What's a safe queen and what's a user?

[midnight flyer]

Replace-ability balanced against desire to use.

If I lose great great grampa's knife it would break my heart...but then again it warms my heart to use his knife

Basically it's a knife that it would really really be a "darn shame" if something happened to it.

I've got a Case XX era barehead jack in mint condition that falls in that category, not a nick, scratch, or bit of wear on it.

It's nice to look at, fun to handle, but it's like that extra fine china at your parents house that they reserve for "good company", but when company comes they never seem to be good enough for that "good china"

Which kind of sucks, you don't really "own" these things, you are a custodian for them...they own you.

Pretty insightful for some of us. Due to medical emergencies, my parents were forced to move to an adult living center and had little time to clean out their house. Their "save this, it's too expensive to use" list of possessions was incredible. Mom had a full set of sterling table silverware that was about 150 years old, passed from her mother. There were all kinds of things like that. Things that were packed away, out of sight, stored for a day that never came.

But on my Dad's side of things, it broke my heart to see that he kept every knife I bought him, and never carried them. He might have carried them once or twice to make sure I knew he had them, but they were carefully stored as they were much more expensive than the knives he would buy for himself. He didn't want to take a chance on losing or breaking one. He was fond of Puma knives, and he had the real 100% Solingen made knives I bought for him starting 25 years ago all unused.

To me, this was a waste. He is careful with knives and taught me proper use when I was still wet behind the ears. If he damaged a knife or something happened to it, it wasn't because he was doing something stupid. I wanted him to use those knives and would have gladly bought him replacements had he used them up, lost them, or damaged them. But to him they were an extravagance, too expensive to just carry around with no concerns.

I see knives as tools (although I do like some of the fancy ones, no doubt!) and I won't let any of them sit like that. The ONLY knife I don't carry is my grandfather's Keen Kutter Barlow as it is irreplaceable and is probably about 80-90 years old. That is the only one in "heirloom" status.

Robert

 

[cchu518]

Midnight that's the story of our lives! I'm Chinese and was born in the US. But my parents were peasant farmers in China. Growing up we had a restaurant in NYC that served JFK's widow Jackie, Brooke Shields and a large part of the 1978-19823 cast of the WWF wrestlers including Andre the Giant. We weren't poor by most standards, but my mother treated us as if we were due to how she grew up. I chat with a lot of folks whose parents went through the Great Depression and its much the same with how they were raised learning to be frugal and to just get by even though you don't have to anymore.

I actually rebelled against what my parents taught me in my 20's, it was the tech boom and NYC was awash with opportunity and adventure. I rebelled by a very wide margin actually and now that I'm in my late 30's and married I'm trying to get back to a less wasteful time in my life. Still though, good quality tools should be enjoyed for what they are. There are some exceptions to every rule of course. Bob Loveless is a genuine icon, and I know what he says about his knives and hoping that they get used in the field. But damn, I don't know if I could bring myself to using one of his originals vs. the styles and patterns he invented that could be had in a mass produces format. I'm sure there are countless examples of this scenario is well, therein lies the hypocrisy I suppose of wanting to use a knife as a tool and not a collector's item! Then again, a Loveless original is finite to the Nth degree! Lol.

 

[quattromori]

Aside from few exceptions (old/rare patterns, or emotional value) it's exactly the same knife, owned by two different people

Fausto

 

[Lee48]

I don't have a safe. I have knives I use and I have knives I haven't used yet and I have knives I've used before but don't use now yet I will always keep.