Your New Knife!

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Always been a fan of Buck, ever since mowing lawns to scrape up some cash then ride my BMX bike 5 miles each way to buy a 110 Hunter, circa 1978. Early this week I thought I lost my favorite EDC at work- the small Vantage. Should have bought a spare as they have been discontinued a while and I really liked the diamondwood scales. It's small enough to carry at work with business clothes plus I can de-bone a partridge or pheasant in seconds with that thing. Couldn't find it anywhere and basically gave up and bought the Vantage Pro with the blue G10 scales as a consolation.

As you would guess from the pic I found the small Vantage. It was in the clothes dryer, open, and almost completely disassembled, LOL. I threw a handful of my clothes in with my wife's load, so definitely my bad. Haven't seen any cut up wife's clothes yet but I keep the blade sharp as a razor, so if I disappear from the forum- she did it. [laugh] Several of the tiny screws, spacers, and the clip were in the dryer lint trap. I'm buying a lottery ticket tomorrow after recovering every single part.

Had to buy a T6 tiny torx driver then put it back together with plenty of blue LocTite. Sometime down the road I'll refinish the diamondwood scales. The blade is made from Sandvik 13C25 stainless. It takes a razor edge and holds it a long time even with moderate abuse. The S30V steel for the big one is supposed to be the shit, but time will tell.

Gave this guy a 'dislike' for throwing shade on these then shilling for Spyderco, LOL. I would have left him alone if not for the Spyderco shilling and being a total puss about the liner lock. Feel free to pile on with the down-votes [rofl]
 
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I seem to have developed a hankerin' for a kukri...

They're cool, but I never used mine as much as I thought I would. A hatchet is almost always more useful.

If you do get one, the larger ones are usually too much knife. The actual Gurkhas I met in Kosovo carried midsize ones.
 
They're cool, but I never used mine as much as I thought I would. A hatchet is almost always more useful.

If you do get one, the larger ones are usually too much knife. The actual Gurkhas I met in Kosovo carried midsize ones.
Yeah... it would probably more of a 'cool' purchase than a 'I could really use a kukri right about now' purchase.
 
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Always been a fan of Buck, ever since mowing lawns to scrape up some cash then ride my BMX bike 5 miles each way to buy a 110 Hunter, circa 1978. Early this week I thought I lost my favorite EDC at work- the small Vantage. Should have bought a spare as they have been discontinued a while and I really liked the diamondwood scales. It's small enough to carry at work with business clothes plus I can de-bone a partridge or pheasant in seconds with that thing. Couldn't find it anywhere and basically gave up and bought the Vantage Pro with the blue G10 scales as a consolation.

As you would guess from the pic I found the small Vantage. It was in the clothes dryer, open, and almost completely disassembled, LOL. I threw a handful of my clothes in with my wife's load, so definitely my bad. Haven't seen any cut up wife's clothes yet but I keep the blade sharp as a razor, so if I disappear from the forum- she did it. [laugh] Several of the tiny screws, spacers, and the clip were in the dryer lint trap. I'm buying a lottery ticket tomorrow after recovering every single part.

Had to buy a T6 tiny torx driver then put it back together with plenty of blue LocTite. Sometime down the road I'll refinish the diamondwood scales. The blade is made from Sandvik 13C25 stainless. It takes a razor edge and holds it a long time even with moderate abuse. The S30V steel for the big one is supposed to be the shit, but time will tell.

Gave this guy a 'dislike' for throwing shade on these then shilling for Spyderco, LOL. I would have left him alone if not for the Spyderco shilling and being a total puss about the liner lock. Feel free to pile on with the down-votes [rofl]

I'm a big fan of Buck knives. They may be in the middle-tier of American Made knives, but they are the backbone of the Blue-Collar worker.
I would put Kershaw in that ranking also...
 
Haven't bought a new knife in a while, so picked up a couple...
I great way of spending a little money before it becomes "valueless" is to turn cash into steel!

