Knife Handling Safety: The Habits That Keep the Edge Off Your Hands

The Short Version

The first version of this page was a short list of dos and don'ts. This one explains each habit, because a rule you understand is a rule you keep when you are tired, cold or in a hurry, which is when knives cut people. Almost every knife injury that is not an assault has the same shape: the blade was moving toward a hand, the hand was in the path, and the blade slipped. Every rule below is a way of keeping a hand out of that path. None of it is complicated, and all of it is easier with a knife that is sharp, locks solidly and fits your hand, which is where the rest of our guides come in.

Why Knives Cut People: The Numbers

A study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine, using the Consumer Product Safety Commission's national sample of emergency departments, estimated that about 8.25 million knife injuries were treated in American emergency rooms between 1990 and 2008, roughly 1,200 a day. The great majority were unintentional, most were lacerations, and the finger and hand were by far the most common body parts hurt. The kitchen produces more of them than any other room, and the pocketknife and the utility knife produce most of the rest. Those figures are from the only large national study of the subject, and they are old, but nothing about hands or blades has changed since.

What the numbers say is that knife safety is not about the dramatic accident. It is about the moment of inattention while cutting a bagel, opening a box, whittling a stick or closing a folder, when the hand holding the work is where the blade ends up. The habits below exist to make the safe position the automatic one.

The Sharp Knife Is the Safe Knife

Everyone has heard it, and it is true for a mechanical reason. A dull edge needs more force to start a cut, and force is what you cannot control. When a dull blade finally bites, or skates off the surface instead, it moves fast and in a direction you did not choose, usually into the hand that was steadying the work. A sharp knife starts a cut with light pressure, follows the line you give it, and stops when you stop pushing. It also cuts cleanly, which matters if it does cut you, because a clean laceration closes and heals faster than a ragged one.

Keeping a knife sharp means touching up the edge before it is dull rather than after, a few strokes on a ceramic rod or a fine stone every week or two for a knife in daily use, and a proper sharpening on a stone when the touch-ups stop working. TEKTO blades are ground at about 20 degrees per side, and the sharpening guide walks through the whole method. The sharpness test tells you when it is time.

Grip, Direction and the Blood Circle

Hold the knife in a full-hand grip with the fingers wrapped around the handle and the thumb either wrapped or resting on the spine, and the blade pointing away from you. The thumb on the spine gives a push cut control and keeps the thumb away from the edge. The wrapped grip gives a hard cut strength. For fine work, choke up with the thumb and forefinger pinching the blade just ahead of the handle, which is how a chef holds a kitchen knife and how a carver holds a whittling knife. Whatever the grip, the edge faces away from your body and away from the hand holding the work, and the cut moves in that direction. The two questions to ask before every cut are where the blade will go if the material gives way suddenly, and where the blade will go if it skates off. If the answer to either is a hand, a leg or a wrist, change the setup before you cut.

Outdoors, Scouts teach the blood circle, which is worth keeping for life: hold the closed knife at arm's length and turn a full circle, and if you can touch anyone, you do not open the knife until they move. Indoors, the same idea is a clear bench and nobody reaching across it. The one grip to avoid is the one that puts the work in your palm and the edge pointing at it, which is how people cut avocados, bagels and apples into their hands. Put the work on a board.

Opening and Closing a Folding Knife

More people are cut closing a folder than opening it. Opening is simple: hold the handle in a full grip, keep the fingers of that hand out of the arc the blade will swing through, and open it with the thumb stud, hole or flipper so the blade swings away from your fingers. On a flipper like the F1 Alpha or F2 Bravo, press down and back on the tab and let the bearings do the work. Do not wrap a finger around the front of the handle where the tab is. When the blade is open, confirm the lock has engaged, by feel on a liner lock and by the click on a button lock, before you apply any force. A lock that has not fully engaged is the folding knife's one dangerous moment.

Closing is where the fingers get caught, because the blade is swinging toward the handle and the hand is holding the handle. On a liner lock, push the lock bar aside with the thumb, start the blade closing with the index finger on the spine, then move the thumb out of the way and finish closing with the finger on the spine, so no finger is ever between the edge and the handle. On a button lock like the F3 Charlie or F4 Echo, press the button with the thumb and close the blade with the index finger on the spine. The button is on the side, so the thumb is already clear. Never flick a folder closed by snapping the wrist, and never close it with the palm. The anatomy guide shows where each lock sits.

OTF and Automatic Knives

An OTF automatic removes the closing problem, because the blade travels straight in and out of the handle and your fingers never cross its path. It adds two habits of its own. First, the blade fires at the touch of the slider, so the knife is held with the front of the handle pointed at nothing you care about, and the slider is run with the thumb of the hand holding it, never by a finger reaching around. Treat the front of the handle the way you treat the muzzle of anything. Second, retract the blade fully before the knife goes back in a pocket, and confirm by feel that the slider is home. The A3 Delta, which is a side-opening automatic rather than an OTF, has a safety switch beside the button for exactly this reason: engage it when the knife is in a pocket and release it to fire.

