Drawing your knife from your pocket? Ritter?

[josywales3]

I posted this in training as well, but it's really an every day use question.


When you draw your knife, for everday chores, NOT defense, how do you perform a front pockte draw?

Here's why I ask. I'm going to assign a name to parts of the knife, because I'm not certain of the terminology. When a folder is closed, the point touches the "Butt" of the knife. Where the blade swings from the grip is the "Joint".

I just received my Ritter Mini and the clip is attached to the Butt and the point touches the Butt. On my old knife, the clip was attached at the joint and obviously the point touched the Butt.

When I drew my previous knife, I pulled the knife out holding only the Joint between my thumb and finger, blade facing forward. I instinctively swung the knife Butt softly back into my hand and thumbed the blade open. Almost so quickly that you'd hardly notice. With the Ritter, I have the Butt/point end in my finger and thumb, blade facing backward. If I grab it with my finger and thumb, I have to creap my hand forward to get my thumb in place in order to open. Or, I have to put my hand deep into the pocket and pull the knife out.

It's the difference between having the Butt end in the pocket or the Joint end in.

My guess is that Doug didn't want us to be pulling a survival knife out with only two fingers and that probably makes sense. What have you all found?

 

[Ritt]

I've found that with some practice I can pull either a tip down or tip up folder out of my pocket and open it in one motion. The motions certainly are different, but I find that with training either motion will come "naturally" eventually.

That said, I don't buy dedicated tip down carry folders anymore, even though Spyderco often tempts me. In a tip down carry, the pivot (your "joint") is sticking up out of my pocket, and I've found it just gets too dirty. There's nothing worse than going to open my knife and feeling/hearing that horrible crunchy-ness as sand/dirt is ground around in the pivot. It's worse than fingernails on the chalkboard to me.

 

[iubigred007]

i too have both tip-up and tip-down folders... but i most ofter choose the tip-up, it just feels better to me.

my favorite EDC folder is tip-up, and i carry it daily a benchmade 941... awesome!

 

[Luckylefty01]

All right, to actually answer your question, what I do with my rittergrip, is reach down with my thumb (inside my pocket) and my forefinger (outside my pocket), to where my forefinger is about on the bottom of the clip (toward the joint of the knife), and my thumb is on an equivalent point on the inside (your fingers may go down more or less, depending on how long they are), grip the knife, pull it out, and then simultaneously transfer the knife to the rest of my fingers (using the clip to hold on to with the tips of my fingers to keep the knife in my palm and move my thumb out to where the axis lock is to move it back and flick the knife open (I admit it, I'm a flicker). You could probably also use the thumbstud just by moving your hand a little farther down the knife before attempting to open it.