The Bard-Parker knife is one of the very few dental labratory tools that I find essential.  The blade mounts in the handle the same way as a regular surgical scalpel.  Surgical scalpel handles are made from stainless steel and the traditional handles aren’t particularly ergonomic for our hobbies.  The mount for the surgical blades is smaller than the mount for the laboratory blades, so Bard-Parker has two versions of the plastic handle.  The green #5 accepts the surgical sized blades and the #6 is for the larger laboratory blades.  I generally don’t care for the feel of #5 handle and blade combination because the blades are too small and out of proportion with the feel of the plastic handle, but because of some of the specialty shaped blades, it’s a good handle to have around.  99% of the time a much better blade and handle combination is the standard #6 handle with a #25 blade.

No matter what type of hobby knife you use .. the first thing that goes is the tip ... so I always keep a small pocket sharpening stone handy to touch up the tip ... Especially when I am trimming decals or masking.  My favorite sharpening stone is this small India stone from Norton ... It cuts quicker than a hard Arkansas surgical stone and seems to leave a sharper edge ... It won’t gouge like Japanese wet stones so you will probably have the same stone for many years.