Hey, was wondering if anybody might have any tips for me! I've been using a Worksharp Knife & Tool Sharpener MK2, and have this weird issue where my knives are coming out sharper on one side than the other.

I know that shouldn't really make any sense, but I've got a knife right now that I have no problem shaving hairs off my arm with, but only with one side. If I flip it over, no matter what angle I approach with, I can't knock away a single hair. The bevel is also significantly wider on one side, which I also can't figure out how to correct but I'm sure is related.

I can't tell if this has anything to do with the fact that the belt rubs against the steel in different directions when sharpening each side (up and into the blade on the left side, down and away from the blade on the right), or if perhaps this might be an error in technique on my part. As far as I can tell, I'm keeping the blade in line with the guides properly and not deviating significantly.

For what it's worth, I'm working with a hawkbill blade. Meaning that I have to lower the knife as I draw it through the sharpener, to keep contact with the belt. I know this allows for a lot of room for error; I've been making an effort to ensure that I'm keeping the alignment correct the whole time, but it's wholly possible that this may be where I'm messing something up.

Any ideas if I might be doing something wrong or something I could try to get a more even edge on both sides?

And.

My.

Axe.

That's it. That's the joke.

The Inevitable Conclusion

...

^What?^ ^Okay,^ ^fine.^

...

This is the "Snake Eye Tactical" CE-5079BL. Like many of its ilk, its name doesn't exactly ring melodious.

And yes, that is "Snake Eye," singular. Not "Snake Eyes," like throwing a pair of ones.

I have no idea why. Whoever-it-is is very consistent with this nomenclature, at least, regardless of the fact that your brain's been trained to get it wrong every single time.

The CE-5079BL is, without a doubt...

...Yeah, that wasn't much of a stretch.

What this is, is, a frame locking spring assist folder with a very funky blade shape. The way it's designed is as if a 14 year old D&D nerd just drew what they thought a fancy dwarven bearded battle axe ought to look like, from the top down. And that metaphor is more apt than you'd think.

That's because there's very little else axelike about the CE-5079BL. Its blade has none of the wedge-profiled thickness of an axe, for instance. It's just a regular old 0.110" thick slab of "440" series stainless steel, the exact species of which is unspecified. The bevel is hollow ground, not convex as you'd expect an axe to be.

And then of course it's dinky. It's 7-7/8" long open and 4-1/2" long closed.

I've blocked out a half an hour on the schedule here for the argument about how the blade length ought to be measured. The whole thing from the forward end of the handle to the tip is 3-3/8", but the actual sharp part is only 1-7/8" and the rest of it is largely empty air. Neither of these figures match the manufacturer's stated blade length of "2.75 inches."

The CE-5079BL's got one other measurement going for it, as well. It is extra, extra broad. Easily 1-7/8" across when it's closed thanks to the wide handle and upswept horn on the peak of the blade.

Here it is with a selection of other wide bois picked at random from my collection. If you absolutely need to pick a superlative, I think the CE-5079BL has the highest breadth-to-cost ratio out of anything I've ever owned since it was only $15. I did not dig into this in extreme detail, but it may just take the crown for the broadest folding knife I now own, period.

The CE-5079BL's looks are also very funky. The handles are steel of some description with this groovy machined finish -- both figuratively and literally -- that winds up a striated surface that really catches the light. I like this blue incarnation best out of the available options, and the accent color is very shiny and almost appears... anodized? I wasn't aware you could color anodize steel like that. Maybe it's something else. In any event, the blade is finished the same way.

It does sport clip that is even deep carry, if you feel like being perverse and actually bringing this with you anywhere. Although the clip is not reversible, lacking screw holes in the opposite handle slab. Which is weird, come to think of it. I mean, just look at the thing. It's obviously not like anybody was afraid to drill any holes in it.

I'm going to keep showing off pictures of the shiny handle slabs for no other reason than I think they're so damn neat.

Anyway, this is a spring assisted opener and can be set off either via the ambidextrous thumb studs or the flipper on the back. But that said I found the spring action on mine to be... what's the word... iffy. Often it would not lock open unless I rotated the blade out all the way manually.

I figured out why pretty quickly.

Ever wondered why you haven't received anything coated in Cosmoline recently? That's because the world's entire supply has been used up by packing it into this thing.

I think this was so liberally gooped by the factory with the expectation that this would be a lubricant, but I'll be damned if the stuff doesn't look and smell just like Cosmoline, so it probably is. Which, I should point out to anyone blessedly unaware, solidifies over time.

Needless to say I cleaned the bugger very thoroughly on both sides of all of its surfaces before taking this picture.

I will also mention that this zigzaggy spring for the assist action is certainly a novel way to do it, and not one that I've seen before. Maybe I just haven't taken apart enough spring assisted knives.

The CE-5079BL is a weird hybrid design with two handle scales, both steel, but only one liner. It is a frame or body locking knife, with the bent lock portion being on the side that hasn't got the separate liner. I think the liner serves no other purpose than to keep the spring in place, and provide a pocket for it to wiggle around in and do its thing.

Here's the hardware. The shiny blue accents around the pivot are clearly just ordinary flat washers that have had the same bluification process as the other parts applied to them, whatever it is. There's nothing else clever in there whatsoever. The pivot screw is completely round, with no anti-rotation flat. The pivot rides on the customary grubby Nylon washers. And the halves are separated with two shiny but otherwise very basic round threaded spacers. All the screws are the same save the two spacer screws that must pass through both a scale and a liner, and are thus longer.

Oh, and while the pivot screws are probably meant to be T8 Torx head, the male screw on my example actually fit a T9 driver much better. The female side solidly fit a T8. Search me on that one.

Whatever these are dipped in to make them blue, the process was clearly applied to the entirety of every part. The accent work is then accomplished by machining the rest of the part which exposes the shiny metal underneath. I now know this, because the pocket beneath the pivot screw washer also has this finish in it, albeit unevenly, and despite the fact that it'll never be seen. If I had to guess I would say the handle scales are probably cast, then dipped, then machined afterwards. I can think of no explanation for the weird slope present in that pocket.

This may go some way towards explaining why the entire assembly is somewhat canted. Not just the blade in the channel, but the entire knife. If you rest it on a flat surface, it just always sits off kilter.

The Summation Or Whatever, Again

There's no getting around it that the CE-5079BL is probably precisely suited to the type of purchaser where it is likely to be sold, vis-a-vis the bong shop.

Otherwise, the blade shape really begs the question of what the heck anyone is supposed to use this for or how. With the tail of it ending in a wicked point aimed right back at the user, this is probably one of those deals where it's just as dangerous for whoever's holding it as anyone else.

It looks cool as all hell, though.

Ring-da-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding...

..bom-bom-baaaaaaoo.

Usually when I show you guys this kind of malarkey I have to sheepishly admit to you that I have absolutely no idea who made it or where it comes from. This time, though, that's not the case. This knife was made by none other than "Heng Hui Hardware Industrial Co., Ltd."

I know this because they were kind enough to stamp it into the blade.

I've probably owned this knife for going on 16 years at this point so in light of that you may be surprised to learn that Heng Hui apparently somehow still exist, and they're still cranking out chintzy knives, among other things. Nothing quite like this, though. Here is clearly their high water mark.

Our little tradition is not completely abolished, though. While I know with certainty who made this, I can at the very least tell you I don't know what its designation is. There's nothing else marked on it. I can't find this knife for sale anywhere anymore except here, which is in Czech, and it's labeled "Z3594." This may or may not be the manufacturer's designation or it might just be the SKU it's sold under on this particular site and therefore means nothing. On this point the internet remains silent, and the trail runs cold. But given that the URL calls it item "1660" instead I think the former is as good a theory as any. So I'm sticking with it. (And while we're at it, just get a load of those product photos. Phowar.)

Regardless of what who is calling it where, the Z3594 is obviously a balisong knife. It's got one thing going for it, which is the rather hard to miss ring on the heel of the blade. Obviously I bought it for no other reason than this.

And I know what you're thinking.

Yes, you absolutely can.

The ring is 0.890" in diameter 22.62mm, and it's easily big enough to get a thumb through. This is no dinky decorative drilling, barely suitable for sticking a lanyard through. No, it's large, ostentatious, and ready for you to grab this knife confidently by the scruff of the neck and ninja forth with it right the fuck into the night.

To assist in this, there actually is a pocket clip on the other side which is a surprising inclusion. As usual it's on the wrong side of the handle, but I can excuse it this time because it keeps the ring positioned away from your pocket seam, which realistically is the only way you're going to get this thing in your pants anyhow. And all that said, the clip works well and feels pretty good. I can't even come up with something incisive and sarcastic to say about it. It's fine.

You might think at first blush that the ring would get in the way when you're flipping this thing around, but it really doesn't. The Z3594 is actually competently designed in that respect, which is a thing that sounded much less absurd before I saw it written down just now. You'll note that the ring is actually positioned such that at rest it's on the bite side handle, which is not the one you're normally manipulating. The extreme curve throughout the whole knife allows the pivots to be very offset and that also keeps the ring out of your way during normal operation. Once you get the knife fully open, though, it's right there in the perfect position to get your index finger through.

Update: All of the above is surely because this knife appears to be a clone -- albeit not a perfect one -- of Terry Guinn's "Ring Fighter," which was a short production run semicustom (20 or 39 units, depending who you ask). Thus any design competency present is certainly borrowed.

And, competently designed is not to say that the Z3594 is competently made.

Because it isn't.

For instance, these casting flaws are really rather laughable. My granny could do a better job casting the metal in a pot on her stove.

I have no idea what that pattern is supposed to be, either. A row of bunny ears? Deer tracks? Kamina's sunglasses? Beats me.

This is definitely a throw back to those good old/bad old days when every piece of Chinese cutlery you were able to lay your hands on could be counted on to be a source of never ending hilarity. The handle slabs are clearly cast, so it's a puzzle how they also managed to utterly fail to manage to be flat at least on one side. The tips of both handles where the pivot screws go through exhibit this pronounced flare, which can't be improved with any amount of dicking with the screw tension, no matter how hard you try.

Thus, then, as you would expect the pivot action is very, er, free. And it is, because the entire thing rattles like a pair of castanets. It's a red letter day indeed when I can say that a balisong fails so hard at the wiggle test...

...That it's not only possible but downright trivial to cause the latch to miss the opposite handle entirely.

But never mind the quality. Feel the price. I don't know how much I paid for this back in the day, but it was surely less than $10. You couldn't pry my wallet open for anything more even if you had a crowbar ninety feet long.

Of course anywhere there is machine work it is visibly crude. There are no sharp edges on the metalwork other than the cutting one, the one that's supposed to be there, but as an example the inner surface of the ring is more than a bit rough and I'm convinced its shape is actually stamped rather than milled. It works well enough, but feels distinctly unrefined and could probably benefit from with a pass with a Dremel -- a job which I've been putting off for all these years. And plan to continue to do so.

Since I have a reputation to uphold around here I think I am obliged to provide you the above, so I did. For archival purposes, I left all of the components exactly as filthy as they were when delivered.

The Z3594 actually wasn't too tough to take apart at least to the point you see here. This despite its best efforts, up to and including all of its screw heads being not Torx like we've become accustomed to, but rather Allen heads which manage to not quite properly fit any size bit I own -- neither metric nor fractional inch.

The screws came prefastened from the factory with one of only two torque values: Finger-tight, or irrevocably cranked. Luckily for us, enough of them were the former that I was able to get all four handle slabs apart and extract the blade. The knife is spaced out by two Chicago screws forming the pivots, and one simple threaded barrel on each handle, down towards the tail. Among the screws that would not come out were one of each of the spacer screws, and one but not the other of the screws holding down the clip -- which helpfully arrived pre-stripped from the factory.

Here's a lineup of... most... of the hardware. No fancy features are evident whatsoever. No anti-rotation flats on the pivot screws, no fancy decorative screw heads, no springs, not even any pins.

The blade rides on what are easily the grimiest plastic washers I have ever seen in my life. At first glance I thought whatever is all over them might be graphite, if we could be so lucky, but I think in reality it's just dirt. Some of it could be cleaned off. Most of it couldn't.

The blade works thusly, and when it's dismounted you can see how offset the pivot points are from each other to accommodate the high Banana Quotient present in the assembled knife. Strangely, the press job on the kicker pins is actually pretty good -- among the better examples I've seen on flea market grade cutlery, actually. Weird.

Above: You, versus the guy she tells you not to worry about.

The Z3594 probably wishes it were a Benchmade Model 42. It's probably got pinups of it all over its room, and spends all afternoon listening to Depeche Mode and Morrissey while wistfully gazing into a mirror at itself and halfheartedly doing curls using weighs made of balsa wood and leaded Chinese paint, dreaming one day it might grow up to be half as good.

Proportionally, it looks as if somebody took a Model 4x, clamped it in a vise, and whacked it with a hammer until it bent. From the tip of the tail to its forwardmost kicker pin, it's almost exactly the same length as from the tail of a the Model 42 to its tang pin. That can't be a coincidence.

All in, the Z3594 is precisely 6" long. Open it's 9-1/8", and the taking of both measurements is confounded in no small part by the radical curvature in it when it's both open and closed. The blade is 3-15/16" long measured from the tip of its scimitar-like profile to the forwardmost point on the nearest handle, with the one near the edge winding up noticeably closer to the front than the other one by the time it's open. The blade is 0.098" thick or 2.51mm, and is made of an unspecified alloy which is presumably stainless. Being entirely of low-tech materials, it weighs a not inconsiderable 197.8 grams or 6.98 ounces.

