What got you started?

Comeuppance

Comeuppance

Fixed Blade EDC Emisssary
Joined
Jan 12, 2013
Messages
4,765
You know what I mean. What inspired or spurred your interest in higher-quality knives? What knocked you out of the gas-station knife bracket?

For me, it was a co-worker at my old job, years and years ago. I had been carrying a wal-mart Ozark Trail knife for a while. It was fifteen bucks out of the camping section, and it was just as good of a knife as I had ever known one to be. One day, he related a story about a friend of his who had a super cheap TACTICOOL knife with a glass breaker and a belt cutter built in.

In a particularly inebriated state, he decided to test out the glassbreaker on an outdoor glass-top table. He cut his wrist a little, but broke right through the glass all the same. Bolstered by his success, he then goes to stab the knife into a nearby tree.

And the lock fails.

He now has one less finger.

So, I realized I had a cheap crappy knife and went about researching better ones. I went totally overboard and dropped thirty-five dollars on a Cold Steel Counter Point II. I could not believe I had spent so much on a knife, but I felt like a total hardass AND I now had a knife whose lock would not fail.

After a little time using it, I noticed it dulled pretty quickly. I did more research. Found out about better blade steels.

Cut to a few months later, I'm carrying a Manix 2 XL and a Tenacious. Then, I found these forums, and things became silly.

So, that's how I became "the knife guy" amongst the people I know, and, even now, years later, my tastes are still being refined with a revolving door of knives in my apartment...
 
My family have been woodworkers, ünd farmers for ages, in the olde country, ünd the new. I would say knives have simply been engraved into my genetic code
 
Well, my buck 110 wasn't cutting the mustard so I bought a spyderco civillian. It snowballed from there.
 
The Kershaw Scallion is to blame. I was at a shopping mall the year the Scallion and Chive came out and they had one of those kiosk where a company had set up and was displaying and selling just a few different knives. I bought both and got hooked in quickly. I don't think it was even a year later when I bought my first Sebenza!
 
I got old, and maybe a bit wise, but certainly more appreciative of the thought, craftsmanship and work that goes into producing a truly useful, or beautiful blade. There is something primal about a blade that struck a chord in me, and now that I have the time and means to acquire such things, I've begun to build a collection that long after I'm gone, will be a useful, and hopefully valuable legacy for my children. If I had to identify a singular knife, the genesis of my passion would be a Benchmade CQC7 from the 1990's.
 
I suspect that I always had the disease, and that it simply lay dormant, waiting for the right moment to awaken. :)

I bought my first knife, a CRKT M16-03Z, when I was about 13. I carried it until the detent was worn and the blade wouldn't stay closed. I was given a few cheap knives that did passable jobs, but I always wanted something more. I've always appreciated quality craftsmanship and materials, so it was a natural move for me.

Eventually, I was in search of a good replacement knife and took to the internet. I'd heard a lot of good about the Spyderco Delica, so I went out on a limb and bought one. Things only got worse, and I now realize this illness is terminal. I don't shun cheap knives, but I'm a convert to quality. I don't do "safe queens," so if the blade can work hard but still look good doing it, I'm interested. :)
 
A 3rd crappy budget Gerber coupled with my first job in a steel foundry working cutoff, noticing first hand the vast amount of different alloys I was working with, and the night and day difference some were to cut through compared to others, led me to start looking more into steels used in Knives, and thus it began...

Edit-fwiw I always liked Knives before that, owned quite a few over the years, but they were all relatively cheap "crap" Knives save for a SAK or 2, and I thought a $10 flea market special was a great deal as I was simply just ignorant to them in terms of quality and different steels and such. Like many average and uniformed consumers, I thought Buck was the best knife on the market just because of name recognition,.
 
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I've always had a fascination with knives ever since my dad gave me my first "Camp King" garbage OldTimer style knife when I must have been around 8 or 9. I loved the potential of a sharp edge. What could it not do? Much like I get off on knowing my phone is fully charged and my laundry is all washed, folded, and put away, I feel at ease with the knowledge I won't get caught without an edge when I need one.

I have a very good friend who has been carrying a Benchmade 806 in D2 (the original axis model after they switched from liner) since what seems like as far back as I can remember. I remember being at his place watching a movie and I kept flipping my Gerber Paraphrame and he just chuckled and said, " you sure do like that Gerber, don't you?" He wasn't being mean, but I could tell he was amused. I told him I simply enjoyed knives and this was what I had at the time. He handed me his AFCK and said "See what you think of this."

8 years and more knives than I can count later, I'm typing this sentence. Now I have several 806s of my own and am continually amazed that there is always something more I can learn about edged tools. I now admire the efforts of Warren Osborne, Shane Siebert, and Rick Hinderer in the same way that I admire Akira Kurosawa and Isaac Azimov, and Kurt Vonnegut. What a crazy world, so glad to be here.
 
