For some reason, my son thinks I need more knives. He made me a cleaver for my birthday and he recently bought me an assisted opening knife while on a trip. I have never had one of those before. It is kind of a fun novelty to continuously click it open while I am sitting and staring into space.

I live in the knife capitol of the world. Gerber, Leatherman, Benchmade, Kershaw and CRKT are all headquartered here. As a result, I have some unique opportunities like the annual seconds sale at Kershaw. There are fifty dollar knives that sell for $5. Some of them are defected while others are models that just didn’t sell. It has been a number of years since I went to the sale. The truth is I can only use so many knives. I love the idea of buying a deal and getting something cool but why…? Besides that, a lot of the knives I have have been given to me. Like the two below in the picture.

These are my two newest folding knives. Both of them were given to me. The gray one is the one I was saying that my son gave to me. The old fashioned one I was awarded by the local state representative that I was helping with his trap fundraiser. When I got it, I thought, what am I going to do with this? I keep it in my office to open boxes and packaging. The truth is, it is not a locking blade and so I am leery of putting it to real, hard work.

I have often thought that I want to buy a real barbeque show piece. I can afford it and I should have a heavy-duty tactical knife for the zombie apocalypse. But then I think about how torn I am to surrender the $15 Leatherman at TSA and I think not a chance I would carry around a $400 knife to possibly lose it.

The knife that I carry 99% of the time is the same knife I bought in middle school. I like it, it is comfortable. (read more about it october-22-2020-tacticool-thursday) It is not the best steel, it is scraped to heck back on my first amateur attempts to sharpen and it doesn’t even have a pocket clip. Those were just being invented at that time in the 1980s. My brother bought one about a year later that did have a clip. But, it does lock.

I think one of the things that I do like is that it doesn’t have a clip. That makes it slim to fit in my pocket and doesn’t catch on other things when I pull it out. I would be very, very sad if I lost it (wouldn’t be the first time). This always gets me thinking about buying a replacement Everyday Carry knife. Each time I do, I find myself going back to what is familiar and comfortable.

The only knives I have lost since becoming an adult have been because they were taken from me at the airport. However, as a kid I lost track of the number of knives that I have lost. I think two Swiss Army knives, a Boy Scouts branded folder and an Opinel given to my from our French exchange student we hosted are amongst the list. Part of the reason this is true is that it is carried every day so I always know where it is.

One time I bought a very nice looking, titanium clad knife and I carried it a while. It turns out that I hated using it because the pocket clip bit into my hand while using it. Another time I bought an expensive (for the time) knife off of e-bay. When it showed up, I was in shock. It was tiny. It is also uncomfortable to use. This was about the time I was learning that I needed to see things before buying them because the dimensions provided did not translate well in my head.

End Your Programming Routine: I probably will switch over to this new knife for a while. I don’t have the same emotional attachment to it so I am less worried about whether I will lose it or ding it up doing things it wasn’t designed to do. I doubt too that this will be the last one either. But, don’t be surprised if I go back to my old faithful either.