Remember your newbie days?

Started for me with a swiss army knife i found in the gutter when I was 7 or 8. I have had many crap knives but also had a really decent Spyderco collection when I was around 11 or 12. My mom Danelle worked for them and loved it. She got the whole family into spyderco. My collection dwindled away but I got back into it and now I have about 20 spyderco again ones I really like. My mother passed away this year unexpectedly but she was always down to talk knives. I have her pink native. The only one she still owned. And some other spyderco shwag.
 
I knew your mom she was a great person, I was so sorry to hear of her passing from you in a different thread.

Are you going to continue her legacy with collecting Spyderco's? Glad to see you posting. :thumbup:
 
How it all started? I remember pretty well as I was in grade school by that time. It started with my Dad and getting a very tiny weekly allowance (by today's standards). Thank God there were no $50 video games or computers then. I would have been no different from most kids today, probably worse.

Just what is a newbie anyway? I knew little about blade steel until probably the last 20 years or so but I owned and used knives since I was 7. Until I joined BF, I typically owned one, two, or three knives.... one was designated for "hunting", carried one, and one probably layed in a drawer. I didn't even own a fixed blade. My first fixed blade knives appeared after the release of the Rambo movies mentioned below. I never counted how many knives I owned because I didn't care. I could tell you how many firearms I owned, but not knives. Still can't tell you how many knives I own. Don't care to even count.

I still wonder if I ever needed a fixed blade at all, but it's fun. So, what can I say?

This is a bit of an exaggeration of reality, but not much. Rambo started it all for fixed blades for me! Yes, John Rambo! Before that, I couldn't care less about fixed blade knives and I certainly didn't use them. Knives were never central to a movie prior to Rambo. They were just tools. All of a sudden, they were needed for SURVIVAL and killing and who knows what else. Then I realized that I already used my knives for all those things except for the killing part. it has been a fun ride.
 
My newbie days were and were not only about 2-3 years ago. I have had a background interest in outdoor cutting tools since childhood. At different points in life the interest has flared up and died down. Not extinguished, just put on a secondary or 3rd, fourth burner. What I did for many years was just have one simple but med. to large folder with me. For years I had an old Normark ''Super Swede'' folder, after moving up through the line from the Swede and another I believe. Then I had and still have a Victorinox ''Rucksack'' SAK. I've had this one for.. oh, around 15 or so years now. But In the last few years I dove deeper into knives again. The interest was always there and for some strange reason, maybe living in the north, several interests converged. Camping, fishing, remote location metal detecting, peripheral concern about walking into a bear, simple love of the Boreal forest etc. all seemed to dovetail to were carrying made sense. I still struggle at times with only wanting a few practical ''user'' cutting tools, and my unexplainable attraction to different blades. Most days I could care less though and just have fun with what I have. This and other forums, have taught me a lot about outdoor cutting tools, and I have more to learn still. Being on this forum has slowly moved me from base ignorance in cutting tools to a moderate knowledge base. I also see myself transitioning from huge knives to wood processors in the 3.5-5 inch length for the most part now. I am also getting a little more into axes this last year or two.
 
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How I REALLY started was a hollow handled "survival knife" that through God's will didn't break when I used it. Then a friend custom made me a knife and it just rolled downhill from there.
 
jfalkos said:
Here's my story. I just got out of high school. All through high school I was on a rowing team, and we'd travel to Tennessee for spring break. We went to Hammers (any Tennessee residents know what I'm talking), which is a very fun budget store. I had one of the older guys buy me a knife and it was the coolest thing ever. I actually got two things. I got a Fury EMS folder. HUGE, heavy, "glass breaker", serrated, the real deal I thought. I also got a northwest trail blister pack with a small knife (gerber paraframe clone) and a cheap multi tool in it. When I got home I looked online for Fury knives and found Bladeplay.com, which sells a lot of cheap stuff. I made an order or two from there.

In the following months I bought a few leatherman products and a new Swiss Army knife. I was looking around for a nametape and stumbled upon uspatriottactical. I ordered a catalog from them and saw the benchmade nim cub II in it. I ordered it from a different site and from there, my blade craze began!!
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Just got back from Nationals down there in TN a little while ago :)
 
I remember when I thought Gerber knives were the best things out there...until I found CRKT. Now compared to ZT and Spyderco, CRKT seems almost like TAC-Force (although the quality of a CRKT is at least 100x better).

I also remember buying a chinese-made "swiss army knife" as a kid for $1.50 at a garage sale. I thought that I had gotten a steal until I noticed that I could bend the blade into a curve with my hand. I also had a $5 buck 112 knock-off that I carried until the lock got almost dangerous to open.
 
My grandpa gave me his old Victorinox and taught me proper usage of the knife, then my dad bought me a Frost Cutlery Delta Ranger when I turned 7....Boy I still have both of those knives and 40+ others (the collection has dwindled due to me giving away some blades to friends who admittedly didn't respect them like I thought they would :thumbdn: ) But I remember thinking that that frost was the shit, hard to believe that was 13 years ago.
 
Frost and Rough Rider knives have sort of replaced some of the old brands as a "first knife" due to pricing. I can understand, kids need to develop an appreciation for the use of the tool and then upgrade.

Anyone have Macgyver influence them on their first swiss army knife acqusitions? Thinking back, it was not long after the show started that I purchased my first SAK. Prior to that, I thought of them as "kids knives".
 
