The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Jack Black
that ebony custom is fantastic!!!!
This year was a short year in acquiring knives, couple of Rosecraft that are really great for what they are. But this crkt I got on my bday Dec 8 has wowed me in all aspects. BTW
View attachment 2747261
Nice choice there 
This year is nearly at a close and though I contemplated briefly whether I would post here or not, it is still tradition and one I'm not keen on shirking (even if I don't have much to add).
I tend to wax introspective at times and will often evaluate where I am at in life during whichever season I happen to be in at the time. These last couple of years have found me more conservative in some areas and with that comes a more conscious effort to budget not only my time and energies overall, but more particularly the enthusiasm and expenditures that my hobbies take up. Sending my boy off to college may have something to do with that; college is expensive and when it's a goodly distance away, it also serves to provide us parents with a wee bit of anxiety.
Total abstinence is not necessary in my case, however, and I feel that I've still managed to acquire some very fine knives from some of my favorite makers this past year. Does one of these blades make the final cut for what qualifies as my 2024 KOTY? I suppose we shall see in due course.
As I was mulling over the options, I was rather surprised to note that I do believe that I can count the number of new knives I have acquired this year on two hands. I suppose that could make the decision easier or harder depending on one's perspective.
After some thought, I considered the following as potential contenders:
Shown here are a CPK FK3, a Tony Mont EDC Bowie, a Waynorth City Stock Knife, and an Albers GL-24. All of these knives represent craftsmanship I admire, communities that I adore, and people that I am honored to call friends. After all, a knife is simply a knife, a tool, but it becomes something so much more when this seemingly benign object ends up being the catalyst for the connections we've made here, the friendships we've cultivated, and the community we treasure.
Unfortunately, I cannot call any of these my 2024 KOTY. Per Jack's faithfully studious guidelines, none of these knives really qualify, despite my fondness for them. I am blessed with an abundance of choices but I must confess that my pockets have largely been occupied by a limited selection of past KOTY contenders and winners. I've become a bit boring in my carry choices, I am afraid, and I've gone months in a row of carrying the same knife or two. That said, the Albers GL-34 came awfully close but try as it might, it could not supplant the stalwarts that preceded it.
There is no 2024 KOTY for me this time but I still have managed to carry some excellent cutlery. Thank you, Jack, for carrying on the tradition!
Happy New Year, all!
Thank you for contributing, it's always a pleasure to see you post 
So I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. I didn’t buy a ton of knives this year, but the ones I picked up I thought were definitely worthwhile. The knife that I picked, I think is probably one of the most exquisitely manufactured pocket knives I have ever laid hands on. It truly is an heirloom to be passed down through generations. I’m not a bandwagon type person who jumps on something just because everybody else does, but for those of you that were privileged enough to land this one, I think you know what I mean. I never picked one up in any of the drops, as I missed out and I’m not very good at all the ins and outs of the market. But I reached out to a member who I thought may know where one would be for sale and he definitely hooked me up. So as I sit here around the campfire in the backyard on New Year’s Eve, thinking about the past year and what I hope this coming year will bring, I have what I think is the most handsome, eloquent and useful pocket knife a person could own in my pocket….
Jakeywax31
did a great job working with
Cosimo De Benedetto
on these, but at the time Paul was having them made, it just wasn’t in the budget for me to get in on it. Paul, being Paul, had one made for me anyways. Cosimo’s work is beyond impressive, and I’ve been thrilled to carry this beautiful piece of pocket art around with me quite a bit since it arrived.
waynorth
City Stocks might have made the cut. I think it’s one of Charlie’s best SFOs (which is really saying something). There’s just so much to like about this knife. Alas, they’re so nice (and, in the case of the white bone, so rare) that, so far, they remain relatively uncarried, and therefore don’t qualify for KOTY.
Jack Black
for giving me his blessing to continue the annual Guardians knife tradition that he started, and to Eric
ea42
for making the knives, and to all the Guardians for leaving me with one KOTY and not 26. 
