what got you started???

S

samblam

Joined
Jan 19, 2011
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143
as the title says, what traditional knife got you started, be it a slip joint, ?lockback?, or fixed blade. for me it was the sodbuster.

I always remember my dad having one(the large one), i saw it the most when he took me fishing, but seems as though it was always there, and when i knew he wasn't looking i would grab it off of the island counter in the kitchen and just drool over it thinking that if that was what dad choose to use it must be the best kind of knife to use. it is now gone missing, dad is looking for it (for the sole reason of giving it to me) i really hope he finds it. i have more sodbusters than any other pattern, and i am always looking for another one because they take me back to a not so long ago time when things were simpler and all i had to do was try to be like my dad.

what was yours????

thanks
sam
 
only recently started with slipjoints, but mine was the case slimline trapper. i just saw one in a local store one day and fell in love with it.
 
For me, I guess it was the era I grew up in.

Once upon a time, long long ago, when a man put on his pants in the morning, he always had a pocket knife in there. It was just standard. You didn't think about it, just was. In fact, if a man didn't have a pocket knife, he was thought a bit weird. Kind of like a young guy now that does not carry a cell phone. All the men I knew growing up carried a pocket knife, and the usual pocket knife of the day was a small two blade slip joint of some kind. Maybe a barlow or stockman if he was a blue collar worker. It was a rite of passage for a boy to be trusted with that first pocket knife. Now a lifetime later, a small slip joint is still THE knife to have in that pocket. The only lockblades I ever saw was the so called eye-tallion stilleto and switchblade jobs the punks in the ducktail hair cuts carried. The James Dean thing I guess.

Then came Senator Kefauver.

My first real good knife was a Camillus scout knife my dad gave me when I was 12, and becoming a boy scout. To some extent, that influenced me toward a knife with a screwdriver and a few tools on it, like a sak. I get very nostalgic when I see a scout knife. IN the army, there was alway the MKL knives around, and TL-29's. Maybe why i like sak's so much.

Carl.
 
carl,

i love your posts, i have read all of your stories in the sticky, and i really feel like i know you, despite or obvious age difference (i'm 24) i think i would really enjoy spending and afternoon with you just to hang out and see what kind of real world knowledge i could pick from your brain. there are not enough guys like you in the world, that are just real and honest.

l.j. tibbs,

isn't that yellow handled slimeline a great knife, i love mine, it so slim in the pocket for such a long knife it just gets lost in the pocket, and has such a nice long slim blade that will slice like there's no tomorrow.

thanks
sam
 
samblam said:
l.j. tibbs,

isn't that yellow handled slimeline a great knife, i love mine, it so slim in the pocket for such a long knife it just gets lost in the pocket, and has such a nice long slim blade that will slice like there's no tomorrow.

thanks
sam
Click to expand...

definitely. :thumbup: i absolutely love it, and yeah it just disappears in the pocket.
 
Seeing my granddads big old sheffield slipjoint, it went missing after he died but I base all my slipjoint purchases on if they make me feel the way i did seeing my granddad pull his knife out.
 
Robert.B said:
Seeing my granddads big old sheffield slipjoint, it went missing after he died but I base all my slipjoint purchases on if they make me feel the way i did seeing my granddad pull his knife out.
Click to expand...

What an excellent strategy!:thumbup:



A Buck 703 like the one pictured below was my "first love" as far as knives are concerned. I carried one in the early 80's until I lost it in a house fire. Man did I love that knife!

About 28 years later I bought this one and another one just like it to help rekindle an old flame but it's just not the same anymore. Still a great knife though.

1979to1985Buck703Colt.jpg
 
jackknife said:
For me, I guess it was the era I grew up in.
...
...
Carl.
Click to expand...

I agree with Carl.

When I was young, most men carried a knife, and the knife they carried was a slipjoint, it being before the Buck 110 made lockbacks common. I adopted my first knife, a carbon steel bladed equal end jack, from the tool drawer after asking my father's permission. I was about 8 at the time. The knife was a goodly bit older than I.
 
A pen knife with a one inch blade and a bail for sharpening my school pencils
I was 8 years old and I purchased with my saved spending money
 
Dad always carried a small stockman, Old Timer and then a Uncle Henry. He always had it in his pocket. I remember him stropping it on his belt. ain't no telling how many squirrels and rabbits and fich that it cleaned.
 
I grew up in the 1950's with two older brothers and our father was what used to be called "a Sportsman."

We belonged to The Mohawk Valley Sportsman club, which stocked pheasants, did hunter safety classes, and had a rudimentary trap range.

We had a boat, and fished, etc. Deer camp in the Catskills, trips to the Adirondaks, etc. Our mother cooked whatever poor ducks flew in front of our swinging muzzles, etc.

My uncles also had hunting dogs, etc.

