Recommendation? How to Loose a knife

Whitedog

Whitedog

Joined
Dec 30, 2005
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I've been carrying a knife for 70 plus years. Started back in the 5th grade. Case Stockman or such. Then in the late 70s or 80s along comes the one bladed one hand openers with a clip. Liked the idea of one hand opening especially when you were holding on to something that needed to be cut. But these damned clips are the quickest way I know of to loose a knife. Over the years I have had 4 knives slip out of my pocket. Found 3 of them. Had one escape this morning. Fortunately I found it. But that is the last of using the damned clips. The knife can just go in the bottom of my pocket from now on, Who else feels the same?
 
One thing to note is that not all clips are created equal. The "clip test" is one of my purchase criteria. If it doesn't seat securely and there are no easy clip alternatives, that can be a deal breaker.

... I really don't like knives turning sideways in my pocket so clips are my preference.
 
I stopped using clips years ago*. Never lost a knife though. I had clips bent, scratched leather steering wheels, paint, and unwanted attention. Moved to pouches in the pocket.

I have other methods of self defense, so rapid deployment ceased to be an issue.

*when doing yard work I will start with it clipped to a pocket, but by end of day it’s in the bottom.
 
This is a common problem. At one time I was carrying my knife clipped on my left hand front pocket but kept having issues with the knife getting caught under my seatbelt and when I pulled the seatbelt off it would slip it right out of my pocket and either under the seat or into the parking lot of wherever I stopped.
I moved it into my right pocket, but I guess it is still a danger especially if you are walking through heavy brush, etc.
I also have a problem with slip joints slipping out of my pocket into chairs, vehicle seats, etc. so I guess it is not a unique issue for clip knives.
 
Keyopp said:
One thing to note is that not all clips are created equal.
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This. And it can be hard to tell how it will work out when you order online.

I do use a clip most of the time, though. Had problems twice.

Once was with a Kershaw something, forget what it was. Nothing special. But at the time my commute involved a train to a bike ride to work, and biking with a clipped knife didn't work so well. After the second time I dropped it, I stopped doing that.

The second was a Seb 21. The clip screw fell out of the body at a friend's house. I found the clip and screw but not the knife. Several months later, my friend found it in her kid's room. (With mom's permission, I gave him a pretty forgiving slipjoint.)
 
I kind of prefer in a slip in my pocket. That way you are not showing everyone that you are carrying a knife by using the clip.
 
Sibyrnes said:
I like the deep carry clips that Benchmade uses - haven’t lost one so far.
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I was going to mention the same. Surprisingly, the short, deep pocket clips (like on a Bugout) are really good. I managed to get Benchmade to send me a bunch back when they weren’t so stingy handing them out… put them on every Benchmade I had.

My only (near loss) was a small Sebenza. I was loading garbage bags up into cans and one caught the 21 clip and took it with it. After I realized it was gone, and hours of searching, I decided to look in the can and there it was, securely clipped to a hole in the side of a trash bag… glad I didn’t give up before garbage day.
 
I've only lost 1 knife in my life & It was due to a loose clip.

This taught me to always check the tension of the clip so that the knife won't slip out. Haven't lost a knife since. 🤷‍♂️
 
My experiemce is the opposite. I used to loose knives all the time loose in the pocket. I haven't lost any with clips. Though I did have one attach itself to the seat belt.
 
I shouldn't type this because as laws of nature seem to go "if I type this it's almost certain that soon after ... it will happen to me" ... but I've carried both with and without clip for 50 years and have never lost a knife. I have only once ever had a clip catch on anything but I felt it immediately. I'm not sure a knife could come out of my pocket without me feeling it.

Now I have had one sheath knife ... a Buck 110 in a belt sheath that fell out of the sheath while crawling under a fence while deer hunting. I got to my truck and realized it was gone and it hit me that was probably where it happened so a flashlight and long walk back tracking my path and I found it right there where I rolled under that fence.
 
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The only knife I ever lost was an old Spyderco with the integral molded clip back in the early 1990's. No way to tighten those up when they got loose.
I was on a hike wearing tight cut-off jeans. My best guess is it slipped out of my pocket while I was sitting eating lunch. Went back the next day and couldn't find it.
Once makers switched to metal clips with screws -- which allows you to take the clip off and re-bend it to tighten it up -- I've never had another problem.
 
I lost two Benchmades because the clips snagged on furniture. One of them turned up the next day, but not before I had ordered a replacement. The other one never turned up. Tthese days, I don’t carry knives with clips. I carry an Opinel 6, an SAK, and sometimes a third knife. If it had a clip, that gets removed.
 
Peter Hartwig said:
My experiemce is the opposite. I used to loose knives all the time loose in the pocket. I haven't lost any with clips. Though I did have one attach itself to the seat belt.
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Same here. Slipjoints are always slipping out of my pocket but I’ve never lost a clipped knife. Closest call was a 6” Ti-Lite catching a door frame, luckily it didn’t wave open!
 
This is a very reasonable concern. I almost always carry a lockback on my belt for this reason. I've lost a PM2 that way and almost lost other folders. Luckily I was present enough to retrieve it.
 
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