Going along with everyone else, here’s my contribution to Og’s latest meme. This is the knife I carry every day*, and the one I usually go to first (click to embiggenate).

That’s a CRKT Delegate that I bought back in December. I chose it because it’s an assisted-opening knife with an easy** to use safety, and it’s both classy enough for my office job and practical enough formy volunteer EMS work and for everyday use. The pocket clip is nice and tight yet still easy to clip on, and the assisted-opening action is nice and crisp. The blade came almost razor-sharp, and is holding the edge very well. It lists on CRKT’s site at $59.99, but I got it from knifecenter.com for about $40.

The only issue I have with it is that way the safety is designed makes it almost impossible to open the knife with my left hand – my previous EDC knife was ambidextrous, but had no safety and would occasionally open in my pocket, and I decided a safety was necessary after a couple of close calls with the edge – but the position means it’s quick and easy to open with only my right hand. Every other safety I’ve seen is positioned so that it’s difficult to use one handed and quickly, which went against one of my main requirements.

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* I do usually have a second knife somewhere on me, or nearby, but I rarely use it for cutting. For work, it’s a cheap penknife that does a kind of flip-fold thing to open and doesn’t really have much of an edge (it was free) but is okay for cutting tape or opening envelopes. That generally lives in a small inside pocket of my jacket. For everyday carry and EMS work, I have an old Leatherman that was a gift from Dad’s boss at the time. The two blades on that are extremely sharp, but inconvenient to open. I use the tools more often than the blades.

** “Easy” in that it’s simple and well positioned for one-handed unlocking and opening. The mechanism was very stiff when it was new, and even though it has loosened up some with use, it’s still fairly stiff and requires a good amount of pressure to use.