When did regular old pocket knives become “traditional”?

@Fire King I think you've gone beyond the pale.......geddit? Dont worry Ive got plenty of trad knives on my bucketlist too..:)
 
Growing up in the 60's I remember carrying those shell handled fish knives. At some point I had a four blade camper, and some Imperial and Camillus folders. When I was a young teen I got myself a Buck 112 and carried that into my twenties where I lost it over the side of a Coast Guard cutter off the coast of Alaska while working on the cargo netting on the Helo deck. Had a few stockmans after that, and some fixed blade traditional's. Some time in the mid 90's I was working in a warehouse of a hardware distributor, we carried Schrade brand knives and I had couple of those, but one day while making deliveries, a manager of one of our customer stores gave me a one handed liner lock Buck Odyssey, he said that the knife I was using to break down the pallet was "too nice" to be used cutting straps and shrink wrap... At the time I thought it kind of ugly and funny looking with its thumb hole opener and it's pointy half serrated ATS-34 blade, but I clipped it in my pocket and it became my work/every day knife.

At the time I didn't really think about it much, it was just a tool, and a very handy one at that. Opening dozens and dozens of boxes daily, breaking down pallets of goods for stock, constantly being pushed for time, that one handed knife made my life a lot easier, I could grab the box with my left hand and open it quickly with that knife in one smooth action and have that knife back in my pocket in seconds. For well over fifteen years that knife was a constant companion, even to the point of totally wearing out the blade and sending it in for a replacement. Those weeks where it was gone I really realized how accustomed I had been to having such a easy, rapid deployment and rapid close tool on hand.

I was still interested in other knives, some traditional like Laguioles and stockman and hunter patterns, but also into some unique knives like the AG Russell one hand knife and the Gerber Paul knives. It wasn't until I found Blade Forums that I encountered the term traditional knives, they were all just knives to me. It's kind of funny that I have acquired many more traditional knives in the last few years than I ever even knew existed before discovering this "porch". Good times!
 
I think there's an obvious parallel between knives and firearms in this traditional vs modern discussion. They evolved over the same time period, for the same reasons, and in some ways gained momentum from the same changing mindset. I'm someone who is attracted to "older" tech, the nostalgia for "simpler" times and frontier days. My midlife crisis has mostly been comprised of a movement from goretex to wool, iphones to analog wristwatches, flippers to slipjoints, etc. It's a kind of anachronistic fetish and I'm totally okay with that. But I think it's silly to imagine that our grandparents would have thumbed their noses at these "modern" evolutions. Pocket clips, thumbstuds, flipper tabs, torsion bars, covers that are impervious to water-- these are all fully in the "building a better mousetrap" category, and anyone who actually needs to use their tools will always take a stronger/faster/more effective tool. As with firearms, I personally own dozens, but I can't bring myself to purchase anything on the AR platform. I just think they're ugly and I prefer my rifles with wood. But they are absolutely more effective. My grandfather was in WW1, I have no doubt that if he were alive today he'd own an AR. Final thought, what I meant by "changing mindset" above is the influence of tacticool, when the militarization of civilian tools started happening. Remember when the NRA was an organization of marksmen and hunters? Yeah that was a while ago. There was a real sea-change when the philosophical push became all about personal defense, sometime around the 80s-90s. I suspect it came from the manufacturing industry as a way to sell more guns. But in any case tacticoolification certainly helped to push the wave of "modern" knife improvements forward.
 
When? When the word 'traditional' became synonymous with old fart. At some point the curmudgeon contingent started being offended by pocket clips, thumb studs, and *gasp* serrated edges! Since calling them fogey knives would probably offend the fogies, Traditional became the perfect, yet essentially meaningless, descriptive term.
 
I do not know when I got my first pocket knife or where I got it or was bran it was . I do know that I was playing the Splits before 1951 and that my Dad had a pretty good Barlow . I went into the Army in 1958 carrying a Fishknife that I still have and do not remember how I got it . In 1961 I bought a three bladed Ulster that carried and used until I retired in 2001 or 2003 . Depends on how you look at it . I still have that Ulster . Somewhere along the line , I bought myself and Dad a small Buck just so he had a nice knife . I do not know when the Moderns came out and never wanted one because I had all the knives I needed . Sometime after 2003 I started getting Knives as Gifts and I started collecting . I was gifted a knife with a Thumb Stud and removed it because that would not be TRADITIONAL . I guess you have to say the Old Fashioned Pocket Knives became Traditionals the day the Moderns came out . There or more learned people here than I that can tell you when the Moderns came out . It is like when you have 2 Vehicles and they are not the same , you may have to call one a Truck and one a Car .

Harry
 
JohnDF said:
And doesn't it feel good to simplify?
I'll probably never give up my iPhone though. ;)
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Oh I didn't give up the iphone (I'm tapping away on it this moment). I just started wearing watches again to give myself one less excuse to pull it out of my pocket. Bought a regular old bedside alarm clock for the same reason. Feels good to draw some boundaries around the dang thing, they're taking over society. I still have all the other stuff too...still carry modern flippers sometimes. Still grab a fancy rainjacket sometimes, it's quick, easy, light, and it works. But it never makes me smile like putting on some waxed canvas does :)
 
Where would something like this old Kershaw lockback live on the Traditional-Modern spectrum? It's not really what comes to mind when I think of either of those categories...

