Effective lifespan of slippies?

i live in slip joint country.

farmers use strockman knives for everything imaginable . they cut everything with them. food,fuel,baler twine ,they use them for whittling, to skin animals, scrape metal to seat gaskets,and as steak knives, etc;
i know a few guys around here who can wear a knife out... wear the main blade down in a year or two.

good for me cause i can always trade them a new one. some of these knives are what i would call collectible, Fightn' Rooster:eek:, Bulldog:D and Case dot, oh well.

someone mentioned rotation. this is probably the best way to get more years of use from a good knife.

one of my favorite knives was a Schrade Uncle Henry two blade trapper. i skinned so many critters with it the clip blade became a little loose. still worked well for skinning.

all good
thanks for starting this thread:thumbup:

buzz
 
Reading Buzz's post above, about wearing down a blade in a year or two, reminded me of this:
I read somewhere that Remington did a market survey when getting into making knives, and found that the average pocketknife lasted about three years. Their fate varied from worn out, to broken or lost.
Times were different then - more people carried a pocket knife, and used it for work or domestic duties. Replaceable-blade knives (boxcutters etc) may have been rare or non-existant And of course, someone who went through a knife every year or so would bring down the average, allowing us to "inherit" knives from that period.
Seems there is no hard and fast rule. My pickup truck is 12-13 years old, and I expect to have it that long again, but I take good care of it!
 
I've had a Vic SAK Classic that i had as my first knife. Its 6 years old now but it has been ABUSED because at the age of 8 I didn't know any better. It still works perfectly fine. Slipjoints seem to be able to take alot of use and abuse before they need to be retired.
 
The lifespan of a slipjoint depends on if the owner is a loving admirer of the knife, or merely thinks of it as a another tool. The loving admirer will keep a keen edge, wipe it down after use, never force the blade to do anyting but cut, oil it, and thus have it for life. The person who doesn't think twice about using a knife for prying, twisting, scraping, etc. will soon be without a functioning slipjoint. But then thats probably the person who will just buy a new one for $5.99 from that plastic jar of junk knives sitting at the cash register of his local hardware store.
 
With some care, I don't know how you kill one. I have my grandfather's large, old CASE stockman. Shield is long gone, jigging is worn almost smooth, and it was in his pocket for many decades. He was the type that didn't buy a pocket knife unless he lost the last one he owned as he saw them only as tools. He worked in different blue collar jobs his whole life, and was an avid, dedicated sportsman. He used that knife all the time for every activity from (as told to me!) from about the mid 40s until his death in the late 60s. The only other pocket knife I know he had was also given to me, a Barlow he carried for years before he found that large stockman pattern he liked so much. Can you imagine.... two knives over a few decades?

He didn't take care of things all that well, and couldn't sharpen a knife on a bet. What may have helped this knife survive was he took it to a local guy with a fixit shop that sharpened blades for .50 a blade and cleaned and oiled the knife when finished. According to my Dad, Grandad felt like he had a new knife every six months, so that really reinforced the idea he didn't need a new one. Besides, according to Grandad, a stockman had three blades you could use and they were all shapes to boot. What else could you want in a pocket knife?

Although the blades are a bit misshapen now from decades of sharpening, it still opens and closes with great authority and performs very well. Not bad for a 65+ year old knife! If used as a knife only, this thing might easily last another couple of generations.

Today's knives... I dunno.

I have too many knives as it is, and will probably never wear out any of my knives. I have a couple with a lot of road miles on them that got that way because I couldn't afford any other knives at the time. But even though I carried and used them in my construction job for about 10 years, they still fit and snap better than some of the newer knives from that same company. So unless you misuse the knife, got a bad one, had an accident, or sharpen on a belt sander, I don't think you should ever need to worry about wearing one out.

Robert
 
My case slipjoints are all from 2000. They're 12+ years old and going strong. That said, I take better care of knives than I do cars. The sheepsfoot on my stockman is showing the usual sharpening 'dent', but I expect to get another 3+ years out of it.

