Here's some of my knives, past and present.
At one point I had a leaf blade Lil temp 1.
I fell in love with the handle real quick, but grew to dislike the clip just as fast. It was bulky in the hand and flashy in the pocket. Out of every folding knife I've held, this would have to go in my top 5 when it comes to ergonomics. I remember describing it to my buddy, "It feels like I squished a ball of playdough, then turned it into a knife handle."
I bought a ZDP189 Endura with some money I got from a landscaping gig. I took the saber grind flat to the stone and converted it into a scandi grind. The edge, despite how thin it was, never did fail. I used it fairly hard too, whittling hardwoods etc.
Another regrind. Early into my spyderco collecting phase, I was really into bushcraft. My test for how good a knife cut, was to go cut some wood shavings or feather sticks with it. I was obsessed with running really thin edges, like you can see on this OG Native I picked up when they were $40 at any Walmart.
Fun fact about this Native. I also modded the handle profile to resemble what the Native 5 looks like today.
See that pikal? I was an early adopter. I had no interest in the martial applications, but was very interested in the tech. I wanted to try the removable wave, a feature I'm sad we haven't seen since. I was particularly excited for the caged ball lock. I had owned many regular ball locks over the years, and found them a little tricky to close.
I thought the whole point of the cage was to facilitate one finger closing vs two finger closing on the regular ball lock. So I spent the first day practicing until closing the Pikal with just my thumb became second nature, and I've used the CBBL that way ever since.
I'll end this with the one that started it all for me. The knife that got me into Spyderco. an old 440V single liner Military:
