There's no such thing as the "perfect knife"...

Every knife is a compromise, and every knife is part of a larger suite of tools. Know the limitations of your tools, and make sure you have a good reason if you need to exceed them.
 
Buck 110 is a favorite of mine also, since I was a kid. The old kind, with the brass bolsters.

I get a chuckle out of all the assisted/flipper/springblade variations. Sure, you sometimes need to get your knife out one handed, especially if you can’t let go with your other hand. Pinch the 110 blade between your finger and thumb, rotate your wrist downward til you hear the click, there you go. Cowboys, carpenters, and truckers have been doing this for decades. With gloves on. Yee haw.

Parker
 
Yep. C catspa I do it differently though. I pinch the blade open a little then open it on my leg. 40 years x 365 days x 10 times a day.= minimum 150,000 openings never cut my jeans yet.


Closing I push the lock with my thumb and press the spine on my leg to close it.

If I could only keep 3 knives for daily use it would be 3 Buck 110’s
 
Man with no name said:
While there may be no perfect knives for everybody in every situation. There are two that come pretty damn close for me, the Cold Steel Trail Master and Buck 110.
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Pretty darn close choices there. The Recon Bowie and SRKs aren't far off the mark.

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I've tried to make a knife that can do everything, and I learned that you can make something that gets a C+ grade in every task and that's if you want to keep it well rounded to perform every type of task. If you want to get an A+ grade in one area you're going to have to sacrifice another attribute down to an F or D-.
So you can either settle for a C+ in every attribute, which will be some form of sharpened pry bar object, that you can chop a tree down with, do a semi decent job at feathersticking, prepare your food in a somewhat uniform manner, baton and split wood quite well, and make a decent go at clearing branches and making notches in wood. It will do everything to a passing level of acceptance.
But it's not going to win you sushi chef of the month presentation awards, it's not going to give you the cleanest shave, it's not going to be as good as a real axe at felling a tree, it's not going to win over the bushcrafting community and replace their fav puuko scandi knife.
So basically you can have a jack of all trades that performs sub par at everything, or you can make a highly specialized knife that scores an A+ in one particular task. The jack of all trade type knives will probably be used as survival tools and given to soldiers, where you don't need something that wins awards you just need something that can do everything to a shitty standard and keep you alive and not weighed down with 20 different knives.
So your specialist groups are still going to buy their specialist knives designed for their exact task, the sushi chef is still going to use his single bevel ultra fine knife designed for his trade. The wood worker is still going to use his marking knife (Think kiridashi)
And crocodile dundee is still going to use his ass kicking knife.
 
While there many not be such a thing as one perfect knife, there are those that suit many folks and check a lot of boxes.

Certainly the venerable 110 can't be all that bad seeing how many of the them have been used and abused over many years.
I happen like carbon steel fixed blades that provide value and an therefore Becker fan; the BK15 and now the BK18 are the apple of my eye in that range. The Navy Mark 1 is said to be perfect in its simplicity as is the KaBar Marine Combat knife for its utility.

I also like the Cold Steel Master Hunter as well for field dressing and skinning. Did I mention that my beloved Buck 119 Special was my "heavy" knife when I was just starting with knives. The BK2 and BK9 have handled with aplomb everything I have made them face. I will throw a Cold Steel SRK in my pack when I don't know what to bring as it's near perfect for versatility owing only to the Recon Scout and maybe the Becker BK7.

The Spyderco Endura and the Pacific Salt are lightweight pals of mine when weight is a concern. Whenever I'm and or around salt water, the Pacific Salt is my perfect knife.

For a hard use folder the Cold Steel Voyagers provide great value but pale in comparison to the Recon 1 or the SR1 Lites that are near perfect hard use folders. At least that what's I thought until I got the 4-Max and 4-Max Scout but they are heavy and not as fitting for my hands as the AD-10 - which is my very favorite heavy use folder.

The Sebenza is perfect in it's simplicity and execution; the company also provides great customer service - as do some other companies.

The original Kephart, of which Ethan Becker has created the modern day KaBar Becker BK62, is considered by many to be about the perfect knife for a woodsman - before "bushcraft" was a thing. In that size range, it's as perfect as can be perhaps.

There are so many almost "perfect" knives that are pretty near "perfect" for so many different scenarios that it's mind boggling to limit it to a mere dozen, let alone one.
 
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