It comes down to how you treat the knife. Yes, it's a tool. But it's not a prybar or a screw driver.

Mark
 
Hrmmmm.

I've not had the best luck with Victorinox knives.

Sciccors springs fail often. I've had numerous classics loose their scales. Also had a few classics bust springs.
 
comoha said:
The lifespan of a slipjoint depends on if the owner is a loving admirer of the knife, or merely thinks of it as a another tool. The loving admirer will keep a keen edge, wipe it down after use, never force the blade to do anyting but cut, oil it, and thus have it for life. The person who doesn't think twice about using a knife for prying, twisting, scraping, etc. will soon be without a functioning slipjoint. But then thats probably the person who will just buy a new one for $5.99 from that plastic jar of junk knives sitting at the cash register of his local hardware store.
Click to expand...

?

Cory,

All you have described is basic respect and care of tools
Take care of them and they will take care of you.
Knowing the function of your tools and using them in their limits, means they will last for a very long time.

Taking care of your tools does not make you a loving admirer!
 
Here is my grandfather's barlow, that I got this year. He has been gone for about 20 or so years now. I don't know how old this knife is, but it is still going strong.


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Bigfattyt, based on the tang stamps, I think it's post 1961, but in not sure how much past. I could be wrong too, though.
 
As with anything, I think it all depends on what you are doing.

The major failure points seem to be: the joints can loosen, the scales can crack or break, the back spring can break and a blade/tool can break.

I've not had the best of luck with Victorinox SAKs. I've busted a back spring on a few, had. Umerous ones loose their plastic scale and pretty much every one that has sciccors has the sciccors spring break. One way that they help minimize tool breakage seems to be to make random tools impossible to open.

I've owned several Ulster Boy Scout knives that fail differently. The joint get loose and I get wobble. One got bad enough to eject a cosmetic bolster. Still, I've never broken a tool or blade, never broken a scale nor a back spring.

All in all, I think traditional with fully pinned construction and riveted plastic/Derlin is going to be as rugged as you can get.

If you want tool selection in a more rugged combination I would suggest the pocket sized Leatherman tools.
 
Well, I think all I can add has already been spoken at on this thread.

It´s like with everything as a tool-to-use. The more care you take, the longer it will last (or be there).

I have found some pretty old tools (no knives), at my greatgrandfather. He was born 1900 and died 1993. I have some axes right here, which were handforged about 1860. He took great attention on his tools. So they survived the times. Hardly to imagine, that things would stand during times of one and a half century and still working. Of course, that´s also some kind how they were treated and who maintained them. Some oil here and there an no abuse. That´s the correct way for a tool.

While looking around in the landscapes, I see more and more disposable things. Cell phones, cars, computers etc etc - these are all things that are built not for existing a very long time. But this is a problem of our times. Not at the things they are for real.
If my grandpa would still be alive and would tell him, that a washing machine nowadays just will last about five years, he would answer "Don´t buy that thing, it´s no good!!"

You know, what I mean?

Times have changed, but with our hobby (or any other things of great craftmanship), those things will still last for a lifetime and even longer. When we take good care of it. But that´s not the same with everything around us.

Kind regards
Andi
 
Bigfattyt, that is the EXACT same knife I have upstairs! My Dad got it for me when it was time to get my first real knife. Western Barlow 822 stamped same as yours. I got it when I was about 8 so mine is from 1975ish. Still sharp, still as great as the day I got it. Now that my father is gone, it means even more. The only difference is that my Dad and I sat at the counter with one of those metal scribing tools and he wrote my first name on one bolster and last name on the other. Cool knife.

Pete
 
Orca, I bet that back then a man would buy one knife and use it for everything. Farm and ranch work, house hold chores, mumblty peg, scraping paint, scraping mud off of boots and all sorts of things that we now would consider abuse. I'm sure 5 years was an early marketing ploy but it probably wasn't that far off. I think that if I carried only one knife for absolutely everything, including using it for things that I would rather not but a man might have in the '20s, it wouldn't last 10 years. Still, I'd like to see Remington's research method.

Ben
 
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