What’s the smallest EDC knife you can get away with? Fixed or folding are fine.

Railsplitter said:
If I want to abide by local laws, which I do, I have to carry a blade 3 inches or less.

Having to obey that law has made me realize that I don’t really need anything bigger than that for my retired city boy lifestyle. I’ve gotten so used to small knives that I actually prefer them.

Most of my EDC knives have 2.75 - 3.0 inch blades but I also occasionally carry even smaller blades.

I get frustrated when I see a knife that I would otherwise buy but the blade is 3.125 inches.

That law is not strictly enforced around here but I would be that one guy who got caught.
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I feel the same way here, it’s a stupid law to begin with but having a 3.5 inch limit and seeing knives I like at 3.6 inches makes me want to move… 😅
 
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I have dozens of Les George knives, but the ESV gets as much pocket time as any model. It's small, but robust enough to perform most any EDC task.

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I carried a BM mini-grip for awhile so I can get by with that size but I prefer something closer to 3.5". My most common carry knives are the PM2 and Manix2. I sometimes carry a Bradford Guardian 3.
It's more than just blade size, most folding knife handles are in proportion to blade size and small handles are hard for me to hold onto. Even if I could get by with a blade smaller than 3", I would want a larger handle.
 
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For most of my adult life, I carried a tiny SAK on my keychain and survived. I carried this Spyderco Meerkat for 6 months straight. It did 99% of my daily cutting task fine. I usually keep a larger knife in my bag, but could definitely get by with a Dragonfly or something similar.

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For years I carried a single edc/work knife in the 3.5-4 inch range for blade length. In recent years I ve begun to prefer a 4 inch main carry knife. About two-rhree years I started carrying a second knife, smaller than my main knife. My second knife is a three blade Cold Steel Holdout. It has my minimum 4 inch handle. It cuts and slices great with its thin edged blade. It can handle almost anything I need from a knife. One day I may stop carrying the four inch blade. No time soon.
 
The smallest knives I like to carry are a CF Bugout and a Hogue Deka with Wilkins scales. I have carried a Dragonfly or Alox SAK and managed to survive.
 
Smallest i feel comfortable with is a 3" blade with 2.5" cutting edge. So I should say at a minimum 2.5" cutting edge. I much prefer bigger though, 3.5"
 
Opinel 4. For such a slicer 3 finger grip is good enough. Prforms much better than expected for such a small fricion folder. The best feature is how light the knife is - same blade length as Peanut's but four times lighter.
 
Personally, I have found that anything with a blade 2" or shorter leaves me feeling like I need more knife. I would say 2-1/4" blade is probably my minimum I am comfortable with. Anything shorter than that starts to hinder my food prep ability.
 
Mini Bugout is also about as small as I like to use.

The handle just barely fits all four fingers my men’s medium sized hands in a hammer grip. Pinky drops off when using a saber grip. Pinch grip feels amazing with Flytanium Crossfade scales and backspacer.
 
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