The taper is hollow ground -- the cheapest kind of grind, of course -- and exhibits those ratty old machine marks we all know and love by now. I can't say anything about the edge because mine is not original. Perhaps unwisely, I elected to sharpen mine some years ago. I didn't put a lot off effort into it but alas, what was once the crude and sawtoothy original factory edge is now lost to time forever. However shall we cope.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There is a Venn diagram. On the one side, the Illustrious Pantheon of Knives with Cool Rings In Them. On the other, objects purporting to solve problems that most likely don't actually exist. Somewhere in the middle rests this knife. I couldn't tell you exactly where.

"Hey kid, do you find your balisong knife too hard to hold onto? Of course you do, nerd, that's the point!"

So maybe it's not built very well. But despite everything stacked up against it, the little Heng Hui actually manages to do something kind of special: In the world of balisong knives, it brings something genuinely new to the table. The ring might be silly but so are balisong knives in general, really, when you step back a bit and look at it. I won't go so far as to say that there are "myriad" ways you can use the ring to add to your repertoire of spinning tricks but there are certainly at least few, and thus there are things you can do with this that you can't do with most other balisongs. That's got to count for something.

It's just a shame that it's... you know.

Crap.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the CIVIVI Typhoeus.

(Gesundheit.)

No, the Typhoeus is actually named as far as anyone can tell after the monster from Greek mythology. You know the one -- so tall his head brushed the stars, controlled the wind and breathed fire, had snakes for a butt.

What?

No, really.

Anyway, this incarnation of Typhoeus is not, in fact, so large it brushes the stars. It's actually pretty compact for what it is, which is a 6-1/4" long fixed blade knife shown here in stylin' purple, with a very modern looking upswept drop point blade that's 2-3/8" long. It weighs 81.1 grams or 2.86 ounces, making it quite light compared to many other fixed blade knives.

Actually, no. A fixed blade isn't quite what the Typhoeus is. But it's not a folder, either. In fact, it's kind of hard to describe just what it is, which I guess is exactly why it's here.

You see, it has a trick.

Thanks to its articulated handle, it transforms before your very eyes...

Into a punch dagger. (Yes, another one.)

Well, "dagger" is the wrong word, too. It's only single edged. But still. Can your zooty Zero-Tolerance-Benchmade-Emerson-5.11-Strider-Chris-Reeve even do that? I submit to you that it cannot.

CIVIVI themselves call this an "adjustable fixed blade knife," which I guess is one way to describe it.

Mind you, that's because the one thing it doesn't do is fold. Well, okay, it self-evidently does because you just watched it do so. But it doesn't, like, fold fold. Not in such a way that the blade can be packed up within the handle.

Therefore it comes with this leather sheath, which despite being decently made is unfortunately is rather horrid in how it's designed. That's a shame, really, because the Typhoeus itself is actually pretty well built. The sheath holds the knife only in its punch-dagger configuration, and you can either pull it as such or give it a little twist when you draw to convert it into its traditional mode in the process.

But the sheath is one of those ghastly fold-over retention flap jobbies with a chunky crude button snap on it, which makes it impossible to draw quickly and just plain old annoying to draw at all, what with the damn flap getting in the way and the snap scraping you and knocking against everything. Undoubtedly it would be better served by an injection molded or Kydex sheath with some kind of passive retention. But it hasn't got one of those, at least not from the factory, and not until I can be bothered pressing my own. So despite superficial appearances this is not in any way a self-defense knife. On the bright side, storing the knife in its punch configuration shortens the overall length considerably to just 4-1/2" (albeit now at 3" wide) which means it won't stick up as far to poke you in the ribs while you're carrying it. If only CIVIVI marketed this as a selling point. Instead, they don't seem to mention it at all.

The Typhoeus' blade is, depending on how you look at it, either a design sans ricasso, or is one of those hip and trendy "all choil" dealybobbers. When you're holding it in what's for lack of a better word normal knife mode, your index finger goes in that space naturally. There is no jimping anywhere on it but the G-10 handle slabs are both milled and textured, so keeping a hold on it isn't too tough and its design lends itself to easy controlability. The upswept edge has a cutting profile that presents the entire length as a functional belly, making it quite usable.

In punch dagger mode, a narrow tang is revealed behind the bulk of the blade which goes in between your fingers like so. The ensemble is not symmetrical and the blade is noticeably offset in the handle. While you can hold it either way 'round you'll probably find it more comfortable to have the shorter end of the handle towards your thumb, which is how it will naturally fall if you switch it from the traditional grip to punch dagger configuration anyway.

The lack of a ricasso does present a bit of a problem here, though, because it's easy to nick yourself with the corner of the blade at its base. Even moreso if you're trying to get a grip on it in a hurry, which is probably a further ding against it for self-defense duty. I probably wouldn't want to use it as such, anyway -- there are much better options available.

I was going to take the Typhoeus all apart but I decided at the last moment I couldn't be arsed. The pivots do ride on bronze washers, though, which you can see peeking through the gaps. In total it has four pivot points, with two linkages between both handle halves.

The pivots don't present any perceptible wiggle at all, and the mechanism moves quite freely, to the point that you can just flick it back and forth between modes. This is sure to amuse anyone to no end.

Well, it'll amuse you to no end, and annoy all bystanders in the process. That sounds like a win/win to me.

The Typhoeus' action does not lock in either position. What keeps it there is your grip on the handles, which cam themselves together as you squeeze. Notably, pressing on the spine of the blade with your thumb does make it want to start folding up, and there's probably no jimping there specifically to discourage you from doing that. Keep your fingers instead on the handle itself around the scales and it's not going anywhere.

The made is made of 14C28N steel which CIVIVI take great pains to point out as Swedish. Despite this it is still very much made in China. The blade is 0.119" thick, and I am very pleased to report that it's flat ground. It has an attractive satin finish on it, and bears no markings other than...

...This nearly microscopic steel descriptor laser engraved into it. It bears no other inscriptions or maker's mark, although it does have CIVIVI's "C" logo as an emblem on the head of the center pivot screw:

The Typhoeus is quite compact for a "fixed" knife, as evidenced by how much smaller it is even than a bog standard CQC-6K.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Typhoeus is a fidget toy par excellence, but at anywhere from $65 to around $100 depending on which color variant you want, it's kind of tough to justify on that merit alone. Luckily, it's also competently manufactured and pleasantly functional in the bargain. If I were you, I'd look at it as a "fixed blade" style knife that's easier to carry than most by magically making itself shorter when you put it away.

It's a shame about the sheath. You'll probably have to add $10 worth of Kydex and rivets to your bill of materials.

Hello my friends, the day is once more / Just wait to see what we have in store / A silly knife no doubt, and one that is furthermore...

...Naughty.

I have on multiple occasions mentioned owning several knives with various aspects that the law finds it within itself to frown upon. And probably just as often, expressed my own personal conclusion that regulations outlawing this feature or that particular mechanism or the other shape or whatever are ultimately all very silly when viewed from the perspective of anyone familiar with, you know, reality. Byzantine knife laws make the least sense out of pretty much anything because at the end of the day blade is a blade, and there is self-evidently no such thing, for example, as a "high capacity assault knife." You could cut someone just as well with a 4" paring knife from the Dollar General as you could with the latest tactical spring loaded all black half serrated tanto point karambit switchblade from 5.11 or Emerson. Or a chunk of obsidian you've knapped on a rock, for that matter. One sharpened chunk of metal is much the same as any other from the standpoint of someone wanting to perform mischief with it -- or one having mischief performed upon them with it.

(And that's notwithstanding the racist motivations that underpin specifically the US federal switchblade ban, balisong bans, and "dirk and dagger" laws.)

But this. This is easily the single most likely thing I've got liable to keep a harebrained legislator up at nights worrying.

I've probably had it for about 20 years, and I'm pretty sure I bought it from BudK back in the day, when I was in one of my "get it before it's banned" moods.

Yes, this is a punch or push dagger. It is an early example of a brandless OEM Chinese special, so it never to my knowledge had any name or formal model designation, and while I can't find its exact ilk for sale anymore you can still find things online rather like it. If you prefer a brand name option, the Cold Steel FGX Push Blade leaps to mind. It has very little utilitarian purpose. This blade, it is made for stabbin'.

It's also made entirely of G-10, and is therefore completely nonmetallic.

In last week's column I gave an overview of a ceramic bladed folding knife, which doesn't have a metallic blade. But it still had a metallic liner, clip, and screws and therefore would not pass through a metal detector. This doesn't, and it absolutely would.

But even still, don't try it.

This "knife" is a 5" long, 0.175" thick, single flat piece of textured G-10, which has a cord wrapped T handle and a flat ground "blade" profile milled into it. For its part, G-10 is extremely strong for its weight (in total here only 17.4 grams or 0.62 ounces) and also surprisingly rigid. But considering that the thing and the whole of the thing is just fiberglass suspended in an epoxy resin, it doesn't actually hold an edge worth a damn. Like, at all.

So while there is an edge bevel on it, it's not even sharp enough to make a reliable letter opener. Even if you carefully sharpened it, it's unlikely it would last for more than one cut. The material is just too soft and prone to abrasion.

But that's not the point. The point is the point, and this knife is probably quite stout enough to Render Unto Caesar that what is Caesar's. Maybe not all 23 times, but certainly at least once. As a last-ditch holdout, it would seriously inconvenience anyone you punched with it although I imagine given how soft the material is it would utterly fail to penetrate leather or even the cheapest soft body armor.

Even so, I would not want to have this coming at me unexpectedly in the dark.

I present this to you bare, because although it did arrive with a belt sheath -- which ironically contained a large steel button snap on it, completely defeating its implied purpose -- this was made of fake leather so abysmal that it literally disintegrated into fish flakes while in storage in my knife cabinet. So I threw it away. Maybe some day I'll 3D print a replacement one, or something.

Whatevs. I'm obviously not carrying this thing with me anywhere, so I can't think of a single thing that's a lower priority.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's probably because of things like this that all of our airports have switched over from plain metal detectors to those backscatter X-ray machines now.

It's all theater, though. Both that and this. Despite what the hysterical shriekers would have you believe if they could, to the nearest couple of decimal points no one is actually smuggling these anywhere, nor are they the crux of any kind of secret terrorist plot, and while we're at it nor is anyone realistically going to successfully use it as a last-ditch self defense tool when so many other ones are both better and just as readily available.

Even so, it's sometimes nice to know that just by owning something like this you're pissing off the right people, even if only passively.

SCH404: Weirdness Not Found

"What the hell is this?" I hear you ask. "This looks like the ordinariest ordinary thing that ever ordinaried."

Here's a hint, by way of a magnet.

The Schrade SCH404 is indeed one of those from the burgeoning, but still uncommon, sector of ceramic bladed knives. But unlike the cheapie translucent ones that Amazon perpetually refuses to ship to your location, this one has a zirconia ceramic blade with this attractive obsidian finish.

The SCH404 is very old and thus very discontinued. So much so that it's actually pretty tough to find any info on it online. It's also one of those things that perfectly illustrate how us spacemen are already living in the future, but we're so numb to everything nowadays that the mere presence the advanced wondermaterials it's made out of -- things unfathomable to an observer from, say, fifty years ago -- now just feel like they're old hat.

And this was an inexpensive entry level knife in its day, not even remotely premium.

But despite its age, the SCH404 still has quite a few modern aspects about it. Like like the deep carry pocket clip, highly textured G10 scales, and slick single sided liner design. These are all highly desirable hallmarks of current EDC knives. Just in this case also including a blade made of a weird nonmetallic material.

For a start, this is a very light and compact knife. It's only 48.7 grams or 1.72 ounces -- that's actually 2.4 grams lighter than a Benchmade Bugout. It's just 3-3/4" long closed, 6-1/2" open, and sports a 2-3/4" long blade made of that groovy glassine ceramic. I think the only way to go lighter per displacement would be to pay a lot more and pony up for the likes of, say, a Böker Anti Grav.

The SCH404 is pretty thin overall as well. It's 0.346" thick not including the clip, with its lack of bulk in both dimensions and weight combining to make it very easy to carry. The ceramic blade is 0.80" thick.

Actually, let's talk about that blade.

Ceramic blades like this one are typically billed as "forever sharp." The zirconia ceramic material is incredibly hard, falling somewhere between 8.5 and 9 on the Moh's scale and thus much harder than steel. It resists abrasion to an incredible degree, and is essentially completely immune to the inherent abrasiveness of cardboard, sisal rope, leather, and even wood.

The glossy obsidian surface is a veritable beacon for fingerprints but not, it must be said, scratches. There is very little that can truly scratch the surface of the SCH404's blade. Basically only sapphire, diamond, and tungsten carbides -- all things you're unlikely to be trying to slice with your pocketknife on a daily basis.

But the material is also very brittle, and the thinner it is the more brittle it gets. Thus a ceramic knife like this chips near-microscopically rather than dulling via abrasion or the edge getting rounded down like a typical steel knife. It's also not a good idea to put any torsion on it at all, because the material would be prone to just snap.

And I know what you're thinking. No, this knife will not sail through a metal detector. The liner, clip, and screws are all made of plain old steel. So forget it. Only the blade and scales are nonmetallic.

It's a very good thing these come preground, because they are functionally impossible for a hobbyist to properly sharpen. Yes, you can theoretically do the job with resin bonded diamond stones but the process is arduous and difficult, and the penalty for failure is high. My example is very lightly used, so I can only imagine these tiny imperfections in the edge came from the factory. The SCH404 is not quite shaving sharp although it glides through paper and cardboard quite easily still. That's just as well, because if it were truly dull I probably wouldn't be too keen to do anything about it.

I dig the subtle refractive rainbow effect of the light playing off of the texture in the edge like a starling's wing. The SCH404's blade really is stunningly beautiful. The flat of the blade is literally mirror polished, to the point that it casts reflections. The machine marks, meanwhile, sparkle in the light. It's like waving a black diamond around.

The edge is also fortunately exactly mathematically true. As it bloody well ought to be, given all of the above. If it weren't, good luck trying to correct it.

