What do you do when someone asks to borrow your knife?

The sentiment I fear most is the one growing loudest on this thread. How cool is it to be a selfish materialist. It's just a knife. It only costs money. 2 weeks at McDonalds as an extra job and you could get a sebenza. People are always more important than things. I would have thought a venerable site such add this would have accepted that long ago.
 
I give them my money clip knife, Cold steel medium voyager (old style) its small and what most people consider ample size.
 
Pete3 said:
"do not use it as a hammer or screw driver!" some people...
my coworker was using my benchmade adamas to hammer some little nail or something
I look at him, realize what hes doing, "SCOTT! WHAT Are you doing?!"
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While I don't condone that, the Adamas is tougher than a Nokia :D
 
j4ckwr4th said:
The sentiment I fear most is the one growing loudest on this thread. How cool is it to be a selfish materialist. It's just a knife. It only costs money. 2 weeks at McDonalds as an extra job and you could get a sebenza. People are always more important than things. I would have thought a venerable site such add this would have accepted that long ago.
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If it's just a knife and it only costs money, then they can work to buy their own. Why should I let someone ignorant or careless damage what cost me time and effort to afford?

People can be more important then things. My people are worth more to me than your things.
 
Rhinoknives1 said:
That is why they are training to be a engineer. They are after lots of sheepskins that say they are in the know and usually have no manual dexterity.
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That seems to be the case. I have in all seriousness met some engineers that were utter geniuses and bring to mind the ideas of an inventor/problem solver/fixer-of-the-impossible, but most of em have been taught to "think between the lines". Mostly talking about current generation. I do believe Ken Onion was an engineer for the Robert Bosch plant in my town, although details are a bit hazy. That guy obviously knows his stuff, recurve fixation notwithstanding. :D
 
Esav Benyamin said:
If it's just a knife and it only costs money, then they can work to buy their own. Why should I let someone ignorant or careless damage what cost me time and effort to afford?

People can be more important then things. My people are worth more to me than your things.
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Exactly! Most knife folk even carry a beater for the sole purpose of accommodating people who do not carry nor respect knives. Can't really say that is a callous attitude, despite the snarky way some talk about "sheeple".
 
First: i apologize if i offended you, or any other member/staff of this site.
Second: i respect the opinions of everyone, even those i disagree with, BUT, i am allowed to express my side (which i have now done and do not plan to continue in this thread, save for the response of a mod (my first here, but not my first ever, so i'm aware that i have stepped on some toes at this point)
Third: I honestly do not see the link in your argument Esav ( i say argument from years of calling intelligent discussions that :P)
You say :
Esav Benyamin said:
If it's just a knife and it only costs money, then they can work to buy their own.
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First phrase is (and im sorry if its received as derogatory, i honestly cannot think of a more apt term to describe the underlying sentiment) is selfish? your argument boils down to "the risk of you potentially damaging my knife is NOT worth the potential gain of a new knife aficionado" and i cannot for the life of me see why you are either
A: way too busy in your life to spend 30 seconds explaining the benefits of knife ownership to someone who JUST asked you for a knife ,
OR
B: you associate with the sort of disreputable characters who you apparently deem unworthy of such a cause.
Either way it is an exception, not the rule, on the whole people want whats best, even if they don't know what it is. I still think most of you missed my reference to teaching a man to fish...

Lastly, this one just escapes me and am willing to listen to an explanation before i respond to it, because quite honestly it confuses me.
Esav Benyamin said:
People can be more important then things. My people are worth more to me than your things.
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(how did i leave you with the impression that my things were worth more than anyone? my sole argument is against that very point. my initial reaction was to label this an emotional response, but like i said, i will wait for clarification.)
 
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Theres only 2 people I let see my knives.
One, being my cousin, and the other, being my hunting-friend.
They know what they mean to me, and they know that I dont pry, poke, or drive screws with it.

Everybody else, I cut things for them.
 
I say NO immediately. If they are insistent I will tell them that I will cut it for them. Most of the time I find that they are wanting to use a knife in a way that will damage or abuse it. As an example, just the other day someone asked to borrow my knife at work. I asked what they were wanting to do and they said that they were wanting to pry the laminate surface of their desk off. I referred them instead to the other most abused tool - the standard screwdriver.
 
My brother in law taught me not to lend my knife out. He asked me for a knife once, some time ago. He was scraping a window sticker off of his car window. It was an inexpensive S&W knife I believe, but I had it very sharp. He had it in his hand for less than a minute before he sliced his finger open really bad. We both learned from that. I learned not to loan out my knife, and he learned how not to use one.
 
j4ckwr4th, you are really over-thinking this. A person casually asking to use my knife, who has no important task to use it for, and no great skill with knives, may either damage the knife or himself.

Damage the knife? Easy for him -- or you -- to take the value of my property lightly, is it?
Damage himself? Working all my life in a very real world, I will not allow his inexperience to put me in a bad light. Don't hand a gun to a child, or any hazardous choice in life to someone incapable of dealing with it. That's not selfishness, that's realism.

Perhaps I could make a friend for knives by cutting or prying the job myself, showing him the right way. Or perhaps I could let him learn to make his own way in the world by buying, maintaining, and using his own tools, as we did.

If he needs a teacher, we could talk about it. The way not to learn is "lemme see ya knife" ... "SNAP! oops, twisted too hard".

The leech's kiss,
the squid's embrace,
the prurient ape's defiling touch.
And do you love the human race?
No, not much.
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As a retired/disabled mechanic I kept an elcheapo flashlight and chinese lockback just for mooches, if they got broke or lost on their way back to me no big deal. I have a sign on the inside of the lid of my top box that says if you borrow the same tool twice it's time to buy your own. I made my living with my tools and not by supplying every Tom Dick and Harry with tools they needed but were too cheap to buy.
 
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