Editing The Pen Addict 138/transcript (section)

== Folding Knives ==


'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' So there's really like two different classes of folding knives. There's traditional folding knives, which are like the Queen Congress that my grandfather has. And they usually have like, you know, stag handles, bone handles, and they're typically really heavy and they have what's called a nail nick. It looks like a little slit in the metal blade where you put your nail in and pull it up. Um, and those are good for everyday carry, but you have to be, those are sort of like more knifey knives because they're not as easy to open. They're not, they don't have a lock. You have to have some sense about how to use them for like somebody that's just starting. I would say that you want to get a knife that has a device that lets it open with one hand that has a pocket clip and that weighs less than four ounces. If you get a knife over four ounces, it's just, I mean, and I, I, I'm going out of the way of telling you this right now. I have very minimal, very light requirements. There are guys that will regularly carry an eight ounce knife, but I've just found that it's, it's inconvenient. It smashes up against stuff and it really hampers. Like I go outside with my son a lot and my son and my wife and I go hiking probably twice a week. And if I have an eight ounce knife on me, I feel like I'm tired afterwards. So four ounces is probably the max that I would ever carry. So a clip, a one handed opening, a lock, and then under four ounces. Those would be my three or my four requirements for somebody just starting out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you see why this can be a problem? Myke has, we talk about fountain pens. Do you listen to him talking about this and going in? It's, it's, it's insane. The similarities that, you know, a guy like Tony and I have in just how we approach things, you know, how we look at a pen or look at a knife and how obsessive we get. But it's more just, it's almost like second nature at this point where you just kind of have this feeling, you know what you want. You've been doing it long enough and you can kind of, uh, and Tony always freaks me out. He just rips all these things off, like all these, you know, these different, uh, phrases and terminology that we use for fountain pens. He uses, you know, for knives and flashlights. I'm like, I have to look up these terms half the time, Tony, when I read your blog, you know, like, uh, choil and, uh, jimping and, uh, this is part of it though.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cause we do exactly the same, like when you're getting into something like this and you're going to people that are like deep within it, you know, this is kind of just how people talk. Like you talk in the terms that you know, like it's just, it's interesting for me to hear. Cause I know now how, like, you know, like when people hear me talk about this stuff and like, I don't even understand why you would need a pen like that. Like I'm listening, I'm like, I'm listening to the, like the way that you guys are talking about knives. Right. And I appreciate the, the, like the reasoning that you kind of give for it, but it's like, to me, it's just like, I can see them. I think that I look at them and like the beautiful objects, but I would never carry a knife because it is just not, it's just not really something that you see people do here. Like, I don't know why that is. Like there are people, like people carry knives in like Swiss army knives or in Leathermans, you know? Cause it's like, it's a thing. It's a thing. It's not just like a blade. Cause it's kind of, I don't know. There's like, there's, there is a slightly different culture here to, to things that could be seen as weapons, you know? Cause obviously I can't imagine that either of you are like carrying a knife so you could stab someone if you needed to. Like that's not like, yes, you could. But that's not why you're doing it. You know, like in the same way that I could take a guy out with a fountain pen, right? I'm sure I could find a way to do it, but it's not the purpose, right? But so like, but here it's kind of seen slightly differently. And I think there's a bit more of a taboo around it. And of course there are going to be people that write into me and tell me that I'm wrong, right? Which is fine. Cause there are people that will carry knives in the UK, but I think it's, it's less, it's less common, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. No, I think I can see that.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' My understanding was that there was a, to the, that there's essentially a gun, a very heavy gun restrictions in the UK. And then, and this is just my understanding from doing research for articles that after guns went away, that it was like the sign of being a thug or a gangster that you carried a tool that was just a knife in the UK. It was like, yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Knives, knives are like for that, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. It's a perception thing. So yeah. Yeah. All right. So the one question I have about knives, I just, sorry, I just, I just thought I would