So, I mentioned the Böker Anti Grav earlier, and I did that on purpose. That's because I suspect, but cannot prove, that this knife was actually OEM'ed by Böker using much of the same equipment, material, and template.

What clues me in is this highly distinctive five-holed spanner nut on the pivot, which is suspiciously reminiscent of the one on the Anti Grav and its sibling, the Anti MC. If so, that's huge -- that makes this an incredible poor man's version of that knife, especially considering that the former retails for about $195 nowadays. The main thing you're lacking is the zooty carbon fiber or titanium scales, but for the end-of-life retail cost of around $15 on this thing I'll sure take the $180 discount. So if that's true, there's the other half of the oddity surrounding this knife. We'll probably never know for sure.

I bothered to take a macro photo of the SCH404's model number etching, so I'm going to show it to you and nobody's going to stop me. Here it is.

Size wise, the SCH404 falls firmly into the compact category. It's basically the size of a Mini Bugout. Compared to the usual CQC-6K, there, it'll ride thoroughly unnoticed in your pocket.

The Inevitable Conclusion

You can't buy the SCH404 anymore, so there wasn't much point in me yammering on about it. But it's the only folding ceramic knife I own these days so it's the one you got.

Ceramic knives like these -- in their pocket knife incarnations, anyway, and not as the fairly ubiquitous cheap white kitchen knives -- shine for basically one and only one purpose. If your workflow involves cutting a lot of cardboard in a day, something like this absolutely will save you from endless resharpenings or having to go through box cutter blades like popcorn.

Like many things in my collection, both those I've shown you and ones I haven't gotten around to yet, the SCH404 is a bit of a relic. It's a peculiar combination of materials, construction, and price point we're not liable to see the likes of again. At least, not for what it cost when it was available.

I'm almost feeling like I'm being personally called out, here.

This is the "TZGUO" model Q19. As I'm sure you're getting tired of me telling you, both the brand and the model on this thing really don't mean much; you can find this and many of its near identical siblings wherever Chinese white-box goods are sold, under a near infinite array of names and non-brand monikers. This particular instance came from Amazon, hence the unpronounceable five letter combination. The fact that it sneakily violates the "no balisongs on Amazon" rule is just delicious icing on the cake of overt cheekiness. You can also find these all over AliExpress and probably Wish and Temu by now, too, where they're cheaper and you can score one for about $35. The search term you want is "titanium design balisong," apparently.

But never mind all that. Just check this thing out.

The Q19 is a balisong utility knife. It takes standard Stanley style trapezoid blades, as are readily available everywhere.

It has a spring loaded latch, too.

Does that remind you of a particular knife? It certainly reminds me of one... Mine!

Now, I don't think I've been scooped, here. Rather, I think this is a case of convergent evolution, as it were, with both myself and whoever is churning these things out arriving at some similar design conclusions for similar reasons.

And it turns out I like The Q19. I've actually been using it as my daily driver for about the past two weeks, which is why you haven't seen me blathering about much of anything else in the interim. And this will go a long way towards explaining the tape gunk stuck to the blade in some of these pictures.

The Q19 is, as implied by its product description, made of titanium. Well, a lot of it is, anyway. The handle scales and latch certainly are. A magnet reveals that the blade carrier and clip are actually steel. That's fine, and the combination of materials adds up to a total weight of 76.5 grams or 2.7 ounces exactly.

It's definitely more of an "EDC" size and not a competition sized knife, measuring out at 4-9/16" long when closed including the tail of the latch sticking out, and precisely 7" long when open with a typical blade installed. It's square in profile with flat sided handle scales, 0.416" thick not including the clip.

Said clip is a traditional design and rides in a little pocket machined into one of the handle slabs. Of course it's not reversible, with no matching pocket on the other side, because this is in accordance with the deeply rooted worldwide conspiracy among all balisong manufacturers everywhere designed specifically to annoy me in particular, wherein it is also on the wrong side of its handle.

Ahem.

Anyway, the heel of the blade contains a slotted screwdriver tip or, as it's described in the specs, a "pry bar." And the hook on the end of the latch functions as a bottle opener. The manufacturer is thus pathologically driven to bill this as a multi-tool.

Fair enough, actually. The tailhook does open bottles like nobody's business -- provided you manage to lever it the right way around, and don't try to use it backwards.

I spent some time trying to research what the Q19 is a knockoff of and ultimately came up empty. If anything, the closest I can come up with is the Artisan ATZ-1823PO, the now discontinued utility knife version of their Kinetic Tool thing. This certainly has a T shaped latch strongly reminiscent of the Artisan one, although that isn't spring loaded and this is. And the Artisan tool has that weird combination switchblade/balisong action which this certainly doesn't.

Annoyingly, then, the Q19 appears to be a more-or-less bespoke design that against all expectation actually turns out to be pretty good. Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are. That's not how these things are supposed to go.

Its action is excellent, for a start. The titanium handles are fairly light but the Q19's balance is spot on, with the center of gravity remaining well inside the handles and not out in the blade carrier. The pivots exhibit no drag and are totally consistent in their nearly complete lack of friction throughout the entire range of travel. The rebound is pleasant and distinct, without setting up any vibrations or resonances in the handles. And thanks to having an extension spring driven design ripped off directly from Benchmade, the latch is held out and away from the handles at all times and can't strike either one during manipulation. It just feels good overall.

You would think that the bottle opener hook would make it snaggy as all hell but somehow it doesn't. The knife is thin enough and rides against your pocket tightly enough that it doesn't seem to cause an issue. The only real fly in the ointment I can see from a design perspective is the prybar tip sticking out of the end, which might get in the way if you're trying to do over-the-finger spin tricks. I guess if it bothers you, you could just grind it off. It's a $35 knife with no collector's value. Who cares?

Hier ist Der Viggletesten.

The Q19 scores favorably here, exhibiting very little wiggle and absolutely zero tap of the blade carrier against the insides of the handles.

Yes, this is a $35 knife wherein a significant portion of it is constructed of titanium, and it has ball bearing pivots. Nice ones, too. And the inside faces of the handles are pocketed for the bearings, so this wasn't a case of some existing design somebody just decided to slap bearings in and add $2 to the bill of materials. No, it was designed for them from the start.

Here's the latch spring mechanism, which is dead simple and suspiciously similar to that of the Benchmade Model 42 and subsequent knives. It will spring open from either the latched or unlatched positions if you give the handles a hearty squeeze together.

The Q19 also has a Zen pin design without the need for kicker pins to be pressed through the blade carrier. This is just as well, because every time you see kicker pins on a cheap Chinese knife they're invariably pressed badly. In this they're just basic straight pins with no shoulders or fancy features, but they sit acceptably square when assembled and don't cause any problems or weirdness.

You might think at first blush that installing or changing a blade in this requires tools, based on the two little Torx screws on the blade carrier. But those are a cost cutting measure, not a mechanical necessity; they obviate the manufacturer from having to machine a narrow slot into the blade carrier and instead allow it to be assembled out of two pieces which has got to make it much easier to manufacture. Rather, the nubs that engage the cutouts in the blade are actually mounted on a flexible prong, which you can pull down with the aid of a fingernail just far enough to allow you slide it in and out. If you're chicken you can still install a blade the hard way, by removing those two screws and the top plate. But that's not actually necessary.

Again, this is highly reminiscent of how I do it on all of my printed utility knives. Obviously great minds think alike.

The pivot screws have anti-rotation flats and the handle slabs do indeed have matching D shaped cutouts in them for once -- on all four of them, even. Thus undoing the pivot screws is easy provided only that you start reefing on it from the correct side. There is no visual indicator on either of the screw heads which is the male side and which is the female. But you'll quickly discover that the female side refuses to turn, which clue you in pretty quickly. The Torx head on that side is thus ultimately just decorative. You can install the pivot screws either way around depending on whatever suits your fancy.

The Q19 comes in a pretty nice woven-textured box, and I was surprised to find that it even comes with a nearly complete set of replacement hardware inside as well. It comes with a spare clip, too, which may be an addition prompted by the smattering of reviews on Amazon bitching about said clip breaking. But I can't prove it. To be fair it is only held down by one screw, so I imagine if you were truly hopelessly uncoordinated it's possible you could rip the clip clean off of the knife. Remember, kids: The clip is for carrying the knife on the inside of your pocket, not for dangling it out in the open off of your belt to get snagged on every damn fool thing you might happen to pass by.

You get two replacement assembly screws (all five are the same, including the one mounting the clip), one each of the male and female pivot screws, one spacer barrel, and a clip. You don't get a replacement spring, though.

It also comes with a box of "WYNNS" utility knife blades, so you don't even have to get on your bicycle and pedal down to the hardware store to get your own. These aren't great, exactly, even easily outperformed in edge retention by those in my cheapo 100 pack from Lowes. But they'll do to start with. Of course you can mount any Stanley style blade in this provided it's thin enough to go in the slot, including fancy composite edged or even the forever-sharp ceramic ones.

Oh, and the handle slabs are completely interchangeable so when I put it back together I swapped the bite side slabs, so I could put the clip on the correct goddamn side of the knife. I will begrudgingly re-award the points I docked for this originally, even though it should have come this way from the factory in the first place. Dagnabbit.

While we're flaunting that Benchmade Morpho, though, let's do our usual size comparison thing.

The Q19 is actually very similar in proportions to the Model 32, the smaller of the two Morphos. It's smaller than my Rockhopper balisong, although not for any mechanical reason -- I just designed the Rockhopper to be longer than it strictly needs to be for comfort purposes.

Open it's the same story, although both the Q19 and my Rockhopper's blade carriers are shorter overall than a normal fully steel blade probably would be.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is pretty much the second coolest box cutter in the world. (The absolute coolest, of course, would be the one I designed. But I would say that, wouldn't I?)

In fact, the Q19 is way better in reality than it has any right to be. I can't find much of anything to complain about, really. It's actually built rather well, it's slick as all fuck, it has all the features, and the price is right, too.

Plus, I think it'd probably make a good introduction for anybody looking to get into balisongs. With a spring latch, titanium handles, and ball bearing pivots all in one package you really can't go wrong. And it's worth mentioning that it's significantly safer to be fucking around with than a normal live bladed balisong, for two reasons: One, you can just take the blade out of it if you feel like it. And two, even on the sharp "bite" side of the blade carrier, about a third of it has no edge exposed. Unless you're holding the handles really far down it's a fair bet you'll just whack the blunt part against your index finger rather than find yourself contributing an express blood donation.

Usually I spend all of my time with this type of thing damning with faint praise. Oh look at the little thing, it thinks it's a real knife, isn't that cute? But with the Q19, I can do no such thing.

It has all the hallmarks of crapness. It's a Chinese made, cheaply sold, generic and endlessly rebadged non-brand product that, for once, actually turns out to deliver 100% of what it promises. I'll be damned.

Okay, okay, this one is kind of a cheap shot.

Not just because this knife is cheap per se, although it definitely is: Only $6 at the moment. Rather, it's because I kinda-sorta posted it already.

But not really.

This knife has no real designation other than it's non-brand name, "Treszen(R)," and we are led to believe its model name is literally "EDC Pocket Knife." I have to wonder if that (R) there means whoever the hell is flogging these things on Amazon actually bothered to register their trademark in the US. Do you know, I'll bet you a nickel they didn't.

This knife bears more than a passing resemblance to one that I showed off in one of my very first Weird Knife Wednesday posts. That was the "SDOKEDC SD604A," and both that and this are very nearly clones of the Scorpiodesign Shapeshifter.

All three of the above are strong contenders for the king of knives that the uninitiated are guaranteed to never be able to figure out how to open. Just let motherfuckers find out you have one of these on you and they'll stop pestering you about borrowing your knife in a big hurry.

The action is this Rube Goldberg triple-jointed nonsense that achieves, at least according to the design goals of the Scorpiodesign original, a knife with an effective blade length longer than the handle is once it's deployed. If you find somehow that this was a void that absolutely needed filling in your life, well, here you go.

The product description goes on to describe it as, "Special Folding Method."

Yeah, that's for damn sure.

It doesn't really feature a lock as such, but when it's all folded out your grip on the handle forces the two halves to cam together, which effectively holds it open and prevents it from folding up on you.

The critical difference here is that the Treszen here is much, much smaller than its inspiration. Small enough that you realistically could actually carry it if you were so inclined, which means I like this incarnation a lot better than the others -- which, novelty aside, are entirely too large and doofy to actually keep on you. That's the SDOKEDC on the right, there, which is near as I can figure identical in dimensions to the original Shapeshifter. And on the left, the bog standard Kershaw CQC-6K.

The Treszen is 5-1/4" long when open and 4" long closed, which puts it well within the realm of actual EDC friendly sizes. It's also only 0.320" thick.

It's way slimmer than the SDOKEDC/Shapeshifter. It's about as thick as a Bugout, actually. But despite this, your EDC aspirations won't be helped in any way whatsoever by the complete lack of any kind of clip, lanyard hole, or even perfunctory ratty nylon belt pouch. You'll just have to let it slosh around in your pocket, I guess.

If it helps you any, though, it is extremely shiny.

That's because it is constructed entirely of metal. What kind of metal? Who knows. The best anyone can tell us is "high carbon steel." But because of this it weighs 61.3 grams overall or 1.16 ounces and feels denser in the hand than you'd expect. Its 2-3/16" blade has a drop point-ish profile that's not too weird to use for things, and is 0.096" thick.

The near mirror-polished surface is, of course, a complete magnet for both scratches and fingerprints. But damned if it doesn't give the thing an unexpectedly grown up vibe. This could, at least in dim lighting perhaps, pass for a gentleman's knife.

Playing with it is strangely satisfying, too. But that's only after you figure out the inherent fly in the ointment, which is that the tip of the blade by necessity pokes through one of the sections of the handle as a part of the opening process. And if you don't know this and you're not careful about it, it'll poke you, too.

