The Sum of My Knife Knowledge

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I knew it!
 
Beware RazorEdj, Doris tells me that "they" are watching you closely.
 
That was a very fine thread starter. Good advice all the way around.

One thing I don't understand though... You live in the Adirondacks and don't use your knives during the winter? I used to live up there and did X-country skiing, snow shoeing, ice fishing, even some winter camping in the high-peaks region. Plenty of use for knives, though you're going to have to get a "winter knife" like my Finnish MK95. No exposed tang to stick to your hands, and a little extra reach which seems to go well with heavy gloves.

Tell Doris you'll come back with a fox fur to line her new leather home.
 
Unfortunatly, me winter life is spent further down in New York than the Adirondacks. I'm actually at the foot of the wimpy Catskill Mountains, earning a living in Columbia County. But once spring rolls around, I spend about 3 days a week in the Adirondacks, leading a simpler and meaningful life. I consider the Adirondacks Mountains to be my home, even though I was neither born nor take permanent residence there.

I have seen and lived in many places during my short life, but the Adirondacks are the only place in which I've truly lived. I've seen awesome beauty there, as well as the awesome forces of nature. Nature quickly culls the weak, and easily tears down anything which man can dream up. The Adirondacks are "forever wild" because they insist that it be this way. It's that shear force of nature that I'm addicted to.
 
I must say that I’m positively brimming with information today!!! Here are a few more gems, culled from amongst the litter of what brain cells I retain from my teenage years.

1. Knife handles just plain stink. They come in two varieties, the indestructible butt ugly kind and the gorgeous naturally fragile kind. At least that’s what the manufacturers want you to think. They sell G-10 and FRN and Delrin and all manner of synthetic horrors. These space age materials have a half life of about 4 billion years and look about as appealing as this ingrown hair that’s been festering on my backside. The truth is that stag and bone and wood make great knife handles. If natural materials were good enough for cavemen, who are we to disagree? I guarantee that cavemen were much harder on their tools than we are, and we still find remnants of these natural materials a thousand years later. So your knife handle will only survive for a thousand years!!! That’s long enough for the knife to eventually get dropped in the woods by your great-great-great-great-grandson who could lose a hover vehicle in his own driveway.

2. Buy a knife that actually cuts. Some knife nut’ll probably scalp me for this one, but not all knives cut well. I’ve got knives that I dropped a hundred bucks on that just don’t cut well!!! They have the awesome ergonomic shape, the impervious lock and the never-needs-to-be-sharpened steel, but that’s it. These knives just don’t cut for beans!!! I can sharpen them until they cut my copier confetti across both grains, but guess what happens the first time I go to clean a brook trout? Nothing. The blade just slides across the fish’s belly like the trout was cut from a diamond. Blade geometry still means something, whether the heat treat was done by Hephaistos or not.

3. What’s with the lanyard holes? I can understand the Sebenza having a lanyard hole. A tip-up carry knife leaves the lanyard conveniently hanging from your pocket. But a tip-down carry knife leaves the lanyard uselessly lumped up in the bottom of your pocket. What a feature!!! And if this weren’t bad enough, let me rant about the placement of lanyard holes. Most of my knives have the lanyard very high up on the handle, just so I get a handful of lanyard every time I hold the knife in a firm grip. Could the manufacturer have just lowered the lanyard hole a bit, so that it didn’t interfere with my grip? Yep. But then again, 99% of all knives have a functionally useless lanyard hole anyway, so who cares. Just fool yourself into thinking that that badly placed lanyard hole, that would only thread a lanyard the width of a yo-yo string, is actually an inventive method of lightening the overall weight of the knife. It’s a feature, not a conspiracy to craze lanyard freaks like myself.

4. Again, here’s my standard disclaimer about taking my advice. I’m the second craziest person on all of Bladeforums, so nothing I say should be believed. I’m also a neophyte in comparison to most. I can’t tell you what the specific gravity of a chunk of Molybdenum is, or even how to pronounce it. I haven’t got a clue how many rocks you have to throw to get a nicely stonewashed blade. I can’t fathom as to how damascus steel is produced in all of those amazing patterns and colors. All I do is run around in the woods trying to cut everything. That’s not exactly the mark of a man you want to trust for important factual information. Go to your lawyer for advice. He will tell you anything you want to hear…… for a price.
 
Keep going, guys - I think this thread is going to save me a lot of money :-)
 
The grim hand of death couldn’t shut me up now. Here are some more fruitless wonders from the glossary of a badly deranged mind.

1. What’s up with all of these 5 inch thick blades? What do you people plan on cutting with these things? Mount Rushmore? Or are you just connoisseurs of exotic folding pry bars? If memory serves me, knives were meant for cutting things. Have you ever tried making a delicate cut with a folder whose blade is the thickness of a NYC telephone book? I’ll clue you in on something. That’s not a knife in your hand. It’s a chisel. Go out and buy a knife.

2. Hehehhe….. Thinking about Blade Discussion Forum posts give me a chuckle. Do you want to quickly approach that awful road of unpopularity? Try this little trick I learned. Post up about a nondescript fixed blade or slipjoint. You’ll instantly be ostracized by all of your peers, and immediately categorized as part of the “over the age of 90 hayseed” crowd. After all, only farmers and uninformed sex perverts worry about how to properly use a spay blade. Real men carry tactical folders, which NEED to be drawn and opened in under 1.5 seconds; just in case a friend’s bagel needs cutting.

