Posts Tagged → blade
Are you into knives?
Are you into knives?
This is more of a question for men, most men, actually the vast majority of men, especially men who still identify as a man, and it is maybe a question for three women on the entire planet. It is not a question for the Western mincing limp wristed urban femboys of both straight and gay orientation, unfortunately.
A high-respect shout-out to the manly men in Africa and the Middle East, where tradition requires men to wear a real dagger at all times in public. That is heart-warming to see, especially in these days of artificially reduced testosterone and unnaturally lilting voices.
I am definitely into knives, and I have been so since I was about six years old. I received my first pocket knife at age six or seven, and I have never stopped enjoying using, carrying, and looking at well made knives on a daily basis.
Since the dawning of our species about a hundred thousand years ago, hand tools have had a particular appeal, especially hand tools with an edged or a good bludgeon at the end. Nothing speaks to a man like a well-made, well designed, purpose-made tool, and especially a knife tool. So much can be done with a good knife, like defending one’s self, acquiring dinner, making other tools, and just feeling prepared for whatever comes into the cave opening at night.
Hand tools are how our ancestors defeated much larger, hairier, and scarier beasts than even my buddy Irv, the stone and then bronze spear points drawing first blood and the following knife edges drawing delicious strips of fresh red meat to be roasted over fire and consumed. Sadly for our ancestors, they did not have cold beer to accompany their manly dinner combat and hand-to-hoof warfare meals, as we do today. But I digress. Maybe. Cold beer and good knives do go together. More on that later.
Point being that today about a zillion high quality knives are made and easily available to the manly men among us, and the adventurous women, too. This overflowing supply of knives exists because there is an unquenchable demand for them. Whatever desire we had ten thousand years ago for a good, well balanced, sharp blade in hand, has only become more and more acute as the knife materials have surpassed stone, bronze, and even anything high tech metal envisioned in Alien vs Predator movies.
Today, you can literally buy any kind of knife made of any kind of steel, iron, stone, copper or bronze, made in a dozen places around the world (Pakistan, Japan, America, Germany, China are leaders), for a decent price, and its quality will range from OK to unbelievably great. Like many knife aficionados, I enjoy watching videos of Pakistani and Indian families hand-make various knives from scrap steel of both poor and high quality. You can buy one of these knives and get a lifetime of service out of it. If you buy such a knife from an American or Canadian maker, you can get ten lifetimes of use out of it.
A quick search on eBay for outdoor, defensive, and recreational knives will yield a literal sh!t ton of variously shaped blades, handled in all kinds of wood, plastic, micarta, Z10, bone, ivory, mammoth ivory, and other creative materials. This surfeit of knives exists because humans the world over want them.
One of the challenges with acquiring as many knives as we want is how high tech is populated by mincing limp wristed femboys, both gay and straight. These sad eunuchs don’t desire a good blade in hand, they desire to put everyone else in their hand and control everyone and everything by way of deceit. Because they are intimidated by manly objects and words. And so neither PayPal nor Stripe will provide real-time banking services to online sellers of knives (or guns). Yes, you can buy some knives on eBay, but most of them appear to be cheap Chinese knockoffs of better quality designs.
Enter a new knives-only website, www.knifeenthusiast.com, that makes everything you like about shopping for and buying knives easier, more streamlined, more informed and informative, and just plain all-around better. The knives they have tend to be higher end, higher quality, custom made, and are for sale by guys like you and me. Disclaimer: I know the crazy guy founder of this website. Disclaimer: Yes, he really is crazy about knives. Despite being a genuine flatlander, he is a very masculine man, has fathered countless children just to prove his manliness, and likes guns n’ knives and hunting and war implements of all sorts, sizes, and historic periods like all other manly men. His house is a small museum or armory ranging from the 17th century until present day, as you might expect.
So go visit https://knifeenthusiast.com/ to satisfy your deep need for yet another edged weapon, and rest comfortably in the knowledge that you are supporting a small business run by people who think and experience life just like you.
ps Neither I nor this blog received or will receive any sort of remuneration for this essay. On this blog I write about what I like to write about because it pleases me. I like knives and I like small business entrepreneurs. I like my buddies. This essay combines these worlds.
