how many knives is too many for edc ?

Jesse B. said:
>As many as you need, or "might" need on any given day. Personally, and on most days, that number is 1--unlike Machete, who by my count needs a minimum of 26:
Click to expand...
He also, apparently, doesn't believe in folders.

Based on all those butter knives on his chest, he must expect a lot of toast in his future.


To answer the OP's question: It depends on the situation. I'd say 1 is fairly normal, 2 is reasonable, and more probably need a purpose if you don't want people to wonder about you (not that I care, but there are quite a few that have knife issues; if you've ever had someone nearby jump when you opened a larger folder, you know what I mean). For a true EDC, you probably only need one or two. I only carry one except when I have a specific reason to carry more (camping, showing them to people, etc). At my last employer most of the engineers and all the techs carried one daily, but now I'm outnumbered by people that don't (and they're afraid of and/or incapable of opening a 3.6" AO knife), so I'm going to carry a second, smaller, less intimidating, less expensive, folder that I can hand them without worrying too much.
 
Last edited:
One 3.5" or above, one 3" or below, and one mini multi-tool usually the leatherman squirt
 
Like others for me it depends on the situation.

Sunny day and I'm in shorts I go lighter. One modern folder, and either an Vic Tinker, Vic Classic, or Leatherman Micra and maybe a Fenix E01.
Pants or in uniform a bit heavier. I go with a modern folder, sometimes two, a Leatherman Wave, and a Fenix LD 20.
 
Cold steel bushman folder in my pocket . And there's a Fiskars hatchet wrapped in 550 , a gerber lmf two and a leatherman new wave in my EDC pack.
 
Also depends. My normal daily pockets hold my BM585, Olight i3 flashlight and SAK Tinker. I'll add the ZT350 or BM 585 black to the mix as well. Add to that a HK Plan D for work. When hiking or snow shoeing I add the BK 16 or 14. When bike riding just the BK 24.
 
Last edited:
SoCal_kid said:
I like the one is none, two is one philosophy. That being said, having three is not for me
Click to expand...

"2 is one, one is none" is in regards to doing nothing during CQB without backup... It can hardly apply in this case. Unless of course you are a person who needs 2 knives for their work, one is usually quite sufficient I would imagine. Just as an experiment try telling 10 random people you carry more than one knife on a regular occasion, and gauge their reaction. One quality folder will hold up to some severe abuse and maintain an edge long enough on 98% of your days to get you home for a touch up, so that a second one could hardly be warranted for the average person.
 
For EDC, I think that more than one is too much.
When I good camping or hiking I may take 2... Actually one multi took and one folder.
But for EDC I think one is enough
 
rustyrazor said:
One quality folder will hold up to some severe abuse and maintain an edge long enough on 98% of your days to get you home for a touch up, so that a second one could hardly be warranted for the average person.
Click to expand...
Only 98%? It's probably more like four to six nines, perhaps higher. I agree that you probably won't need a backup, but a beater can make sense. A quality one will probably even handle a day or three of very heavy use in a survival situation with little to show from it.
 
It depends on the functionality and use for each tool. If you carry multiple knives, there's going to be overlap where for certain tasks, any of them will do. But there may also be tasks where one of them is better suited to the tasks than the others.

I would say that "too many" means that you carry a knife that never gets used, or that the overlap in use is covered completely by one or more of your other tools and so that the only reason that you use it is for the sake of using it.

My normal daily carry is between 2 and 3 knives. Boker KeyCom clipped to a pocket with a small flashlight clipped to it. Double duty as a pocket dangler for the flashlight and quick one-hand operation for simple cutting tasks. Victorinox Cadet in right front pocket. The Cadet is a recent addition to my carry and I like it for the additional tools. Third (and somewhat redundant) is some type of traditional slipjoint. Case, Buck, or Great Eastern Cutlery, usually a 2 or 3 blade pattern.

The redundancy is between the Vic Cadet and the Case slipjoint. The Vic covers most of what I formerly used the Case knife for, though having the variety of blade shapes with the multi-bladed Case means it still gets some work, and the Vic blade rarely gets used.

If you count multitools, then I have yet another blade on a small Leatherman Squirt P4. I carry it for the other tools, it just happens to have a blade on it. I could probably make do for some things with the LM blade, it's just not optimal for most things I need. If the knife blade were snapped off on the LM, I'd still carry it for the other tools.

So - I carry multiple tools each day to cover different needs. They all have one or more blades on them, but also have features not covered as well by any of the others. I don't feel any particular need to minimize the number of blades I have on me. They're all small and relatively lightweight. I could probably get by with fewer, while reducing the overall utility, suitability to task, or convenience of my current tool set. But I don't see the motivation to reduce total blade count just to get to some arbitrary number of "not too many."

Bottom line is to carry how ever many you feel meets your needs or just your wants, and don't worry about whether the non knife carrying world thinks you are weird.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top