Cold Steel Serrations

[Confederate]

Confederate the lesson you should have learned is how to properly use a knife. When you need to take a sapling with a slip joint you cut notches and then break it.

What you say is absolutely correct. You couldn't be more right. Having said that, I was bit by my Boy Scout knife years earlier when the blade slipped out of a piece of wood I was whittling and cut my thumb open. With more skill I wouldn't have necessarily done it. But the good news is that modern knives with modern locks make slipjoints unnecessary. As you say, fixed blades also solve the problem, but in many jurisdictions, they're illegal to carry, and, of course, they can be a bit cumbersome.

My own opinion is that if you're going out in the wilderness (and I think these guys were either in Canada or Australia), it's a good idea to have a good fixed knife. Barring that, or simply backing up such a knife, it might also be a good idea to have a good locking knife. Okay, the guy cutting his hand up was using the wrong technique. Rain was running down his forehead and he was undoubtedly under some anxiety in trying to free the other fellow. But had he had a good locking folder, despite his lack of skill, he likely would have been successful in cutting down the sapling without injury.

To me, logic dictates that a knife lock its blade if possible, because there's no advantage...no pros...to having a knife not lock. Yes, they can still fail depending on the locking mechanism, but the likelihood is against it if it's a halfway decent knife.

A slipjoint SAK Farmer would solve your presented issue much better than any high speed locking tactical knife. Saying that slip joints are not the thing to buy is ignorant, learning to use a knife correctly is much more important than a lock.

Well, I can agree that learning to use a knife is more important than anything, but not necessarily that a SAK Farmer would be better than any high speed locking tactical knife. Yes, I know that the Farmer has a saw blade that would have been superior to any plain edge, but some of the better tacticals have much better steels and fairly large, toothy serrations. If using a 4-5-inch blade made of a good premium steel, the nod could go either way. I never take any folding knife (or its lock) for granted while using it. I've been nipped once or twice by my Buck 110 because the lock has an aggressive spring and likes to snap shut. This is something my tacticals don't do and I was admittedly careless when it happened, so it was my fault. Still, I just don't like slipjoints, preferring knives I can open and close without assistance. But that's for another thread and, in fact, has been discussed. It comes down in the end to preference.