I carry one around the farm and when I know I'm safe from going through metal detectors which are becoming ubiquitous here in Marylandistan. Swiss Army knife to be exact.

Bringing one into an elementary school would earn you a trip before a judge I'm afraid.

I carried a carbon steel bladed Case folder with bone scales in high school- not to be brandished on school grounds, but allowed. Others did similar, but the probable difference is that I still carry (and use) that very knife wherever I go that doesn't include airline travel. It still has nearly all the blade due to not letting it get dull and needing metal removed. Sixty four years now, and counting.
It is so pocket worn that the escutcheon on the side is rubbed away and to prove it is, indeed, a Case you need to open it and read the stamp on the blades.

I only need it when I go buy Fentanyl at the local homeless encampment.

The guys would play mumbly peg  by the school doors until the first bell rang to let us in. Mine was an Old Timer too.

Starting in 1st grade, we didn't have kindergarten, a Davy Crockett pocket knife and I think it only had one blade.  Mom & Dad gave me a J.C. Higgins single shot 22 for my 5th Christmas.  It's gotten worse.

Probably around 3rd or 4th grade the Davy Crockett knife was lost and to 'be like Dad' I graduated to a 3 blade Stockman.  That would be about 65 years ago.  I still carry one, either a Case or Uncle Henry.

Why a fella remembers some things I have no idea.  In junior high, back when that was 7th and 8th grade, our English teacher was trying to open something, what I don't remember, and she asked if anyone had a pocket knife.  Well, this was a little bitty farm town in the Ozarks and I think most of the boys in class produced various pocket knives.  'Course in high school if someone had shook down the cars and pickups in the parking lot you could have armed a couple platoons.

My oldest son graduated in 1991 with 29 kids in the graduating class.  Not the same town where I went to school but, things hadn't changed a lot.  I taught him to sharpen knives and he used to sharpen them for his classmates 50 cents a blade.

My how things have changed for the worse.

Been carry one for as long as I can remember.  First birthday in the mid 1950’s and have a few guns.  Actually bought my first gun, that my parents didn’t buy, when I was 11.  Set pins at my aunts bowling ally at 10 cents per line.
Bob

My very modest collection. That big ole Bowie knife is one heck of a knife. I'm sure I have more knives scattered around. Yep, there's one out in the plow truck.

I don't leave my house without my pocket knife and North American Arms 22 short mini revolver in my right front pants pocket. Both are about the same size and are small enough that I forget I even have them, which has caused a few white knuckle trips back from New York and Massachusetts, both of which are only 5 miles from where I live in VErmont.

oneatatime wrote on Nov 12^th, 2026 at 11:57am:


Is that a knife in yoour pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Axes are sharper than some of my knives.

I have carried a pocket knife since I have had pockets. If I have my pants on I have my knife and my Leatherman on my belt. I use them every day in my work or fixin' stuff around the house. 
Stay sharp
Gunny

Carried a Swiss Army knife since grade 3 and now I carry two of them - but not through the airport and now they have metal detectors at the hospital as well. 
Came into the hospital on a stretcher in September and they never found the two knives.
Found a Swiss Army knife is not adequate to skin a moose though.
Buck knife with a Browning steel works better.
Westerner if you want them sharper I was trained to sharpen the axes used in logging competitions.
Yours need more of a bevel and flatter bevel to get a better razor edge.
Never use a grinder only an axe file to precisely sharpen.

Patients now going into the Alberta Emergency Rooms must now go through a metal detector.
Too many incidences of people on drugs assaulting health care workers.
When I was in emergency a native lady who had been arguing with her husband had stabbed him.
They made sure she was no longer armed before the police came to retrieve her while they were patching up the husband.

I make a knife now and then. Here's the last one I made a year or two ago, my keeper because the curly maple scales came from a block of wood I rescued from my grandfather's shop when he died in 1973 - took me this long to find an important use for it, haha!

(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Blade is A2 steel, hardened and drawn very little. The blade was left pretty brittle so as to hold a keen edge, and it surely does (I know, don't call me surely). It's ok as long as I don't drop it on a hard surface or pry with it. I can remember those protocols but I don't dare let a blade go to a recipient like that.

I'm starting to thin the herd on knives too. Here's one I put up on eBay: (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

I don't carry "a" pocket knife. 2 is 1 and 1 is none. Also carry 2 flashlights. If you don't carry a small flashlight it's hard to believe how much you use them. 

Have misplaced my smaller flashlight so here is a new one in the package. Haven't given up on finding the old one yet. 

Left front pocket large clip flashlight and small knife with keys and nitro bottle.    Right front pocket was a Kershaw blur but has recently been the auto knife. Small flashlight goes in right watch pocket. Use to carry a Leatherman wave but it hasn't been worn in a while. 

gnoahhh wrote on Nov 12^th, 2026 at 6:47pm:


I make knives occasionally also, but often with Damascus blanks  I find at the Oregon knife show in April. Got a couple blanks this year and final shaped them, and built handles from desert ironwood. The larger knife is a raindrop pattern.
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

I got a bowie blank from a friend yesterday and figuring out what I might use for the handle. Wont be desert ironwood again as it's beautiful, but extremely hard wood to work with.