Using Expensive Knives?

Most all of them shake their head and reply that when you look at it from that point of view it gives them a whole new perspective of using that expensive tool for the job it was designed for.
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This is all so true, but that argument is best applied to the guy electing to use a $20 knife as compared to a $100 knife, but not necessarily for something much more expensive than that. Consider that a Dozier (just to take one example, there are many others equally good) Master Hunter costing say $185 will equal or out perform any other knife in the "large skinner/game prep" category.

This puts a whole other slant on the issue because one must ask if it makes economic sense to use a knife costing much much more for this purpose when nothing, performance wise, is to be gained? Would these hunters be carrying $1000 rifles if there existed a rifle that would shoot what ever they are shooting as accurately and reliably for say $150?

Sorry, I know this is topic drift.. Couldn't help myself...
 
Matthew, the only people making that argument are the ones using $100 knives ;)

One could use that same analogy to someone who drives a Cadillac, BMW, Lexus etc. Why not a Ford or Chevy?

I still maintain that people should not have to justify the purchase and/or use of things that are more expensive. We do it because we like nicer stuff, plain and simple. And it's hard to argue the a BK&T is nicer than a Simonich or Blackwood.
 
A good part of the fun of owning knives is using them. While I have some knives I wouldn't use because of their extremely high cost or historical value (Scagels, Morans, etc.), I'm open to enjoying most of my other knives. When I hike, I carry either my Fowler bowie or my Sinyard Mountain Man bowie. I admit that I cringed a little the first time I used them to whack off a branch for firewood, but I quickly got over it. My everyday carries are a thin bladed Hartsfield for fine work and a Sebenza for cutting boxes and such. Using a knife in a reasonable way doesn't bring the value down that much, and I don't plan to sell most of my knives anyway. The joy of owning them is multiplied tenfold. Also, if you carry it for years, the daily cost of carry is really very little when compared with the joy you get and the admiration and conversation it engenders from others. Enjoy! ;)
 
Matthew, the only people making that argument are the ones using $100 knives.
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Are you saying that people tend to set the limit at about what ever they happen to be doing at the time, or that there really is a <b><i>performance</i></b> difference (i.e., not an aesthetic difference) between a standard Dozier and something whose market value is 5 or 10 times higher either for historical reasons or because of the materials/complexity/craftsmanship of the knife?

Remember I was speaking of fixed blade hunting knives with blades in the 3"-4" range, not other categories whose "highest performance" prices will obviously be different. I've also used such knives and handled those ranging in price from say $25 to $1000. From what I can tell, you get to peak materials and engineering performance at about $200-$300 in a fixed blade (of this type). You have to jump to the $300-$400 range for folders. Exotic blade materials like talonite will skew these prices too, but I think you get the idea.

Beyond those prices, the differences are increasingly aesthetic. <b>Not that there is anything wrong with carrying and using a particular knife for aesthetic reasons</b>, not at all!

Analogies to more complex machines simply don't hold. There really is a big performance difference between a $12,000 car and an $80,000 car of roughly the same type. Same for that matter with watches. I have an analog Citizen watch that cost me $300 almost 5 years ago. The watch face never scratches (real crystal), the numbers stay luminous all night (really good phosphorus, not tritium with a half life), it will never need a new battery (solar powered), etc. All in all, a pretty good watch, but its accurate only to about 15 sec/month, about the same as a $35 Casio! If, by contrast I paid $3000 for a watch that was aesthetically very similar to my Citizen, I should be able to expect accuracy to something like 5 seconds/year, or so I understand from reading up about watches...

Knives are, after all, very simple machines compared to cars or watches. One might reasonably expect that modern engineering would be able to achieve peak possible performance at something well under the higher end prices in the over-all market. All I'm saying is that this appears to be the case, and while anyone has the right to carry what-so-ever they want, it remains true that beyond about $200 or so (remember small FB hunter), you don't get anything that actually cuts better!
 
Matthew, very well said.

Look at the old analogy of someone saying "oh he's rich"

If you have someone who makes $20,000, they make look at the guy making $100,000 and think he's rich. While they guy making $100,000 looks at the guy making $250,000 and thinks he's rich, and so on.

The people who find value in a $100 knife can't see the value of the $250 knife, while the guys buying the $250 knife don't see a value in the $500 knife and so on.

