Did a loved one or friend get you interested in a certain brand?

silenthunterstudios

Slipjoint Addict
Joined
Feb 2, 2005
Messages
20,039
When I grew up, my father always had a Schrade OT peanut or pen knife in his pocket. They seemed to come in an endless supply. If he didn't find a new to semi new one cheap at a gun show, he'd find another one my mother saved from the dryer or washing machine. All of them had a nice patina. I remember every single one being passed to me before church every Sunday to clean my fingernails. Now, my father prefers a pull so light on a knife that it brings out the OCD in me. He is an automotive upholsterer, and used to be able to crush my fingers in between his. He never hurt me, but as a young kid, I thought he could crack walnuts with his fingers. Arthritis and old age have crept up on him. I've gotten him Buck knives, Case knives, new Schrades, but he loses them all. He recently found a Tidioute 72 lockback with bone scales I gave my little brother, and is carrying that. He prefers his small knives though, but he hasn't lost the 72 ;). I've got a couple knives I need to sharpen and give back to him. He gives me hell if, after rooting through my knives, finds one he likes and goes to use, and it isn't sharp to his liking (he has gone so far as to put a lock on his toolboxes at home because my little brother doesn't return tools, but hey, go through my knife collection). I asked him why he didn't sharpen his own knives, and he told me why should he, he's got me. On the other hand, I saw him picking his teeth with a butcher knife, and said I had sharpened my mother's knives too much. Most of the "giving me hell" is in reference to the high caliber of blades I have, and his estimation that I should know how to sharpen them all. He's right.

My grandfather, my fathers father, held dozens of odd jobs his entire life. Most of that life was spent as a salesman. I remember being a little shaver, as my father and uncles say, riding with my grandfather on his sales route. He sold Twinkies, soda etc, and ate a lot of his supplies ;). I remember him having what I surmised were Colonial knives, later I found he got these from Coca Cola, Pepsi etc, they were advertising knives.

Knives were just tools to both men, although my father gave me a Green River skinner blade that he had bought with the intention of making a knife for himself and using it on the trap line (he was a trapper when I was a kid).

After all of that, while I like Schrade knives, I hold no affinity for Old Timer knives. I cleaned out most of the hardware stores on the Eastern Shore/Delmarva and parts of the Jersey shore of their USA made OT knives, but gave most of them to cousins and friends. I like older Schrades/Waldens etc with bone, but the delrin OTs do nothing for me. I am a floozy as my buddy says, for jigged bone, swedges and long pulls. If there is a brand that I "stick to", it would be Remington. I didn't see my first real 1920s-1930s Remington until I was in my 20s.

What brand did your parents/older siblings/friends etc raise you on? Is it still your favorite brand? Are they still in business? Do you carry one every day?

If you have pics of the knife you carry from that favorite brand, traditional of course, or your relatives knife they carried every day, throw them up!
 
Last edited:
My father carried Buck and Case. Mostly Buck. My grandpa carried 3 and a half inch pens and slim jacks, mostly Western I think. I tend to carry knives more like grandpa's because he was a chef and I have a similar indoors job, whereas dad was a carpenter and mechanic, so had more need of a big stockman, which would weigh down my dress slacks. I'm not stuck on brands, only quality. My dad's 1970s Case 6375 and Schrade-Buck 301 were and are good knives, but nowadays one has to look to other places for such routine attention to fit, finish, and detail. They used their knives, I have the leisure to collect them, and to give more thought to what knife might be the best made, or the prettiest, or the most well-thought-out design.
 
My Grandpa D.D. carried several brands of knives but the ones he seemed to like the best was a old Case XX 6375 large stockman and a Boker Bone Handle large congress. And it made a big impression on me even know i was a little kid. I can still see him in his liberty overalls in his chair rolling red cedar shavings on the floor. They both are still two of my favorite knives.
 
My best buddy Jack who I've known since the 7th grade got me into Queen Knives. About 20 years ago he and I made a trip up to SMKWs to get a new pocket knife and I seen these Queen knives and I had never heard of them. He says that his grand pappy who we use to swipe some of his moon shine from, had carried one all his life! I said well that's good enough for me! He picked out a single blade folding hunter with delrin handles and I got the same in a button lock copperhead. I've been buying Queens ever since! As for my relatives my dad and uncles all carried Shrade, Uncle Henry for my dad, and Old Timer liner lock folding hunters for my uncles. My grand father carried Old Timers and Cases.
 
Last edited:
My best buddy Jack who I've known since the 7th grade got me into Queen Knives. About 20 years ago he and I made a trip up to SMKWs to get a new pocket knife and I seen these Queen knives and I had never heard of them. He says that his grand pappy who we use to swipe some of his moon shine from, had carried one all his life! I said well that's good enough for me! He picked out a single blade folding hunter with delrin handles and I got the same in a button lock copperhead. I've been buying Queens ever since! As for my relatives my dad and uncles all carried Shrade, Uncle Henry for my dad, and Old Timer liner lock folding hunters for my uncles. My grand father carried Old Timers and Cases.

