I don't buy a slipjoint unless I plan on carrying it and cutting stuff with it. I'm clumsy, and have a habit of standing up with knives on my lap at home. I have a lot of different handle materials, so I've carried a lot of different handle materials. I use them, but don't tend to abuse them.
That being said.
Buy a nice knife and use it!! Carry it and treat it like the knife it was designed for. If the manufacturer put it on the knife, it should be good enough to use as a knife. That's why they are the professionals. If they are still in business you can probably get them to fix it for you. If it's an old knife- then look at how long it's lasted!! All of these knives were collected in two handfuls and brought downstairs for the pics. They are nice, but still just knives.
These are some old user knives of mine.
Blackwell (horn), Skelton/Hartkopff (Stag- the Hartkopff is the only pictured knife I haven't used, because it's too hard for me to access the blade nail nick), Hibbard Spencer Bartlett & Co./Kabar (wood) , Boker(ivory and black lip mother of pearl as far as I can tell), Dorwal, Keen Kutter (bone)
My personally used "fragile" handled knives. The "Zebra" ivory knife is actually my daughters, but she chooses it for me to carry quite a bit, even after I gave it to her. The wharncliffe ivory was lost outside the night I got it after falling out of my pocket during a roll.
GEC (Stag), Lloyd (ivory, wood), Tham (wood), Bear MGC/Walter Kayser (MOP)
I'm not throwing these knives at walls or anything, but they are a good representation of knives that have been used and have borne no true ill effects. Many are shadow or barehead without much of a problem either. Most knives I see have more issues with the blades than handles. I live in a dry environment too, and find that it takes an initial time period to see if anything shift drastically, and I've never had an issue with slipjoints.
I'm willing to bet that if you carried a knife and it developed an issue, that it would be easy to find another for your pocket whilst the original is getting repaired....😉 I find it can get too worrisome thinking about the handles. A good manufacturer will make the handle a good shape for retention and finish the material to an appropriate grippiness. Smooth bone/wood/Pearl will all be slipperier than jigged bone or stag. I don't use my mammoth knives to cut greasy hoses or get them soaked in antifreeze or anything, but they are strong enough in my examples to withstand multiple drops, capable enough that I don't worry taking them camping if I want, or carrying everyday.
I haven't done it with stag, but I soaked some pieces of the sameold bone cover in mineral oil for 1,2,6 and 12 months and noticed no difference in any piece at the end. All pieces were the same hardness, no warping or degradation. All pieces were kept in the same bag until removed, then dried, checked for warp/colour change/and scratched with the same nail each time, then placed in a bag with the other removed dry pieces until the cessation of the year, and scratch tested again. I had heard not to use mineral oil on bone from a respected member of BF, but wanted to test for myself.
Interesting to note that there may be issues with stag. Will, could it be that the prolonged soaking is just letting more of the currently existing vegridis to work its way out thanks to capillary action along the scale/cover borders. Did you notice it creeping up the pins? Or more just getting into the mineral oil solution and dying everything green? I've luckily never noticed this and I've given most new old slipjoints a couple of day soak before cleaning/sharpening. Thanks for sharing!
whats that mean?
