Character AKA a Rusty Fingerprint

Rev. Pete

Rev. Pete

Joined
Aug 25, 2001
Messages
843
I'm lucky. My entire knife and tomahawk collection survived the big "international" move. Everything arrived, and there were only two minor casualties. One was a tomahawk that had it's nice finish marred by it's Kydex sheath. I was in a rush and slipped the sheath onto the tomahawk before I realised that it had never been on it before. Anyway, this is a tomahawk after all, an expensive one, but still it should have a bit of character and now it does.

The other casuality was a little utility knife that should strictly be a user but after I got it I found it too beautiful to put into serious service. When I unwrapped it after the move I found a rusty fingerprint on the blade and the only possible culprit would be me :eek:. I distinctly remember coating the blade of that knife with CLP and wrapping it in a cloth before I packed it in my knife box. When I unwrapped it there was a brown oval rust spot on the blade. It seems that as I was wrapping the blade I somehow touched it with my right baby finger. I polished it with Flitz and it looks fine, just a faint dark stain on the blade. Now it has character and I will be wearing and using this knife at our weekly summer BBQs. By the end of the summer the blade will probably have a lot more stains on it :D.

Scratching the blade during use is one thing but have you ever added "character" to a knife in a roundabout way?
 
I have dried blood on a couple of my knives that I never bothered cleaning, and haven't used them since then so the blood hasn't been rubbed off yet. Dunno if that counts.
 
I seem to drop my slipjionts onto my cement parking lot far too often, and have dings on the ends of the bolsters of several to prove it :( .

And I slipped with my stone when I was sharpening my Boker barlow, and now have scratches on the back of the blade, near the tip.

Same Boker, who would have thought that mayonaise would have stained the blade...

A nice swirl on my Buck 119 blade, thanks to another stone incident.

A ding on the back of one of my Gerber's blades, near the tip, from trying to free a dollar from an un-cooperative pop machine.
 
All the knives I use have "character marks". (darned near every knife I've decided is a keeper) Most of 'em are caused by using the knife and not being able to clean it for a while. Citrus fruits and some types of plants leave big stains on my blades. My wife has a plant in the front yard that will stain ANY knife that cuts it! I'm serious - it discolored an ats-34 blade (Spyderco Wegner) in a matter of seconds, as I watched! Every knife my wife has used to prune that plant back has big splatters and smears on it. All my knives get scratches just from cutting stuff and sometimes from sharpening. The more marks they get, the more I love 'em. To me, the marks are just a result of quality time spent.
 
My knives have "character" marks. So does my motorcycle, my truck, my guns . . . Using something tends to give it "character".
 
I have lots of "character marks"; scars, bruises, bad right knee, bent finger tips from broken tendons, grayish hair and white beard ...

If I can have character marks, so do my knives.
 
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