I'm sure Ken and Ryan Daniels would love to hear that story. Pretty cool.
 
My father carried Buck and Case. Mostly Buck. My grandpa carried 3 and a half inch pens and slim jacks, mostly Western I think. I tend to carry knives more like grandpa's because he was a chef and I have a similar indoors job, whereas dad was a carpenter and mechanic, so had more need of a big stockman, which would weigh down my dress slacks. I'm not stuck on brands, only quality. My dad's 1970s Case 6375 and Schrade-Buck 301 were and are good knives, but nowadays one has to look to other places for such routine attention to fit, finish, and detail. They used their knives, I have the leisure to collect them, and to give more thought to what knife might be the best made, or the prettiest, or the most well-thought-out design.

Yes, our more luxurious (compared to our forebears) lifestyle affords us the opportunity to play around and treat knives as works of art, not just tools.
 
Oh, but of course. My dad carried a black bone Case trapper throughout my entire youth, and so a Chestnut Bone CV trapper was my HS graduation present to myself -- and the first actual, knowledgeable knife purchase I made, that wasn't just pulled from a pail in a bait shop, starting me down this long, looong road. ;)
 
Yes, our more luxurious (compared to our forebears) lifestyle affords us the opportunity to play around and treat knives as works of art, not just tools.

Indeed -I've always had, and sometimes carried, pocketknives since I was a boy, but I never gave it much thought until one day when I decided to buy myself a good one that really suited me, and wasn't just a gift or a random find. Suddenly, I found myself wanting not one knife, but about 25. ;)
 
Buck knives was my familys brand of choice when i was a kid. I still like them but dont carry them everyday.

Jim
 
I got into traditional so after re discovering my grandfathers and great grandfathers knives. Old timers and a buck 110.
 
I don't think so. The only brands my family could agree on were Old Hickory kitchen knives (at least 4 generations, back to great-great grandmothers on both sides of the family) and the only filet knife I ever saw my dad, uncles, and step father use was a Rapalla.
I do like Old Hickory kitchen knives (and cast iron skillets and porcelain on steel pots) and prefer a Rapalla filet knife, but I cannot say it is because of what my family used when I was young.

My friends and I were not really "into" knives. From Junior High through High School, we had a lock back on our belt or some Army Navy surplus knife in the pocket.
On the rare occasion I bought a new knife, I did not pay much attention to the brand, other than to avoid anything and everything Gerber.
 
My wife's family got me into collecting Camillus knives 20 years ago. My wife, her father and I all do it. It's what we do when we get together. We hang out a few times a year, and break out our Camillus collections. We see each other every week, and go though possible auctions that look enticing. It's a family thing.
 
I had dimpled steel camp knives as a kid; I assume now they were Camillus, but had no idea at the time. My pop didn't carry a knife, and I didn't realize I needed one until I was backpacking around Europe in 1970. Without a knife, I had no way to slice the bread, cheese and sausage that provided most of my sustenance on the road. I found one in Amsterdam that fit my budget. It had a familiar look to it, so I guess I assumed it was a well-known style. It was only last year, on this forum, that I learned it had a name: sodbuster, or Hippekniep.

So, no mentor. I pretty much had to figure out for myself what I wanted in a knife. That meant I accumulated half a dozen Opinels over the years, and about the same number of SAKs. I learned about them from mail-order catalogs like Brookstone and L.L. Bean. I rarely carried them; they were mostly stashed on various motorbikes as part of the tool kit. When the Leatherman came along, I acquired a few of those, too. They tended to supplant the SAKs. Now I am down to one Leatherman (although I might still find a couple more stashed away), two Opinels, and three SAKs, not counting the alox Farmer I picked up a few months ago, and the Victorinox Mauser GAK that I bought a few years ago because I thought it was cool.
 
I would have to say that Buck would be my families brand of choice. Growing up everyone had and used a Buck 110 when hunting season rolled around. Two of my uncles carry the 303 stockman knives and always compare them when we are at trout camp. My Grandfather carried a Buck single blade 704 that my mom gifted him when I was little. He used it a lot ended up breaking the blade, Buck of course fixed it with their awesome warranty.

A few 102 Woodsman fixed blades end up on the hip of my family members. My brother is a bit of a goofball and carries five fixed blades on him when we are at bear camp, ranging from the big 119 down to the little 102.... There is something wrong with that kid.

The two mainstays for my Dad was a Buck 422, one of the original Bucklites and a 119 he used for quartering deer. I have so many memories of those two knives opening deer up and getting them ready for the freezer.

