Regional Pocket Knives

T

tcacarter

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Apr 1, 2013
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I got to thinking earlier, when I was growing up the only knive anyone carried was a form of a stockman most where either case or shrade and most where stainless. After reading some other threads it sounds like some people had a similar experience. My idea is for everyone to tell us what what people in there area carry if they notice a pattern. By the end of this thread it would be nice to have an idea of the basic pocket knife of everywhere in the world. I live in north florida and like I said most people carry a stockman. Sorry if this has been done before but I couldn't't find it.
 
Here in southwest virginia it's a toss up. Lots of agriculture and backwoods folk. Case, boker, and schrade are most popular. Not too many tactical knives around. Mostly the 18 pattern case stockman, case full size trapper, slimline trapper, 8ot, 4 inch boker stockman, and mini trapper. Most of the older guys carry the trappers and younger the stockman.
 
Growing up in south Arkansas, I thought the Stockman was the only way "real" pocketknives came. There were a few promotional single blades, but for the grown folks it was the Stockman; mostly Old Timer or Imperial; Case if one had the money.
 
I grew up in a city in the 60s, southern US. I don't really specifically recall much about what people in general did with regards to knives. My boyhood knives were a Boy Scout knife of some kind, later a red handled Swiss Army Knife, and somewhere in there a Barlow. In high school I remember Buck knives were popular among those who hunted, both the 110 folder in a belt sheath or the black handled fixed blade.

I wasn't particularly interested in pocket knives until fairly recently so I guess I wasn't really paying attention.
 
Born on LI NY, grew up in NY and England, live in Oakland CA. Growing up I mostly remember the SAKs my Dad brought back from business trips to Switzerland. He gave me my first SAK when was very young. Most of my elders had Schrade, Camillus, Imperials etc. I really remember my Uncle who is an Electrician having TL-29s. I used to buy any cheap hardware store knife I could afford, a lot of Imperials and Colonials.
Today I rotate a lot of Traditional knives; Peanuts, Pens, Jacks, Small or Medium Stockmen, SAKs, suddenly an Opinel or two... but I also always have a modern locking folder which for the past 5+ years is a BM Ritter Griptilian and it is still as sharp and solid as ever. I just find the Traditional knives "speak" to me a lot more than the BM.
 
Growing up in Apopka, Florida in the 60'-70's, most of the knives I was exposed too were stockman patterns and a few single blade patterns. Local industry was greenhouse foliage crops, farming and citrus. Hard working guys bought their Schrade Old Timers at Stokes Hardware on Main street. The Case brand were bought at Watters Hardware, later renamed Lumberjack Hardware. Mostly brown delrin. I think that was my first. Dad always had a small pen knife, Imperial I think. And a couple of Old Timers, which I still have and carry regularly. My older brother carried a Sodbuster Jr. which I thought was pretty cool.He skinned a lot of deer, hogs and once an alligator. I bought one too. Now most everybody carries some sort of clip tactical. I don't really care for them. I've got a couple somewhere.
 
When I was a kid, pocket knives were ubiquitous. Every man who had pants on had a knife in a pocket. Didn't really matter if he was an office worker or delivery truck driver. And usually it was some sort of two blade jack in the 3 inch range. Serpentine, dog leg, cigar, or peanut. The smallish two blade jack seemed to be the knife of the era. This was the mid Atlantic area of Washington D.C. and Maryland. There was a smattering of war surplus knives cheap, like TL-29's, MKL knives, and of course scout knives. Some out and out city types who didn't think they needed much knife had those little folded metal handle knives sold near the nail clippers in drug stores, like Trim. One little sheepsfoot blade, or the 'deluxe' models that has a knife blade, a nail file blade, and a combo screw driver and bottle opener. They must have worked, they sold a zillion of them. Pretty common in the late 50's and 60's.

