Lanyards

Accessories or necessities?

Folks put a lanyard on their knives for different reasons. Or course what better way to utilize after scoring a nice bead right?

I did not take much notice of lanyards for folding knives until...

finding myself having to put them down in order to do something. Only to pick it up again soon afterwards. Example in the field, while cutting up food and the stove/ pan starts to get over heated.. I can quickly release the knife to remove the utensil from the fire without leaving  the knife down if I have it looped over the last 2-3 fingers...

Short lanyards seem to be trending.. From a functional point, many simply use them to tug the knife out of the pocket and looks neater of course.. like a cutesy little tail. 

While the aesthetics are good but too short a lanyard doesn't cut it for me.


 To illustrate..

".....at the work bench working with a knife...
... reaching out for a recessed light switch.."

Bang! With knife in hand, it gets in the way.
Either scratching something or accidentally poking the tip into some hard surface"

If there is one thing I absolutely can't stand.. it's a mauled up tip. You can have a perfect knife but without a proper tip... oh well...






 With a short loop over 3 digits...

Working out the loop length vs knife size is something that will take awhile.. because my benchmark is something that fit comfortably while not impeding operation of the knife during opening and closing.

Too short and nothing is ever gonna go right. Nothing worse than to flick the wrist upwards to try and catch the hanging knife and mid way as the hand reached down... OOPS! too short and the knife falls back down... I watched it and  -- it's gonna make you look really dumb if you have an audience around. Or worse, the knife will just over-rotate. Surely don't want to have the blade or tip falling on your arm...

"But.. short lanyards where u slip only the pinkie in would be like a longer loop for 3 fingers.. no?"
Well.. yes and no (for me). It takes a tad more time to accurately slip the pinkie in. Furthermore anytime when I am dangling something off hte last finger, its kind of feels "insecure" that I might drop it anytime.

Generally for me, a smaller width knife with 3.0"- 3.5" blade goes well with a 3.5 finger width loop like the Spyderco Southard here.



The F95 has a similar length but gets a little tight when holding the knife with all 3 fingers looped.. Hence for this it's normally hooked around the last 2 fingers which works out pretty well...

Getting too wordy? Yea, I concur. A video is probably better...

A little shaky but its a pain trying to do everything with the left hand and holding the cam with the other.. when everything from knife to phone are oriented for the right-handed world. Guess in a way that serves to explain the effectiveness of having a correct length of lanyard looping over the finger too..