Ahh, I had a knife in my pocket in the Second grade and I bought the genuine Imperial slippie for $0.50. My first real knife which I thougt was insanely expensive (but worth it because that's what they cost) was a Case Barlow when I was 9 or 10. Really don't recall the age other than I saved up for that knife a long time and was really excited to have a genuine Case like my Dad. Dad did not buy us kids knives or guns; we had to figure out a way to buy them ourselves.

Added: I can still remember buying those knives and picking out the Case Barlow at the local hardware store. That was a while ago. Wish I could remember my college course details as well.

My future brother in law showed me the light in terms of more expensive knives. Within a year, I was buying $100+ fixed blades at gun and knife shows. That was a lot of money to me by the way. But I could easily afford it. I just had not adjusted to the cost of the better fixed blades at that point. This was 1990.
 
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My grandfather got my brother and I started some 12 years ago. Started out with him showing us all his traditional knives and how he sharpened them and giving us a knife. He has some that he's had in his possession since the 50's. I had always had a Gerber or something equivalent and then basically my little brother took off with it with a Spyderco Tenacious. My brother then began to dig deeper into this plethora of knives and then as I discussed this with him, he steered me to Spyderco and we went to a local knife store. While there I picked up a Spyderco Wayne Goddard Clip It In VG10, a lock back knife that I loved and carried for several months and was absolutely hooked. Then from there it began. I picked up a Benchmade 710 and he gifted me a Spyderco Military for a wedding gift (that i traded back to him & I'm trying to get back lol) I love having this hobby with my brother and grandfather (who doesn't think any of out newer knives compare) I asked my grandfather what he though about my Sebenza and he replied saying he wouldn't pay 15 bucks for it at a flea market but know it's a hobby back and forth with my brother about what we can trade each other. Especially living far away it's something that we can keep in touch about and talk about on a daily basis. I love being able to have that connection and continue it.
 
I never was much for gas station / flea market knives. I started playing with knives as a very young child (I started carrying one when I was about 5). My granddad and dad had brought some back from World Wars 1 & 2 as souvenirs and they were always laying around to talk about and play with. My family was an old farm family, so tools of all kinds were available. The adults just reminded you to be careful and then let nature take its course. They let us learn by needing mercurochrome and band-aids. If you're not old enough to remember mercurochrome, let me tell you... that stuff stings. And then you're dyed a bright orange for a while until it wears off.

Anyway... knives have always been part of life for us and dad always carried a switchblade he brought back from his WW2 service. We knew that some knives were better than others just like any tool... better ones cost more than cheap ones and if you want quality, you need to pay for it. When I got older and started hanging around gun shops, they reinforced that idea with better quality guns and knives than you'd find in flea markets or gas stations.
 
Let's see here, I'd say I got tired of buying a new awesome $25 knife just to have it dull when cutting butter, or break the 3rd or 4th time using it about ten years ago, then I switched to Buck and Gerber, haha quality stuff there I was spending $50 dollars now. They were ok but still dulled rapidly, and just didn't really have the technology I wanted, so I typed into the Interwebs top 10 knives, and quickly found a 25 page or so thread/argument of best knives....I read this thread and started reading others in the same forum about steel quality, Customer Service, warranties, lock type/strength, and now here I am in the same dang forum still...Funny thing is I still don't know anything about best knives, best steels, best locks, but I do know that I found knives I like and sadly they generally cost a wee bit over the $100 mark...

Pretty sure though that I'm happy in my current choices and want to thank all of you for helping me out of the Buck/Gerber/CRKT is the best thing out there phase in my life.
 
Apparently my hobbies are affected by small tidbits I pick up on in TV shows. Several years ago watching Mad Men I got curious about traditional shaving after seeing Don Draper use a shaving brush and double edged razor. Fast forward a year or two and I’ve got a decade worth of shaving soap, a few brushes, and hundreds of dollars of double edged and straight razors. So much for saving money over crappy cartridge razors, but now a daily chore has turned into an enjoyable ritual.



For knives, I’ve always had an attraction and affection for them but wasn’t really aware of them beyond SAK, Buck, etc. I saved up and bought a Spyderco lockback in high school (early 2000s) and promptly lost it at camp a few weeks later which soured me on expensive knives. Four or five years ago I started hearing about this awesome fancy knife company called Kershaw but I couldn’t imagine spending $40 on a knife. I found one of their Tension model on sale at Cabelas for $20 and figured I could swing that. Two and a half years ago my dad gave me a Kershaw Blur Glassbreaker personalized with Matthew 3:17 for the birth of my son and I finally had a really good knife, but I didn’t really get “into” them yet.



Getting back to the TV show theme, a few months ago I started watching a show called Banshee and there is a picture of a sweet looking fixed blade in the opening credits that caught my eye. I started doing some research and looking at pictures trying to find something similar and purchased a Puma SGB Drop. As with googling anything knife related, Bladeforums came up a number of times. About the same time, I decided to send in my Blur and Tension to Kershaw for sharpening and started looking at their other offerings online. I had been carrying a small Gerber money clip, combo edge knife and was looking to step up a bit. The Blur is too big for in-pocket carry (plus the glass breaker tip would be murder on dress pants for work) but the Gerber wasn’t cutting it. The Leek was where everything tended to be pointing but I just didn’t have an immediate affection for it. Then I saw the Cocobolo Urban Tracker and was hooked, bought it.



