Generally speaking, I believe these types of tools are convenient for a lot of good reasons we can all think of. But more importantly these things are necessary for all the things we can't think of. Nobody ever showed up at a house fire with a fire extinguisher, they show up with a fire truck. The fire extinguisher is for when you did not expect the fire. Generally speaking I look at everything I EDC as an "option", if someone breaks into my house, my absolute last choice is to use a gun. But I want the option. I consider myself an intelligent person and I am sure she is too, she doesn't need the knife for the things she can imagine now, she needs the knife for the situation she can't predict, where she will want the "option" of using it. Specifically, a knife is one of those things which is tough to create at the last minute.

He he, thats why my wife got a leatherman micra for christmas one year because she was always borrowing my wave. She looked at it like a young boy who got socks and underwear (disapointed) but then started using it all the time and a couple years later wanted a new one since all the paint had worn off hers. So I bought her one of the new squirts the year they came out from a place on the internet who specializes in personalized gifts. So when she was showing off her new leatherman with her name on it at work all the girls in the office were like "what do you need that for" but then started borrowing it all the time. After she quit that job to go back to school she became the person in class who everyong would go to fir a knife or scissors.

Yeah? She liked the Squirt?

Go find a long DC'd Leatherman called a Flair, with corkscrew, cocktail fork, and pate spreader. It is my personal favorite!

It still has all the usual stuff, and when I'm going to do much, it's still a Wave, but it sure is fun to pull out the cocktail fork in mixed company. Think about it -- whip out the multi tool off your belt, open it up, and voile! Really lays the wimps hair back.

Both of us have come from families with alcoholics in them and we have seen the damage caused by both alcoholisim and social drinking so neier of us drink at all and neither of us would want to have a corkscrew anywhere around so I've avoided any multitools with corkscrews.

The oldest, most common surviving artifact of humanity is the 'aechulian hand axe' a clumsy name for the teardrop shaped lithic tools found throughout the old world. How old? if you accept evolutionary theory they were the SAKs of mankind when he still wasn't quite fine tuned himself, or still a half finished lump of clay or dirt pile waiting for the fingers or breath of God to settle on the finished product. No doubt other skills such as cordage making, knotting and fire of course were early inventions. But it was that ancient cutting edge that everything is based on ; disposable diapers, this computer keyboard, canned whip creme. Is it any wonder we can bring this stuff onto an airliner, yet the one ancient companion we MODIFY OUR ENVIRONMENT TO HELP US is confiscated? Oetzi's last line of defense on that snow covered mountaintop was a knife. The Roman Senate bypassed lengthy impeachment hearings over Cleopatra's dress and simply 'stuck it ' to Caesar in the Senate itself, the last gasp of a Republic gone mad with empire. The Vikings recognised the universal utility of a knife, codifying laws that guaranteed even a slave's right to carry a knife. We shake hands with our knife or sword arm and (thanks to rennaissance italian nobles) open doors for our women to take an assassin's dagger first. Periodicaly society gets all happyface and sings about "flowers in your hair" but 3+ decades later Bobby Darren is still singing about MACK THE KNIFE on a custom car stereo installation misswire that causes the engine computer sensing units to cut out over 50 MPH. Then your british mechanic unscrews it with his SAK, mutters " whats all this then" deploys THE BADE, and like Alexander the Great solves the riddle of the Gordian knot <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

This is from one of James Mattis' posts on BF (reposted a while ago by Esav). I didn't meet the man, but I couldn't agree more:

"My good reason to carry a knife is that God gave me rather weak teeth and rudimentary claws in an evolutionary trade-off. The hairy-armed person who figured out how to put an edge on a suitable rock made it possible for us to be recognizably human in the first place.

I wear a wristwatch whether or not I have an appointment to keep, and I carry a pen and/or pencil because I am a literate person whether or not I have a specific writing task ahead of me, and I carry a knife because I am a human and not an ape.

A knife comes in handy for all sorts of random tasks that involve separating matter. Like cutting a string, or making a sandwich, or opening a package. It can also come in handy in an emergency, which need not involve a human assailant, and emergencies are by their nature unforeseen, so one should carry a knife all the time.

And in a perfect world where nobody needed a weapon, I'd probably carry a slightly larger knife, because it wouldn't scare people.

-- James K. Mattis z”l

Eloquent. Have I said I'm glad you are here?

Folks, Francisco knows everything there is to know about the SAK.

I'm a woman, and I have no problem with knives.

Dad always made us wear watches and carry knives. He would sometimes spring an unexpected test on us, "Let me use your knife," even though we knew perfectly well he had his own knife in his pocket.

In Junior High, I was the opener of stubborn ketchup packets and divider of shared candybars. When the pricipal caught me spreading mustard on a hamburger with my SAK, (this was before students were searched for weapons on a daily basis) he asked me where I got it. My Dad gave it to me. "Well, don't go threatening anyone with it." And that was it. My cutom engraved SAK (Dad gave it to me!) fell out of my pocket one day during marching band and I was heartbroken!

These days, my job requires me to carry heavy duty pruning shears that are always sharp. Because of that, I've slacked on on my knife carrying, but now that I am reading the forum I realize I need to get back in the habit. Pruning shears are great and all, but they don't have tweezers in the handle!

Why would a woman want a knife? Well, if she gets a package in the mail, she doesn't have to go to the kitchen and use the paring knife to open her package, then wash the paring knife before putting it back in the knife block. She can just use her pocket knife.

If she is taking her knitting or embroidery with her to the doctor's office and working on it in the waiting room, the scissors of a pocket knife are easier to fit in her purse than those big Ginghers.

If she is on a walk and sees a nice rose she'd like to get a cutting off of, she has a knife with her. She doesn't have to go all the way home and get her pruning shears.

If it's raining cats and dogs and her Final Exams start in twenty minutes and she doesn't have an umbrella, and she has to run into the student book store and buy an umbrella, and she'd like to remove the tag . . .

If she scrapes the bejeezus out of her shin and needs to bandage it, but there's no bandaid big enough, so she has to improvise with guaze and a cotton pad but there's no way to cut the guaze to length because someone took the scissors out of the first aid kit and forgot to put them back . . .

I'm sure you can think of more instances. :-)

A word of caution. I was in a similar situation three or four years ago. I bought my wife a CRKT Navajo. Perfecrt for her. I knew she was carrying it, because sometime later she asked for another one becaue she lost the first one. I got her another one. Then she wanted a Letherman squirt, then a Buck Metro (she thought it was cute.) I bought her a Spyderco Salsa and she gave it back saying that the lock wasn't ergonomic. Its gotten to the point that I have to get her one when ever I want one. Dear God, I've created a monster.

Good thing I didn't buy her a 1911.

Biscuits

Why a knife?

Because I'm not the sort of person who like to wait for someone else to come and fix things. Problem? Fixed. Move on.

TRO