Glad I found this community. I hope it’s ok to ask for some gift recommendations on here - wanna make my kid smile this Christmas :)
My son is 17, and he really likes knives. So far, he just has a few, and none of them are too nice. I would love to get him one within my budget, which is $150.
What are some quality and cool-looking knives in that range? He loves DnD and fantasy, as well as the color black and red.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and recommend!
Ontario RAT2 in D2 steel is a fantastic option and a tad cheaper. Benchmade bugout or any number of Spyderco models are also great options.
But the next step is getting him a water stone, and looking up some good videos on free hand sharpening. It’s a lot cheaper than spendy sharpening systems, and learning to sharpen also teaches you what to use your knife on and what not to, depending on how frequently you want to be pulling your stone out.
I think he would love to learn how to sharpen it properly with a water stone, thank you for the suggestion!
It took me years and buying shitty “sharpeners” that actually mess up your edge to the point where it needs to be reprofiled before I figured out that a simple water stone and a little technique is your best bet.
You can get really crazy about using diamond stones, diamond pastes on a stone, and stones of graduating fineness, followed up by a leather strop, but I find for most low to mid grade blade steels, a normal medium grit and some elbow grease does the job just fine.
Thank you, you are likely saving me hours of research online. I really appreciate it.