I love all my DR RSK Benchmades...although no tanto...excellent, excellent knives.

I've had my eye on the Cold Steel AK-47 for a while. Something to look into.

I went to this site and am now more flabbergasted than ever over the numbers and variety of knives produced all over the world. Might be a bad thing to start a collection, might end up needing a 12-step program. This site had 8 different knives just for cutting mushrooms! (I live in the Mushroom Capital of the World, at least according to the local Chamber of Commerce.)

I have 2 Strykers (small and large, both first production runs from several years ago) and a Voyager clip point. If price is no object, the Benchmade is simply a far better-built knife. In my opinion, it's not even a contest.

And now for the dissenting opinion! After carrying a medium or large folder every day for the last 15 years, I keep coming back to the tanto as the most useful everyday knife. It's not because it "looks neat", but because I find a surprising number of tasks that a drop point or clip point can't do. Anything that requires scraping, for instance, is simply better accomplished with the front bevel of a tanto.

I've got quite a few knives, including a few customs from well-known makers, and most of them are drop points. The knives that end up in my pocket about 80% of the time, though, are the Benchmade Strykers.

As to sharpening, I have no problems - I use a Lansky sharpener and it's relatively easy to put a shaving edge on both bevels.

-=[ Grant ]=-