What's your most useful knife?

Usually, that is going to be whatever in my pocket has a straight edge. Most often, that will be an Okapi Biltong. My Electrician is always there, too, and the short sheepsfoot blade is used most often, by a long shot. The 2018 Forum knife, a RR improved Muskrat, and some flavor of stockman also get carried a fair amound. In each case, the sheepsfoot blade is the one I find most useful.

Over the long haul, however, the last 45 years, my most useful knife has been the little Anza on the left. Only occasionally in my pocket, more often in a motorcycle tank bag, it has sliced sausage and cheese, opened cans, cut fuel hose, scraped gaskets, cut zipties, stripped insulated wires, turned screws, opened frozen car doors, pried valve covers, whittled drain plugs, chopped vegetables, opened the mail....

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Most useful pocket item that also has a knife in it? LM Wave gets a nod over the SAK Explorer (my favorite SAK).

Most useful pure knife? CS Ultimate Hunter. Perfect size for me. I'm a fan of the triad lock too.
 
In my everyday work mode my most used small pocket knife is the Buck 303 cadet and then my most used large pocket knife is the Buck Vantage Pro with the 110 slim pro in close competition.

One knife just doesn’t cut it for me. On my personal time away from work the 303 is usually in my pocket most but at times I switch to the 301 or 501 depending on what I’m doing.
 
Work beater, Launch 3

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I would have to say as of late my most used knife is a case med. Stockman in CV. Then next would be an alox electrician. Or rat 2 in d2 steel .
Before it was confiscated by a friend, it was the native 5 lightweight kinda goes in spells I guess
 
Over the last 30 years, my Laguiole as I always have it on me, followed by my Leatherman (used to be a classic PST, now a Rebar) that I also always carry.
Apart from those: when I step out into the yard (it's a large yard) without knowing beforehand what I might need to cut I always grab my reground Mora HD attached to a paracord sling and hang it diagonally across my chest. So that one sees a lot of use, often dirty, often not very knife-friendly.
During meals I use a Terava mini puukko bare tang to cut bread, cheese and such - very sharp and as there are no handle scales, easy to clean. I always put a small wooden cutting board next to my plate, too.
When processing wood in the yard: for splitting logs a Gransfors Bruks small splitting axe and a small forest axe, for delimbing branches and splitting kindling my Skrama. Usually, if I know I am ging to do a lot of wood processing or pruning I'll swap the Mora HD for my Jääkkäripuukko 140, which is a lot better at light chopping/delimbing.
Most of my knives are users, but these are the most useful/most frequently used. With the Laguiole being the champion.
 
abcdef said:
SAKs and smallish slip joints rule the planet.

Most here have many awesome pocket fixed blades and tanks, etc. Guilty. But you know what you use.
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Eventually I think many of us will come around to this way of thinking.
 
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Shorttime said:
I want to derail for a moment, but it's still in the interest of knife-related content. Mr. Beige, can you tell us more about the attractively chunky piece in the top right of this photo?
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Looks like you are looking at the butt end of another Anza, the Dune Field. If my photos were better, you would be able to see that it was ground from a file about 5mm thick. Not for everybody, but I like them. Eleven inches overall, with a blade just under six inches. A little self-referential humor there, file work on a file knife.

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View attachment 1248984 In the kitchen I get a lot of use out of these custom paring knives by George Young. The blades are Stellite 6-K and are .027" thick. The handles are African Blackwood?
 
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