I'll tell you what's not so elegant, though. The Treszen's build quality is actually kind of crap.

The edge grind features this rather hilarious chicane in it at the tip, for instance. I figure whoever had this on the grinding wheel must have sneezed right when they got to that part.

And but of course, the edge is gloriously out of true. At this rate, I would almost be disappointed if it weren't. For $6, would you really deprive yourself of the amusement, nay, sheer joy of spending an hour with your very best diamond stones bullying the edge back into shape?

To its credit, the Treszen actually does away with the ridiculous gaps between all the moving parts that the old SDOKEDC featured. Despite not actually being built that well in an objective sense, this helps in making it at least superficially feel quite a bit less naff. The main pivot where the blade slides down along its track is spaced out with these nylon washers, for instance, which probably help reduce the mechanism's friction from completely untenable to merely absurd, and also result in a fairly low amount of wiggle in the blade once it's deployed.

I was going to take the Treszen apart to show you this, but I'm ashamed to admit that, well... I can't.

That's because while it's theoretically held together with Torx screws, several of them are pre-stripped from the factory and some of the others are so malformed that they don't fit any driver I own. Just look at them. I have no idea how the factory even managed to assemble it.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I've never held a knife so crappy that I liked so much.

I don't even really know why. At the end of the day, the Treszen really isn't any more practical than its larger brethren despite being markedly easier to carry. There still isn't any way to describe its method of operation that does not somewhere include the words "deeply silly." And yet.

I can say one thing about it, though, which may also be a result of its German roots: It is categorically impossible to open with one hand. That's not a benefit anybody, except for someone who lives in a place where one-hand opening and locking knives are illegal. Like, oh, Germany. Just a thought.

Strange as it is, ridiculous as it is, I think it would take a indefensibly unreasonable leap for anyone to claim view the Treszen as a weapon. You can't call it anything more than a pennknife. Hell, a Swiss Army Classic is just about John Rambo's Bowie knife compared to this thing. It's so stupid that it's completely nonthreatening.

I mean, just look at him face. How can you not adore that?

So far I love it. Overall very durable and solid feeling. Love the assisted open action. Blade is very very sharp. Chap Stick for scale.

It may in fact happen to transpire that I, too, have a type.

Actually several, probably.

Left to right, top to bottom:

• Kershaw CQC-5K 6074OLBLK
• Kershaw CQC-6K D2 Version
• Kershaw CQC-6K 8Cr Version
• Kershaw CQC-11K D2
• Zero Tolerance ZT0630
• Zero Tolerance ZT0620
• Kershaw CQC-4KXL D2

You know balisong knives, right?

I mean, you're here. So of course you do. Two handles, two pivots, and the blade in the middle...

No, not like that.

...This is the "CIZPIROK Double Edge Blade Folding Knife," which comes variously plus or minus the usual mantle of edc-gadget-gift-cool-folding-knives-for-men. It's one of those. You know how it is.

The CIZPIROK, quite aside sounding like somebody who just sneezed in Polish, I think is considerably more interesting once you don't consider it to address the question of, "How do you make a knife with two edges fold?"

I mean, that much about it is glaringly self-evident.

The 4-3/8" long double edged dagger blade is there, plain as the nose on your face. That's barely interesting at all.

Rather, I think it's better as an exploration of this: What if someone who had never seen one before set out to make a balisong knife, possibly by having one described to them over a bad telephone line, but happened to get one critical parameter absolutely wrong?

The CIZPIROK, you see, has all the elements of a balisong knife. It has two handles, drilled through with decorative and lightening holes. Just like a Benchmade Model 42, right? And it has two pivots at the heel, one for each handle, and it's even held shut by a reversible latch on the tips of the handles that can lock it both open and closed.

All the ingredients are there, but somehow despite starting with some ground beef and a bun, the chef wound up producing a flan. And it's just wobbling away on the plate, damned if he knows how it got there.

You can even, with a fair bit of practice, luck, and a following wind, manipulate it somewhat akin to a balisong knife. Though overall the experience feels mildly cursed.

But rotating the entire kit and kaboodle 90 degrees makes the whole thing decidedly uncanny, if you try to think of it in balisong terms. The CIZPIROK's major defining feature, other that what we've already covered, could best be summed up as "flat."

The two handle halves are unitary flat slabs of steel, rounded over on the edges, and with the entire thing painted black. It's 9-1/4" long open including the latch, and folds up to about 5-1/4". It's precisely 1/2" thick either open or closed, not including the pocket clip. Said clip is mounted very far down on the side of the knife and leaves a huge 1-1/4" or so of it sticking out of your pocket. But it doesn't get in the way otherwise, because it winds up in between the handle halves, trading places with the blade, when the knife is opened.

There's a "thumb" ring in the tail where the point of the blade winds up when it's closed. Calling it that is a bit of a stretch, really. The hole is a shade under 3/4" in diameter which certainly makes it much too small to get my thumb or index finger through, and failing that I can't find any other use for it.

The entire thing has a kind of techno-dirk vibe to it, a cross between one of those classic diver's knives and an OSS dagger. If this appeared in a movie the femme fatale would have it tucked in her garter, and the directors probably couldn't resist making her try to use it as a throwing knife.

Being entirely made of steel, it feels quite dense in the hand at 163.6 grams or 5.75 ounces. The blade purports to be made of 440C which is plausible. As for the country of origin? Go on, you'll never guess.

The CIZPIROK's sideways design automatically engenders some mechanical weirdness. The pivots are riveted together so nondestructive disassembly is, unfortunately, completely impossible. So much for that.

Running the axis of each handle through the blade would otherwise require making the heel of the blade really thick, which obviously hasn't happened. Instead, there are two of these H shaped plates, one on either side, through which the pivot pins go.

You would imagine that this would make it awfully hard to keep the entire assembly within square and resist torsion, and that's exactly right. When it's unlatched, the whole thing can wiggle pretty significantly.

But at less than $20, you weren't really expecting this thing to be machined by Swiss watchmakers, were you?

As such, close inspection of the details reveals all the places wherein the crudeness lies. Here's the tip, for instance, which is definitely capable of administering a poke but the finish has been rubbed off in the process of grinding the edges. It works, but is decidedly unrefined. The bevels have highly pronounced machine marks on them, plus all the usual other hallmarks of cheapness. They're all here.

So as is tradition for these types of things I'm positive the edges have been ground freehand, and they're quite out of true. But in this case there are four edge grinds to contend with rather than two, so it can be twice as whacked. What a bargain.

From the factory the grind doesn't even make it all the way to the point. But then, given the hyper budget construction and unknown heat treating quality, this may ultimately be for the best.

With its all black finish, double edge, and crossguard-eque side protrusions which are really more finger guards than anything else, the CIZPIROK postures itself with fighting knife aspirations. It's a little big for EDC duty but not excessively large.

And of course, it can posture just as much as it feels like. That doesn't make it so. Here in reality, I think you'd probably prefer something that's a little less tough to open in a hurry.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The CIZPIROK Double Edge is a fascinating case study in bonkers knife design, and probably serves as a good example of why we don't do it this way. It's novel for sure, but I'm not entirely certain the problem it's setting out to solve is one that actually needed solving.

But just the fact that it exists means you don't have to ask, "what if?" Here it is, in reality, where you can hold it. Now you know. How strange.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/24661845

Smith & Wesson M&P Border Guard Spring-Assisted Folding Knife

Gerber Sumo Folding Knife

CRKT CEO Flipper Blackout Folding Knife

Buck 264 Cavalier Folding Knife

Gerber Paraframe, Mini Paraframe, and Mullet Keychain Tool Folding Knife Combo

Gerber Paraframe II Knife

Our novelty cutlery train will now be departing according to its regular schedule. The conductor will come by to slice your tickets clean in half very shortly.

I admit I was absent last week, but that's because I was out perambulating upon my velocipede, whereupon I took this daguerreotype. (Knives carried on said expedition: My Leatherman Wave, Böker Rold, and HUAAO Bugout clone.)

But never mind that. Strap on those goggles, tie up that scarf, and doff your top hat for this.

I'm going to have to have a bit of a stretch and a warm up before I can rattle off its name. One moment please...

...

Roight. This is the "NLX 8'' Steampunk Design Lockback Pocket Folding Knife With Coated 420 Stainless Steel Blade. For Collection, Everyday Ccarry and Outdoor Activity Tool Knife (Damascus)." [sic]

It's obviously a novelty knife. But that probably doesn't matter much for the, shall we say, specific type of individual this is clearly meant to appeal to. You're already not listening to anything I say, are you? Ah, I see you've already put one in your cart.

The NLX Steampunker is tailor made to just complete that look for anyone who's already got a pair of brocade fingerless gloves, nine pocketwatches, and an impressive selection of waistcoats. It certainly has, to use the vernacular, an aesthetic.

Not an ᴀ ᴇ s ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ᴛ ɪ ᴄ, mind you. Although if anyone made a Vaporwave knife, unironically or no, I'd be the first to buy one.

No, this has an 𝖆𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖈, and it's one that's engraved on a brass plate in curly writing riveted to a mahogany door. An aesthetic that's wearing a tailcoat and smoking a pipe. It's a wonder it hasn't got anywhere to shovel the coal.

This is a lockback folding knife, and answers a question thus far unasked: "What if we put the lock springs on the outside?"

And so it does. Four highly visible extension springs are what power the lock bar.

This has the side effect -- no doubt intentional -- of leaving the lockback mechanism itself proudly displayed while you operate it. Right there out in the open, ready to get either packed full of lint or pinch an incautious fingertip, all in the true 18th century tradition. So if you've ever become overcome by burning curiosity about how a lockback knife works, well, here it is showcased and ready for inspection.

The springs are indeed fully functional and are not just visual frippery for the sheer joy of making the thing look like a Victorian light switch. They are truly what drives the action. They're easy enough to unhook with a small pair of pliers or nimble fingers, and when disconnected the lock bar is unrestrained and is free to flop around of its own accord. To help prevent this from happening without your input, each spring's eyelet rides in a small groove in its corresponding pin.

But if decorative frippery is what you want, the Steampunker has it in spades.

Clubs, hearts, and diamonds too, probably.

I am particularly fond of the shiny scrollwork medallion embellishing the middle of the handle. There's only one of those on one side, because there is indeed a clip on the reverse:

The Steampunker is all wood and "brass," and while there are a couple of variants of this knife mine is the "Damascus" version.

I'm having to use a lot of scare quotes here because a lot of things about the Steampunker are, that is to say, per se, in point of fact, actually fake.

None of the "brass" elements are actually brass, for instance. The bolsters, the clip, the liners, screws, and backspacer all have that brassy gold finish but a magnet sticks to them readily; they're steel underneath. And the filigree embellishment is definitely a casting and its done surprisingly well, but it appears to be made of zinc that's been electroplated with something.

We can, if you like, dredge up the old argument about whether or not modern pattern welded "Damascus" steels actually technically deserve to be called Damascus steel or not. (You're looking for the argument over whether or not a katana could cut a European sword in half? You're in the wrong room. That's three doors down the hall, to the left.)

But there's no question that the Steampunker's blade isn't regardless, because it's clearly just a painted-on pattern silkscreened over a plain steel blade. The dead giveaway is that the loops and whirls of the pattern fall into the fingernail nick and jimping notches and remain completely uninterrupted. Which they obviously wouldn't do if the steel were truly layered and these details were machined in afterwards.

Another clue might be that the "Damascus" pattern is exactly the same on every single example of these, just printed right on from the same template on each and every one. If you grab any random product photo of one of these off the internet, compare it to mine and you'll see the pattern is identical. The sole purpose of this sort of thing is precisely to look good in a catalog to anyone who doesn't know any better, in order to part them with their money.

The wood, at least, is genuine. That's not much of an impressive feature, though, because it is of exactly the same type of pedigree as the wooden scales on the souvenir pocketknife you'd find at a roadside gift shop right outside the National Park, the kind that's pre-engraved with every name in the world except yours. It's even stained in the same color, although to its credit it is nicely CNC routered with some grooves and scallops and a beveled finger notch on each side.

The clip is a traditional design and it is not repositionable. As above it is definitely steel and not brass, and it is mounted quite offset from the centerline. But its saving grace is that it's offset to the correct side for a right handed user, i.e. nearer to the rear seam of the pocket, and it pains me to say this but it actually draws very nicely with a pleasant feel and the right balance of tension and release.

I have a few knives worth hundreds of dollars with clips that I like less. So stick that in your mill and grind it, why don't you.

The Steampunker is definitely akin to a full sized knife. It's every bit of 8" long with a 3-1/2" drop pointed blade that's 0.110" thick and 1.041" across at its widest point which is at the root of the edge. There is a small almost-choil at the base of the edge followed by a ricasso that protrudes about 1/8". In total it weighs 128.7 grams or 4.54 ounces.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a tactical knife. Towards that end there are no thumb studs, although there is a fingernail nick in the blade -- only on the side opposite the clip. But the lock springs are weak enough and despite its gimcrack appearance the Steampunker's action is smooth enough such that it actually is possible, with practice, to open it with one hand. Though only just.

The blade lockup is surprisingly solid both laterally and rotationally. Very little blade wiggle is present. In fact, the flexibility of the blade and very slight flexibility of the handles are the only notes I have to make. Despite these, there is no rattle within the actual mechanism.

The Steampunker's thickness measurement is compounded not only by the clip, but also by the springs. Without them the handles themselves are 0.465" in thickness. With the springs it bulks up to 0.779", and including both the springs and the clip adds up to 0.859" which was a measurement that was damn difficult to take.

There's very little else to say about the feature set. There is no spring assist or switchblade action; despite all the springs it's just a regular old folder. The backspacer does include a loop that can be used as a lanyard attachment point. The spine on the lock bar is very broadly jimped, and for some reason there's a superfluous hole in it, akin to the ones the spring mounting pins are pressed through but empty.