Down on Maryland's Eastern shore it was the same. Smallish two blade jacks. The big difference was that many folks who either hunted, (legal or otherwise) carried one of the little finn type sheath knives. About 3 inches in slim pointy blade, stacked leather washer handles, and made by Case, Western, Kabar usually. The little jack in the pocket was for most stuff, 'saving' the blade on the belt knives for the serious field dressing or whatever. In the country, it was not at all uncommon to see a man with a small sheath knife on his belt. In the city though, when most men wore a suit, the small jack was the over whelming choice. Once in a while you saw a SAK, but they were not common until the early 1970's. Before the backpacking craze hit in the late 1960's, SAK's were an expensive novelty item.

After 1964 it all changed. Buck had the 110 folding hunter, and in a few years, that was all you saw on belts everywhere, even in the city where delivery truck drivers, construction workers, tradesmen of all types, carried the black pouch on the hip. That kept up until Tim Leatherman had his brainchild.

Edit to add, these days I rarely see pocket knives in the hands of people around here. I do see a lot of people using a pen to punch a hole in a package, or a key to saw their way through. Maybe some keychain size SAK's. LIfe in the big suburbia.

Carl.
 
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I grew up in south Mississippi in the 70's and 80's. I mainly saw and still see Case trappers. The guy at the hardware store said they sell those Case yellow trappers by the boatload!!
 
I see mostly Trappers, Sodbusters & Stockman patterns here in Texas sticking out of a leather belt pouch. I would say mostly Case and Moore Maker (Matador, Tx) from my informal survey over the years as well as the typical inventory at feed stores around the state.
 
Northeast Ohio here. Growing up I'd say I most commonly saw Buck 110's carried in belt sheaths, or small-to-medium single blade lockbacks carried in pockets.

Get out in the country a bit, though, and belt knives are commonplace. Not all that rare to see a Ka-bar or two hanging off a belt, either.

-Dan
 
I guess that would be Opinel knives and SAKs. Sometimes people might carry some cheap electrician's or stanley knives. Amongst workers there's a fair share of people having a Leatherman as well. Overall, people in Belgium don't carry knives that often at all.
 
I grew up here in South Carolina mostly but bounced around on some Air Force bases, wherever dad got stationed. So I saw the TL-29 and the like a lot.

My mama's family were farmers and mostly carried old Case or Schrade folders. I saw a lot of Peanuts and Stockmen.
 
Grew up in rural South Carolina, saw a lot of schrade stockmen, a schrade lb7 here and there and amongst hunters the small Camillus fixed blades and shcrade sharpfingers.

Now living in central Ohio, I don't see many traditional knives at all, mostly people have no knife on them or if they do it is some cheap imported tactical flea market special that is mostly falling apart from lack of build quality, abuse, misuse, and neglect. Also they are always dull as a butter knife and half serrated.

Quite sad how things have changed.
 
I moved to CT. when I was six ( 1978) received my first knife a Imperial KampKing, Prov. R.I., I have a number of Imperials from childhood, also a Ulster Boy Scout knife, I know the hardware store had a fantastic display case with Imperials, Schrade, Case, Buck, & SAK. I can remember most of us kids had Imperials, tradesmen had Bucks or SAK's on their belts. The more well off kids & Boy Scouts had SAK's & friends that had fathers in the military seemed to have Bokers. I know that at fairs there seemed to always be someone selling Imperials, I think the close proximity to R.I. had something to do with it. By the mid 80's SAK's where the most common knife & Buck & Gerber for locking knives.

Pete
 
Born and raised in rural, western PA. I have mostly Camillus, Imperial, and Case knives in my hand-me-down collection given to me by the older generations of my family. I have almost all of the usable, old knives from every knife carrier in my family and I've been enamored with and collecting sharp steel since I was 5 when Dad gave me my first knife. I am where old knives go to die.

