How do you store your knives?

Atlas Knife Company

Atlas Knife Company

Joined
Feb 16, 2010
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3,668
Just what the title says, how do you store your knives? Do you have a fancy display case, glass front china cabinet, or do you just throw them all in a box and hope you don't lose one?
 
Sadly I mostly toss mine under my bed.. there are probably thousands of dollars of knives under there. I will pull one out to suit a certain task and then put it back, if it's not an EDC or something I'd put in my backpack etc. But gonna be watching this thread for ideas certainly!
 
All mine go into one of my Safes and the way things are today that is the best place for them.!* I very seldom show any of them unless it is a good friend and I trust them ~~ which most of my good friends I do trust.
All Guns and Knives go in there except my Favorite ones to carry.
 
For my EDC knives (which is almost all of them right now) I took the drawer in the kitchen where the cutting board and chef's knives are and put some partitions in it to hold one knife by itself. They use to be loose in that drawer, but now are organized, but I have two knives on order and no more slots available, so I will have to figure something out.
 
I have a few shelves in my safe devoted to knives. I used to keep them I'm a nice wooden box on my dresser. Then I realized that if that box were to disappear I would be out a few grand. now a majority of them are safely locked away.
 
I keep the original boxes inside a larger box. But I hope to soon build a display case.
 
I think I'm about to get a pelican box for a rifle (1700) and put them in there. It's pricey @ $215 at the local dealer, but I've recently misplaced one knife and it's driving me nuts, so it's probably a good investment in my sanity if nothing else. I'm trying to figure out if I should use a VCI (Vapor Corrosion Inhibitor) or a desiccant pack or both. I wipe everything down with a Sentry Tuf-cloth.

Also, how do you guys store your leather sheaths and knives. I know better, but I keep them together. I'm thinking about vacuum bagging them since I picked up a seal-a-meal at the local thrift store for six bucks. Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
zaph1,

Thank you for this thread. Storage and transportation has always been a "puzzlement" for me.
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Golnick's post has made me re-think everything below this line. Most of my methods were for short term transportation. No knives stayed in Spyderco or other rolls after the necessity for transportation.

I had suspected some of this and for that reason my storage methods have changed every three or four months.
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CXL!!! CXL !!!

I also want to thank Striderco for bringing the Large Spyderco cases with transparent slots to my attention. I have the smaller ones, but I did not know that the big ones existed. I have to be very careful how I open them or show the knives because they have a tendency to slip out. Suggestions appreciated. I do prefer the transparent sleeves to the other styles of slots. I have never seen or tried the expensive Bench Made cases.

Plano fishing tackle boxes plain, or lined with felt, also work well for storage.

I like a large variety of knife patterns, handle materials and sizes within easy reach. My wife frowns when I have too many knives sprawled on the dinner table. In the interest of marital peace, I keep a small stack of clear plastic drawers under my desk.

Fancy customs are kept in the padded zipper cases they came in, or other padded storage like Bill's cases. I keep the cases in large tackle boxes, and sometimes these are in larger plastic tubs or Book Boxes.

This may imply a large collection. I am not a collector. I am just an aggregator of sharps that I like, from the cheapest blade to the finest items that I can talk myself into reaching for at the time. My taste is still evolving. I make many mistakes, and change my mind too often.

I have one nice wooden display case like those used at shows, but I am afraid of breaking the glass.

I prefer an extremely low profile to a serious safe.

There are other good threads on this subject in BF. This is a very good thing because the responses appear to group around a specific method or style. There are in-depth discussions of safes, rolling stacked Snap-on toolboxes, glass display cases, and Gerstner style homemade or special built wooden stacked drawers.
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Golnick

I am always open to suggestions.

Mike H.

WTB
2009 BF Forum Barlow
 
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Pelican case.
P1030476.jpg
 
All my fixed blades have a lanyard. I hang them by that lanyard on the vertical, long gun dividers in my safe. All my long guns sit at a bit of an angle, & the knives hang straight down so they don't bang against each other, rub or anything detrimental to either gun or knife. This also only puts the weight of the sheath on itself instead of hanging point up by the sheath, if that makes any sense.Basically, I'm making use of a completely wasted space in my safe. All folders go on a shelf in said safe.
 
I have 2 Ikea cabinets that are 4 feet wide, 18 inches deep and 8 feet high. These hold everything that I don't carry on a regular basis.
 
hey cmdr riker, what is that worn yellow one in your box? i'm intrigued.

also, i just keep my knives in the box that my ka-bar becker bk2 came in. my bk2 sleeps next to the box in my drawer.
 
I have a couple of shelves in my closet that all my general EDC folders sit on. Almost like a display so I can go up and flick them open and play with them :D And then I keep my big fixed blades (they have lanyards) handing on coat hooks on the wall with the sheaths off. It's irresponsible and it looks cool. The rest of my knives I just keep in a drawer in my bed room.
 
Plastic foam products which tightly fit the knife pose several risks: first, they can trap moisture on the knife. Second, they can out gas chemicals which can degrade or decolor knife materials and can build up as a cloudy, difficult-to-remove film on metal. Third, their material can migrate into surface pores and imperfections causing them to "stick" to the knife. Therefore, foam-lined cases and pouches are not recommended for long-term storage of valuable knives.

Cases such as the Spyderco cases that have clear vinyl have many of the same problems as foam, especially out gassing. To make what would normally be a hard plastic material soft and pliable, you have to add a plasticizer to it. The chemicals called phthalates the we hear about sometimes are plasticizers added to plastics to make them soft and pliable. We sometimes hear about them because they can come out of the plastics and go into food and beverages and drugs and such stored in or even just passing through containers made of such plasticized plastics. Some research shows that this may lose a health threat.... to people, but what about knives? Many plasticizers can build up on metal and other materials and cause a difficult-to-remove milky film. It is not unreasonable to suspect that, over time, they may affect some of the plastic materials used in some knives, possibly making them softer. Softened plastic films may also, over time and especially with even slight pressure, tend to flow into pores and surface imperfections in some materials and, thusly, tend to bond to those materials.

Cases lined with felt or other cloth have a special concern. The dyes used may tend to migrate over time into some materials. I was once shown a beautiful custom Bali-Song with genuine ivory inserts. So beautiful... until I turned it over. It had been stored for many years unmoved in a display case lined with green felt. The green dye had migrated out of the felt and into portions of the ivory. Such a shame.

Be very careful about using desiccant packs in sealed containers. Be very wary of sealed containers in general. Desicants do not make moisture go away. They just absorb and hold it much like a kitchen sponge. But, just as a sponge can only trap a certain amount of water, so also desicant packs have a limited effectiveness too. And just as a sponge will release its water if squeezed, so also desicant packs will release their water -- possibly doing serious damage to the knives they were supposed to protect -- under the right circumstances.

So, there are a few facts to consider right there.
 
I just throw them in a drawer. Not a special drawer. For the nicer knives, I keep the box they came in and throw that in the drawer.
 
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