What with all springs and pins and greebles sticking out you'd expect the Steampunker to snag on every damn thing on the way out of your pocket but surprisingly, it doesn't. If you are truly incautious it's still possible to hook the springs on things inadvertently and if you're truly hopelessly uncoordinated it's not too difficult to knock of them off of their mounts in the process.

They're captive on the other end, though, each held in place with the head of a screw so it's not like they'll get lost if you do. And they're really not too tough to put back on, if it comes down to it. The lock will even still work with all but one of them disconnected, so you'd have to lose all four before anything dramatic happens.

The Steampunker shatters into what feels like about a hundred pieces when you take it apart. It's less complicated than it looks, although I do have one grievance to air out.

Here are both halves of the pivot screw. One is an ordinary Torx head (T8) but you'll notice the other side doesn't have a head at all; it's just a threaded tube with a tiny little lip around the end.

This sits nearly but not quite flush with the surface of the inner liner, and since there is no anti-rotation flat on it and every screw in this thing was threadlockered to hell and back, attempting to undo the pivot screw just causes the entire assemblage to spin in the hole. So getting the little blighter apart was a puzzle box I was not expecting to have to open today. You can see the aftermath of my grabbing it with pliers in the photo above. A soldering iron was also involved. I don't think it would have been too much of an ask for the manufacturer, whoever they are, to put a hex head or some wrench flats on it or something.

The Steampunker is largely held together with these three threaded barrels, which accept a screw on either side and once again do not have any anti-rotation features or engage with the liners in any mechanical sense. One of them is the pivot point for the lock bar and the other two go through the backspacer in the tail. All of them will merrily spin forever without fully releasing their screws unless you clamp them with something.

The clip has this little bit of scrollwork decoration on it, and on my example is already showing some rust spots. A visible indentation was left in the metal where it met the bending brake at the factory as well. It's easily the crudest part of the entire ensemble. I haven't decided yet if I'm motivated enough to pickle and re-electroplate it.

Earlier I said all the "brass" components on this knife weren't really brass. That's not actually true, as it happens, because the pivot washers actually genuinely are. Go figure. They're not ultra-refined or anything, but they get the job done and brass is a fair sight better than plastic. Or no washers at all, come to think of it.

Note also the "PRC" marking on the heel of the blade, which is the only inscription on the entire knife. Needless to say it is unequivocally made in China.

Here is the medallion from the handle. It's easily my favorite detail on the whole knife, which is why I keep harping on about it. The casting work is excellent and contrives somehow not to appear to be cheap, even though it unquestionably is. I don't doubt for a second that you could find this same part as a generic decorative finding somewhere, probably in purchase lots of a thousand units. The one curious thing about it is that it's mounted with the same M3 machine screws as used elsewhere in the knife, but they don't touch the steel liners and are just reamed straight into the wood.

It is deeply silly, with a $19 novelty piece like this, to enter into it with any kind of expectations whatsoever about the edge. My example arrived noticeably dull, with the crude edge grind illustrated here. Dull I can deal with, but those notches and chips in it are as it was delivered from the factory. I haven't used this knife to cut anything, and to be fair it's doubtful that I ever will.

The product description claims the blade is made out of "420" steel but does not specify which variant. It's possible, I suppose, to maintain some kind of whimsical faith that it might be as nice as 420J2, for instance. But I wouldn't hold your breath on that, because all you're liable to do is turn your face blue.

I would conjecture that the edge was ground by hand, given how it noticeably changes towards the tip.

Here's the essential truth of the matter, as it were.

As you can see, the edge angles are quite noticeably different from one side of the blade to the other. At this point I should quote some aphorism about price, but you've surely heard them all before.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I deeply respect the dedication that's caused you to read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age cover-to-cover seventeen times, I really do. But they still won't let you into the convention with any real edged weaponry about your person.

The NLX Steampunk knife may be silly, and it may be kind of impractical, but damned if it doesn't look cool. And that's what it's really all about, here. All the urchins and society ladies will see you strutting down the street and they'll say, "That chap right there, he is one anachronistic muthafucka."

You already know if you want one. You already know if you don't.

I was recently alerted to a new Wal Mart / Ozark Trail release by fellow user @cetan@lemmy.world, yet another in their line of Benchmade-eque crossbar locking folders. A mechanism which they've finally given a name, now calling it the "slide lock."

As you know, I'm pathologically drawn to this sort of thing like an idiotic moth to a bargain basement flame. Goodness knows I've already featured enough generic Chinese garbage on here to sink an entire container ship, and that's because I think inherent to these is a certain type of bent appeal. Plus, it's a lot easier (read: cheaper) for me to buy this kind of crap on a lark just to show you guys rather than whatever the latest big-ticket collectible du jour is.

So today.

Hmm...

There's been a minor scuttlebutt about this knife on the internet lately. Can you guess why?

Yes, it's because whoever Walmart is using as an OEM for these knives has come just about as close as you can get to ripping off the Benchmade Bugout as you can do without getting sued so hard your underpants spontaneously combust. At least for a stateside brick-and-mortar oriented retail product.

We've seen clones of this ilk before, of course, but they've always been the purview of nameless fly-by-night nonbrands relegated to grey market drop shipped online shopping; wretched hives of implicit mediocrity like Amazon, eBay, and Aliexpress.

But this isn't exactly anonymous. You can just walk into a major store and buy one. Easily, as it happens. Unlike the last few go-rounds with this type of thing, it seems Walmart has contracted whoever-it-is to make more than, like, twelve units of these. I didn't have to do any searching to lay my hands on my example because my local store had about 30 of them in stock. And Walmart's web site indicates it's the same story at all of their other locations just about everywhere, at least for now. And at the time of writing, these retail for a princely $9.97.

And whoever-it-is still remains a mystery, although historically Walmart's private label Ozark Trail knives have been made by Hangzhou Great Star Tools Co. Ltd., a Chinese OEM for low end cutlery who are also the force behind several other budget brands. And whose web site I'm not linking this time because it appears to currently be broken. I'm not sure what that forebodes. So I can't prove they were the ones who made this, but they've made similar knives before. It's as plausible a theory as any.

So, what do you get for ten bucks and is it any better than the previous Walmart crossbar folders?

Well, the answer to the first question is this. And the answer to the second one is yes.

As usual, this appears in generic Ozark Trail packaging on a hang card that doesn't provide much in the way of information or identification. It doesn't have any kind of name aside from the uselessly nondescriptive "7.5-Inch Folding Knife," although it does appear to have a SKU of T2203R1-11 as stickered on the back of the package. These are likely subject to change without notice, because Walmart is so noncommittal about this thing's designation that the SKU and UPC aren't even printed on the actual cardboard -- they're a sticker, ready to allow the packaging they've already cranked out a billion of to be reused for the next thing.

There is also a sticker that just contains the numeral "1" in the upper right corner on the back. I don't know what that's for. Maybe where it's supposed to hang in the planogram, or which slot it corresponds to in the glass case?

Why anyone cares about this is, of course, because it's a crossbar locking folding knife like unto Benchmade's Axis lock. This sort of thing has become increasingly popular recently since -- as I'm sure you're sick of me telling you -- Benchmade's patent for their Axis lock expired in 2016 which means now anyone can have a runup at the idea. This sort of thing excites us no end, but presumably the novelty will eventually wear off.

Walmart distributes a huge array of cheap and nasty folding knives under their Ozark Trail label that are plain liner lockers or lockbacks, of course, but none of those are especially... special. Nor much good. Which is why I'm not featuring yet another one of them every ten minutes. They're just commodity disposable low quality knives, so much so that the packaging never even bothers to indicate what kind of steel they're made out of and barely even contain a bullet list with a perfunctory set of standard features.

This time, however, there's something new. For a start, we actually get a named steel! This model is alleged to be made of D2 steel, which is printed right there on the back of the card. That's already a serious upgrade over the previous two models, which were made out of... Well, nobody actually knows, really.

D2 is no longer considered exotic (such as it even ever was) and nowadays is pretty much regarded as an entry level steel. But this wasn't always the case, and even so at least we can state with some degree of confidence what the heck this knife is made out of and thus possibly predict how it should perform.

D2 is a tool steel that is tougher than the typical standard for entry level knives, 440C, and also has superior edge retention compared to 420 or 440 series steels. It's not very corrosion resistant, though, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why this knife has a black epoxy coated blade. Knife people can probably be trusted to properly maintain a semistainless blade. Any average cross-section of Walmart shoppers you care to make, well. Probably not.

The coating is consistent and even looks pretty nice with a fine texture to it that prevents it from being completely shiny, and looks pretty thick. It'll wear and get scuffed up with use, of course, but at least it appears it ought to be a while before you'll work your way completely through it.

That said, I'm not a fan of coated blades in general -- D2 or not -- and I'd much prefer if this just had a bare blade. Corrosion be damned.

The rear tells us this was made in China, as if we didn't already know. The front is printed with the Ozark Trail logo but stops short of specifying who the actual manufacturer is.

The packaging further goes on to state that this knife has an "4.25-inch injection handle." It's injection molded out of glass filled nylon if I'm any judge, since it looks, feels, and sounds exactly like the stuff e.g. if you scratch at it with your fingernail.

Insofar as I can tell this knife comes in only one color, which is Ostentatious Orange. This will probably appeal to the Mossy Oak crowd whose custom it will undoubtedly attract; for the rest of us it means at least you'll be able to find it again if you drop it in the weeds.

The T2203R1-11 is fully ambidextrous as far as the controls go, but its deep carry pocket clip is not reversible. It carries tip up only with the clip on the left side when held with the blade deployed and the edge out. And that's your only option, short of taking it off.

Look, we may as well rip this Band-Aid off all in one go. There's no denying that this is manifestly meant to be a poor man's Bugout. The comparison to Benchmade's perennially dominant bantamweight folder just can't be avoided. The T2203R1-11's design clearly started by copying Benchmade's homework, and the details were shuffled around just enough to keep the men with briefcases and very somber ties from showing up at the door.

So the overall vibe of the deep carry clip, the molded fiber-nylon handles with checkered grip pattern, Axis/crossbar lock, the blade shape, and the lanyard hole worked into the scales on the top rear corner of the knife, it's all deeply reminiscent. Oh sure, the shape of every design element is just different enough to remain Legally Distinct. But you can see how it is.

Even the sizing is the same. Looking down on it flat from above, the Ozark's footprint is functionally identical to the Bugout. 7-1/2" long overall when open, 4-1/8" long closed, with a 3-1/4" drop pointed blade. The blade is 0.89" thick, which is basically the same as the Bugout's as well.

But you see, where it differs significantly is in construction methodology and thus the thickness. And it sort of solves what, er, bugs everyone about the Bugout. Benchmade are so confident in the strength of their fiber reinforced nylon handles that the Bugout eschews handle liners entirely. But I'll bet you whoever made this wasn't. So the Ozark has full length steel liners beneath its scales. As a consequence, then, it's thicker: 0.533" across its scales, not including the clip. So it's 0.144" more than the Bugout, which is enough to be noticeable. But it's also significantly more rigid than a Bugout and if you ask me more confidence inspiring in the hand.

Naturally this must mean that the Ozark is heavier than a Bugout, too. And it is, at 80.5 grams or 2.84 ounces. (That's 29.4 grams more, if this matters to you for the purposes of backpacking and/or being launched into space.)

The Ozark's blade is also hollow ground whereas the Bugout has a flat grind. That's to be expected, really, because doing a true flat grind is expensive and a hollow grind isn't. (In fact, if you're using a grinding wheel to create your blade's bevel it's very difficult not to naturally wind up with a hollow grind.) But all that notwithstanding, it's still got nice machined aluminum diabolo spacers separating the halves and everything.

The Ozark T2203R1-11's scales are a little more rounded and the texture molded into them is not as aggressive as the Bugout's. That makes it theoretically less grippy on paper, but in reality it's unlikely to matter. The Ozark has some jimping on the back of its handle right above the lock but it also has some at the base of the spine of the blade whereas the Bugout doesn't.

Oh, and the Ozark's draw from the pocket off of its clip is much nicer than the Bugout's. I imagine this is down to the smoother texture on the scales, but no matter how you come at it, it's noticeably easier to draw despite the clip still providing more than sufficient retention to keep it from just falling out of your shorts if it's inverted.

It also costs $170 less than a Bugout. Make of that what you will.

The previous Ozark crossbar lockers were cheap and cheerful, but really left a lot to be desired in the action department.

This doesn't.

I'm going to skip ahead a bit here, because the other update this knife got is a big one. It's got ball bearing pivots. And you know I am all about that.

Yeah, that's right. No more shitty plastic washers and no more dicking with your pivot screw tension to find the magical quarter of a degree where the blade neither locks solid nor wiggles like an extra on a Jason Derulo set.

The T2203R1-11's action kicks ass. It's not spring assisted, but it doesn't have to be. Give the thumb studs a little push and it flies open like you've got telekinesis. Hold the crossbar back and it'll Axis flick open and closed extremely readily. And its travel is basically completely silent until the lock clicks into place.

This puts the Benchmade original in the rather unfortunate and unenviable position of being outdone in both hand feel, draw, and action by an off brand $10 piece of shit that hangs on a peg right below the telescopic hot dog fork and just above the plastic whistle and compass carabiner. That's got to hurt.

Actually, all of this does raise one point of contention. I think this would have been even better if it were a Mini Bugout knockoff instead. See, at a 3-1/4" blade length this knife is slightly above the typical magical legal maximum of 3" which'll get it automatically Naughty Listed for carry in a lot of places. The Mini version's blade is 2-7/8" which cruises under that limit. It would be especially cheeky, not to mention beneficial for a lot of people, if this did the same. Oh well.