It seemed that my Grandpa on my fathers side (born 1917) favored two bladed jacks and pen knives for the most part. He used his pocketknives 'till they were nothing but little slivers of metal. Most of his jacks are Imperial but he had a few nice Case bone handled pen knives. It seems he likes his pocketknives fairly thin and between 3" and 3.5" in length. He had a case folding hunter for general outdoor tasks, and although well worn, it looks like a late addition to his collection because there is quite a bit of blade left on this one. It has some of the nicest, yellowest, popcorn stag handles I've ever seen. He also had a white handled, Western fixed blade along the lines of the Little Finn so often mentioned in the Traditional Forum. He had a nice, sharp, convex edge on that one and it was his go-to knife for fishing and small game. He also had a Schrade Sharpfinger which he preferred for deer season which was also nicely covexed. As far as I know those were his only two fixed blades when I inherited the bulk of his collection a couple years ago when his woods stomping days came to and end. He's still with us at 96 years old but isn't as spry as he once was. My guess is that his older fixed blades were worn out to the point of uselessness and were discarded.

Dad has carried a small lockback for as long as I've been around. He had a cheapo Japanese stainless lockback for years (15+). He wore out the handle covers to the point that he replaced them with his own homemade Black Walnut covers. The blade on this one used to be a clip point but it looks like a toothpick now. After he retired that lockback (gave it to me) he got a small case lockback; the stainless steel handled ones that measure about 2.5" closed. He said that he had too much stuff in his pockets already and wanted a knife that he wouldn't notice. He's on his second one of them so far after about 15 or more years.

Every male in my family of my father and mother's generation has a pocketknife on them at all times. In my generation, only my younger cousin on my father's side and myself carry pocketknives. He has a cheap, no-name, gas station knife but at least he has one. Very few of my friends from my hometown carry knives but most of their fathers do.

Unless it's hunting season you will very rarely see a knife in a sheath, fixed or folder.

Now that I've moved to a more urban area in western PA you see almost no one with a pocketknife. Even the people of my parents generation do not seem to carry and prefer to use their keys to open the UPS boxes. For instance, only one single adult male at my place of employment carries a pocket knife (a Leatherman Skeletool). I've even noticed that every once in a while a soccer mom will give an odd look when I'm using a knife in a seemingly regular and safe manner (ie. cutting string, opening letters, opening plastic wrap, etc.). I guess city living has removed the necessity for a knife one generation earlier than it has in the boonies where I grew up.

Matt
 
Carl,
I used to have a ton of those little TRIM knives, never see them anymore. Too bad would make great TSA fodder.
 
OPs double post, Looks like those TRIM Trios are going for a lot more these days on that Auction website!
 
billym said:
Carl,
I used to have a ton of those little TRIM knives, never see them anymore. Too bad would make great TSA fodder.
Click to expand...

Had a few of those also, I might still have one at my folks house, I remember getting them off the cardboard display at the barber shop.

Pete
 
Grew up in eastern NC; outside of a few larger towns with colleges or military bases the area was very rural and agricultural oriented. The brands that I most remember seeing in hardware stores and gunshops in the 60's and 70's were Buck and Old Timer as working knives and Case as upscale knives (much like Remington and Winchester were working guns and Browning's were upscale). Besides the Scout knives we had due to being Scouts I most remember me and my brothers and buddies having either Stockman, Trapper, or Jack knives. I don't ever remember ever seeing a Muskrat, Moose, Congress, or other complex knife as a person's pocketknife. My Granddad, Uncle, and Dad were all electricians or Soldiers (some were both at different times) and I remember the TL-29 and the Klein single blade Sheepfoot wire skinners as being very common working knives. I do remember when the Buck Folding Hunter became popular in the early 1970's - they were all the rage and many buddies and men were wearing them on their belts. I got my first Buck (a 301) in 1970 and carried that knife (or an Old Timer 108OT I bought in 1983) for the next 35 years or so - retired the Buck 301 when my Grandma passed away in 1989 (she had given it to me as a 15th birthday present) and lost the 108OT on a jobsite in 2005. I have pretty much carried a Case with SS blades (Small Coke-bottle Jack or Medium Stockman) ever since as my regular, everyday knife, but being a knife collector I also have an EDC rotation of another dozen or so I carry from time to time. OH

Ps I also remember seeing the colorful display cards in gas stations that contained the inexpensive shell-handled knives for $1.89 or so - usually a few of them were already sold, but I don't remember actually seeing someone buy one of them.
 
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