I've been retired for 6 years now, and for the most part my choices of edc have changed little. I was headed in a smaller direction anyways. I found as I aged, I needed less knife. I don't know if thats a result of using finese over stength or what, but my taste in knifes went to more compact items. I went from 3 7/8th stockmen and large sodbusters, to 3 1/4 inch pocket knives like the Victorinox bantam and recruit and Buck cadet, and the small Case sodbuster. In CV of course.
The smaller knives do just as well opening those cursed plastic blister packages, amil, cutting twine for the tomato and string bean plants, sharpening a perfect hot dog fork when out with the grandkids, and just plain whittling.
It's not that I have less knife work in my retirement, I hav e way more in fact. My grandson rushes home from school so we can go fishing at the little nieghborhood lake by our house. I'm cutting bait, as well as gutting panfish for dinner right there by lakeside with my pocket knife. It get cleaned out swished around inthe lake and a better cleaning with Dawn dish soap when I get home. I've used my Buck cadet and my Case peanut as my fish knife, and both did well.
Being retired, we have, meaning the better half and I, are acually have more to do that wnen we worked. There's more time for the garden, raising what ends up on our table. That means way more knife work that when I was employed. Twine to cut, plants have a bad branch trimed off, bags of seen to be opened. There's more trips to the shooting range. The better half and I belng to the Izzak Walton League up the road, and we go at least once a week to the range, and twice in warm weather. Of late I've been re-zeroing my guns for a dead on hold instead of a 6 o'clock hold. With aging eyes the dead on hold works better and the screwdriver on my sak has been in good use.
I've been very busy in retirement, and my pocket knives have been getting a real working out. With more leasure time, there's more fishing, camping, woodswalking, gardening, alot of which is with the kids and gradkids. My grandson has turned into a knife knut, so we compare pocket knives, and whittle on the back deck.
So far, my Buck cadet, Case peanut, Victorinox recruit, small Case sodbuster, and my old late 60's era Hen and Rooster stockman have been my most used.
The wild card has been a Buck Hartsook. This knife took me by surpise. I was driving a friend around to his medical appointments and chemotherapy for his cancer treatments. He knew I liked knives and he gave me a Hartsook as a gift. I looked at it at first, thinking "what the heck am I going to do with this little toothpick?" but I said thank you and I started to carry it so's not to hurt his feelings. I thought the knife was a joke. The joke was on me. This has turned out to be one of the most handy knives I own. It gets used alot. In the past year and a half it's started to bump some of my pocket knives out of work. It's like a scalple. With nothing to open, its very convienient. Pull out and use. Since its just a single little piece of steel it rinses off and wipes off easy. I've used it for fishing, around the house, and as a un-folding pocket knife. So light you can forget it's there. It's so small, it's easy to think it's a bad joke, but it's a very very efficiant cutter. Nice to have as a little neck knife when in the garden. It also guts fish very well.
I don't understand all those old guys who say they'll never retire. Retirement is a blast.