What actually got me started into knife collecting though was a Case toothpick knife in the Caribbean blue bone. To me that's still one of the nicest dyes Case has ever used. My Mom gifted it to my Dad one year for his birthday. From the moment she picked it out of the display case at our local hardware store I was in love with whole idea of knife collecting. I worked that weekend as hard as I could to earn a Case knife of my own. My first Case was a camo caliber lockback, it didn't matter that it paled in comparison to my Dad's toothpick knife, it was the sheer fact that I had a Case knife. Fast forward a few years and I continued to collect only Case knives never paying attention to many other brands. When I turned thirteen I started my first job as a farmhand at a local produce farm and my parents wanted to reward me for starting my working career. The reward was a beautiful Queen cutlery folding hunter from a local sporting goods store, to this day the quality of that Queen has not been surpassed by any other Queen made knife. While at the store, the man behind the counter brought up this new up and coming company called Great Eastern Cutlery.

He told the story of the Primitive bone knives and how they discovered the old cattle graveyard and utilized the old bone for knife handles, but I wanted nothing to do with it. This new company hadn't done anything to gain my collecting attention like Case and Queen had with their years upon years of cutlery experience... Hey, I was young. The story and brand had caught the interest of my Mom who suggested I check them out, as a Case man, I declined. A couple years went by before I actually caught on and took my Mom's advice.

To this day I've rarely bought any knife that didn't pass through the doors of the Great Eastern factory. I've been to eight Rendezvous if I remember correctly and have the ability to call the people there my friends. The knives they produce are top of the line in my books, but the people who make them are even better! If you ever get the chance, stop in and take a tour, it's worth the time!

I'm a young guy so I've grown in the knife world along side GEC and I've enjoyed using their knives throughout the years with a lot of pleasant memories to count on. It helps that the Factory is just a river away from trout camp!

Sorry to ramble, I've enjoyed this thread immensely!
 
As most guys who are 60 (give or take a few decades) I grew up with a pocketknife and received my knives and knife knowledge from my Dad, Uncles, Granddad, and being in the Scout's. When it comes to a brand, I'm the one who established Buck Knife as our main brand - picking out my first while in HS, a gift from my Grandma who let me pick it and later picking a Buck 105 for field carry while in the Army. I have given Buck's as gifts for many years, but did branch into Case for carry and gifting about 18 years ago. I also carried little Schrade pen size Stockman knives for many years to work. I never was rabidly, exclusively Buck, but considered it my main brand while enjoying a few others - my one consistent theme was USA made. I still carry Case, Schrade USA, and GEC for EDC purposes but pretty much use Buck as my working knife 95% of the time (farm, field, and hunting knives). OH
 
When I was a boy, my Dad was a gun trader and we went hither and yon in search of anything that would fire a metallic cartridge and turn a profit at resale.

We went to gun shows, pawn shops, hardware stores, trade days, etc.

I started acquiring pocketknives, any brand, any pattern and ended up as a young adult with a cigar box full of mostly unused knives.

On one particular trip to a fishing tackle and hunting store outside Decatur, Alabama, Dad was buying a group of Smith & Wesson "Victory Models" which were war surplus revolvers, rechambered for .38 Special cartridges, nickel plated and new grips added. I was exploring the store, which had more merchandise than one could actually look at.

The owner had terrible emphysema, could barely talk and was in the process of "selling out".

Along one counter was a series of wooden bins, about 12" x 10" x 10" deep and each held a mass of different patterned pocketknives. There were six or eight of those bins that had dozens of mint Robeson Strawberry Bone handled pocketknives.

Dad picked out a few patterns he thought he could sell at a gun show and bought a half dozen of each.

I appropriated a couple of those, a Daddy Barlow and an 088 two blade Congress for myself.

Fast forward to 1988, when I discovered that box of old knives had value and I started to, once again, collect knives. Those two Strawberry Bone Robesons became the nucleus of my Robeson knife collection.

Still have the 088 Congress.

Always will.



 
Last edited:
That Strawberry Bone Half Congress is a fantastic knife, not too massive in the bolster, fine curve, good long blades on it and that bone.....
 
I grew up with my extended family using Old Timers, Uncle Henry or Imperial . Plus that what 90% of all the Stores carried. Plus back then Case and Queen were 2 times the price. One Grandpa did have a Sunday Boker 3 blade small stock man about the same size as a 340 OT.
 
My wife's family got me into collecting Camillus knives 20 years ago. My wife, her father and I all do it. It's what we do when we get together. We hang out a few times a year, and break out our Camillus collections. We see each other every week, and go though possible auctions that look enticing. It's a family thing.

Was that because you/they were/are close to the old company, local/regional heritage?
 
Back
Top