If you’re a Boomer or Gen-Xer, you may have a fond memory of your father or other relative giving you a pocketknife at a young age. It may have been a lock-back or a fixed blade, but for most of us it was a simple slip-joint folding pocketknife with no locking mechanism. The blade was held open under simple spring pressure. Sometimes it was a single blade Barlow style or Jack knife. In other cases, it may have been a Trapper with a drop-point knife blade and a Spey blade. If you were really lucky, it could’ve been a multi-blade Congress knife or a Swiss Army Knife.
Many of us who were more serious about knives may have graduated on to something with a Walker liner lock, frame lock, or Axis lock-type mechanism. That was the goal from the 1980s onward, to have a folding knife that locked up like a fixed blade. Still, many of us look back on fond memories of that first knife type. Custom knife makers