Wow Tim, what a stunner!I have got to admit that the City Stock is one of the best knifes I have acquired myself this year,
But, my KOTY is definitely a most amazing gift from Glenn or better known asglennbad .
What more can you say about his stag on a Albers lambfoot. Very blessed with this sweet knife.
Definitely a Kinfe of the Year
Great post Bruce, you kept us guessing right to the end
I saw Jack’s annual thread when it began, have read some of the pages but not all as yet. Been mulling it over and as this is the last day of the year I plan to participate. 50 years ago I far preferred to carry a bigger pocketknife, having graduated from the BSA knife of my early and mid-teens, to a Buck 301 I was gifted my senior year in high school. Over the decades I have gone down as far as regular carrying using pen knives and perhaps 20 years ago settled in on the medium Stockman as my regular carry. What has changed this year was winning the 4” Craftsman Stockman (Schrade 881) in JonMcD’s great GAW of five fine pocketknives last December 2023. The Craftsman came in right around Christmas Eve, I was immediately drawn to it and began regular carry of it after Christmas.
In early March I made a trade with Bryon Banks here on this forum and obtained a PERFECT BattleAxe Premium Stockman (bone dye and jigging, W&T, and F&F are as good as it gets, it doesn’t even have the blade rub we expect from a Stockman). I decided it would be a carry knife, not a Safe Queen. Finally in October I pulled out of storage a NOS Case 6392 Premium Stockman that had never been carried - carrying the BattleAxe proved to me I could carry and enjoy safe-queen knives. Additionally a pocket pouch makes it easy to carry the things I like to have in my pocket without a big lump at the bottom of the pocket - making a 4” a delight to carry once again.
I enjoy carrying all three and all are now regular carries. I will eliminate the Case as I bought it in January 2015, even though it was never carried until this past October. The Craftsman just barely slipped in under Jack’s rules - right at Christmas 2023. Almost impossible for me to pick between the BattleAxe and the Craftsman, however the Craftsman, with its Delrin handles and Schrade carbon steel, is a work-a-day, use for anything, type knife that I am drawn to. It also carries the grand old name of the Sears Craftsman line, it’s my K-O-T-Y of 2024. OH
Lovely photos too That's a nice way to end the year Jim, and a great choice
Those knives have been popular here Some great runners-up Barrett, that was very generous of PaulSeeing as the year will be over here in a few hours, I suppose I better get in on this thread while the gettin’ is good.
Like many of you, I’ve been blessed with a few great knives this year, so I’ll follow the tradition of naming a few runners-up before revealing my KOTY.
I picked up this excellent older (in the GEC sense) sheepsfoot #15 over the summer. I may be biased because it was around the time that I first got into GEC, but I think the knives they were putting out around 2013-2015 were some of the best we’ve seen from GEC, and this knife is no exception. Outstanding fit and finish, nice pull and snap, and damn good looking (even though I generally prefer no end caps).
I received some wonderful knives as gifts over the years, and this has to be one of the best of those.
If I had been able to bring myself to give either of them much pocket time, one of these fantastic
For me, though, this year’s Knife of the Year was really a foregone conclusion. I started working with Eric Albers on the 2024 Guardian’s Lambsfoot at the very beginning of 2024. We exchanged dozens of emails over the following months, talking about ideas and logistics and timelines. It was great getting to work with Eric to put this knife together, and a relief when I was finally able to announce it to the Guardians of the Lambsfoot group in August. The best part, however, has been the great reception the knife has received, which can even be seen here in this thread. I’m honored that so many of y’all named the GL-24 as a contender for your KOTY, it really means a lot to me. Thanks again to
You did an outstanding job getting Eric to make those fabulous Lambs, well done my friend, they're truly special Wishing everyone a very happy 2025, and I hope that some time during the year, you realise you have your Knife of the Year for 2025 See you here towards the end of the year folks 
Rufus1949
. There's no indication of the cutlery's name on the knives, but the bolster stamp is the Camargue Cross, a symbol that caught my eye, and imagination, the first time I ever saw it.