Then I started thinking back to that first Spyderco I lost and started looking through their catalog. Found the Manix 2 and liked the leaf shape and FFG so I bought one of the lightweight ones. Then I looked deeper and found the Dice and I was in trouble. A couple of months ago I couldn’t conceive of spending that kind of money on a knife but the Dice ticked all of my boxes (titanium, carbon fiber, easy pocket carry, flipper). Then one of you enabling so-and-so’s pointed out an unbeatable price at one of the vendor sites and all of a sudden my monthly spending budget went right out the window. Fortunately, some of my previous hobbies also have good secondary markets so I was able to unload some shaving stuff to retroactively fund the Dice.



To return full circle, I decided to purchase a Griptilian for my dad for a milestone birthday coming up engraved with Proverbs 20:7. I can’t wait to see his reaction when he opens it!



And to wrap up on the TV theme, fortunately I didn’t pick up any hobbies from watching Breaking Bad…
 
I was always fascinated with knives as a kid, had a bunch of flea market junk that I loved dearly. The interest faded as I got older, but then I got a job as an EMT. Well, my father decided I needed a bullet proof knife if I was going to be running squad. He picked me up a Buck Strider 880 tanto. Absolutely loved that knife, carried it everywhere.

Fast forward to my huge mistake, getting married. Wife didn't like the knife, which I'm not going to disparage her for different strokes and all that, so I started putting it up when I wasn't working. Well, I found a better paying office job and the knife ended up getting "lost". Still sad about that.

Fast forward again to me realizing and correcting my huge mistake. Single again, I was making decent money and didn't have too much in the way of bills and one of my good friends bought an Emerson karambit. Well, that reminded me that I do, indeed, love knives, so I started looking for one. Ended up with a G10 Kershaw Tyrade out of pure luck as I didn't know a darn thing, and that knife was the gateway.
 
I have always carried a knife. But it was usually a cheap knife. My dad would get me a new knife as a gift on every so often. I usually carried Gerber knives had a CRKT knives. and they always worked for me but all I was doing was cutting tape or just having it in my pocket cause I was taught never leave home with out a knife. They it dulled quick but I never really cared. When started my first job and was cutting alot of cardboard and tape and boxes and things of that nature I went and got a folding box knife. I carried that almost every day for about 6 years. It was not until I switched jobs and went from warehouse/driving to being a PA that I stopped carrying the box knife and went back to a Gerber. It was not long after that that I joined Instagram and found this forum. I really got into looking at knives and reading about them and wanting a better knife. I then I bought my first Kershaw Cryo and that got me hooked. Then last Christmas I was given a 100 dollar gift card to Cabela's in Canada and I went and bought my first ZT0350. after that I was hooked and have not looked back.
 
Kershaw Blur.

I've been carrying knives regularly for a couple of decades, but didn't really start collecting until a few years ago. My first knife was a Victorinox (Spartan model, based on my memory of the tools on it). Prior to the Blur, pocket knives were almost entirely just about utility for me. But the Blur changed all that. In addition to being very functional, it was also a fun knife. It got me looking more at what was available beyond a SAK, a traditional slipjoint, a simple liner lock, and a simple lock back.
 
My start came from boy scouts - when i went shopping for gear the first time, the one thing my parents made me wait on was the official issue pocket knife. Man, i loved that thing when i finally was able to pay for one...think i still have it somewhere - from that to my first buck knife and on from there
 
I've always paid more than $20 for a knife, even in my early days the cheapest knife I had was a SOG Flash II. I guess my standards were above most when it comes to knives, dunno where it really started but I'm ok with it.

As for when I started buying quality brands, it was a couple days after finding this forums; I bought a SOG Aegis and went looking to see if others liked it too, only to find that there were others in the same price range that were better and that more people liked. I got a ZT0566 within a week from the exchange and never looked back.
 
One day I asked my dad to use his stockman. He looked at me like I asked for $100.00. So he took me to Kmart because he was going anyway to get oil for the truck. Bought me a Boy Scout three blade knife and a sharpening stone. It only lasted about 15 years before it was sharpened into retirement, was kinda worn too. I miss it some days but if I still had it that would have meant never using it. I've retired many blades since.
 
I always carried a knife as a child. I was in Boy Scouts and my dad always stressed the idea of having quality tools and that they were worth the money. When I got the means a few years ago, I decided I would splurge on one nice knife and that would last me for years. I got a Manix 2 DLC in its original 154CM hollow ground configuration. To the contrary though, that got me hooked and I wanted to try different knives and since then I've only bought one folder that cost less than that Manix. Everything else has been even higher end and I no longer even carry the Manix.
 
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