How the method of drawing your knife influences the clip orientation and knife size you prefer.
Specifically, there has been discussion surrounding the Military not being a good candidate for tip-up due to the length of the handle.
While I no longer own a tip up Military, I do have a comparably sized Police 4.
https://streamja.com/XWB3y
This is significantly slowed down compared to how I normally draw it, but the point is to show the way I draw my Police minimizes the need to shift my grip to access the spyderhole.
Here is a comparison video showing how I see most folks draw their knives VS how I do it.
https://streamlala.com/bmjnT/
Most people seem to pinch the exposed rear end of their tip up knives, so of course they'll have to make a big grip adjustment. I'm not sure why they do that.
I stick my thumb deep into my pocket and can have it resting on the opening hole before I've even got it unclipped on this Pacific Salt.
For comparison here I am drawing a stock Military: https://streamlala.com/Jm1q7/
Even though it makes less of a difference with tip down, I still feel more in control of swinging the handle into my grip when I jam the web between my thumb and index finger into the lip of my pocket.
So I think by changing how you draw your tip up knives, you may find yourself comfortable with larger folders.
This was the main post that inspired this thread. I think looking at my videos back to back, for me the Military carried tip down clearly requires more grip adjustment after the draw that a comparably sized tip up knife.For the Military tip-down makes a lot of sense. It is a large knife with a long handle, and tip-down puts your thumb near the Spydie hole as you pull it out of the pocket for quick access. No need to "shuffle up" the handle to get there like with tip-up. The clip nestles into a vacant spot at the base of the fingers and disappears in use. It is a very well thought-out design.
Millie - https://streamlala.com/Jm1q7/
Police - https://streamja.com/XWB3y
It is this experience that makes me feel the concerns over carrying a Millie tip up are unwarranted - especially when one considers the Millie 2 will still offer tip down carry for those that prefer it.
This is also one of the reasons I don't care for low carry clips on larger knives - they don't work the same as say, a Caly 3 sized knife.
With the Caly 3's deep carry clip I could still get my thumb on the opening hole prior to unclipping it. If the Szabo folder had the exact same clip and clip placement, it would have felt awful.
There's a lot more to making larger folders than loading a 3" blade design in photoshop and increasing the size proportionally.
Sometimes I wonder how folks that feel like the quoted post draw their knives. I also wonder how many of them have actually tried a tip up Military? It carries quite well, better than tip down IMO:
Same with the Para 1
In fact I can't think of a single Spyderco I'd rather carry tip down than up. It's less comfortable reaching into my pocket, it requires shifting my grip more to unclip and to re-clip the knife, it has a greater impact on ergonomics for me, and it exposes the pivot to dirt and debris tip up carry protects it from.
YMMV, but I'm switching the Military 2 clip to tip up immediately if it doesn't come that way from the factory. And I'm willing to bet we're going to see more of them setup that way.
Look at any four way Spyderco model posted here, whether it's a smaller knife like a Delica or a larger knife like the Police 4 - it is exceptionally more common to see them setup for tip up carry.
For some reason folks think the Military won't work well that way - and I have no idea why.
. I do usually open the knife with my middle finger though, unless I only need a small bit of the knife edge, then I use my thumb.