Nice to see men wearing a knife, especially as a symbol of public necessity
My buddy Irv definitely has a knife thing
Life and Love of the Knife
Since God created us humans, either in one quick master stroke or through a series of evolutionary steps (I don’t know which one and I don’t really care, because God is all powerful and can do anything He wants, and all we puny humans can try to do is figure it out as we muddle along), we have had a love affair with sharp edges. Blades, that is, which give our amazing but soft and weak hands the ability to cut, slice, stab, and pierce dangerous foes and animals, and render them into delicious roasted brontosaurus steaks. As Mogli says in “A Jungle Story,” his antagonist, the massive male tiger Shere Khan, may have his big teeth, but “I have my own tooth,” a sizeable steel knife blade affixed to a sturdy and dependable handle, with which Mogli is indeed a significant foe to all who would eat him.
To humans, the knife in all its forms – skinning blade, meat slicing blade, spearing blade, or stabbing sword blade – is our tooth, claw, and fang. It is our defense, a lifeline, and third arm in a world where most of the critters we have hunted, eaten, and clothed ourselves with often have a mouth full of knives as well as heads and hooves adorned with sharp and pointy edges, any one of which is instant doom to us. As a brief visit to the dinosaur and modern reptile exhibits in any respectable museum will show, we humans inhabit a world where history has had most of our battles and warfare with men and beasts alike determined by who had the bigger, faster, longer, sharper knife blade.
The Pleistocene is where modern humanity and our knives and spear blades came into Yin and Yang fusion, resulting in the extermination of even the largest and most dangerous of wild animals. And well into the 20th century, men everywhere across the planet daily adorned themselves with blades both practical and beautiful. In a world that is still always dangerous, blades have always represented us humans, and men in particular, as both useful and dangerous.
So is it any surprise that even today, in our sickly society filled with Toxic Femininity, men, particularly men, still have a love affair and deep personal connection with knives and blades of all sorts? It’s almost spiritual. Knives and sharp blades have been our constant companions since our species gained consciousness, and knives have been all that stood between us and death for over a hundred thousand years. Often in a hunter-gatherer society, a good knife is all a man needed to live a comfortable life. Nowadays, we habitually carry small pocket knives by Case so that we can accomplish small home chores easily. Serious blade length reduction! How far we have fallen! Are we still men, armed only with our tiny folding pocket knives?
I say yes, we are.
Because like so many millions of others, I am a masculine man and a not a Low T feminized and pathetic freak of self-loathing nature, and because I am an outdoorsman, and because I am against being or feeling helpless and defenseless, I use sharp blades all the time. A sharp edge is always on me or near me, so that a threatening saber toothed cardboard box can be quickly broken down and put into the recycling bin. That always makes my woman feel like the tipi is properly sorted out. Like thousands of generations of men (M-E-N of nose, ear, and back hair variety) before me, my appreciation and love of the knife has resulted in a life of the knife, and I celebrate that. It keeps me thoroughly human.
If you are a guy (born a man with a penis) or a practical woman (a human born with a vagina and female reproductive parts), or even someone caught in between both genders and yet nonetheless afflicted with a strong streak of self preservation and practical ability, I strongly suggest carrying the largest and most robust blade you can legally and practically use every day. Or just get some CutCo knives for your kitchen. It will make you feel like a million bucks, at night your hands will naturally paint beautiful primitive cave art on the walls of your basement, and you won’t ask yourself where that innate skill suddenly came from….because you will be acting organically like a natural and properly kitted out human being. These things naturally flow from one to the next.
Just be careful not to get too carried away with this knife thing. Buying knives easily becomes a habit or even an addiction. All for the right reasons, of course. It is hardwired in us.
My buddy Irv has a knife problem. As an electrician, he has many opportunities to seriously test all kinds of pocket knives and knife steels. But he yearns to strap a dozen sheath knives on and prowl the woods. He has significant back hair, too, because he is a man.
Two original Stone Age tools. A flint hide scraper (top) and a chert butchering knife from Upstate New York
A very small slice of the hunting knives we have at our reach here, including a matched ivory micarta handled pair of Randall copies for my son and I by Perry County maker John Johnson each complete with over-the-shoulder baldrics and belt sheaths.
Pronged spears and sharp arrows (sharp blades on flying sticks) from about twenty thousand years ago. Still the best hunt around.
Super cheap WalMart special faux Damascus steel Japanese style kitchen knife is still very sharp and an an incredible tool
USA-made CutCo, definitely not a cheap kitchen knife, with excellent blade steel and bombproof handle material. Highly recommended.
Most of the knives in our kitchen. All CutCos except for two Old Hickory high carbon blades at either end. Old Hickory is an excellent USA-made kitchen knife at a very low cost that can easily be an outdoor knife