I personally would not spend more than about $250 on a fixed blades because they have very limited value to me personally. I like small fb's to carry on my neck or in my pocket.

Now with the car analogy look at the Mustang GT, they street out at around $25k and will smoke some BMW's costing a lot more money. But do people put Mustangs in the class of a Beemer? Yet both cars are known for performance?

Will the $200 custom perform better than the $100 production? Maybe, it depends on too many factors IMO.

Like I said before, it all comes down to preference and how much money you want to spend.
 
Some of us make them to be used. When you buy a using knife you are missing out on what they are all about if you don't use them. I have a good friend, Jake Korrell. He is a trapper, started trappping when he was 8 years old. He has made a good living at his trade. The knives he was using were absolute junk. I gave him one to try out, he has been using it for about 10 years now. He used to carry beaver out and skin them at his shop, now he he is around 90 years old, skins them where he traps them and doesn't have to carry the whole critter home. He walks more miles on a winter day than most do in a month. He is very appreciative of that old knife and it has skinned tons of hide. He never knew what a good knife could do, just figured he would use the cheapest he could get and sharpen them till they were gone. He enjoys that knife and they make a good pair. An old song, "once you have found her, never let her go", those who don't use their knives will never know what they missed.
 
I carry a TNT every day. The ones in my possession range in cost from 550-750 dollars. Does the TNT cut 5-7 times better than a 100 dollar knife. Probably not, but for me that is not the point. I like knowing that I have the very best knife available, a knife that I can enjoy today, and some day 20 years from now.
 
"Buy the best you can afford and cry once."

Enough said, I think. Women spend thousands on jewelery and wear it everyday. Never crosses a woman's mind that she wants a $5000 (or more) ring and is not going to wear it. That is silly. You buy the best knife YOU can afford and carry it knowing you have the best YOU can afford.

The first time I put an expensive knife in my pocket I "cringed" as well. I got over it quick. I wear a nice watch because I want a nice watch, I carry a nice knife because I like to carry a nice knife.

Plain and simple a knife is a tool. Yeah, I may "baby" an expensive knife a little more than a less expensive one (meaning I do not use it as a pry bar, screwdriver, etc.). As has been stated by others in this thread most makers will "refurbish" a knife you have used to hell and back at a very reasonable cost if you like.

Oftentimes the knife (or knives) that I am carrying in my beat up truck are worth more than the truck.

But my only male "jewelery" is a nice custom knife, a nice watch and my titanium wedding band (no necklaces, bracelets, etc). Use any knife you get and enjoy it, otherwise what is the point? You do not buy a Picasso painting to hide in the closet:D
 
Originally posted by brandon
Does the TNT cut 5-7 times better than a 100 dollar knife. Probably not,
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You are right Brandon, it is probably more like 10-12 times better.:D

My most expensive folder I carry is my TImascus TNT. I guess around $1000.00. But I'm still shoppin':) . I use it for everything from kitchen to field work.

As has been pointed out, it is a pleasure to use a fine tool for what it was meant for.
 
If you own a Porsche ya drive a Porsche..... I happen to drive a Ford but I use the new car aerosol 'Porsche smell' spray. Obviously using a custom knife detracts from its collector value. So what. Sans Microtech my best users have been customs! :D
 
I don't use the most valuable knives I own at all..., I used to..., but there are so many great knives out there now for "using"...(and also affordable)....that I keep the expensive stuff as an investment....


"Hunters seek what they [WANT].., Seekers hunt what they [NEED]"
 
I'll start out by stating that, for my purposes, there are fixed blades that will drastically outperform a Dozier in the role of a hunter/skinner/utility/general outdoors knife. A Dozier is a fine knife. I've had a few and like them a lot. A nicely designed D2 blade, properly heat treated, is a great tool. A superbly designed, forged, differentially heat treated, convex or flat ground 52100 blade is a much better tool. VERY easy to sharpen, holds a great edge for a long time, it'll bend before it breaks, goes through material easily due to it's shape. Also, in the case of a Fowler and some others, easy and really comfortable to "choke up on" and almost impossible to cut yourself with. I know I'll generate some comments or arguements over these statements. I welcome that. I've used many different fixed blades over the past 30+ years and will respond based on my personal experience and opinions.