While we have it apart, here's what the liners look like. They are plain steel, not aluminum or anything else fancy, but they do have holes machined into them to at least make them somewhat lighter.

The full bill of materials.

All this is minus two screws compared to the OG Bugout, because the latter requires one screw in each scale to retain the little crossbar liner plates and this obviously doesn't need to resort to any such trickery.

For $10, it's not hard to guess that a Benchmade will certainly be put together much more nicely than this, and so it is. My example had inconsistent screw tension all around, and there are no anti-rotation features on the spacers which also had their screws threadlocked into place. Getting the spacer screws out on both sides is absolutely mandatory for disassembly of crossbar/Axis locking knives like these, because this allows for removal of the scales which is necessary for getting the lock crossbar out before you can fully separate both halves. I wound up having to grab one of the spacers on mine with some padded pliers -- with quite some force, as it happens -- to get both screws out.

I'll be damned if this thing doesn't have an honest to goodness fully functional anti-rotation flat on its pivot screw, though, complete with a matching D shaped hole in one of the liners. That also makes guessing which of the two liners the female end of the screw goes into completely idiot-proof.

As you can see here, the clip is under an alarming amount of tension at all times, based on how much of a bend there is in it. It still draws cleanly as described, though, so I guess I can't argue with results. Once again like the last two Walmart crossbar lockers the screws go inside the clip and are accessed via a hole in it, and are not placed to either side like on a Bugout. And once again they are not flush with the inner surface of the clip, but there's enough of a throat in it that I didn't find this to actually be a problem. Its width at its throat, where the U bend is at the end of it, is actually noticeably wider than on a Bugout. It's slightly wider than the last two Walmart crossbar knives, too.

My only other note on the clip is that despite ostensibly being "deep carry," it's mounted with its top end about 1/4" down from the tail end of the knife, which means that a noticeable portion of bright orange knife is left peeking out above the hem of your pocket like Kilroy at all times. Don't you think that kind of defeats the purpose?

Here's all the hardware. The only booby trap inside is the endstop pin, which is not shouldered nor retained in any way and can fall out as soon as you remove either of the scales. The rest is completely straightforward, and all the screws are even all the same as each other (although I separated out the two for the clip in this photo, that turned out to be unnecessary). That means there is no way to wind up with an Idiot Mark on your blade by fucking up and installing a too-long screw in the wrong position so it pokes out past the inside of your liners. So that's nice for retaining the finish on your $10 knife.

When all is said and done, a genuine Bugout is definitely more user-friendly to disassemble to fiddle with or to clean, and it provides you more options. The Bugout has a reversible clip and this doesn't. You can dismount the thumb stud easily on a Bugout by unscrewing it as well, whereas this one appears to either be press fit or very firmly glued into place with no evident screw heads into which to insert a tool.

Obviously you can't expect the edge on this knife to compare favorably to one that costs 18 times more, so the Ozark T2203R1-11 doesn't. A genuine Benchmade has a much finer edge and its grind is clearly superior, but I have to say the Ozark still isn't bad. The grind is acceptably fine for a working knife...

...And carries on pretty consistently all the way to the tip.

The edge is just slightly out of true, but should be well within reach of correcting by anyone with either a storebought guided sharpener or a stone and a modicum of skill. I'm not going to go so far as to say I'm impressed, but I'm definitely not disappointed.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's been interesting to watch evolution in action with these Walmart knockoff knives. We've seen them develop from trash to broadly functional if a bit weird, with the previous run of crossbar lockers, to this model which is -- if I dare even say it -- actually pretty good.

You have to be careful where you tread with statements like that. I'll make a lot of people with expensive knives very angry indeed if I take it too far.

So all this isn't to say that the T2203R1-11 is as good as a Benchmade Bugout, because it isn't. A Benchmade is better built, more nicely machined, comes from the factory with a better edge, is easier to take apart, and is made of much fancier steel.

But the Ozark's action and clip are genuinely better than the Benchmade. And that's a hell of a thing, isn't it? The Benchmade is better quality, yes. But not, it must be said, 18 times better. Four, six, or maybe eight times better, sure. You'll get no argument from me there. But the price disparity between these two for the actual difference is quality is absurd.

For $10 I think this is a fantastic deal. And barring any unexpected surprises like finding out later that the entire batch had a uselessly bad heat treating job or something, that comes without all the usual qualifiers. It's not, oh, a good kinda-sorta okayish backup knife to leave in the glovebox, just in case, you know, better than nothing.

No. This is genuinely a decent knife. For $10. If I actually had to carry this knife exclusively for a month, for instance, I certainly wouldn't be mad about it.

I just wish I didn't know what I already know about this knife and others of its kind. Things like how it doesn't even have a name. I mean, two decades from now, nobody's going to remember this thing. Nobody's going to say, "Yeah, the T2203R1-11, back in 2024? That was where it was at."

Fucking "T2203R1-11?" Come on.

It'll be a flash in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow, and nobody upstairs will care. To Walmart it's just another faceless commodity product, one of a million, and if they're actually turning a profit on this at $9.97 then I shudder to think of what it actually costs to produce... and by who. The sad truth of it is, it's probably only any good by accident. They probably think they're ripping us off with this, same as they do with everything else. I'll bet you neither Walmart nor their OEM set out to build a knife at this price point and as decent as this on purpose. And sooner or later some bean counter somewhere will figure that out, he'll get ordered to widen the margins on it, and it'll be ruined and that's the end of that.

You can never win a race to the bottom.

But every now and again you can get lucky, jump on, and enjoy a damn good ride for just a little while.

Today's feature is brought to you by the color black.

This is the Elite Tactical Guardsman, and when you see all three of those words together you know you're about to see a Very Serious Combat Knife. Or, perhaps, something that just takes itself a little too seriously.

The Guardsman answers a question that I think very few people have actually asked: Why don't folding knives ever have crossguards on them?

Actually, I think it doesn't quite ask "why" but rather skips right to answering "how."

It is written, for some damn reason, that a "fighting" knife should have a crossguard. So of course there have been oodles of attempts to incorporate a daggerlike crossguard into a folder in the past, some solutions being more awkward than others. This is a perennial contender, for instance. Or the likes of the CRKT M-16. Et. cetera. This sort of thing has been going on one way or another for a very long time.

What most of these have in common is that they're just as wide and doofy when they're closed as when they're open, either incorporating the crossguard into the heel of the blade so it's always sticking out, or building it into the handle in some way.

The Guardsman, however, takes a different approach. To maintain a sleek overall profile when it's closed, its crossguard folds flat against the handle.

But when you open it, the guard pivots out with the blade.

This idea is neither new, nor unique. The SOG Quake leaps to mind, and the internet is just rife with those goddamn "Russian NKVD" folders these days. This is the "Italian swing guard" design and has occasionally (and probably also originally) been found on various stilettos over the years. I don't know who actually invented it or when. If you want to know that sort of thing, ask a historian. I just take pictures of silly knives.

The Guardsman is like unto one of those but it takes its protein powder every morning so it's got a distinct added beefiness. Out of all those among this breed I think it's probably the least ridiculous and among the more functional. Not least of which because unlike the others it's got an Axis or crossbar lock, and you know how I do enjoy a good one of those. Plus it's made of D2 which is a steel I like, and it purports to have ball bearing pivots. All of those are plusses in my book.

Oh, and it also helps that it's only about $27.

Let's check off the rest of the list.

The Guardsman has modern and trendy a deep carry pocket clip.

To add to its fighting knife pretensions, the Guardsman has a rather militaristic, Ka-Bar like drop point profile blade with a partial flat grind and a black powdercoat or epoxy finish. There's even a fuller in it.

Although, curiously, only on one side.

It's pretty long, 8-9/16" overall when open and 4-3/4" closed. It's 1-5/8" across if you count the crossguard or about 15/16" if you don't. The blade is 3-7/8" long. Altogether it weighs in at 126.9 grams or 4.48 ounces, part of that weight doubtlessly contributed to by its full length steel liners. The blade is 0.120" thick across and the entire knife, not including the clip as usual, is 0.616" across its handles at the thickest point. Needless to say, it's made in China and marked as such on the blade. Beneath the crossguard, curiously. More on that in a sec.

All the pictures of this knife online seem to depict it with some kind of charcoal-on-black 3D machined Micarta scales or similar. But my example hasn't got those, and instead has scales that appear to be made out of some kind of injection molded something. Probably glass filled nylon. They are quite heavily textured, though. Maybe this is some kind of rolling change. Maybe mine's a counterfeit. Who knows.

It must be said that the Guardsman's pivoting action is quite satisfactory. I'm not going to claim revelatory or anything, although it's damn good for the price. It'll Axis flick readily, and in fact will fall open or shut easily via gravity if you hold its locking crossbar back. That's just as well, because while it does have a thumb stud for opening it's only got it on one side. The clip isn't reversible, either. At least it'll ride tip up in its one and only carry position.

The crossguard does indeed fold out automatically with the blade via a very simple mechanism. While it works, that part of it is on shakier mechanical ground.

I'm not 100% sold on the whole crossguard thing as it works here, truth be told. It doesn't lock into place and there's a fair bit of free play left in it when the knife is locked open, as illustrated above. You can push it forward pretty far which doesn't inspire much confidence in saving your fingers at first blush, although closer inspection reveals that there's a pretty generous ricasso at the base of the blade and the crossguard can't in fact be pushed past that point.

So you're ultimately saved from giving yourself the mother of all papercuts. But the overall feeling is... incomplete, if that makes sense? It feels more natural that the crossguard should lock solid when the knife is open like the blade itself does, but it doesn't. It could have, via the addition of maybe a little nub on the spine right at the forward end. But that'd sully the square, businesslike looks, I guess.

The guard can't be pushed backwards towards the wielder, though. So obviously it's more for, what, blocking incoming strikes or something? Against your sub 4" folding pocketknife? I'm not buying it. I'll freely admit that I've never had to drop and give anyone 20, soldier, nor have I spent much time on my elbows in the battlefield. But if I were going to make a habit of it, I have to say I'd probably pack something a bit less... foldy.

You could argue instead that the Guardsman is intended more as a self-defense knife, maybe. That's fair, and the crossguard probably would protect you from yourself pretty effectively if you got a little too enthusiastic rendering undo Caesar -- rocking horse action aside. But then, a humble Kershaw CQC-6K is still faster to draw.

The Guardsman will be more discreet to carry despite being longer, though, thanks to its deep carry clip.

A CQC won't broadcast to the world that you're Elite, either.

The Guardsman has one more thing going for it, at least on paper. It claims to have ball bearing pivots. Well, as you know I like to keep knife makers honest. So, does it?

Yep, it sure does.

Inside, the Guardsman has exactly the Axis/crossbar componentry you'd expect. Complete with two omega hair springs, the crossbar itself, and the familiar quarter-note slots for the same in the liners. Overall it's pretty easy to take apart, although do take care that the liners can be reinstalled backwards which will prevent you from mounting the clip, since its screws thread into a pair of holes present only on one of them.

I have to say, despite my complaints about it that crossguard is definitely engineered. You can break it down further into these components and it contains no less than four tiny plastic washers, a pair of threaded aluminum spacers, and these screws. One of them is the thumb stud and you can with care take it out and reverse it -- although you still can't reverse the clip if you do.

The halves are separated by this rather nice machined aluminum backspacer, which has threaded brass inserts in it. It has slots milled into it to provide enough flex to install the inserts, which is an unusual and certainly interesting way to do it.

Here are the mechanical gubbins. The crossbar has a unique design with what appear to be a pair of independent washers to hold the hooks on the springs, and they're swaged onto it or something. Search me how these were installed, since they're an interference fit and don't move, but the crossbar doesn't unscrew or otherwise come apart in any way I can figure out.

The bearings have ten balls each in plastic carriers. Neither the blade nor the liners are pocketed to accept the bearings, so upon reassembly you have to line everything up manually. Holding the crossbar back helps. It's kind of a fiddle but otherwise not too difficult.

Also for some reason the pivot screw has an anti-rotation flat on it, but the holes in the liners and scales have no corresponding flat spot and are just round. So you need two T8 Torx drivers to take it apart. As usual for a bearing knife, the Guardsman is pretty insensitive to pivot screw tension and because of that it can be locked down firmly to have no blade wiggle in any direction.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Look past the weird crossguard thing and the Elite Tactical Guardsman has all the fixings of an underrated gem of an inexpensive little knife -- or rather a big one. It's tough to argue with an Axis locking, bearing pivot, D2 folder for only $27. And it's also built pretty well on top of it. Okay, the guard is a little hinky but other than that nothing about it manages to come off as feeling very cheap.

I could surely come up with a lot more interesting to say about it if it were a piece of crap. But it isn't. Go fuckin' figure.

And you can own it without looking like a goomba, a skinhead, or a tankie. That's gotta count for something, right?

Forsooth, I hath made the journey down to yon local smithee, and picked up this.

I think no discussion of cutlery is complete without eventually, at some level, touching upon the Svörd Peasant series. To label this knife as a "classic" probably doesn't quite go far enough. The Peasant is a crocodile; a veritable relic, unchanged in its design since antiquity and yet still here today filling its particular niche. In a certain sense this is The Pocketknife, with the capital T and capital P being important.

The Peasant is a tang grip folding knife. It is brutally simple, and its design is a deliberate throwback to what is quite possibly -- no hyperbole -- one of the oldest known folding knife designs in the world.

The Peasant's included pamphlet specifies that it's based on a design observed in Bavaria and Bohemia around the 1600's. However, there are documented examples of folding knives with similar albeit not identical tang grip designs dating back as far as the time of the Roman empire. The Romans did indeed have folding pocketknives and some of them were quite complex, even including one notable example not too dissimilar from our modern Swiss Army knife, as displayed here. Simple friction folders were obviously where it all began and were exceedingly common for hundreds and hundreds of years. But by 300 AD or so it is purported that examples were appearing with a familiar extended tang design along the lines of what we have here.

