Seemed to lap it all up. Just last month we went to the craft store so she could pick her very own paracord to customize it:



She's super proud of it and tells everyone she has a pink knife of her own. I have control of it for now, so she has to ask permission to use it until she gets older. I'll be teaching her some more this summer to see how she can handle it.

My advice is to take it slow - you know yourself how to handle a knife properly, and only you can gauge how interested they are in learning and how quick they can pick things up. Trust your judgment and don't try and force it on them. If they want to learn more then they'll hound you for it.
 
This is all excellent advice. I am really thankful for everyone that has contributed. My father really never showed me much regarding tools when I was coming up. Maybe he didn't really have the patience or maybe I didn't care, I can't remember that far back due to a lot of stupid things Ive done through the years. I really want to make sure I get to teach my son what my dad didn't teach me.

Much appreciated, everyone.
 
It depends on the individual child's interest and respect for the blade. My daughter is 7 and she is still working with training knives but my 5 year old son has been using a "sharp" knife for months now. I use rubber knives to discuss the spine, edge, how it cuts, how to hold it safe, cutting technique, where you can touch a knife and where you cant, etc. After I saw that he understood those basic safety rules and edge awareness, I moved onto using a wood knife.

The wood knife had more of an actual bevel and looked like a real knife you would use. I'd let him push it through soft items like watermelon so he felt what it was like to keep a knife steady in your hand and not allow your grip to slip down on the edge.

I then moved him onto a dull steel knife, THAT I TOLD HIM WAS SHARP. This is very important, very very important. He must believe that the knife is sharp. I wanted to see how much he respected the knife and if all those lessons sank in when he had an actual steel knife in his hand, that he thought was sharp like dad's. I had him do tasks like peeling bark off of pine that was very loose so he didn't think his knife wasn't sharp. It let me see if he would square up, cut away from his body, mind his support hand orientation, and all that jazz. I'd emphasize that if you aren't using it, you put it back in the sheath on your belt.

Eventually I felt confident enough that he deserved his own little mora knife with finger guards and he's been using it ever since. We go outside in the back to cut random wood, etc at least twice a week. Camping season is upon us so it'll be great to have him have his sharp knife on him. He's very proud when he wears it around.

If your boy is interested now, then it's a perfect time to start his education and training. Good luck man and enjoy that time together. I cherish those times with my boy and so does he.
 
Here's some pics of Ivan in action, I need new ones. These are with his dull steel knife that he thought was sharp:



 
Cryptyc,
Very cool pictures it great to get your kids into knives and such while they can learn to respect them as tools and works of art instead of seeing a knife and immediately think weapon.
Looks like you guys are teaching your kids well plus you can see the joy on their faces.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top