Painting knives vs palette knives

Bobbie - eternal experiment!  Edges of credit cards have innumerable uses, and not only in watercolour and acrylic; they're excellent for scraping out, and shaping colour: I wonder sometimes what we ever did without them; then we have matches, cocktail sticks, colour shapers, bits of dowelling - there's no end to what we can use to make marks. I was interested in your comment about the Bob Ross knife - I've not used one, I just thought the shape was useful: there are other makers of these chisel-type knives you might find better suited to you - in theory they should work well, but theory yields to practice ... that's a very useful point, from your personal experience.  God knows, there's very little else I can recommend from the Ross stable!  I'm sure he never understood how much damage he did to the mastery of painting technique: worked for him (he thought) so why not share it?  Anyway - I don't want to wriggle down THAT rabbit-hole again any sooner than I have to. 

Oh look!  A rabbit-hole!  Down I go...... I looked for what I could find from Ross's videos which would be of any use at all: I looked on the Bob Ross Inc website (which fairness demands I point out never had anything to do with him).  The easel - looked sturdy enough: but not cheap, and there are better ones out there; the brushes - fine if you were smoothing plaster, or repainting the kitchen; the paint - awful; just awful glutinous gobbets of gunk; the palette - transparent ... a good size, but do you want to be able to see through your palette?  How do you judge colour?   So - the knife; OK, maybe the knife.... yes, I could see a use for the knife; well, specifically, one use - making horizontal marks, drawing lines in paint and with paint.   Further thought, occasioned by Bobbie and Alan, prompts the question - why?  Why, and how often, would you WANT to paint long or short horizontals, and wouldn't a chisel-edge on a flat brush do the job just as well if not better?  And now I learn that the implement is a clumsy lump of plastic in the hand, my previous mild advocacy of it is exposed, to the world, as egregious error! To summarize, then: Bob Ross couldn't draw: his grasp of perspective wobbled like a jelly in an earthquake; and the Bob Ross products are every bit as bad as he was - but I go to one of my favourite art supply websites and there they are, masquerading as professional, or at least as serious, products for artists: and those who don't know any better, which appears to be characteristic of the people who supply them, get taken in.  Just don't be: now I know that the one product in which I invested any hope at all is actually verging on useless I can happily condemn the entire range - something very few other ranges entirely deserve, though some come close.  And of those - unless they leave a substantial sum in the old blasted oak, I shall name names....  

I'd watch you!  I'm sure many would - but TV loves trash.