'''Myke Hurley:''' bring, bring in there cause I'm on the government website. Our government website is amazing, by the way. It's very, very good. Somebody redesigned it like recently. They've got this awesome design firm in and it's so easy to find anything. So it is illegal to carry a knife in public without good reason, unless it's a knife of a folding blade, which is three inches long or less, for example, Swiss army knife carry by or sell any type of band knife or use any knife in a threatening way. Even a legal knife, such as a Swiss army knife, lock knives, knives with blades that can be locked when unfolded and not folding knives and are illegal to carry in public without good reason. The maximum penalty for an adult carrying a knife is four years in prison and a fine of 5,000 pounds. Oh my God. So the good reason, sorry guys, I'm giving you so much information now, but good reasons for carrying a knife. Examples of good reasons to carry a knife in public can include taking knives you use at work, to and from work, taking knives to a gallery or museum to be exhibited. The knife is going to be used for theater, film, television, historical reenactment or religious purposes, e.g. the kirpan some Sikhs carry. A court will decide if you have a good reason to carry a knife if you're charged with carrying it illegally. And then it has like a list of all the other types of banned knives. So you can get the idea. It's basically illegal to have a knife.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Those are some pretty hefty restrictions. I will say that Spyderco makes a line of knives called, and they all started with a single knife called the UKPK, which stood for the United Kingdom pen knife. And it was designed to meet the requirements that you just laid out. So if you're in Great Britain and you want a really fine everyday carry knife and you just want it to be simple, the Spyderco UKPK should work. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the knife.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So there you go. You can see why then like specific knives exist for the UK because we have such restrictive laws over it. And I think it's just because they're like, I don't know why, like what the fundamental difference is and why it's there, but just tools that can be used as offensive weapons in this country are illegal, you know, like guns, you know? So yeah, just the way it is. So there you go. That's why it's so weird to me, guys, because I never see them.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' And by the way, if I had like a Tommy gun to go hunting, right? You know, like a Tommy gun has a really specific connotation in American culture because of all the gangsters and gangster movies. So like no one has a Tommy gun. You know, the people have that exact same gun without the barrel, the drum barrel clip, but no one has that gun because it just looks so weird. So I guess it's the same thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. By the way, Myke, you're going to have some challenge for the show title. I'm watching the chat room and I'm cracking up here. So this is going to be a tough challenge. So I want to the big nerd question I have about knives is I want you to tell me the basics of steel types, because this is the part where my eyes start to glaze over. And, you know, I know I'm the same way about fountain pens and how I can talk like about the details of a nib and the specifics. And just if you're like looking at a knife and just, you know, your basic knives, your more common knives, how what are you looking for as far as steel and why is that important?

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Well, OK, so steel is like a rabbit hole and it's just like nibs. Like when you talk about the Japanese nibs and the German nibs and the gold and the rhodium, it's exactly the same kind of rabbit hole. But I want to say at the very beginning, like I fashion myself as a steel junkie. That's what people in the knife world call in a derogatory sense, people are obsessed with steel. But there are guys out there that know way more than I do. Like Cliff Stamp knows a lot. A guy named Joe Talmadge knows a lot. There's a guy that runs a knife company named Myke Stewart and he knows a ton, as does Sal Glesser, who runs Spyderco. But basically, steel's think of it like plotting on four axes. And the rule is you get you get three, but never four. So the first axis is price. Steel is a combination of iron and other elements and the other elements give it various properties. And so you can get a really great steel, but it's really expensive. And so that's the first axis. The second axis is hardness. And steel's hardness means that the steel is resistant to deformation. And hardness is really helpful because it means you have to sharpen your steel or sharpen your knife less. And it also means that you can put a higher angle on the cutting bevel, which will give you better slicing action than you would otherwise. Then on the other side, sort of in balance with that is toughness. And toughness is the ability for steel to resist chipping. So it'll bend instead of break. And the best way to think of hardness and toughness is hardness is like a diamond where it's really, really hard. But if it gets hit by an impact, it'll shatter. And toughness is like taffy where I could take a bat to to like taffy. And as long as it's not frozen, it won't break the bar of taffy. It'll bend it, but it won't break it. And then the last thing on this four axis is corrosion resistance. And oftentimes that just means it's resistance to water or like to getting stained by water. In reality, there's a bunch of different things that cause corrosion. And the best steels are corrosion resistant to virtually everything. Like Brad, I remember you had a Sprytaco Dragonflight in H1 steel. And H1 steel is a really, really corrosion resistant steel developed for marine environments. So it's resistant to water and salt water because salt water is a little bit worse than regular water. So there are steels that will be really tough, really hard, and really corrosion resistant. But they are incredibly expensive. In fact, the one steel that I can think of is actually not technically a steel because it has no iron in it. And it's called nitinol 60 or SM100. And it will do everything you ever need it to do, except for the fact that it's probably between 10 and 15 times more expensive than even the most expensive steels that are out there. So that's sort of the four things you're looking for. And you'll often get like three of the four or two of the four. And in an everyday carry knife, you don't really need it to be that tough because it doesn't have to, you're not going to be chopping through a tree with it like you would with like a fixed blade for outdoor use or like an axe. So in my opinion, the way to best spend your pennies is to get a hard steel that's corrosion resistant. And like M390 is a really good steel in that regard. 20CV is a really good steel. My personal favorite steel is a steel called ZDP 189, which is a steel developed by Hitachi in Japan. And it is exceedingly hard. It has more carbon than even high carbon steels. And it has a huge amount of chromium, which makes the steel resistant to staining. And it is, in my opinion, and I know there are lots of people that disagree. It's the perfect DDC steel because you can get it, you can get it really, really super sharp and it will hold an edge forever. And while it's not the toughest thing in the world, it will chip. If you're careful, then you'll be fine. Like I'm not, I'm not going to like, you know, debone a chicken because if I hit bone, it'll probably chip it. But everything else, it's fine. It's really great for general utility tasks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So that is, that's a total rabbit hole. I now have more questions about steel than I did when we started. But at the, at the, at the risk of having a five hour episode, I'm going to pivot real quick. And let's, let's move to flashlights because this is where like, I'm okay on knife basics. Like I get it. I understand kind of what I need. And, you know, I found some things that, you know, work best for me. Flashlights. I've carried just one little flashlight. It's a, it's a Phoenix L1T. So I've had it for a few years and it's just a good little flashlight I'll carry in my backpack. And like I use it this weekend, you know, for hours, but what makes a good everyday carry flashlight and what are you looking for as far as, you know, functionality in the lights that you carry?