A good knife will always be worth more than paper & ink...

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Here are my two Benchmade Mini Bugouts. The top knife has scales from AWT, their Type III Hardcoat with no lanyard hole (I'm not into knife lanyards). The grey knife has scales and a backspacer from Rockscale Design. These are their Titanium Critter Scales in their aluminum blast finish. I found that the Mini Bugout factory clips don't work well for me -- they are very hard to get on to pants. I would have to hold onto my pocket material with my left hand while pushing the knife on with my right hand, which was not OK. So I replaced the clips with aftermarket clips from LynchNW.

Yes, this is how you take a $130 knife and turn it into a $300 knife that doesn't cut any better than when you started. It is completely stupid. But I do like them better this way (thank goodness, after spending all that stupid money...).

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Here is my Demko AD 20.5. When I bought it earlier this year, the only available scales were red "Grivory", aka plastic. Yuck. And I didn't like the pocket clip as it isn't deep carry. Also the gimping on the "shark lock" was a bit sharp, so I knocked that down a bit with a stone.

So, I replaced the scales with milled, coated aluminum from Original GOAT. I also replaced the backspacer, also from Original GOAT. I chose the slotted backspacer, but in retrospect a flat backspacer might have been better. IMG_0377.jpegIMG_0378.jpegIMG_0380.jpegI also replaced the clip with one from LynchNW. Since I was already taking the knife apart, I replaced the bearings with new ones from Skiff -- unnecessary but why not.

A couple months after I did all this, Demko came out with a version of the knife with milled titanium scales that is essentially what I created. Oh well.

I do like this knife. I've come to appreciate sheep's foot / Wharncliffe blade styles. Much easier to sharpen and the utility style works really well opening boxes.
 
Stoned here?
I can see where that would eat up a thumb or two...
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I like the Sheep's foot/Wharncliffe for tight trace cutting. You can really bear down on the work...

Good looking knife.
 
Stoned here?
I can see where that would eat up a thumb or two...
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I like the Sheep's foot/Wharncliffe for tight trace cutting. You can really bear down on the work...

Good looking knife.
The front part, not the top. The way the shark lock works is you pull it to the rear with your index finger to release the lock. There is a spring that pushes it forward to the engaged position. The gimping on the front of it was too sharp for my soft girlie hands.

When cutting a box, the Wharncliffe blade seems less likely to slip out of the box, compared to a knife with more belly.
 
The front part, not the top. The way the shark lock works is you pull it to the rear with your index finger to release the lock. There is a spring that pushes it forward to the engaged position. The gimping on the front of it was too sharp for my soft girlie hands.

When cutting a box, the Wharncliffe blade seems less likely to slip out of the box, compared to a knife with more belly.
See, now looking at it, it looks like that is where you would push forward to release the lock.
But it's true gimping to keep your thumb from sliding.

As to it being box-friendly, I can see that. A folding utility blade is very similar to a Wharncliffe...

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The gimping on the top of the blade is for your thumb, if you grab the knife in a gorilla grip and put your thumb on the top of the blade. That gimping is great, not sharp.

Yup, the Wharncliffe is much like a utility knife in practice.
 
It's been 9 months since my beloved Benchmade 915 triage has been lost and never found. A while back I discovered Hogue made knives and apparently the designer of the triage now works with them. They call it the "trauma" and it's basically a clone of the 915 (minus the sweet orange scales). It's pretty good, blade steel is comparable but the overall fit and finish is not quite on par with the benchmade. The G10 scales are not as grippy and rigid and the blade centering is off. But overall it's decent enough for the price, I think I paid about $130 vs $200 for the benchmade. I took it apart, polished and oiled the bushings and got the action on it where I liked it but I could not solve the blade centering problem. Overall I like it because it has the features I wanted in an EDC and saved me some money from buying the Benchmade but I probably won't be buying another hogue anytime soon. Not a bad knife, but not great.
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