EverydayCommentary: Why You Need a True Pocket Knife

We often use the term pocket knife for all folding knives, and it is probably angels on the head of pin to insist they are always different, but there is a class of knives that I think have fallen out of favor for no real good reason. For purposes of this article, when I am referring to “pocket knives” I mean small folding knives that are carried solely in the pocket. Some slipjoints and traditional knives fall into this category, like a Peanut or Copperhead pattern, but others, like a Elephant Toe Nail or a Buck 110 do not. The key is that the knife needs to be small and clipless—something that can genuinely be carried in a pocket.

There are a few reasons to carry such a knife.

First. they tend to be smaller than most knives I review here. Blades under 2 inches are often seen as useless, but whole generations of folks used and carried nothing else. My grandfather’s favorite knife, the only one he ever made a sheath for, was a tiny gem—a very small Case knife (picture above, knife on the left). It has a sub-2 inch blade. He did all kinds of stuff with that knife. He carried it when he worked on a farm and tended to the horses. He took it with him when he and his brother Walt ran an impromptu towing service in the hollers of Southern Ohio (they found a broken winch, fixed it, and attached it to their father’s truck and then drove around country roads pulling people out of ditches for a dime…they were 10 and 8 at the time). He also had it in his pocket when he would make runs to his father’s stash of moonshine in a hidden location, often in the dead of night. Because it was so small it was easy to carry and thus it was always on him, even in school…but that is a whole different subject.

You won’t find any argument from me. I carry a slipjoint even when I am carrying something bigger.

Read the whole thing at EverydayCommentary.com