Tactical Knives

To paraphrase Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Sal Glesser, a tactical knife is a knife you have with you and use when you need to cut something. That being said, most ANY knife can be a tactical knife. Some have been quoted as saying the Buck 110 was the original modern tactical folding knife and was used as such in the Vietnam War. Some have said the SERE folder by Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Al Mar was the original modern tactical folding knife. In today’s age of black ops and other military- and law-enforcement-type pursuits, a tactical knife has come to mean a knife, whether a folder or a fixed blade, sporting a blade with a non-glare finish and a black or dark synthetic handle. If a fixed blade, it usually will have a synthetic sheath of some kind, also black or dark in color, and can range anywhere in size from a neck knife to a “tactical machete.” If a folder, it needs to have a blade in the 3.5-to-4-inch range and be a one-hand opener, often in the LinerLock™ configuration made famous by Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Michael Walker, and sporting a pocket clip pioneered on folders by Glesser. When in doubt about what a tactical knife is, however, we think you could do a lot worse than to adopt the paraphrased Glesser definition in the first sentence above.