Finally, I got around to some actual cuttin’. As I said, it took me a bit to get the blade to a razors edge. And…. I’ll admit it probably wasn’t necessary, but it’s the way I like to keep my knives.
First came the tried and true paper test. I finely honed blade will cut nice, clean narrow strips of paper with no tearing. But that really doesn’t prove much other then it started out sharp. How will it hold up?
If you ask 10 different people how they use their pocket knife, you’ll probably get 8 different answers. Most knives see service as letter openers, fingernail cleaners, string trimmers and screwdrivers. Maybe it’ll peel the occasional apple or even aimlessly whittle a stick. A lot of pocket knives don’t see the light of day more then a couple times a week (unless it’s new and you just gotta impress a buddy). In fact, if you have to blow pocket lint out of your knife before peeling that apple, you gotta find more stuff to cut!!!
So let’s establish how much I use this knife and how I use it. Just for the fun of it, I tried to keep track of how I used my knife over a period of a couple of days just to establish ‘a baseline’.
The typical day starts with the mail. On average, a dozen envelopes get eviscerated to start.
By noon, the FedEx truck drops off a box of knives from…yup.. Great Eastern Cutlery. This is the first real test. Not only do I get to cut some cardboard (a knifes worst enemy next to rust), but Chris (Great Eastern sales, shipping, customer service and information specialist) uses some really great packing tape along with a packing list in a plastic sleeve that needs to be opened. Most of the time I cut the boxes up to go into recycling. 
Lunchtime, if I’m on the road, it could be called into service cutting up an apple and cheese or to open a bag of chips. Yeah, I know, I could eat the apple without cutting it up or just rip the bag of chips open, but that would kinda defeat the purpose and need to carry the knife wouldn’t it?
By mid-afternoon, there’s usually another box or two from UPS that need opening and again, a lot of the boxes are cut to lay flat in the recycling bin.
It’s actually pretty fascinating to start paying attention to how you use your EDC knife. This week I have used it to open countless pieces of mail and freight, strip some insulation on wiring to repair a connection, opened a case of bottled water, lifted a lid on a can of baked beans, cut a tag off from a new shirt, pried out a coin that somehow got wedged in my seat belt buckle, scraped a couple drops of dried paint off a gun stock, as a spatula blade to sort some small screws, to scrap some excess Super Glue off from my thumb nail and I don’t know how many other seemingly insignificant tasks. AND, yes, I do wash my knife blade on a regular basis!
I would estimate my knife gets deployed at least 8-10 times on an average day. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could get by without a pocket knife!!
Next….will it hold it’s edge.