"What pocket knife do you carry every day?
Anyone here who doesn't carry one?"

I find that knives are like cats--- they live with you for a while, then they
die or go away, and they break your heart when they do. I'm still in mourning
for my last two carrying knives.

Sometime in the last year my usual carrying knife dropped out of my pocket. It's
a shock to me that I'd had it for around twenty-five years. Back in the 1980s I
started carrying a small fixed-blade work knife rather than a folding knife. The
usual one was a large McKay knife, not Dexter but maybe Hyde or Murphy

http://www.rmurphyknives.com/store/leather-knives-
ss4.html">http://www.rmurphyknives.com/store/leather-knives-ss4.html

I rehandled it with ebony, a bit wider and maybe shorter and a lot thinner, and
with a bit of checkering on it. Rust-blued the blade. Sheath like a Scandinavian
one, coming up over most of the handle. This sat in my right front pants pocket,
comfy and out of the way; I didn't actually need it often, but it was there.
Basically a bookbinding knife for me, though most of my bench knives are small
or medium McCays, rehandled because they come with what feel like chopped-off
broom handles. I still haven't replaced it with anything regular, my
subconscious still thinks it is there in my pocket.

About ten years ago, I'd guess, a friend of mine found me a not-a-gift sold-
for-a-penny pocket knife that he had found cheap and reconditioned for me. Three
blades, I think basically a "stockman" with two long blades and a pen blade.
Dark smooth wood scales, high carbon steel,old but plenty of life left. It
suited me down to the ground: I was even using it in paper restoration, for
paring paper and shaving off old adhesive tape residues and other incrustations.
That one went through a hole in the pocket. I still haven't had the heart to
tell my friend. I hope whoever found it appreciates it.

For maybe fifteen years before I started pocket-carrying a fixed-blade knife, I
carried one of two 4" lockblades sold-for-a-penny not-a-gifted to me by Hank
Reinhardt, who I had the privilege of corresponding with and knowing in my teens
and twenties, when I really needed it. At that point, in and fresh out of the
SCA, I was concerned with having something I could fight with if I needed to.
Not that I ever needed to: I've never looked like a victim. Nor does it concern
me now: I have a bad knee and carry a stick, and I'd rather have a stick than a
knife in a fight, any day. Still don't seem to look like a victim, though.

And before that, my usual pocket knives were single-bladed Case. I don't
remember the style name I liked, but I think it was one of their old classics,
now out of production, with a long slender blade (not a lockblade) and just one
bolster. Not a big load in the pocket, not a lot of extra crap like saws and
gimlets and buttonhooks, but an effective knife that didn't get in the way. I've
never seen the need for lots of blades.


I'm looking for a knife, in yard sales, but haven't found one that suited my
hand yet. At this point I think I'd prefer a medium-stockman type, three blades
including a pen, but I don't like the look of the variants Case does now. Or if
I could find one of the style I had in the '60s and middle '70s, with the narrow
blade; but that one is out of production, and anyway I don't like Case's current
choice of steels (chrome-vanadium and stainless). Like most everybody here I
feel a bit naked without a knife in my pocket (and a couple of bone folders
too); but I can live without one because I didn't actually use my pocket knife
very often. In due course I'll find one that sings in my hand and get it, and be
set up to have my heart broken again.


Tom Conroy