Several $1 Pakistan Buck 110 knockoffs, as a 8-10 year-old. Had a neighbor who was into martial arts, and he showed me his "Bali-song Butterfly Knife" and said it was quality. Forgot about that one for several years, and just picked up whatever cheap knives I could afford at the playground, or through Fingerhut catalogs. (several Swiss-type multi-blade knives, some Frost folders at a local 5 and 10, a "Rambo" knife for $12, which seemed like a fortune!)

There was a couple stores in town that sold cheap stuff, and one that actually sold real Wenger, Victorinox, and even some Al Mar's during the late 80s - early 90s. Couldn't afford those, though. As I became an older teen-ager, I discovered A. G. Russell's store, and dreamed of one day buying something there.

College saw the discovery of Smokey Mountain Knife Works catalog, and that began a change. At that time, 440C was a premium steel, and I still have my first "real" knife, a Beretta folder made in Japan. I met a guy, who introduced me to his Benchmade folder, and I remembered the butterfly logo, and rediscovered a childhood dream.

I didn't have internet until my first real job, and I soon found this place. The rest is the same story as you all have.
 
22-rimfire said:
Anyone have Macgyver influence them on their first swiss army knife acquisitions?
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Hell yeah!
Everyone on the playground had a SAK or a copy thereof.
If you had a real one with all the tools, you were a playground god, pretty much.

Rambo, Predator, and every other movie ain't got a thing on what MacGyver did marketing-wise. :)
 
Dano1987 said:
Started for me with a swiss army knife i found in the gutter when I was 7 or 8. I have had many crap knives but also had a really decent Spyderco collection when I was around 11 or 12. My mom Danelle worked for them and loved it. She got the whole family into spyderco. My collection dwindled away but I got back into it and now I have about 20 spyderco again ones I really like. My mother passed away this year unexpectedly but she was always down to talk knives. I have her pink native. The only one she still owned. And some other spyderco shwag.
Click to expand...

Wow!:)

That truly is an amazing story!:thumbup::thumbup:
 
My first knife was a victorinox spartan when I turned 18. My parents were never very keen on knives, so I had to wait until I could buy my own. A month or so later I picked up a Smith and Wesson extreme ops knife (Like this one http://www.amazon.com/Smith-Wesson-...&sr=8-2&keywords=smith+and+wesson+extreme+ops) and it went from there. Not bad for a first knife. It held together and kept a decent edge for me. I musta been one of the lucky ones with the horror stories you hear around here.
 
thedancingsousa you might wanna get rid of the link before a mod sees it or someone reports it as deal spotting, just some friendly advice to a new guy. Welcome to the forum.
 
I guess I wanna say im in my newbie days, but ive been a quick learner. Ive been buying knives the past few years but I learned a lot since I joined here.
 
Just joined this site, but I've been carrying a knife since I was a little kid. I, like some of you, remember a time when it wasn't such a crime to have a knife at school. My friends and I use to take pride in the fact that we had the sharpest or coolest knife. If I have my pants on, there will be a knife in one of the pockets! That's been my attitude for years. Used to be satisfied with a Gerber or Case, now I'm carrying a zt 0566, bidding on a pm2, and can't wait to get my hands on a zt 0562. What happened?
 
6.5swedesniper said:
Just joined this site, but I've been carrying a knife since I was a little kid. I, like some of you, remember a time when it wasn't such a crime to have a knife at school. My friends and I use to take pride in the fact that we had the sharpest or coolest knife. If I have my pants on, there will be a knife in one of the pockets! That's been my attitude for years. Used to be satisfied with a Gerber or Case, now I'm carrying a zt 0566, bidding on a pm2, and can't wait to get my hands on a zt 0562. What happened?
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Good luck with the PM2, it's starting to become a sin not to own one here on BladeForums :D
 
As a kid I got started on Victorinox SAK's. In my late teens I started buying Gerbers. At the time I thought those were the greatest blades in existence. In my late 20's I bought a Kershaw Drone from an Army Navy Surplus and thought that was the greatest blade in existence. Soon after the Drone I started buying up a bunch of budget Chinese knives. Mostly Kershaws and CRKT. I had an extensive collection of 8Cr13MoV. Then I bought a Delica and felt the difference. I started to learn about steel, opening and locking mechanisms, blade grinds, you name it. That's when I sold off my Gerbers. Recently I sold most of the other Chinese knives to make room for better blades. I still have the Drone in my toolbox and a couple others I never use. Yeah, when you're a noob you really don't know what you don't know
 
Soon I'll be 64, and I just can't remember which was my first knife having had many since I was maybe even younger than 9 or 10. I watched my dad sharpen razors (he was a barber) and pocket knives of all kinds on stones using a rhythmic figure 8 hand motion. Learned about "wire edges" and "burrs" etc. Studied mechanical design. Still a noob. I just simply love knives, and carrying them.
 
I'm not sure how old exactly I was but I had a SAK when I was around 8 or 10. Got a buck 110 when I was 12 and always had a hatchet for the outdoors. Then there was a time when I thought switchblades and butterfly knives were cool around 13 yrs old but no one would buy me one so I never had one and my uncle set me pretty straight on what a knife was for. Bought a leatherman when I was 18 and started buying older knives at garage sales, mostly schrades and some finnish knives. Started getting more interested in the specifics of knives and the history which led me to this site.
Still in the newbie stage as far as I am concerned, always grateful to learn something new on this site! I have more knives now and some real quality ones but I'm still learning.

Edited to add no offence to anyone who likes switch blades or butterfly knives. They are illegal in Canada but stores still sold them which is why I wanted one. My uncle just made it pretty clear that I would not be carrying a knife as a weapon and I had no use for a knife like that.
 
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