There are some traditional patterns and blade shapes that just work on any format whether on a traditional knife, a modern knife or even a fixed blade! The Swayback handle and the wharncliffe blade is one of the best examples of this pervasiveness. The Swayback knives feel good in hand and can make very precise cuts with that wharney blade. These knives are great for opening packages and can penetrate plastic pretty easy. For example, I adopted the practice of slicing every water bottle in two before throwing in the trash. Besides making more room in the trash, this allows me test different knives to how well they penetrate and slice. The Swayback is about the quickest at doing this safely.
Although I have around 6 or so of Swayback knives, they are not that easy to find. This is especially true outside of traditional knives. In fact, I only have three Swayback knives that are also modern folders and there are not many more still out there. The knives below are all the Swayback knives that I currently own in order of when I bought them:
- SMKW Work Knife
- Case Clover Bone Swayback
- Case 2020 Shotshow Knife (Swayback with Tony Bose signature on the blade).
- CRKT Swindle by Ken Onion
- Kizer Swags Swayback
- Two Sun TS111