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Well, the first thing I'd say is that up until about 10 years ago, it was definitely not worth carrying a flashlight every day. Because while I find that myself that I use a knife more than I use a light, if I was going based on how much it weighed and how big it was 10 years ago, I wouldn't have carried maybe 15 years ago, I wouldn't carry it a flashlight. But now we've gotten to the point where emitter technology, which is the bulb in the front of the flashlight, coupled with the little micro computers that exist inside the flashlight, they've gotten so efficient that you can run a really small flashlight, like one the size of your pinky, you can run it for an hour with, you know, 100 lumens. And that's, that's really good. So the things that I would look for in a flashlight are the battery format. And in my opinion, the emitter technology has gotten to the point where most people for everyday carry don't need a battery, don't need a flashlight that has two cells. You could get a single cell flashlight, like a single AA or a single AAA or a single CR123, which is like a lithium battery that it's used in cameras. And that, that will do pretty much whatever you need. And then the second thing that I think is really important to look for in a flashlight is you want to look for the emitter and emitters come in like a huge, like alphabet soup with numbers. And it's just really confusing, but the, the better emitters that there are a couple right now and they change like emitter technology changes as fast as computers can because the emitters are generally constructed in computer programs to maximize output and balance heat and that kind of stuff. So like right now the XML2 emitter is a really good high powered emitter for like big lights. The XPG2 is a really good emitter for like regular everyday pocket lights. But if I was going to say, if I had my choice, the number one thing, the number one emitter right now is called the Nichea 219 emitter. And the reason why is it's a little less bright than the other two I just listed, but it has a really high color rendering index. And that means that the light it produces is truer to sunlight. It looks closer to sunlight. And this is really important to me and to a bunch of different people. Like I remember when I was first, when I first had my son and I was changing his diaper and I was always trying not to wake, like not to get them like really riled up. But you know, when, when you have a little baby, you got to check to see if they did something that woke them up. And it was always easier to do that if I had a light and if the light was, you know, not super bright, but had good color rendering.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And so how much, how much did your poop checking flashlight cost?

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Uh, that's, that's, uh, well, so like you could get, yeah, that's really crazy. But you could get away with like a, you know, like a $25 poop checking flashlight right now. At the time it was pretty expensive. I had a, I had a custom light to do that. It's silly. It's really silly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, and that's why we love you. And that's why we have a podcast called the pin out because that's like normal usage for people like us. It's just what you do.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' I feel like I'm at an intervention or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, that every week on at Monday at five 30 is an intervention for us. It's like, we talk about this stuff and it's like, what did we, what were the words that just came out of my mouth? It's amazing. Okay, Tony. So talking about all those specs on the flashlight, what are you looking for, for like, not necessarily your starter flashlight, but for a good all around flashlight, what are you looking to spend? And are there any kind of brands that you look at just for kind of these, these base level flashlights that give you everything you were just talking about?