Here's my "using expensive knives" story. One of them, anyway. For me, it's kind of a sad one. For years now, I've been embarrassed to tell this story, but here it goes. A few years ago, during a "hiking/fishing/looking for grizzly bear" trip with my wife to Yellowstone, I stumbled into the local Jackson Hole knife shop. The owner is a real nice guy and we have become friends since then. Anyway, what did I see in the case? An Ed Fowler bowie! The shop owner was selling it for a friend. I looked at it, held it, held it some more, put on the sheath, put the knife in it and refused to take it off. I finally took it off, but when my wife said, "let's go now", I said "no, I can't do that". She reminded me that I didn't have near enough money on me for the knife and that we weren't "credit card people". She said that I already had "nicer knives than that", anyway. Turns out that the owner of the bowie is a big knife collector from Denver and that he was in Jackson Hole at the time. I pulled my new Busfield folder from my pocket. Gorgeous knife that I'd waited 6 months for and paid dearly for and said, "call John, see if he'd take a trade". John did. After a week of hearing how great my new Busfield was (and it was), my wife was uttlerly perplexed. She also knows that I'm a person who knows what he likes and when I like something, the "novelty" never wears off. There is no "novelty" with me when it comes to something I really like. Why would I trade my new folder, that I was SO happy with and paid SO much for, for this rather plain (in comparison to some of my others) looking bowie?

Well, it further blew her away when I strapped it on for our next day in the woods. I had other knives that I paid a lot less for that I would never use. Over the next 6 months or so and well into a cold, snowy Sierra Nevada winter, I carried and used that bowie every time I went off into the mountains to look for my bears (mother and cubs that I'd sit and watch from the next hillside), carried it on my snowshoe treks that I'd take whenever a good storm kicked up and visibility dropped low enough to make it "interesting", etc... Used the knife for everything that you can think of, mostly food prep and cutting rope, fashioning sticks into useful tools. Sometimes I'd forget to take some essential piece of equipment (like the cellphone I promised my wife I'd always carry), but never left without that knife. At the time, I owned probably 10 or 12 nice fixed blades, but no other knife would do. I'd hone the edge on some flat stones that I bought as part of a kit 15 years earlier. Worked fine, nice edge.

Then came the fateful day. I had been waiting for my new Edgepro professional sharpener and it finally arrived. I've always been good at sharpening. After many years, I felt very confident that I could get the desired result, not ruin a knife. I just used my old stones, wet/dry paper over a block of wood, I'd hone a fine edge on the side of a toilet, whatever. Pretty good at it. BUT, like I said, I was using old stones, sandpaper, toilets! Time for a real sharpening tool. I read the book, watched the video, grabbed my wife's kitchen knives and headed for the garage. It did a fantastic job on those skinny, flat ground knives. Made sharpening easy and produced beautiful 3000 grit polished edges, hair popping sharp! Now, I knew that the Fowler had a convex edge, but what the heck, I'd put a nice thin, hair popping V bevel on it for starters and then over time "turn" it convex with my old stones. Well, I adjusted that Edgepro to produce a very small bevel along the bottom of the blade and then proceded to grind it in. I noticed that out near the tip, the bevel was widening a little bit. That's okay, it would produce a burr soon and I could stop, no big deal. As I proceded, I noticed that it was widening more than expected and I still wasn't producing a burr, even on the bottom edge! What I should have done, was STOP, ship the knife to Ed, confess to being an idiot and ask him to fix it. What I DID do was mess it up more, trying to fix it myself. I wound up with a razor sharp edge, very wide "V" bevel out near the tip and had basically ruined the convex blade shape.

I was very upset with myself and couldn't believe what I had done. Other people mess up their knives, NOT ME! Every time I'd look at that knife, I'd be disgusted with myself for not respecting it as I should have. No fault of the Edgepro, by the way. It's the best sharpening system available. Just not for certain blade shapes, such as a Fowler bowie. As the edge thickens out near the tip, you'll get a wider grind. Over the years, I've become proficient with the Edgepro and have learned how to overcome this to a certain extent. I love the tool, but it is not the tool for certain knives. Anyway, I came across a fellow who wanted to trade a beautiful, new Fisk bowie for that Fowler and I did the trade, figuring that I could all the feelings of guilt and incompetence behind me. At that point, I was WAY too embarrassed to send that knife to Ed. I still should have, though. I MISS THAT KNIFE! I made a big mistake in my garage that day, but made a bigger mistake selling it. I didn't realize the bond I had with that knife until it was gone.