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dsutton24 said:
When? When the word 'traditional' became synonymous with old fart. At some point the curmudgeon contingent started being offended by pocket clips, thumb studs, and *gasp* serrated edges! Since calling them fogey knives would probably offend the fogies, Traditional became the perfect, yet essentially meaningless, descriptive term.
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:D:D:cool: Made me laugh as there's a lot of truth in this.

They became Traditional when you woke up one day and felt old :eek:;) and worried about being out of touch...?

Then there are others who feel the icy blast of FOMA breathing down their neck, might be a contributing factor for some. So define yourself by identifying with products and disdaining other options.... Trapped in ghettoes of our own making. Modern knives have their undeniable virtues but they're just too big and lacking in aesthetic lure/variety for my wants. However , the Curmudgeon Brigade will still from time to time bore on that carbon is the only real steel and Traditional this that and another is the correct dogma - when it's only their own conceit and oldfartism taking hold :rolleyes:;) Thus Traditional and Modern become binary opposites in some peoples' minds, which is itself ridiculous. Moderns perhaps became 'weaponised' through Tacticoolism and the perception took root that they are the domain of the young, the up to date and those viewing knives as essentially weapons etc. Fertile ground for the category of Grandpa Knives or Oldfarts Refuge to emerge :D

Other posters have I think, very correctly identified significant watersheds in the evolution of knives and the perception people have of them. The Big Buck 110 certainly changed the field as did the early Spydercos. So the 'contemporary ' knife was no longer the type we now call 'traditional' and 'Contemporary Knife' might be a better term than 'Modern' but there's no changing that.

But as dsutton's quote shows; it is a meaningless descriptive term 'Traditional' and likewise 'Modern' is the same; as time waits for no one and Modern will become eclipsed/displaced by something else.
 
Regular pocket knives first became "Traditionals" with the introduction of the "Old Timer" knives in the late 1950's, coincidently about the time that modern assisted opening knives got derailed for over a generation in their development by misguided legislation.
 
In answer to your question, round about sometime the 1980's when pocket clips, and one-hand opening became voge, the "reinvention" of the linerlock, and a bunch of mall ninja and wannabees decided they wanted one (illsuited) blade for everything in a boxy knife with sharp corners and too thin a handle to get a comfortable grip, who bought into the marketing hype/lie that a knife wasn't "safe to use" unless it had a locking blade.
 
afishhunter said:
In answer to your question, round about sometime the 1980's when pocket clips, and one-hand opening became voge, the "reinvention" of the linerlock, and a bunch of mall ninja and wannabees decided they wanted one (illsuited) blade for everything in a boxy knife with sharp corners and too thin a handle to get a comfortable grip, who bought into the marketing hype/lie that a knife wasn't "safe to use" unless it had a locking blade.
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Again (and all value judgements aside), the consensus seems to be that the onset of the “modern” knife phenomenon began in the late 80s, which explains how I managed to miss it. Several years living and working overseas in fairly isolated circumstances, followed by raising daughters with little interest in camping or fishing, all the while already owning a couple of perfectly serviceable knives, effectively kept me ignorant of the whole thing.
 
What happened in the US after the war, can also be said of good old Europe. Many Solingen makers went out of business and these days there is hardly anyone carrying a Solingen made workmen's knife like the hippekniep (a.k.a. sodbuster) no more. Same for Sheffield and many a maker in Thiers, France. What remained were the two giants of Victorinox and Opinel.
 
afishhunter said:
In answer to your question, round about sometime the 1980's when pocket clips, and one-hand opening became voge, the "reinvention" of the linerlock, and a bunch of mall ninja and wannabees decided they wanted one (illsuited) blade for everything in a boxy knife with sharp corners and too thin a handle to get a comfortable grip, who bought into the marketing hype/lie that a knife wasn't "safe to use" unless it had a locking blade.
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I don’t disagree. But, I’ll add that it was around the same time that many of those older classic family heirlooms started to self-destruct and gas out from celluloid decomposition. No surprise that many would turn to stainless steels blades and handles and later titanium frames.

n2s
 
I never knew they were "traditional" until I started checking out Blade Forum and found that's how they were "categorized". I figured it was mainly to differentiate from "tacticool" ... which should be a subforum title by the way. Before that, I just called them what they were, slip joints, lockbacks etc. In my mind, "tacticool" needed specific designation ... not traditional, which has been around forever and still is. But tacticool seems to have taken over in the mainstream. For example, on "my" firearms forum, if it isn't "tacticool", no one seems interested. If there is a continued rise in popularity of tacticool ... "traditional" may be changed to "historical" ... or something or other.
 
BrotherJim said:
I never knew they were "traditional" until I started checking out Blade Forum and found that's how they were "categorized". I figured it was mainly to differentiate from "tacticool" ... which should be a subforum title by the way. Before that, I just called them what they were, slip joints, lockbacks etc. In my mind, "tacticool" needed specific designation ... not traditional, which has been around forever and still is. But tacticool seems to have taken over in the mainstream. For example, on "my" firearms forum, if it isn't "tacticool", no one seems interested. If there is a continued rise in popularity of tacticool ... "traditional" may be changed to "historical" ... or something or other.
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Remember when the stuff we like and are accustomed to wasn’t seen as just for old farts?
Remember when policemen didn’t look like kids to us?
 
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