I love all knives that I own, from choppers to slipjoints. My collection is all about diversity, and as many discover the amount of diversity available in slipjoints is nearly endless. I am constantly learning more and more, and am finally understanding how the construction of these knives was carried out, and the complexities of such a seemingly simple task. Changing one element of a design has such wide ranging implications, and that is very interesting to me.
I have recently discovered why I balked at collecting slipjoints for so long. In my mind they were always relegated to backup knife status. They were small, thin bladed knives for tasks like cleaning nails and trimming string. Growing up on the farm we had I carried a Buck 110 sized folder or small fixed blade bowie or something of the like. A larger slipjoint meant for work wasn't part of our culture- hunting knife sizes predominated. So in my mind the slipjoints were kept for the times you did not have other knives. We didn't partake in dressing up, so there were no "Sunday" knives to speak of.
Reading this forum and trying to understand the passion obviously shared throughout here brought the knives to my attention. This was a section of knife collecting that I had room for both spatially and monetarily, but needed to find a use for them as I use my knives. I had a couple of small slipjoints already- a small jacknife from Boker, a pearl and Damascus peanut from BearMGC, but nothing that I found very useful as a good worker. I read a bit, and found the canoe calling my name. With a purchase from New Graham Knives I had them track down a stag bone Queen Canoe. I believe it took me throughout the movie Coraline to get an edge on that double bladed butter knife, but after that I took it on every outdoors trip I could, often paired with a modern clip folder, but not as much in a back up role, more in a complimentary role.
I started taking more notice of slipjoints at flea markets/antique shows/gun shows, as well as getting a couple of orders in from a couple of vendors, testing the waters of different companies. Some I was impressed with, some not so much, but I tried to give all of the various patterns a fair chance. Found that I like multiple blades for specific tasks, was not a big fan of pen blades (funny when my first major slipjoint was a canoe), but didn't really have a primary use slipjoint.
The last couple of years has been a great growth in slipjoint use for me. The primary reason was that I work in scrubs now, and clipped folders as a rule don't work the best slipped in the pocket, they seem to flop around too much for my liking. I bought an executive whittler as a graduation present for myself, and discovered that I did not mind a 4" folder as long as the profile was right. The second reason I grew in my slipjoint understanding was a fairly large number of John Lloyd knives that came into my possession. These were primarily single bladed slipjoints, which I did not have, but more significantly they were long enough to be seen as primary use blades. I carried and got used to the feel of them in my scrubs, and finally I had slipjoints long enough for food prep and other tasks I found smaller slipjoints could not perform to my liking.
Then I had to get in a custom clipped folder recently, that seemed very light in hand. I started weighing my slipjoints to compare it to, and found that I was surprised at how heavy some of them are. Now I have another factor to consider.............
In the end, its often easier to just let my daughter choose what I'll use for the day- everything seems capable enough and with so much selection I have to go through each one eventually anyways. Sometimes it's fun to pair a custom clipped folder with an old school beater some farmer must have carried for years, damascus/burl wood/titanium next to old worn and chipped bone/patina/worn down blade. It is also interesting thinking about what uses each blade got through the day.
. Five years ago my slip joint collection was just about non-existant. These days I'm buying more than the modern style and enjoying the heck out of them :thumbup:. They tend to be a little cheaper too 
. As a carry knife it's still hard to beat a Spyderco but with jeans a clipless knife works as well or better for me.
