Is your interest in knives sometimes in the closet?

Everybody where I work knows my knife collecting fetish, and for the most part, it doesn't bother them. Usually, the opposite, because I'm the first person they go to if they need something cut themselves. I'm always playing around with them, and am always showing off my new ones. The ones that know me better/longer are aware that I'm hoping to be a knifemaker.

Even outside of work, I don't raise too many eyebrows. Some, of course, but less than I would if I lived outside Arizona, in a more urban setting. I'm relatively clean-cut, no piercings, tatoos, or weird hair color. If I were a goth or punk or something, I'm sure I'd get more guff whenever I whipped open a balisong or an auto.
 
Depends a little on where I am. In my new government job I certainly wouldn't be flashing knives around in the office. Where I live is a different story, I live in a rural village and, around these parts, people don't generally consider it their business to be telling other people what they can or can't do, or carry, unless you're actually hassling anyone.
 
It depends on the people around me.

At work I carry whatever I want, and nobody bothers me. I work for a travel agency that specializes in outdoors activities, I'm one of the guides so a knife is part of the basic equipment they expect me to carry. Even when I'm in the city (I sometimes work at the company's offices to get some overtime) they allow me to carry anything I want. There is even a bucket of Opinel #8 on the receptionist's desk with a sign that says "Pick one". I love my job. :D

The university is a completely different world. Unfortunately, history and anthropology are taught in the most leftist university building in the whole country. I can respect a socialist, communist or whatever if they are worthy people, but my university is overran with pot smoking Che Guevara wannabes and zombie like hippies who are posers for the most part and annoy the hell out of me. They'll make all kinds of stupid knife/gun comments and then ask to borrow your EDC five minutes later (my usual response is that they'll have to pry it out of my dead cold hands). On my first year I didn't want to create any unnecessary problems, so I kept my regular EDC in my back pack and just carried a SAK in my pocket. SAKs are great PC tools, nobody feels threatened by them. As I became more comfortable I started carrying whatever I wanted however I wanted to. The only guys that I don't want to bother are the professors, the rest of the people don't matter to me since they don't grade my exams.

At most social events, introducing yourself saying "I'm X and I hav over two hundred knives." isn't the best of ideas with some people. I usually keep it quiet and only talk about it if somebody brings up the subject, or if we are talking about outdoors hobbies. I find that if you do something like hunting, fishing, hiking, etc. knife collections don't seem that weird to people.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how careful you are, sheeple are everywhere and you're bound to hear some stupid comment sooner or later. I try to stay clear of those kinds of people but they are a plague. Sometimes I'm very deffensive because I think there is a stupid comment comming, last week I was luckily wrong. I went to a martial arts talk, some guys where doing a kali demo. The man sitting behind me saw the clip on my pocket and said "Is that a Spyderco knife?" I was getting ready to repeat my "it's a tool and I can legally carry it" speach when he asked me if he could see it because he was a Benchmade collector but was thinking about getting a Paramilitary. We had a great talk about our collections, local shops, etc.
 
No never.I believe this practice harms all knife owners. Hide 'em don't tell you got them, as if its child porn. Soon most of the masses will think no one they know carries a knife so there is no need from anyone to own or carry one.

Use them or lose them.
 
Because of where I work, and how well I do my job, it would be hard for me to say that I am not interested in knives. All of my friends know. Of course, all of my coworkers know. Even all of my aquaintences know. The difference is to what extent they know of my knifelust. But I have never hid it from anyone.
-KC
 
Always. In spite of the utility I've always provided at work in opening packages and cutting up bundles, I wouldn't dare express anything but a utilitarian interest in knives. As far as my friends go, they're pretty used to my quirks, but their friends get pretty freaked out. I've told stories here, and believe me, I've got plenty more.
 
+1 to the comments of Electric Zombie and Lone Hunter. It's a shame that as Americans we've become so neutered as a society that we have to have this discussion. I don't think we should make concessions to the sheeple, they don't even acknowledge reality so why dum ourselves down to their level? An if some chic doesn't like the fact that I carry a knife or a firearm..the hell with her...I wouldn't even give her the satisfation of a grudge f-ck much less a second date :barf: Maybe if the few remaining real men in this country started acting like men again the rest of these panty waists would follow suit instead of the other way around.
 
Bob W said:
As far as the social aspects of having so many knives, when I discuss knives in public I refer to them as "pocketknives", even though many are hunting knives, bayonets, and sheath knives. I wouldn't want people to think I'm some sort of Mall Ninja with a closet of fantasy daggers and swords.
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I've recently started using the word 'pocketknife' around sheeple as well, and it definately gets a much better reaction than even just the word 'knife'
 
Do you find yourself withholding to whom you might otherwise share your interest in knives?
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Never have , never will. If so called "normal" folks get sand in thier you know what, because I like knives and guns then, they can go you know what themselves. :)
I guess I can relate though , becasue I think folks that dont like guns and knives are freakin wierd ! :D
 
Nope. I didn't in California and there's certainly no reason to do so here in SW Virginia.
 
I never hide my intrest in knives.I carry my HOG at work(my nick-name for my impact warthog).No one gives a crap.My boss is a knife nut as well so he doesn't say anything to me.I'm the same as some of you folks I'm the go-to guy when something needs cut.My friends are knife nuts or open minded people.I'd probablly be ofended if someone pissed and moaned about my knives.
 