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' The crazy thing is that like the flashlights in the past three years have gotten into this arms race. And it was started, it started by a company called Phoenix, F-E-N-I-X. And Phoenix basically came along and they took bodies and clickies, like the button you use to turn the light on and emitters that Surefire was using. They produced them in China and they dropped the price, you know, to 25% of what Surefire was. And that, that basically was like a starter gun going off. And since then we have gotten to this arms race where you're getting more features, better performance at a lower price. And so the lights that I, I really like, there are a couple of brands. One of the brands is Eagle Tac. Eagle Tac makes a bunch of really good lights and they do make tactical lights, which are giant and weird, but they also make really great lights like the D25 series. I've had a D25A in titanium and it was really great and you don't need titanium. It just looks cool. And then I'm testing right now for review a D25 AAA with a Nichea 219B emitter. And it's, it's a $30 light that does pretty much everything you'd ever need for everyday carry. If you want to spend a little bit more, there are a couple of brands that I like that make nicer stuff. Surefire makes really good stuff, although their lights are very, very tactically centered and they're, they're bigger than an equivalent light. Like you can get a really small CR123A light, but Surefire insists on making these big giant lights, but they're really, really well built. I mean, you can like run over them with a truck. Another really small brand that's good is Malkoff. Malkoff used to make only drop-ins, which were the emitters. You could pull out the guts of your flashlight and put in a Malkoff and it would make, it would upgrade your lights output and make it better. And then the final brand that I would recommend if you were going to go and spend, like this could be a light that you could have for the rest of your life and do everything you need is HDS. HDS makes some really amazing, really robust lights. I mean, these lights are designed to be, you know, you could take them caving, you know, like there are a couple of applications for flashlights where it's like, you cannot have them fail. Like caving and underwater diving. And I don't, I don't recommend HDS or underwater diving because I don't think they've been pressure sealed tested, but in terms of its impact resistance, its resistance to pressure, its heat sink, an HDS rotary will do pretty much everything you'd ever need it to do. Everything you'd ever need a flashlight that you carry on your person. There are, you know, 4.7s makes really good mid-price lights. They have a lot of features that people like. They have good emitters. 4.7s upgrades their emitters probably between four, every four and six months. So they're right on the cutting edge of emitters. But EagleTack, SureFire, Malkoff, HDS, 4.7s. I mean, those are all really, really good brands. I'd steer clear of Streamlight because their stuff is like stuck in the dark ages. But that's the stuff that people can get locally. Like if you go to a Cabela's or you go to an REI, you might run into Streamlight. I just steer clear. Phoenix is also a really good brand. The light you have, Brad, is a really good, easy to use light. And like the E05 from Phoenix is a great one AAA battery flashlight that is excellent for everyday carry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, just listening to this, I definitely need to step up my underwater diving flashlight carry game.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But can I get an underwater knife though, Tony? That's what I want to know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, that's the corrosion. That's the corrosion part.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Yeah, in fact, there are two companies that make really amazing under... Well, there's one steel in one company. So Mission makes only underwater dive nights. And they're usually all titanium. So they don't set off like a landmine or a watermine. A depth charge, I think is what they're called in the water. And they're completely 100% corrosion resistant. Even the screws are titanium. And then there are a couple of companies that use that SM100, which is a metal material, a metal that was developed by the Navy in the 1960s. And it is as hard as any steel. It is 100% corrosion resistant. And it is so tough that if you heat it up, it will return to its original shape. It's like something from X-Men. So yes, you can get an underwater knife if you want it with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What would something like that cost you, just out of curiosity?

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Oh, so I think Strider... Strider is a company that makes like really high-end tactical knives. And I think that they had a run of SM100 Striders. And I think that they started at $28 or $2,900. Wow. I mean, the SM100 is really hard to get. And it is very, very hard to heat treat. Because when you apply heat to nitinol 60 or SM100 to the trade name, it reverts. It wants to go back. So what you have to do is you have to first set the shape. Then you heat treat it and hope that it doesn't want to go back to the previous shape. And then you have to grind it. It's just, it's a massive, massive ordeal. It's much more difficult to use than regular steel. That's crazy. That's crazy. It's crazy.