The Why

Knives have been fascinating me from a very young age. I was drawing pictures of knives of all kinds of crazy shapes and designs by the age of 4. I think it frightened my mother a little bit, but thankfully my early obsession with sharp, pointy objects wasn’t to translate into any sort of horror movie-esque psychosis (just whatever sort of insanity it is that compels me to spend exorbitant amounts of money on a ridiculous number of sharp, pointy objects that I in no way actually need in my life). A few more years into my childhood and I acquired my first real knife — a Swiss Army Knife Sportsman — and a fire was lit in me that would only grow with time.

Years later, in my mid teens, I started working at my father’s plumbing company as an apprentice and also began training in a couple of different martial arts, one of which incorporated a good deal of knife fighting techniques. It was at that point that my love of knives began a process of refinement, and I started looking for knives that would work well for more utilitarian purposes as well as for combat. Through that search I began to learn more of the intricacies of knife design, the benefits of different steel types, blade shapes and grinds, ergonomics, and so on; I began to understand the value of quality builds and appreciate the beautiful marriage of craftsmanship and utility that is the modern pocket-knife.

As I’ve evolved over the years into a plumber, outdoorsman, and full-fledged knife enthusiast, my search for “perfect” knives has led to a lot of incredibly great and unbelievably awful pieces passing through my hands. In looking for awesome knives I’ve read as many reviews as I could and followed as many review sites/channels/pages as I could find, and in spite of that I’ve still ended up with some truly terrible knives. Not because anyone was being dishonest in their reviews, but because there don’t seem to be many reviewers who are putting their knives through the kind of use and abuse that people in lines of work and recreation like my own tend to. Their use, even what some would consider “hard use,” just doesn’t include the conditions that many people encounter on a daily basis. Many reviewers will also review knives based on first impressions, or will only carry and use a knife for a week or so before passing a verdict. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with either approach and it obviously works for many people, those kinds of review processes are often insufficient for my knife needs and just may not be cutting it [insert forced laughter here] for you either.

So my purpose in creating this blog is to provide quality reviews as objectively as I can, and have some fun along the way. Not every review is going to take extreme conditions into account; different knives have different purposes, and I’ll be reviewing gentleman’s folders and bush knives and everything in between. The exact review process and scoring criteria are outlined here, but the basic idea is to carry/use a specific knife for its intended purpose for three weeks to a month, and then score the knife on a ten point scale in ten different categories, with a final grade similar to American academic scoring. This way, I believe I can provide highly useful and easy to follow information and advice to both knife nuts like myself and to those individuals with a more casual interest in knives, all while getting to do two things I really enjoy: write, and talk about knives.