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This is the place for talking about all things pocket knives, and knife adjacent things. Folders large and small, multi-tools, sharpeners, even fixed blade knives are welcome. Reviews! Advice! Show off your Knives!

Also home of the incredibly loquacious Weird Knife Wednesday feature.

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[Request] Knife-buying advice (lemmy.zip)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello knife people, I (very much not a knife person) have been suckered in by dual_sport_dork’s posts and am finally biting the bullet and buying one of those knives. I know approximately nothing about knives except what weird knife Wednesday has taught me, which is mostly how to shit talk cursed knock-offs, so I’m hoping for some advice on how to stick the landing of my jump into this hobby.

I’m trying to buy HUAAO’s Bugout 535 ripoff, and this knife-buying-experience is off to a rocky start because the Amazon link on dual_sport_dork’s writeup tells me shipping isn’t available to my region. Maybe this is just seller-related, maybe these knives are illegal in Canada, I don’t know and to be real honest I don’t give a fuck. I found knivesprecisionedge.com, which claims to be a “trusted store” and “100% issue-free” - sketchy as fuck, honestly. Has anybody else used this site? How bad am I about to get scammed?

Assuming they’re at least somewhat legit and ship me this knife, and that it makes it into the country, is there anything I should know about owning a knife like this? Care tips, how not to use it, anything like that? The main thing it’ll be used for is as a camping knife, if that matters.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

You've gotten a lot of good advice, but let me throw in a few random suggestions...

I use Tuf-Glide on all my knives. You can spray it on or wipe it on with with a cloth. The stuff dries and bonds with the surface layer of the metal. It's a great lubricant, but it also prevents rust and provides some physical protection.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pull-through sharpeners, but avoid any sharpener that uses carbide as the abrasive. There are some excellent and easy-to-use sharpeners with ceramic and diamond rods. My field sharpener is the AccuSharp Diamond Pro. It's easy to use, compact, and produces a surprisingly good edge. I've given the to all my friends and they've stopped bringing me all their knives to sharpen. :-)

There is some decent damascus out there, but most of what you get in lower-end knives is really terrible. Materials science keeps uping the game of knife steels, but 440C was considered one of the best maybe thirty years ago. It is still a solid performer with a good balance of edge holding, toughness, rust resistance, and ease of sharpening.

Don't use your knife for things it wasn't designed to do. Get yourself a small cheap prybar to pair with it. Something like 3" prybar will save your blade and do a better job of prying anyway. I prefer mine a little longer than that, so here's a 3.8" prybar.

Have fun!