Quote:
Originally Posted by mbliss57
I was at my LGS today and he showed me a single blade knife foldable knife he had just acquired. He said it was a $600-$800 knife. I will have to get the brand from him as that price is 10X what you all are quoting. I don't have any good knives just some utilitarian scout knifes and a buck knife for skinning. Is it possible he would really have a knife worth that much or was he just pulling my leg. It was pretty heavy duty about 3.5 -4" folded. It also opened from the fold by pushing on the handle. No button or anything... it was very concealed that it would do that.
I just asked him... he called it a Microtech
|
He's not pulling your leg. Microtech knives are on the "spendy" side, and that's conservatively speaking.
In all honesty, you have to ask yourself, "Just what the heck am I going to use this knife for?" Are you going to use it for everyday chores around the ol' homestead, i.e. cutting hay bales, opening feed sacks, etc.? Are you going to use it for everyday carry...something to open letters with, clean fingernails, sharpen pencils? Are you going to use it for camping and other outdoor chores such as skinning out an animal, making kindling, cleaning fish?
If you answer "yes" to any of the above, you probably won't need an $800 knife. A $40 or $50 knife will cover all of those tasks and then some...and do so admirably.
If you break it down to its smallest components, a knife is no more than a sharpened piece of something (steel, obsidian, ceramic, bone, etc.) usually attached to a handle of some sort.
The cost usually reflects such things as quality of steel, edge retention, sharpening ability, craftsmanship, hand-finish work, handle material, and quality of other components, i.e. bolsters, springs, pins, etc.
A good quality piece of AUS-8 or 440A steel is going to do you a good job at whatever task you put it to, short of cutting steel cable. It really doesn't matter if it has a titanium handle with genuine simulated mother-of-pearl grips with a tiger's paw inlaid in the cap.
I've seen some pretty plain-Jane-looking, high-carbon steel knives that do a heckuva job...and their cost was under fifty bucks.
Sure, you can get some handmade, custom-made, personally fitted knives for a lot of bucks, but will they do the job
overwhelmingly better than a fifty- or sixty-dollar knife with a good edge? Mmmmm....probably not.
I have some beautiful and fairly expensive knives in my collection. Are they really ten times better than a knife that is one-tenth the cost? Oh, I'm sure I could rationalize and say, "But the handle fits me perfectly and it's intricately balanced...blah, blah, blah..." But when push comes to shove, and if I'm totally honest with myself, I probably paid a lot for the name and the prestige, if you can call it that.
Just my view from the saddle. Your mileage may vary.