After years of lurking, I decided to finally join up. I've religiously carried a pocket knife every day for over twenty years, and have bought & carried knives of all styles and sizes, fixed blade and folders, from just about every major manufacturer out there. Like most of us (I think), I carried assorted SAKs and no-name traditional style lockbacks for the first few years. The first modern knife design I owned, which really sparked my interest in the industry, was a CRKT Ryan Model 7 back when they first hit the market. As I remember, it was made with pretty crappy steel & didn't have a very strong liner lock, but I guess you get what you pay for. Despite the fact that the knife itself wasn't that great, the design & features on it were so bizarre to me that I quickly became obsessed with the industry. I'm fascinated by the variety of different designs that exist, what makes one knife more suitable for certain tasks than others, and I'm also the type of guy who loves using knives that have unique or new locking or deployment mechanisms. Variety is the spice of life! I'm not a brand snob, nor do I think a knife has to be expensive or made of certain steels to be considered a respectable tool, though like anyone else I do have standards. Two decades and a few thousand dollars worth of knives have passed since my interest was first sparked; today I have one of the new style full-sized Cold Steel AK-47s in my pocket.
I'm also a gamer, who plays mostly first person shooter games online. Currently I'm focusing on Call of Duty Ghosts on Xbox One. As indicated by my name, I try as often as possible to play these games with knives only. Every FPS game I've ever played gives you a knife, but people almost never use them - unless they sneak up behind a camping enemy and want to embarrass them. The reason I try playing these games without guns is twofold - first, it's far more challenging (and rewarding), and secondly, because the skills and tactics required to do this successfully are 100% transferable from one game to the next, no matter what other weapons might be available. If you're a gamer too & want to play CoD, Battlefield, Counter-Strike, or whatever, then PM me and we can swap details.
Because I've outed myself for my gaming hobby, I feel the need to clarify that I am not a little kid, or some kind of mall ninja. Just a normal dude with some goofy hobbies, one of which I share with everyone else on these forums. I came here just to talk shop on a shared interest, and I plan to spend some time writing knife reviews, modification tutorials, et cetera. It's taken me a long time to gain the knowledge I have, and no doubt some of that knowledge has come from reading posts on these forums over the years. I'd like to give back to the community and share what I know, so keep your eyes peeled for reviews and other texts from me in the future.