I'm not exactly sure when I started to become infatuated with knives but perhaps it was about when one of my older brothers received a Puma Skinner for Christmas.

Suddenly the knives section of Gun Digest got interesting. I looked at pictures of Bowie Knives a lot!

When I got old enough to shave my father taught me how to shave with a couple of old straight razors, which he then passed on to me!

I became fascinated with steel and all its magic properties.

Somewhere during military service I started carrying pocket folders, then after getting out I started browsing in hardware stores.

It's been a chronic and progressive disease!

I started reading Ken Warner (Stoegr Press, and Knife Annual, etc). He made a pretty good case for always having a pocket knife in some pocket.
 
Although not my first knife, what got me started into collecting knives was my co-worker at a place that I used to work at. I was carrying a Kershaw Scallion and he made a comment about me someday getting a "real mans" knife.

So I researched a whole bunch of things and ended up with a Spyderco Endura and that wasnt the best, so I bought another knife that I thought would work better and that didnt work for me either and so on and so forth.

What this leads to is eventually buying a Medium Stockman off of eBay one day to try out traditional patterns. I ordered the knife, and about a day later I was impatient and decided that I couldnt wait for that knife to come in. So, I went down to the only local hardware store that I knew for sure sold Case knives, and I ended up buying an SS Tru-Sharp Amber Bone Mini Trapper.

I carried that knife for a while even after the Medium Stockman came. I carried it on and off every once in a while and was never really interested in it.

Then came recently, or late last year. I got back into getting into a more traditional lifestyle as far as the things that I carried around with me in a way. I really wanted to try out real carbon steel also because my recent co-worker at the job that I am currently at commented on stainless steel not really holding edges very well.

So, even though I have a couple of knives that have D2 Steel and other "super steel," I decided that I'd give something else a try.

I am still new to Traditional knives, but I really like what I have now and I see myself sticking with them because I think that I like carrying them more than I like to carry any tactical-style knife with a pocket clip on me.

There are some other thoughts that are coming about in my head right now for the reasons why I do what I do, but in the interest of not posting my knife story once again in a thread, I'll cut it off after this thought.

My grandfather might be one of the best men that I have ever known, and he has gotten by very well with a traditional knife. He's 70 now, and still going strong without one of these new-style knives that we have now. Why should I fix whats not broken? Even if it's only in this little facet of my lifestyle.
 
jackknife said:
For me, I guess it was the era I grew up in.

Once upon a time, long long ago, when a man put on his pants in the morning, he always had a pocket knife in there. It was just standard. You didn't think about it, just was. In fact, if a man didn't have a pocket knife, he was thought a bit weird. Kind of like a young guy now that does not carry a cell phone. All the men I knew growing up carried a pocket knife, and the usual pocket knife of the day was a small two blade slip joint of some kind. Maybe a barlow or stockman if he was a blue collar worker. It was a rite of passage for a boy to be trusted with that first pocket knife. Now a lifetime later, a small slip joint is still THE knife to have in that pocket. The only lockblades I ever saw was the so called eye-tallion stilleto and switchblade jobs the punks in the ducktail hair cuts carried. The James Dean thing I guess.

Carl.
Click to expand...

I have a tendency to rattle off long posts, but it is because I enjoy this little part of the world a lot.

However, this time there isn't anything I could add to that one; I don't know how it could have mirrored my personal experience any better.

Well said, Carl.

Robert
 
My dad is not a knife guy. He is though, an electrician. I've never seen him strip wires with anything other than a knife. The vendors he bought wire and cable from kept him supplied with electricians knives and that is all he's ever used. I bet that if I went through his garage I'd find at least a hundred of them.
That was what probably got me interested. Watching him work.
 
I can't think of a specific knife. What got me started was that, much to my Mom's chagrin, my Grandfather started plying me with knives at a VERY early age. I do remember joining the scouts so I could carry a knife to school. I just loved knives. Still do. Take better care of them now.

My Grandpa was born and raised in southern Illinois. My other grandfather in rural PA. Farmers and Coal Miners. They did not revere knives the way we do. But they had them. That was part of the appeal, I think. They didn't keep them in froo-froo knife rolls (like me), or handle them with rubber gloves (sometimes). They used them, sharpened them like they sharpened all their tools, and put them back in their pockets.

Sometimes I get a little embarrassed at the way I treat my knives and how many I have. My grandfathers would bust a gut. But they had their things. My Grandpa had more ballcaps than a baseball team, and my Paupa had a huge model train set up in the basement.
 
What started it all for me was a Case texas jack that I recieved from my uncle for christmas from then on I was addicted.
 
A Gerber Silver Knight (250A wood) is the knife that started me on my way to accumulating pocket knives. - Ed
 
It was a Case Caribbean blue toothpick for me. A gift to my Dad that my Mom picked out, ever since I saw that knife I've wanted one.
I've been adding to the collection ever since.
 
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