Why is that your favorite knife?

Dale Baxter

Dale Baxter

Joined
Sep 16, 2003
Messages
171
Christmas is in a few days and Santa has blessed our collection with a new knife, a Damascus utility/patch knife made by Master Bladesmith Howard Clark. I do very much like the smaller knives and as a Bladesmith I find a lot of the knives ordered from me are smaller knives for some reason? Maybe it's the Knife publications telling collectors that I specialize in hunters and utilities? Anyway, back to the post.

I fall in love at every show. As a Bladesmith I can truly appreciate the amount of time put into a knife.
I think folders are classy, Asian and European pieces are mysterious, utilities are good hard workers, and fighters have a serious look to them. I love them and can talk all day about them, but my heart belongs to the Bowie.

My favorite knife is a Bowie. 8" to 9" with a clean clip point and a flat oval guard and with a nice piece of Bloodwood for the handle. I feel that a 8" to 9" blade is more blade than will ever be needed, but will not leaving me wanting or needing more blade. The flat oval guard gives me the freedom to invert the blade without stressing my hand. The Bloodwood is just a personal favorite, I like the color and the hardness of the wood.

I am sure that every one of you has a favorite, share with us...What is it and why do you prefer it over other styles?
Dale Baxter
www.baxterknives.com
 
Funny, I was just thinking of starting a thread like this. My favorite knife? Mayo TNT (in any of its many variations). Why? Because they're just so friggin' ... perfect. Just to cite one picky example, my TNTs are the only folders that don't chew up my pants pockets. I haven't seen anybody else smooth out their clips like Tom does.
 
A Forged Bowie - No surprise there.

Forged ... well there are different views on the technical aspects of a forged blade and I will leave that to the experts. What I like about a forged blade is the tradition and heritage, the idea of hammering red hot steel into a certain state and form .... a forged blade represents a mastering steel through the use of the 4 elements .... Earth (fuel for the fire), Wind (the air that breathes life into the flames), Fire (... well you know), Water (The quench, I know it could be oil, and sometimes clay Ok OK .... I am trying to be poetic, cut me some slack)

Bowie .... its the only way to fly :D An icon, yet so flexible, comes in so many forms, and has limitless potential as a collector. They can look just so spectacular.


A particular bowie ... well it really does depend on when you ask, it changes regularly, but I suspect that is about to change.

Stephen
 
Gee, my favorite knife...hum? That would be a stag handled 10 - 12 inch forged bowie with an etched wrought iron S guard and fittings. If it happens to have a wootz blade, that would be great as well, but any of the better carbon or pattern welded steels would be just fine.

I also really like small integral fixed blades like this one from Tai Goo.

willowleaf-1.jpg
 
Can not say that I have one favorite, but my favorites were made by friends.
 
Bastid said:
Can not say that I have one favorite, but my favorites were made by friends.
Click to expand...
Exactly what he said, most every custom knife in my collection was made by a good friend. It don't get no better than that. ;)
 
My favorite knife is a folder with a 3.25" blade and a pocket clip. It should be slim, ride deep in the pocket and have a blade with a reasonably thin edge for good cutting performance.

The reason that this is my favorite is that it's what I find the most useful and most comfotable for my EDC peice. I've tried larger and smaller knives and within the 2.9"-3.5" range they all work, but 3.25" seems just perfect to me. Sometimes I feel like carrying a knife that is more stout, and I have some that fit the bill perfectly, but for general light use I prefer something a little thinner.

My favorite carry knife currently is a med. Mayo TNT that I recently got. Slimmer then I'm used to carrying and the perfect length. I'd like to try one that is tip-up (my usual preference) but I'm actually liking tip-down on this knife pretty well.

Two other knives that make my top list are my Hinderer Flashover and Firetac. The Flashover is the perfect size and has a great tip-up clip (tied for best pocket clip with the Sebenza IMO). It's thicker then the Mayo but sometimes I feel like carrying something that just feels stout and this certainly does the job. The Firetac is just awesome, great inlay and again the really nice tip-up clip. The extra length seems perfectly proportioned to the thicker blade and handles.
 
My favorite type? Why, it's a tactical folder with black synthetic handles and menacing moniker. :p

Okay, just seeing if you were paying attention. ;) The full-sized forged bowie (9" to 12" blade) is my favorite by far. I like knives with a strong cultural identity, and the bowie is as American as baseball or apple pie. I like 'em plain and I like 'em fancy and I love the fact that there is such an incredibly wide variety of styles within the genre. Premium woods, stag, and fossil ivories put a smile on my face. My favorite guard style is the S-guard.

Other categories of bladeware that really float my boat are fancy gents' folders and forged hawks. I've been sorely tempted of late by examples of both, though I generally manage to talk myself out of it by finding a bowie I'd rather have.

Roger
 
For me it's either the big bowie with quillion double guard, or the mediteranean bowie with triangular blade, no guard, and integral ferrule.
 
i like my tom mayo tnt best of all. tom was visiting family nearby and took the time to deliver it in person and even bought dinner. his friendship makes it a very special knife to me. i have a bunch of other mayo knives but it is still is my favorite

i also have a little bailey bradshaw slipjoint folder that i bought from nifrand. it is tiny (2") and has nice stag scales and perfect walk and talk. it is very handy and stands up to pocket carry well. i have a fancier knife from bailey that is the finest knife i own...but it is almost "too nice" to carry. it accompanies me only to church.
 
Have you ever had a dream about a specific knife? That's what happened to me... I fell in love with the "Iron Mistress Bowie" that Ed Fowler had made and pictured in Knife Talk. I had asked Ed who owned it, thinking I'd contact the person to see if they would be interested in showing it at a Blade Show as a display. He only remembered a member of the Knife Makers Guild might own it.. figuring I'd never really find the person I put it in the back of my mind. About a year passed and a Northwest knives catalogue arrived in the mail. Pictured on the back was a large bowie knife... After a few days something started to gnaw on my mind, like I had seen this knife.. so I turned in Knife Talk until I got to the picture of the "Iron Mistress" and it became very clear within a few minutes. It was the same exact knife. After a days, figuring out how to negotiate a trade I called.. after some tense days I received the word that the owner would accept the trade. I would actually own this knife! I had a feel of tremendous reverence when this knife came in the mail, an awe I cannot describe when I held the knife for the first time and an overwhelming feeling about the mystery of it all.
David
 
My favorite style is an unusual one. I love "finger-hole" grips of various types. Fred Perrin's La Griffe and its many relatives, Frontsight's HideAway Knife, and finally, my own Mobius. I like a grip that wraps around my hand, to a greater or lesser extent, making it easy to retain and control the blade.

As far as other chraacteristics... My favorites have at least a lower guard, both for its own sake and to better support my hand on the grip. I prefer a recurve blade with either a clip-point or a shallow drop-point. And a blade length of somewhere in the 3" to 4" range gives me enough tool for most tasks while keeping the overall length short enough for horizontal belt carry.

--Bob Q
 
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