Knife Locking Mechanisms Explained

Understand the best processing knives and the best knife styles to use on the homestead. Learn about knife locking mechanisms and how to care for your knives.

By Caleb D. Regan
Updated on July 17, 2023
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courtesy Buck Knives
Whittling wood may be best done with a different blade profile, but general utility knives can also work just fine.

Understand the best processing knives and the best knife styles to use on the homestead. Learn about knife locking mechanisms and how to care for your knives.

Among the most versatile homestead tools, the knife really shines. From cutting hay bales open to whittling marshmallow sticks for the campfire and processing any number of livestock and wildlife, this is one tool that is irreplaceable in country living.

I’ve carried pocket knives all my life for help with everything from cutting baling twine to processing deer and cleaning quail. I still remember the first pocket knife my Uncle Fred gave me as a young boy learning to whittle wood around a hackberry campfire. Along with that knife came one of the first lessons I remember about paying close attention when using some of the most useful, revered tools around us.

Knives have been with us in some form since at least the Stone Age. Look in any knife catalog, and you’ll find a bewildering array of options. If you thoroughly consider your cutting needs, there’s a knife category that has you covered.

Knife styles

Our primitive ancestors first used wedge-shaped rocks, shells, bones and other materials to fashion the earliest hunting knives. They could attach these sharp edges — often sharpened using stone, a sharpening tool we still use today — to wooden handles and other materials, and use the tool for hunting itself or for cutting up meat and skins after successful hunts.

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