Can & bottle openers on knives in 2020, purposeless

onewing said:
I've never used a bottle opener in my life, I had great difficulty choosing a sak because they always include one, complete waste of space. There's no reason for bottles to require a tool to open these days, stop making the tool and they'll stop making the bottles.
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The SAK bottle opener is useful for a lot more than opening bottles. Aside from being a flat screw driver, it also is a larger Phillips driver by using the inner corner of the tool, it makes a great scraper once you take a file and square up the edges of the screw driver flats which you should do anyways, it make a good wire bender, and light duty pry tool for those things your thumb nail isn't up to. I've used it as a small putty knife filling nail holes on the wall with spackle when pictures have been moved.

The tool has lots of uses for anyone with any imagination. But some people lack imagination to improvise.
 
onewing said:
I've never used a bottle opener in my life, I had great difficulty choosing a sak because they always include one, complete waste of space. There's no reason for bottles to require a tool to open these days, stop making the tool and they'll stop making the bottles.
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I must respectfully disagree.

Consider the fact that the can opener is something like 100 years younger than the can.

How many years has it been since stores of any kind wrapped your purchases with paper and tied them off with string? SAK still makes and includes that package hook, yet at least two ... maybe three ... generations have come and gone since a person brought home their shopping tied up with string. I don't recall anything but lugging paper sacks inside when I was a youngling. (and being amazed that the person bagging your groceries seemed to instinctively use the loafs of bread to pad the cartons of a dozen eggs, meats, and sometimes cans from the bottom of the sack. I never was able to figure out why the bread should be the first thing into the grocery bag.)

Anyway, just because a tool is made, does not mean there will always be a product made to use that tool.
Or that there will always be someone who knows how to use that tool, come to that. How many Navigation Officers in the Navy today know how to use a sextant to determine their position, for example? Even reading a map and using a compass is becoming a lost art. :(
 
Hickory n steel said:
But a " SAK " is a knife, and in many cases more so than the overbuilt beasts that try to pass as a knife these days.
So yes a lot of knives have can openers and cap lifters.

I'd wager that if there wasn't a flat blade driver involved a lot of people would be much less happy about the inclusion of a cap lifter, more people than you realize do not use cap lifters.

I bet there's almost as many who don't use them as there are who do.
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I'm sure there's a point to the above...

I bet you're wrong, show your work.
 
I used to say the awl was pretty useless to me, but when you need one, you got one on many of the SAK models. It is not for only creating a hole in a leather belt.... good starter for screws, scraper, and other uses.

Using the cork screw to untangle knots on fishing line is useful. But I keep a needle with my fishing gear for that.

I was looking at my SOG Power Pint and I see tools I have no idea of their true purpose. I even saved the packaging so I could identify all the different tools. The bottle opener is interesting. Overall, it is a very practical pliers based MT with a very good needle nosed pliers, two cutting blades that could be useful, and a jewelry screw driver. But to be honest with almost all of the MT's, I seldom use anything other than the pliers or wire cutter. It's there if you need it which is the whole deal with Vic SAKs and why a lot of people like the super ones.
 
On a number of occasions I have used the can opener on a SAK. It is usually when I am visiting someone or at a park having a meal with other people or on family camping trips, and someone has a can but neglected to bring a can opener. I also have a P38 on my keychain, and it, too has seen a good amount of use when I didn't have a SAK on me. But the can opener on a SAK is a lot faster and easier than a P38.
 
22-rimfire said:
I used to say the awl was pretty useless to me, but when you need one, you got one on many of the SAK models. It is not for only creating a hole in a leather belt.... good starter for screws, scraper, and other uses.

Using the cork screw to untangle knots on fishing line is useful. But I keep a needle with my fishing gear for that.

I was looking at my SOG Power Pint and I see tools I have no idea of their true purpose. I even saved the packaging so I could identify all the different tools. The bottle opener is interesting. Overall, it is a very practical pliers based MT with a very good needle nosed pliers, two cutting blades that could be useful, and a jewelry screw driver. But to be honest with almost all of the MT's, I seldom use anything other than the pliers or wire cutter. It's there if you need it which is the whole deal with Vic SAKs and why a lot of people like the super ones.
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I tried using the awl to sew with leather last week, bored at home. It works but man it makes big holes. Very much an emergency only sewing tool methinks. As you say, it is good for starting holes though, I've used it multiple times with belts, it can be used to strike a firesteel, as a line marker when you don't want to actually cut and a whole bunch more uses I've never thought of but no doubt are well represented on youtube. :)
 
TBH, there are a TON of people who think that carrying a knife (any kind of knife) serves no purpose in 2020, unless you have some nefarious reason for doing so. A high percentage of the world’s population, in fact. They will use their keys, their teeth, the tip of a pen, or wait until they have access to a pair of scissors. And most of those types seem to get along just fine in their everyday lives without carrying a pocketknife. That doesn’t mean that pocketknives are useless just because lots of people neither need nor want them.

Jim
 
James Y said:
TBH, there are a TON of people who think that carrying a knife (any kind of knife) serves no purpose in 2020, unless you have some nefarious reason for doing so. A high percentage of the world’s population, in fact. They will use their keys, their teeth, the tip of a pen, or wait until they have access to a pair of scissors. And most of those types seem to get along just fine in their everyday lives without carrying a pocketknife. That doesn’t mean that pocketknives are useless just because lots of people neither need nor want them.

Jim
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A very excellent point bring up, Jim.

On a forum devoted to the worship of the knife as a Cult item, its easy to forget that the obsessed knife nut is the 1% of society at large that actually gives a hoot about knives. Most people couldn't care less, and look a bit sideways at people who do carry a knife. Of the non knife people in the world, they probably don't get in a flap over the sighting of the red handled knife with the silver cross on it.

Thanks to Hollywood and the knife industry they've created menace of the knife with advertising and movies depicting the knife as the bad guys weapon. And unfortunately, theres too many punks who believe what they see on TV.
 
Plenty of pop top bottles in my neck of the woods, still. Last I checked, Stewart's Orange and Cream sodas still need popped, definitely more than a few brands of root beer, pretty much all the hard cider they sell in the hipster section of Athens... None of the canned tuna I haul for lunch or trail use has a pop top, so it needs something to open it. One of those useless, waste of material can openers usually does the trick there. Funny how that works, even in 2020.

Its almost like the OPs opinion isn't formed out of any real experience.


Switch to fresh salmon for your dogs' aminos. I cant imagine any canned sardines would be low enough in sodium to give a dog.
 
I'm going to have to look up how that package hook thingie works, I always wondered what it was...
 
Learned my thing for the day it's literally just for picking up a package tied in twine...
 
When I first saw those hooks, I thought they were to help pull your boot laces tight.

I remember as a kid someplace still tied packages with string. They gave you a wooden handle with two hooks

funny thing is I remember the string was white and red in a shallow spiral, but I can’t remember the store or even the product.
 
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Triton said:
Learned my thing for the day it's literally just for picking up a package tied in twine...
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Although I haven't used the package twin carrier, I will say that sometimes when I have a lot of heavy plastic bags from the grocery store and try to fit 6 bags on each hand when bringing them into the house, sometimes they really dig into my fingers. Similarly, since the SAK is European, many more people walk to and from the grocery store and use public transportation. I could see where a lot of plastics bags might dig into their fingers if they are walking for 30 minutes with heavy bags.

The states that I have lived in, people will usually drive their car/truck if the store is more than 1/2 block away, so no need.
 
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