My problem in Argentina is that we don't have properly defined knife laws. Our weapon laws focus only on firearms and knives fall in a very unclear category of other weapons (weapons being anything that can increase your offensive potential as far as the law is concerned). Carrying any weapon is illegal, so most people (and this includes police officers) think knives shouldn't be carried in the street.

You can argue a defense, but you get your chance to do that when you go to court and your knife is long gone by then. My father is a lawyer and he works as a public deffender (the guy you get when you can't afford or don't to hire a lawyer of your own). He gets a gazillion cases of idiots arrested with crappy knives and he usually gets them off, but he told me that those guys are the ones that create a problem for responsible knife owners. He looked at over a thousand confiscated blades and he couldn't find a single one from a good brand or maker (and he knows knives).

Our law is so ridiculous that people like my dad and I who have a permit to carry a gun can't carry a knife!

The current law is supossed to be open and allow you to carry anything as long as you don't have any violent intent (and "intent" is the key word here) or a plausible explanation for carrying it. Who decides wether or not you look like a guy about to commit murder or if you really need to carry that knife for your daily tasks? The arresting officer, of course. The problem is that our police force is so corrupted that they are actually the biggest organized crime group we have. Sometimes looking respectable will only make you a target for a bribe request. Of course, there are some brave and honest cops.

Anyway, this is a problem for me, not because I fear being arrested (I don't engage in any kind of activity that would lead to a search and don't flip my balis around at the mall) but because I don't have the actual legal grounds to tell the sheeple to shut their pie-holes because I'm within my legal right to carry my knife.

Something similar happens with my proffessors. If I get a sheeplish teacher, I have to suck it up because he is the one grading my papers and deciding if I get my degree or not, and however unfair it might be if he is against knife and gun owners I sometimes have to hide my interests (there are some good teachers that are opossed to guns but accept an open debate).

Sometimes things happen that show I'm right about all the gear I carry and people recognize it would have been nice to have me around. For example, a few months ago my mother was in a court building and the elevator borke down, it came down two stories and the lights went out. The elevator was aboslutely packed with people. It took the firefighters quite a while to open the elevator from the outside because it was stuck between two floors. When they did manage to do it, they check out the inside and the chief said that a flashlight and a screwdriver would have been enough to get the doors opened from the inside. Can you believe that out of the fifteen people on that elevator not one of them had a flashlight, screwdriver (or knife to use as one in such an emergency).

Another example, last week my brother went to a park in the outskirts of the city. I convinced him to take a small PSK (mainly a first aid kit and some other gadgets), since they were going to play some soccer matches and horseride he agreed (somebody always sprains his ankle or stuff like that). A girl who was with two guys (none of them were friends of my brother) were running around and the girl fell, with such bad luck that the beer bottle she held broke and her forearm landed on top of it. Her arm was really messed up. They called an ambulance that took half an hour to get there. If my brother hadn't had his FAK and knowledge (he is a med student) that girl would have been in lots of trouble.

What does piss me off about some knife-haters is that it's actually in their best interest that I carry a knife. I once had to cut a guy out of his car (seatbelt was easy but I had to cut his boot too), how would I have been able to help him without a good knife? Chewing through his boot? :mad:

Sorry for the rant, but these kind of topics always get me fired up.
 
Boink,
I know what you mean. Some people that got you into knives are the first ones to know about your new toys. Others, should mind their business; because news does travel incredibly fast around here as well, and before you know it, everyone is talking about you. To be honest with you, some people don't really need to know what you have, what your purpose is and why you need knives.
 
i think people would be more receptive to my knife collecting habit if i didn't look like a triad member about to shank them
 
on aif someone criticizes my knife collecting habit, i just say no the next time they ask to borrow my knife to open a package or anything.

there are more knife nuts around than you think. some dude was asking about my BM710... and i thought he was going to be a prick and start criticizing my choice of EDC, until i noticed a darrel ralph custom maxx peeking out of his pocket.

Franciscomv, i wouldn't get to defensive whenever someone asks about your knife. Just shrug matter-of-factly, as if to say "what, YOU don't carry one?" The more easygoing and calm you are, the easier it is for them to accept it.
 
Face it folks , many people are just wussies with little or no common sense.
The best reaction IMO to someone that gets butthurt over your knife is to make them look like the wierdo.
When they exclaim about your knife , smile and look at them like your examining a bug under a magnifying glass.
I have low tolerance for sheep , the ones that walk on two feet.
 
Nope. I live in the part of the country (not big city) where nobody gets too excited by this sort of activity. If you get out of hand they will whack you quick and get you straightened out real fast. Not too worried about getting sued either.
 
Yep - My knife hobby is definetly my little secret. Living in the country and having a few 'outlets' where a big folder doesn't cause a stir has helped; but by and large I don't let people know about my knife hobby.

For me it's more than being worried about their reaction - nowadays I keep more and more to myself and only share interests with those most passionate. Less preaching about what interests me and more enjoying I suppose.
 
No.

Strange reactions do happen every once in a while, as with everything, but my pocket knives have come in handy often enough that they have brought with them good memories for all those involved.

Good memories and thankful people have always overcome a trivial, irrational reaction.

In my experience, it is expected that a gentleman always carries a pocket knife.

Chris
 
i don't go out of my way to tell them, but if they ask about it i just simply smile and some yup i collect knives, no big deal. The only time i've ever had aproblem was at a party when someone asked for something to cut open a box. I whipped out my CRKT-M-16 and this girl just got really scared. It wasn't a big deal though, i just simply put it away after and let people think what they want.

i'm kind of known as the kid who collects knives AND carries them. People always ask why i carry them and i just don't really answer them.
 
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