Unless you have tasks you do with your Spydercos and 110's you wouldn't do with the Farmer, in which case I'd like to hear them.
Basically, the Buck 110 and the Para are stronger due to the thicker blades which is more forgiving if the user makes a mistake and torques or jams the blade while it's in thick material.
The thicker blades are less likely to snap than the thinner Farmer blade.
It seems to have a solid, time-proven track record based on the feedback of the knife. Not as long of a track record as the 110, but long enough for me.
Consider this....
The Para-Military has only been available for about four years.
And as far as knives go, it is certainly not a low budget knife for the masses.
Which leads me to believe that there probably have not been that many Para's sold to the average "working Joe".
I'm just guessing but I would think that four thousand a year would be an optimistic number....so you have maybe sixteen-thousand Para's in the hands of users.
Now it's also probably a safe guess that about half of those users have never used the Para for any seriously difficult cutting tasks....so maybe only about eight-thousand users have actually pushed the Para to its limits.
With that in mind, as nice as the Para is, I simply cannot agree that it has much of a track record.
Ergos are largely subjective so I won't spend long here. The Farmer works great for me, long term included.
Maybe for you, but for the vast majority of folks, the thicker and longer handle of the 110 is going to be much easier on the hand than they slimmer and shorter Farmer handle.
Look at most of your gardening and farming tools....notice that the handles tend to be larger and more hand-filling?
Smaller and thinner handles generally cause blisters and hand fatigue.
And when slippery from fluids like deer blood, the smaller handle affords less control....not to mention that it's easier to slip and cut oneself with a smaller handled knife.
Here's some pictures to give folks a better idea of the handle size difference.
The Buck in my hand....
And the Victorinox in my hand....
One little slip and my fingers would be on the Vic blade, no doubt about it.
Your comparison of the Para and 110 isn't fair. Take the clip off the Para then compare them.
Perhaps, but if you had the Para clipped to your pocket at the time you got lost in the woods, how are you going to then remove the clip?
Without a screwdriver, you're stuck with the clip til you get rescued or hike back to civilization.
When using a random stone from a creekbed or whatnot I can take a dulled edge to serviceable condition in under a minute. I don't consider that hard either. What do you define easy as?
Wow, you're a lot faster than me!
I can't take a dull S30V blade and get it to a serviceable edge, using a rock from the ground, in one minute.
But I suspect that we have different notions of what "
dull" and "
serviceable" might mean.
Regardless, I'll bet you can still sharpen the Farmer and the 110 even faster.
Buck 110's get tarnish on the brass if you even take them out of the clamshell
Rust is very bad on a knife.
Tarnish is really just cosmetic.
I've never had my Spyderco liners corrode except when sweat got trapped in between the liner and G10 scale of my Cara Cara. Came off easily with some sandpaper.
But have you ever been lost in the woods, perhaps constantly wet from rain and snow and sweat, , perhaps for weeks?
I'm not saying that the Para is a rust-bucket, but I do think that it would rust a bit quicker than the Farmer or the 110.
I've been using Victorinox non-locking knives since I was 5 and never once did I cut myself due to the lack of a lock. I can't think of many survival scenarios where lock or no lock would even matter.
But if one is lost, tired, hungry, dehydrated, cold, and weak....it's much easier to make a mistake or use bad judgement when cutting something.
And a locking folder is simply more forgiving than a non-locking folder.
I'm not saying that the Farmer or the Para-Military are bad knives....they're both great knives....I just think the 110 would be better if one was lost in the wilderness.
Having said that, I would choose the
Victorinox SwissTool over the 110 if that had been an option.