3. Here’s one. The next time somebody asks what the greatest blade shape is, say you love sheepsfoot blades. That’ll draw the resounding echo of crickets coming to your rescue. We’re testosterone filled men here. We want things that stab and pierce flesh. Sheepsfoots are for little kids and... I don’t actually have a clue as to where the name sheepsfoot came from, but I’m pretty sure it’s seedy like the spay blade. Farmers do gross stuff for a living, and name they’re implements accordingly. Give me a hawkbill blade any day. I want to be Hannibal Lecter when I grow up.
 
Great thread, Buzzbait. And just think, it wasn't all that long ago that you posted your first photos of "the Angry Beaver" on the Buck Forum. I think that somehow you'll survive the winter quite well.
 
Very entertaining Buzz! And you make some great points as well. Thanks for sharing your demented thoughts with us.

I'm going to venture close to that "unpopular" road now...
Is it sheepsfoots or sheepsfeet? ;)
He he he, sorry couldn't resist! I guess I've got a little cabin fever too.
 
Simply one of the best threads i read in a long time! Let me know when you get to the poor house Buzz and i will sent you photo's of all the new killer stag handled knifes i can get my hands on. :p

"A sane man does not spend an entire day soaking stag in mineral oil" and i couldn't agree more about that statement! LMAO hehe

Cheers!
James
 
forgive me for asking a 'real' question here :rolleyes: ...but is it reccomended to soak stag in mineral oil (to prevent drying I assume)? I have a really nice custom Buck 110 with stag handles that I want to keep looking pristine. Any advice?
 
A real question, eh. We'll allow it just this one time. :)

They (whoever they are. I bet they're the same ones that are watching RazorEdj) say to soak all of your stag in mineral oil for 8 to 12 hours, once a year. This is supposed to prevent drying, cracking, and excessive shrinkage of the stag. I personally believe this an evil plot from Johnson&Johnson to sell more Bandaids.
 
Gee, I think I’m beginning to run out of knife knowledge to impart. There must some other aspect of knife acquisition that I haven’t touched on….

1. Screws!!! That’s it!!! I haven’t gotten a few things off my chest regarding the screws that hold our knives together. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally baffled as to why a manufacturer would want to use 10 screws to hold a knife together, all of different sizes. What are they thinking?!?!?!?!!!! You need an entire toolbox to get these darn things apart. Is Chris Reeve the only smart guy in the entire knife world, uniquely possessing an intelligence not of our world? My Sebenza has 4 screws…. All of which are the same size!!! A miracle!!! It took me 300 dollars to find somebody who could build a knife using a single sized screw, but I prevailed. And best of all, the Sebenza uses allen screws. Allen wrenches of all sizes can be found at any department or discount store. Have you ever tried to find small Torx wrenches locally? Good luck. I had to go to a knife manufacturer to get a set of small torx wrenches. It’s a conspiracy I tell you.

2. I’m back on a roll now. Not a jelly roll like I had for breakfast this morning, but my own superior wit and egotism is absolutely rolling off my fingers and pressing the keys on my keyboard today. What really stokes me is this whole stainless steel thing in the slipjoint corner of the knife world. Manufacturers are bent on producing all slipjoints with the absolutely cheapest, worst edge holding, stainless steel that money can buy. The tactical boys must feel soooooooo superior, having access to steels that outperform a butter knife in the aspect of edge holding. We slipjoint fans have to constantly endure being offered the same grade of stainless, over and over, that holds an edge for about 3.5 seconds when cutting cotton balls. Do you see anybody making a BG-42 slipjoint for under a billion dollars? Nope. They all hate me. That’s what it is.

3. Aha!!! I actually have a small amount of USEFUL information for you stag lovers. Places like Smoky Mountain show a dizzying array of German slipjoints, all with genuine stag handles. I really thought I’d found paradise. I instantly ordered up a bunch of genuine stag handled knives, and was subsequently horrified by what I received. This is not Sambar stag, unless the knife implicitly says so. The German stag is usually deer stag, which pails in comparison to Sambar stag. I have 3 month old Tupperware containers in my refrigerator, full of food that looks better than most of this stag. You get a gem now and them, but most of it is pretty ugly. You’re better off going to a store and actually viewing the stag before you buy.

4. Oh yah. Before I forget… I’m pretty bummed out by all of the local knife stores. I don’t know about you, but finding knives locally is just a bad experience. I have a gun shop down the road that sells knives. They carry 4 Smith&Wesson S.W.A.T. folders, a HUGE display of Pakistan specials, and one Microtech switchblade. Is it just me that’s finds this a little bit odd? And what’s worse is that the only knives that sell are the Pakistan aluminum foil blade knives. Yuk!!! I’m starting to think that the average human doesn’t deserve a good knife if he’s dumb enough to think that he can buy a knife for $1.99 that will actually cut something. Then again, the Pakistans have better fit and finish than the Smiths, and the Microtech is way too expensive for the average Joe (who couldn’t legally carry it even he was rich and famous). And this is a hunting store. We all skin our deer with a switchblade, right? Hehehe. You never know when you may need to get a drop on that buck with a hole in his chest.

5. But seriously now, as this thread is quickly going down hill (thanks to me), there are good people in the business. Men like Joe Houser from Buck and Will Fennell from Camillus are wonderful people. Men like them make the whole thing worthwhile. They put up with lunatics like me, who constantly bombard them with the absolutely stupidest questions imaginable, and still manage to maintain some amount of patience. I applaud them for their genuine love of the hobby and love for us knifenuts. And the custom knife makers out there… I thank their wives for not hanging up on me. We call the highly exacted master of knife making and get to speak to his wife, who has to answer questions as if she were talking to an expectant father. That’s what I call patience. Thanks a million.
 
Just want to say that I've enjoyed this thread humongously .....
and you'd best keep close tabs on Doris, cuz I'm in love. :)
 
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