The Peasant is intentionally made out of low tech materials using low tech equipment, mostly by hand, by B.W. Baker's Svörd knife company in New Zealand. It comes in multiple sizes and multiple handle materials, most visibly polypropylene in various colors and also wood. You can get kit versions, too, if you want to have the satisfaction of assembling yours yourself. This is the "Micro" variant, the smallest version on offer, and strap on those goggles and don your top hat -- I just had to get the brass version. I mean, of course I did. Come on.

Modern knives have a seemingly endless of supply tricks and mechanisms, and of course we've had a grand old time inspecting, dissecting, and discussing many of them in this very column.

The Peasant, however, doesn't. Its mechanism is purely that it has no mechanism. Only a single pivot point through a hole in the blade, and that's all. It's the absolute king of vintagecore. You might think your fountain pen and your pocketwatch and your waistcoat are anachronistic chic, but I'm telling you all that stuff is kindergarten playground time compared to how ancient this thing is.

The Peasant's extended tang serves both as its opener and what holds it open. You'll note the method is extremely reminiscent of how a classic straight razor works and the lineage between those and this is no doubt shared.

The knife is held together with just three screws, which are literally just commodity brass machine screws that are cut to length after screwing them through the handle and then peened on the ends. One acts as the fulcrum point for the pivot, one serves as the open position endstop, and another one holds the handle together at the tail end. And that's it. Job done, that's the whole system completely described.

The Peasant stays open by way of you gripping the tag against the spine of the handle. This method is exceedingly simple but also remarkably secure. As long as you're holding it firmly the knife won't close up on you. The tang ends with a little hole which comes with a small split ring in it, via which you could dangle it from your keys or tie on your own lanyard if you were so inclined.

The Peasant's blade is made of simple 15N20 steel which is not stainless, and takes on this dark patina for maximum medieval cred. You should probably keep it lightly oiled. It has a mildly drop pointed blade with a deep edge grind that's got no secondary bevel whatsoever. It's a convex grind a little under a quarter inch deep, and that helps the Peasant with cutting performance and allows it to perform well above its weight class provided the shortness of the blade is not an impediment to what you're doing.

What, you thought Fällkniven and Bark River developed the convex grind as the hot new ticket? New doesn't enter into it. All they did was nick it from history.

This Micro variant is quite diminutive, although the tang sticks out by necessity even when it's shut. That brings the overall closed length to 4-1/16" not including the split ring on the end which flaps around freely in any case. It's precisely 5" long when open, and its little blade is 1-7/8" long. There is no ricasso so the entire length is a usable edge. There's a V shaped choil of sorts at the base which is where the endstop screw slots into when the blade is closed.

The blade on mine is 0.057" thick at the spine, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn there is some variance from piece to piece. Across the handle scales the Micro Peasant is just 0.180" thick not including the heads of the screws. With them, it's still just about 0.265". You want to talk thin and light? Modern knives wish they could be as little as this. My brass variant is probably the heaviest model of the bunch, but even it is only 41.9 grams or 1.48 ounces, and that includes the keyring because I was too lazy to take it off.

Modern knives may have fancy composite backspacers, or anodized aluminum diabolo barrels, or maybe precision machined washers. These are decadent fripperies. Mere lace and frills. The Peasant, for its part, has no handle spacers whatsoever. That means the blade rubs against the insides of the brass handle plates. And so what if it does? You got a problem with that or something? It turns out, it still works just fine even so. And the brass is softer than the steel, so the handles are absolutely incapable of scratching the blade in any case. Rather, the reverse happens.

The entire bill of materials consists of just seven components, and that's if you count the split ring. The screws, as mentioned, are just ordinary brass machine screws. Like, from the hardware store. One of the handle plates is threaded and the other one isn't, and the screws are proof against backing out by having the ends peened into place. This is evidenced by the flat spots on the heads, for instance.

This means the Peasant is actually not quite so simple to take apart as it appears, because backing the screws out ultimately involves overcoming their smashed tips. As you can see, I broke one of the screws getting mine apart for this picture. But it wasn't a big deal; I had some suitable #6-32 machine screws just lying around on my workbench already. I believe the stock screws were actually originally fine thread #6-40, but it was the work of a few seconds to ream the threads out to 32 pitch with a tap. No harm done, and keep on keeping on.

Rather than hammer my new screws and annoy myself further in the future, I instead fabricated these brass jam nuts. In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, I turned them freehand on my bench grinder. The brass Peasant's handle plates also shine up very nicely with the application of a little Flitz. Although admittedly, probably not for long unless you clearcoated it or something.

I also found a trio of random brass washers in my odds and ends, which make the perfect tail spacer. This is completely unnecessary, but the beauty of it is you can customize your Peasant like this with just any old trifles and junk you have lying around and it works.

Here's a very modern knife next to it. This HUAAO Bugout clone may look simple by today's standards, but its elegance is peanuts compared to the Svörd. The HUAAO is all titanium, anodized aluminum, and stainless steel. Wonder materials. Black magic! The Peasant has, and needs, none of the above. You could hand one to your hypothetical time traveling medieval friend and he would experience no future shock; he'd tell you how it could be made, precisely what out of, and he'd probably even be able to make another one just like it.

Oh yes. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the pamphlet it comes with.

If I haven't played up the historicity of the Svörd Peasant enough, the pamphlet does it some more. Simplicity is the Peasant's selling point, and this as well as the knife's inherent cheapness are driven home all throughout. True to form, the documentation is just printed on regular old paper. Nothing glossy, no bond, not even in color. For your entertainment I've scanned both the front and reverse, which are available here and here, respectively.

The bloke with the wedge of cheese is a nice touch. He's very Phil Foglio.

For his part, B.W. Baker guarantees your Svörd for life. There are some included care tips as well, the highlight of which being the sharpening tips which boil down to basically, "Use a stone on it or something." There's no way you can't respect that.

For the the price of admission you also get this leather sheath. And it is genuinely leather, albeit split grain. I have no doubt that it's just as handmade as the knife is.

It's a bit of a squeeze but it'll conform to the shape of your knife over time. The tang is left sticking out along with its ring, if you leave it installed.

It's not much, but it'd absolutely complete the ensemble along with your canvas messenger bag, designer beard wax, hemp beanie, and vintage flannel shirt.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I think there's a place for a Svörd Peasant in every knife person's collection. It's not exactly cheap in this brass guise at about $32, but nor is it really unreasonably expensive for what you get. Especially considering its hand made nature, plus the sheath and all.

I have used the phrase probably one too many times referring to something as a warning from history. The Peasant is anything but. It's not a warning; it's a celebration. It's the closest thing you'll probably ever get your hands on absolute genesis without owning a museum. It's a chance to hold a fragment of the thing from which, ultimately, everything else in this hobby sprung forth.

Maybe its two handle slabs aren't quite technically identically shaped to each other. Maybe it's got grinder marks on it, and it shows up with an uneven patina, and its blade will rub scuffs into the insides of the handles as you use it. For any cheap mass produced knife we'd decry this sort of thing to no end. We'd label it crap, and to hell with it, and declare it Temu garbage of the worst kind.

But what makes the Peasant different is that all of that is the point. Therein lies the charm; that's what makes it special. It's flawed, but intentionally so. And thus every one of them is in some tiny way unique compared to all the others as well. I would not at all be surprised to find, for example, that the parts from this one wouldn't quite interchange with the parts of any others. And that's something you never see anymore.

Maybe the Svörd Peasant's real value is making you stop and look at every manufactured thing in a different way. Someone made this. Some one. A person. Not a factory, not a country, not a conglomerate, and if you choose to look at it hard enough, maybe not even a brand.

In more ways than one, then, it comes from a different time. And that's where the magic is.

So see you later, alligator. Never change.

Hey guys! I've just recently gotten into collecting pocket knives, and I wanna make sure I'm taking proper care of them. My last two purchases have been karambits, both with fairly steep recurved blades, whose edges I'd like to be able to maintain.

I know that normal sharpening stones aren't going to allow me enough contact with the blade to actually put an edge on it, so I've picked up a Smith's DRET sharpener and have been practicing on an old dull knife with a stiletto blade, just to try to get some basics down. I'm getting better with it, but I'm struggling to get an even, consistent edge. Even without any special optics, I can see with my own eyes that I've got wildly uneven angles.

Granted, I'm practicing with a very low-quality knife that was already in pretty rough shape. I've managed to get the edge from "literally unable to break the skin with 20 pounds of pressure and aggressive sawing motions on my forearm" to "can cut through paper with about half of the blade before bunching up", though it's come at a cost of scratching the absolute hell out of the rest of the blade (which is just me being sloppy).

I figure that once I'm able to get competent enough with sharpening a normal blade shape that I'll move on to testing with a donor karambit. I picked up a super cheap, mall-ninja-ass karambit on Amazon because the reviews were all poor and said that the knife arrived completely dull, so I figured this would be perfect to practice sharpening. Unfortunately, it arrived with a surprisingly sharp edge, so I'm gonna have to abuse this knife for a bit before I can even practice anything on it.

Just curious what sort of tools y'all recommend for dealing with recurved blades, or any techniques I could try to incorporate into my practicing. Thanks!

Here's another one of those knife-esqe, but not-a-knife objects.

This is the Artisan Cutlery Kinetic Tool, and it's a balisong trainer sporting a bottle opener instead of an edge, along the lines of the various BBarfly models and Squid Industries Mako. So it's perfect for safely practicing balisong flip tricks and similar, while still providing a modicum of functionality over a normal trainer knife.

The Kinetic tool measures uͧрⷬ aͣᴛⷮ aͣвⷡoͦuͧᴛⷮ 9-̄1/2"៉ loͦng whͪeͤn oͦрⷬeͤn, ₐₙd ₅₋₁/₂" 𝄴ₗₒₛₑd, w̠͇i͕̙̺t̫͕̼h͎̫̝ i̫͙͎t̪͚̻s͕͎ u͕͕̝n̝̻s̢͓̘h̠̻͍a͔̪̪r͍̙p̫͙̟e̺͓͜n͓̫̘e̡͇͔d̢͇̠,̪̟͜ n̝͎̘o̪̼̠n͔͓͚-̦͚͜b̺͙l͕͓a͚̺͜d̻͉̻e͇͙͓ b̡͇̦o̦̞t͚̞̞t̪͔̫l̦͉̞e͔͔͎ o̵̠͕͚͋̒̚p̴̼͉̞̽͐͠e̴̠̘̝͑͆̕n̴̫̦̔̾͆e̸̝̺̞̿̔r̸̪̦͌̓̀ t̴̡̝͉͐͌̔ḧ̵̟̝̻́͒̓i̴͇̞̿̾̀n̴̟͖̐̒͘g̸̻̺͛́̚͜y̸̡̦̦͆̚͝ ~c̵̡͓͍͊͊͊o̸͍̦̿̿m̸̡͓͉͛̚͝i̴͉͚̾̒n̸͔̼͊̿͘g̸̫͕̝̀͊~ ~o̸̠̻̻͛͒͠u̵͚͍̦̔͌̓ẗ̸̡̫̟́̓͌~ ~t̵̪̼̺́͛̓o̴͕͓͊̕͠~ ~á̸̘̪̝̿̽b̵̪̠̙͋͆o̵͚̠̘̐͑͝ú̴̘͎͒̕͜ț̵͍͎̓͆͛~

...

...

This is the Artisan Cutlery Kinetic Tool, and it's a world-legal "switchblade" because, as you can see, it's not actually a blade. Instead, it's got an unsharpened bottle opener that provides a modicum of functionality while not really being a knife. Therefore, despite its automatic opening action it ought to remain legal just about --

...?

Hang on just a damn minute.

There's some kind of Mandela effect shit going on, here. Is the Kinetic Tool a balisong knife or is it a switchblade?

Well, it's both. And it's neither.

You see, down at the tail end it has a mildly unusual but otherwise mechanically familiar balisong T latch. It hooks over the spacer pin on that end of the knife rather than the typical method of engaging with either of the handles, but otherwise works as you'd expect and you can flick it undone easily enough to find that the Kinetic Tool functions as a serviceable, if a bit heavy, unsharpened balisong trainer knife.

And on the other end is a conspicuous shiny button that, when pressed, sends the unsharpened "blade" rocketing out exactly as you'd expect from a side opening automatic.

This is, needless to say, mechanically bizarre. The question of "why," of course, is a stupid one. If we sat around here asking why all day we'd never get anything done.

But either way, you can't exactly call it a knife.

Artisan actually make a small range of these things in a few different variants, including one under their cheaper CJRB brand. Various handle and tool blade styles are available, but this is the original one with the rearward mounted bottle opener, slotted screwdriver tip nose, and the typical perfunctory but otherwise useless hex nut "wrench" cutouts in the middle. It comes in a few versions wherein the G-10 scales are swapped for different colors but this olive drab green one is as usual the superior choice.

So the Kinetic Tool's headline feature is that is does indeed function as both a balisong and an automatic, all in the same package. And it works. Although this involves some compromises and inherently engenders some weirdness.

I mean, beyond the obvious one in just how strange the idea is on its face.

For a start, as a knife with two opening mechanisms it thusly has two open states. And then it follows that it has two closed states as well, of course. If you compare the image above you'll see the handles are in a different position than in the headline photo at the beginning of this post, despite the tool self-evidently being open in both pictures. You'll wind up with the handles reversed relative to each other if you open it in balisong mode rather than in switchblade mode. You can latch it open or shut in either position.

Both mechanisms are also always in play, so to speak. So there's nothing stopping you from opening the tool as a switchblade, and then closing it as a balisong. Or the opposite of opening it as a balisong, and then pressing the switchblade button afterwards. And then...

