To answer the orginal question, I think that a little knife maintenance would give you the best results.

All of the cutlery listed is of good quality. For every day carry, I like the Spyderco Dragonfly. Very small and non-intimidating, but useful for everthing from opening packages to spreading peanut butter. A small gentleman's folder.



For more tactical style use, I like the Cold Steel tanto fixed blades.

 

I think I'm either going to go with the Cold Steel Recon 1





Or the SOG Vision II

 

 

The SOG serrations would be easier to sharpen (bigger scallops) One of my Gerbers has those little scallops like the Cold Steel and are nearly impossible to sharpen.

 

man it sucks, butterfly knives are illegal in cali... grrr

 

Wife got me a ceramic bladed Boker. Unbelievably sharp. As long as you don't pry with it, you'll be fine.

 

I've read about those. They sound nice but like you said, you can pretty much only slice. I use my knife for everything.

And serations haven't gone dull on my current Gerber even though my blade can't even cut through butter. So I'm not too worried about sharpening those. Plus I'd pay to have someone do it, I can never get it right

 

go with benchmade. good knives right there.

 

I love my kershaws .and walmart even has a couple of nice ones sometimes.

KERSHAW
BENCHMADE
SOG
KABAR
SPYDERCO all are good in my opinion some CRKT's are pretty good too

 

My current fav is a spyderco endura FFG there's a ton of colors to choose from pocket clip can be moved if you're a lefty. About 50$ worth every penny. Lightweight thin easy to carry good steel holds an edge and easy to resharpen.

Also look into a spyderco sharpmaker super easy to use comes with instructional DVD. Use it to sharpen up that old gerber so you have a back up.

Too many knives is almost enough!

 

This is such a zombie thread that neither the knife nor the wife that bought it for me are around any longer!

 

Benchmade, SOG, & Becker / KA-BAR are the brands I most prefer. Benchmade has really good customer service in my experience, and their lifesharp service is a nice plus for when a blade gets beat up outside of normal use. $5 in shipping and they clean, inspect, & sharpen it to new specs.

 

kabar, crkt and sog are my favorites. daily carry, in the field, camping, wheeling. amazing pieces of gear from all

 

Another vote for SOG and CRKT. Especially the Columbia River Knife Tool. I've had the same one for years and it just won't die. It's not for lack of usage, either. Love the double lock and finger tab on mine.

 

I have a pretty decent collection of knives and a buddy of mine buys/sells/trades knives about as often as I change socks.

We've come to the conclusion that for survival/screwing around in the woods type knives, the gerber and buck knives that use 420HC are great for the money. Not "cheap" knives, but compared to the "high end" blade steels like S30V and the like, they're a steal. Easy to sharpen and holds an edge well.

I have a ZT folder in S30V and it's a PITA to sharpen and really hasn't impressed me on edge retention. Glad I got it from my buddy for cheap because they're WAY overpriced IMO.

For a little more money than the gerber/bucks, Fallkniven makes excellent knives. Haven't tried their newer blade metal yet, but the laminated VG10 is amazing. Durable, easy to sharpen, and will take a razor edge.

Well, there's my 2c, for what it's worth.