Here's where this story relates to the topic at hand. What I do realize is that I would love to have that kind of bond with a knife again and whether the knife set me back $200 or $1500 would be irrelevant. I'm not a monetarily wealthy person, but it would be worth it.

The moral of the story is that "it's the knife, not the price". You don't have to spend big bucks, but if the knife you fall in love with and you KNOW is the perfect carry/using knife for you above all others happens to cost a pretty penny, find a way to buy it and then CARRY IT AND USE IT. Just don't do what I did. The right knife can be your best friend. How can you put a price on that?
 
Although my wife is not terribly interested in my knives, she really can't avoid them.

I hand them over to her when I get them, and she does a quick test on the folders. It takes her about 3 seconds to guess the relative value of these knives. She has yet to make a mistake (after going through maybe 30 knives or so). She knows nothing about blade steel, does not know the name of a single knifemaker, and knows virtually nothing about the other materals used in knife making.

Her test - overall appearance, smoothness in opening action, and hand feel when holding the opened knife. If it applies, she does a quick take on the clip.

We often don't agree on which should be "keepers", bceause my criteria aren't limited to those noted above, but the quality of those expensive knives always shines through.

My knives are pretty much my only "male jewlery" aside from a wedding ring. I'd rather carry a $1000 knife than a $1000 gold and diamond ring/
 
Farmer, great story, I have a few but none that heart wrenching. You had me on the edge of my seat. I have more than a few that I regret letting go of but I have just as many that I never will...

Architect, you need to write a book on how you trained you wife.

Mine is good at guessing the price 1/2 the time, she knows my range so she usually just sticks her guess somewhere in there.

There have been times where I would get a $400 - $500 knife and she would say "is that one of those Spyderco's?" (I like the Spydies too).... I'd be utterly deflated...

Or I'll be excited about a new conquest and she'll say "what's so special about that one" or "I don't know, it's not as nice as your other ones"

Oh well, could be worse, the shoe could be on the other foot and I could be saying that kind of stuff about jewelry :D
 
Hello Farmer: I am very pleased you liked the knife and enjoyed hearing aboutyour experiences with her. You could have sent her back to me with no hard feelings on my part. Never be bashful about sending a knife back to the maker, we are human also and know well the ease with which a guy can get on the wrong trail, the further you go the worse it gets. Your experience with her puts the icing on the cake, another man was right behind you and missed that knife by hours, he still talks about her. I rember her well and always wondered where she went. The first owner was a professional man and one of his clients saw her on his desk then contacted me and started a lasting friendship. I am glad to hear that she served you well. Thanks
 
Ed:

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate that. My experiences with that knife taught me many important things, including some hard lessons. Some of those lessons I had already learned with other things much more expensive than the knife, but the knife drove them home for good. Let me tell you about this airplane I had once......Well, maybe another time! I guess if a knife can teach important things to a person, then that makes it a great knife and a knife that has served well on this earth. She was definitely a great knife for me.
 
Farmer, great story! You should write an article for a knife mag about that :) (or maybe have Ed put it in his Knife Talk section). I have a Fowler Pronghorn. I looked and looked for that knife for a couple years and finally found one early this year. I have carried it and used it a little. I can't bring myself to really put it through some hard use but this fall I plan on bringing her out of the safe and taking her on some serious hunting and camping trips :) I can't wait to cut something with it. My most expensive knife I carry and use is an Emerson CQC6. I wanted one for a long time and finally found this one. Its an older no date model and I gave $1450 for it. I have carried it many times and used it alot too. I doubt I will ever sell this knife so I can put as many character marks on it as I want :D
michael
 
Great Story Farmer! thanks for sharing!

Using expensive knives? Yes I do. but when I go help a friend move and have to cut down half the stuff off, and pry the mirrors from the walls...I take a CRKT M18...can't bring myself to using a 450$ custom folder for that...call me cheap...:D

As for sending back to the maker...I once ruined the tip of a knife trying to put an edge on it...no problem...sent it back to the maker...had to wait for a month or so...only to receive it with a less than perfect grind...when asked I was told - they thought "as it is a user - you wouldn't mind the finish wasn't perfect...."

ARRRRGGHHHHH :mad:

I was so pissed I sold all the knives I had from said maker....cheap...
 
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