Two more. A double-action OTF is designed so that if the blade meets resistance on the way out, it disengages from the mechanism rather than forcing through, which is why you never fire one into something to test it and why you never put a finger in front of the handle to feel for the blade. If the blade is loose after a misfire, the fix is to pull it fully out by hand until it clicks and then retract it normally. The reset guide shows it. And keep the track clean, because lint and grit in the handle are what cause misfires. The OTF cleaning guide covers that.

Fixed Blades and Sheaths

A fixed blade has no lock to fail and no closing stroke, and its risks are the draw, the return and the work it invites. Draw a sheathed knife with the hand on the handle and the other hand nowhere near the mouth of the sheath, and sheath it the same way, with the spine against the back of the sheath and the edge away from the fingers, looking at what you are doing. A Kydex sheath like the one on the X1 Atlas clicks when the blade is home. Listen for it and tug once to confirm. Carry the sheath where the handle is not going to be driven into you if you fall, which usually means the side or the small of the back rather than the front of the belt.

The work a fixed blade invites is harder than pocketknife work: splitting kindling, cutting rope under load, dressing game. Batoning, splitting wood by striking the spine of the blade with a stick, is safe with a full-tang knife like the Atlas if the knife is driven straight down into the end grain, the hand holding the handle stays above the blade, and nobody is in front of it. Dressing game is the single most common way experienced outdoorsmen cut themselves, because the hand steadying the animal is inside the cut. Keep it behind the edge, cut with the tip up, and stop when you are tired. The hunting knife guide goes through it.

Passing, Setting Down and Walking With a Knife

Pass a folder closed and a fixed blade in its sheath whenever you can. When you cannot, hold the knife by the spine of the blade with the edge facing you and the handle toward the other person, say "knife" or "handle," and do not let go until they say they have it. Set a knife down closed or sheathed, and if it must be open, lay it flat with the edge away from the edge of the table and the point away from where anyone will reach. Walk with a closed folder in the pocket or a sheathed fixed blade on the belt. If you must walk with an open blade, hold it at your side with the point down and the edge back, and walk, which is the one rule every child is taught and every adult forgets. And if a knife falls, let it fall. Step back, let it land, pick it up afterward. Nobody has ever been seriously hurt by a knife hitting the floor, and many people have been hurt grabbing for one.

Work Habits: Boards, Boxes and the Other Hand

Most cuts happen at work, and the work is usually small. The habits that prevent them:

• Put the work on something. A board, a bench, the ground. Not your lap, not your palm, not held in the air by the other hand.
• Keep the other hand behind the edge. Hold the work from the side or from behind the line of the cut, never in front of it. If the knife slips, it should travel into open space.
• Cut boxes with the tip, not the belly. Score the tape with the first half inch of blade, pull toward you along the seam with the box on a surface and the off hand well back, and do not reach into a box with the knife open.
• Do not pry, twist or lever. A blade that snaps sends a sharp fragment somewhere. A blade that slips out of a pry sends the whole knife. That is what the glass breaker on an F1 Alpha or A5 Spry Mini is for, not the blade.
• Do not use a knife as a screwdriver, can opener or chisel. Every one of those is a slip into the hand.
• Wear a cut-resistant glove on the off hand for repetitive cutting, carving or anything with a frozen or slick surface. They cost a few dollars and are the single most effective piece of safety gear for a knife user.
• Stop when you are tired, cold or distracted. The last cut of the day is the one that goes wrong.

When You Get Cut

You will, eventually, and the first ten minutes decide most of what happens next. Put the knife down. Press a clean cloth or gauze firmly on the cut and keep pressing, without lifting to look, for ten minutes by a clock. Nearly all knife cuts stop bleeding under steady direct pressure. Raise the hand above the heart while you press. When the bleeding has stopped, rinse the cut under clean running water, dry around it, and close it with an adhesive bandage or wound-closure strips, pulling the edges together.

Get the cut looked at by a doctor or an urgent care clinic if the bleeding has not stopped after ten to fifteen minutes of firm pressure, if the cut gapes open or is deep enough to see fat or tendon, if any finger is numb, tingling or will not move normally, if the cut is on a joint or across the palm, if it was made by a dirty blade and your last tetanus shot was more than five years ago, or if in the following days it becomes red, swollen, warm or starts to drain. Cuts on the hand can involve tendons and nerves that sit just under the skin, and a tendon that is partly cut can tear through later if it is not repaired. That is the one injury from a pocketknife that has lasting consequences, and it is the reason the "it's just a cut" instinct is worth overriding on the hand. This is general first-aid information, not medical advice.

Storage, and the Next Generation

Store a folder closed and a fixed blade sheathed, in a drawer, a case or a block rather than loose in a bag where a hand will go looking for something else. If there are children in the house, store knives where they cannot reach or open them, which for a determined child means high and latched, not high, and when they are old enough, teach them. A child who has been taught the blood circle and the closing stroke is safer than one who has only been told to stay away, and the guide to teaching children knife safety covers the age, the first knife and the rules. For the knife itself, keep it clean and oiled so the lock and pivot work the way they are meant to. A gummy lock is a safety problem, not a maintenance one. The storage guide and the cleaning guide have the details.