oldmanwilly
Gold Member
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2014
- Messages
- 3,414
My Opa always had some folding knife in his pocket for use around the farm/ranch. It was rarely anything special, usually just some stockman, jack, or two-blade barlow he could pick out of a display at the hardware store or from a bin on the counter at the feed store. Usually Imperial, Schrade, Kabar, and occasionally a Case, but later on in the 90's and 2000's he started to buy some Sabre and other no-name Chinese knives as they were cheapest (he grew up during the depression after all). He always told me that Schrade was the best knife you could buy for your money and, for most of his life, he was probably correct. So, I naturally fixated on carrying traditional folders to mimic Opa as he used his knives for everything: castrating lambs, fixing water lines, opening feed sacks/tubs, scraping corrosion off of battery connection posts, gutting and skinning game, clearing weeds out of a gate, cutting sausage for his dinner, and everything in between. Funny enough, he rarely broke a pocket knife from prying or otherwise. Instead, he would use them hard and sharpen the blades down into toothpicks, then just pick up a new one. I still have a sack full of slipjoints with blades ground into oblivion.
So, following that example, I still carry a traditional folder every day (usually a slipjoint, but sometimes a lockback slips into rotation) but I usually supplement with a modern locking folder and/or fixed blade as I see the value in being able to access a knife, use it, and return it to a pocket/sheath with one hand.
Lots of my other family members carry something sharp on a regular basis for farming, ranching, hunting, or some other trade, but my Opa gets the recognition (or blame?) for setting off my fascination with sharp and pokey things.
So, following that example, I still carry a traditional folder every day (usually a slipjoint, but sometimes a lockback slips into rotation) but I usually supplement with a modern locking folder and/or fixed blade as I see the value in being able to access a knife, use it, and return it to a pocket/sheath with one hand.
Lots of my other family members carry something sharp on a regular basis for farming, ranching, hunting, or some other trade, but my Opa gets the recognition (or blame?) for setting off my fascination with sharp and pokey things.