...What happens is this.

Yes, the Kinetic Tool can switchblade itself closed if you already have it open. Only once, of course, until you manually reload it against its spring -- Artisan unfortunately haven't figured out how to violate the laws of thermodynamics. But in light of that, this may have something to do with why it isn't sharpened. By default, what it would whack you with in this case would be the "spine" of the blade anyway, but being able to snap the thing shut on your own fingers accidentally is still a bit disconcerting.

But this means you can combine either opening or closing method as you see fit. Another wrinkle caused by this is that when you open it normally in balisong mode, the blade is "backwards", so to speak, and presents you with the edge containing the bottle opener against the safe handle and not the straight spine. That's because it opens in the expected orientation from this position when you open it in switchblade mode, but since the pivot direction of either method is reversed from the other, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

The Kinetic Tool's latch also doesn't have any endstops.

In addition to adding another element of Fiddle Factor to the proceedings, it also means you can with some dexterity spin the latch around backwards and latch the tool together from the inside.

This has the amusing side effect of making the Kinetic Tool one of the few physical objects I can think of that's capable of softlocking itself.

Really. Watch this.

Did you catch it? Here's what you do: Open the Kinetic Tool in balisong mode, then flip the latch around to latch it from the inside. Then press the switchblade button to make it close itself.

Since you engaged the latch backwards it is not in the path of the blade's closing travel. But you can't undo the latch, because the tip of the blade is in the way, and the blade is already at the end of its travel. You can't use the latch to push the blade out of the way, and you can't use the blade to undo the latch. And you can't undo the latch through the blade. And so on, and so forth; it's a mechanical catch-22.

Thankfully this conundrum isn't permanent, since you can use a suitable poking object to pivot the blade out and reset the switchblade mechanism, and then undo the latch. But it'd be great for one of those, "I'll bet you a dollar you can't open this knife in 30 seconds" sorts of bar bets.

What all of this adds up to is that the Kinetic Tool is a fantastic deskside fidget toy despite -- or perhaps because of -- all of these oddities. It's just shame it isn't actually useful for much else.

Other than its thin handle scales, it's constructed entirely of steel of one kind or another. So for a balisong, it's actually kind of heavy: 158.8 grams or 5.6 ounces. A lot of compromises had to be made with the pivots, essentially shrinking them down to dollhouse size, to accommodate also stuffing the entire switchblade mechanism in between them. Thus the pivot feel is serviceable but not great, and then it also likes to hook your finger with the bottle opener notch while you're manipulating it which is obviously suboptimal. Relocating the bottle opener to the tip would have solved this at the expense of making it much harder to use to actually open bottles. Pick your battles, I guess.

It's not terribly useful as any other tool, either. The aforementioned bottle opener will probably be the most often used feature for most people. For instance, I don't think anyone in the history of mankind has actually undone a bolt in such a manner that resulted in meaningful work being done with one of those stupid stairstepped hex notch thingies. This despite their popularity in showing up on those dumb wallet cards and oodles of other gifts-for-dad sort of tripe, seemingly just so another bullet point could be put on the package. I guess you could use the screwdriver tip as advertised, although only on rather large slotted screws, and only those that are not down any kind of blind hole. Artisan claim the tip can be also used as a prybar, but do so at your own peril due to how thin the pivots are. I think putting any real amount of torsion on the mechanism would probably tear the tips right off of the handles. There's a slot in the blade, too, but I have no idea what that's for. You can fit a piece of 1" webbing through it, but towards what end I can't fathom.

Oh, and in deference to tradition it has the totally expected but largely useless ruler markings along the back edge. There are no numbers but the little tick marks are indeed fractional inches: Halves, quarters, and eighths.

The front shows Artisan's logo, and the reverse has the model number of the variant in question as well as Artisan's "patent pending." Nowhere is it mentioned where it's made; not on the article itself or in the blurb. If I had to guess, I'd say China or Taiwain. And nor is the blade steel specified on the tool itself, but Artisan's web page claims it is made of 8Cr13MoV which might actually be useful to know if it had, you know, an edge.

Inherent dangers aside, it'd probably be slightly more useful if it did. But then it'd surely be double illegal in most locales, so the fidget toy version is what we got.

Actually, they did once make a sharpened version -- sort of. Model 1823PO is a similar scheme to this, but it included the ability to insert a standard utility knife blade. (That seems kind of familiar, come to think of it.) It's now discontinued, though, and jury's out on whether or not that was due to hordes of owners complaining about shaving their knuckles off with it. Either way you can't buy it anymore and I've never been able to lay my hands on one.

Oh well.

Artisan call the flipping action "silky smooth," which is a bit optimistic. The Kinetic Tool's balisong pivots are, as mentioned, tiny. They do ride of brass washers but they're not especially refined, and leave a fair amount of slop in the mechanism as pictured here. They don't feel particularly robust.

You can see the washers plainly by looking at it down the edge:

It does spin freely enough but once again, just like the Mantis knife we looked at last week, it suffers from the problem of the "blade" being heavier than either of the handles individually which necessitates the flipping action to be a bit slow.

You can see the teeny tiny pivots and their attendant washers here. I did not bother to take the switchblade mechanism apart because I know how annoying it'll be to put back together. I know what we'd see in there anyway: A torsion spring, a hole for it in the heel of the blade, and a machined mushroom shaped lock button. I'd doubt there are too many other surprises.

One unusual point of note is that the Kinetic Tool's G-10 scales are screwed to the liners from the inside. I'm not sure why, though, because if the intent was to not have exposed screw heads there are still the four screws at the tail end that go through and hold the spacers on, which are visible right there and bold as brass on the scales at the tail end of the knife.

I guess one other oddity is that the two pivots for the balisong handles are actually constructed slightly differently, and use different screws from each other. That's because one of them also serves as the endstop for the blade's travel in switchblade mode, whereas the blade has to be able to pass through the other. So one pivot is a full length threaded barrel with a screw in each end, and the other is comprised of two escutcheons machined into the puck around the switchblade mechanism with a gap in between. None of the barrels or spacers have anti-rotation mechanisms on them so to fully undo everything you'll have to grab them with pliers or something.

Its forward kicker pins are permanently machined in place into that same puck around the switchblade mechanism. A raised boss around the button acts as one massive rear kicker pin, which is kind of clever.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Kinetic Tool certainly does one thing it sets out to do, which is to be a really strange Knifelike Object with two fully functional opening mechanisms all in the same package. Obviously I think the "tool" aspect of it is highly dubious and I think it'd have been better off as an actual knife.

Its design results in some mechanical oddities that are thus far exclusive to Artisan's/CJRB's range, so if you want something like that just so you can say you have it, it's in a field with no competitors other than itself and its siblings. If I were you I might try the cheaper CJRB version, since it's bound to be no more or less useful but has the same mechanism, is sure to retain all of the same quirks, but costs half as much.

And then, there probably aren't many fidget toys in the world with the possibility of leaving your onlookers wondering if they walked away in the same timeline they arrived in. Surely that thing you're playing with was a butterfly knife just a minute ago.

...Wasn't it?

Hey guys! This might be a bit of a longshot since I don't think this knife is too popular, so I don't expect a lot of people to have experience with it. I recently purchased a Reate Exo-K, and I absolutely love it. It's in no way a practical or useful knife, it's dangerous to the user and its own self, and it's illegal to carry in a lot of places. But it's fun, and that's what matters to me.

I often will idly flip the knife open and closed while working, and from the beginning there was always a little amount of rattle when deploying it. After having it for about a week or so, it feels like all the pivot points have gotten a bit looser, which I think is to be expected after breaking it in a little.

But now it's beginning to feel like there's more play going side-to-side with the arm, causing more rattle than before. While held in the normal reverse grip, it tightens right back up and there's virtually no play, so I'm not worried about it falling apart on me while I'm actually trying to cut something with it, but I'm worried that the arm may come apart somehow during deployment. Since a flipping motion is required to open this, I worry that I may end up launching a razor sharp blade in a random direction at considerable speed, which... isn't good.

For what it's worth, this is how much space I'm getting between the arm and the handle when in the open position. That much space exists while the lock is engaged. I'm not sure if this is typical for the Exo-K, or if this is an excessive gap.

Compared to the trainer, there's a significantly larger gap and louder rattle. But they're made from very different materials, so I won't know how much I can reliably compare the two.

Just curious to know if anyone else has had this happen with theirs and is normal, or if I should reach out to Reate for a warranty claim.

"Oh, look. Another stupid balisong. Why don't you get a new shtick, granddad?"

...

No.

This is the Mantis Mothra. In the category of knives named after Toho movie monsters, it is probably in a class all by itself.

The Mothra is a full sized aluminum handled balisong, measuring up at 9-3/4" long when locked open, and about 5-11/16" closed. It has a 4-1/2" long spear pointed blade which is, despite its appearances, only single edged. The manufacturer calls it a "drop point" which I suppose is technically correct in the same sense that a stromboli could be called a "sandwich."

The blade is made of 154CM and is very thick: About 7/32". That's pretty unusual for a balisong. Not including any protuberances like the latch head or the ears of the blade sticking out the sides, the Mothra is a girthy 1-1/8" across and about 1/2" thick in total. All of this adds up to a weight of 157.5 grams or 5.55 ounces. So, ephemerality is one attribute this knife definitely hasn't got.

(Project Farm Voice) The Mantis Mothra is made in Taiwan.

It also sports some very intense design.

The handles have this craggy, stonelike appearance on their edges that looks like it ought to be a wall texture in Quake or something. Then the blade has a deep fuller in it that's got several holes drilled through. Suffice to say the looks are certainly unique, possibly even divisive.

The Mothra's handles are clearly cast and not machined. If I am any judge, those blemishes down on the tail end are definitely air pockets from the casting process. The surfaces are bead blasted and anodized, so then one can only assume that all the spots on the edges and corners that've been rubbed through and the bare aluminum peeks through are intentional. Probably so that when the surface inevitably gets scratched or otherwise patinas, Mantis can say it's "supposed" to look that way.

On the bright side, showing up the way it does for an MSRP (but certainly not street price) of around $300 makes me feel a lot better about the finish on that $20 Exo knockoff I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. Although, on the matter of price -- hold that thought.

I've talked probably one too many times before about knives with "impossible" pivot screws, which present no mechanism of screwdriver engagement on their heads. This looks slick but isn't much of a trick, of course. There's always a flat spot on the shank of the screw or some other manner of anti-rotation feature, or failing that on a balisong specifically you can just flip it over to the side that's got the screw heads and undo them with the knife in it's latched position, because the tension against the shanks of the screws will hold them in place while you work. The other side always contains the screw heads.

So you see, just flip the Mothra over and...

...Oh.

Uh.

So it's impossible to take apart, then.

Strike that, reverse it.

If you haven't guessed, the Mothra's trick is that it's part of Mantis' "BladeXchange™" series. The pivot screws are not screws; they're buttons, which work in a manner identical to those found on a button lock folding knife. Except rather than lock and unlock the knife, they allow you to slide the blade out of the handles entirely via a channel milled into the heel of the blade that meets up with the pivot holes.

That's visible here. And these are the easiest disassembly photos I've ever taken for you guys.

So the Mothra's deal is that it's actually incredibly easy to take apart. But why would you ever want to? Well, other than the obvious cleaning and lubrication chores...

...Mantis also sell a variety of different blade styles as you would expect, which you can replace -- sorry "eXchange" -- with whatever you've already got. One knife into many, if that's a void that needs filling in your life. And in addition to various edge profiles they also offer a blunt trainer blade you can swap in. The one pictured there is the "Dexter" blade which has a Wharncliffe profile and loses the false edge on the back.

And the straight spine on it reveals just how ludicrously thick the blades for this thing are.

So here it is being a Dexter. Mantis seems to just name their variants based on whatever blade they come preinstalled with; insofar as I can tell, the handles are the same between their various models. So you can be like Katy Perry and change your mind; reinvent yourself (or at least your knife) as freely as you like and you'd probably have valid grounds for changing the name right along with. Swapping takes mere seconds, although the reasons for doing so are left as an exercise for the reader.

The release mechanism for the blade looks like this:

There's a fat part and a skinny part, and a spring behind it. When you push the button the fat part sinks into the opposite side of the handle until it's flush, and the channel in the blade is wide enough to clear the skinny part, so once you get it lined it up just slides apart.

Apropos of nothing, this also means that it is trivial to succumb to the temptation to assemble the Mothra backwards. Here it is as such. And if you do this, how it's pictured above is as closed as it can ever get. It's mildly amusing the first time. You probably won't do it twice.

Anyway, the astute among you have probably already figured out two glaring asterisks hovering just above and to the right of this entire getup.

First and foremost, balisong makers go to great lengths to improve the mechanical precision of their pivots to create finer, smoother, more solid, less rattly, and generally more pleasant mechanisms for their knives. I've waxed poetic at great length about this sort of thing many times. Bushings, precision washers made of fancy low coefficient of friction materials like sintered bronze, ball bearings, the works. Some of this stuff costs big bucks, and balisong nerds get very excited about it.

Well, I just showed you a photo of the Mothra taken apart and it sure didn't include any of those. That's because it hasn't got 'em. All the effort was apparently spent on the release mechanism and for the rest, well, we're just banging rocks together. Literally, in fact. The pivot surfaces are just the blade steel riding directly on the inner surfaces of the handles. The bead blasted and textured aluminum oxide anodized surfaces of the handles. You know, that stuff they make sandpaper out of? So you'd predict that it scuffs up the pivot area something fierce.

And you'd be right. Give that reader a cigar. No washers, no nothing. Not even a pair of perfunctory plastic ones.

The other part is, all of this needs to have a generous clearance so that you can actually slide the pieces apart without them getting all jammed up. So with no bearings or bushings in there either, this thing must rattle like a telegraph office.

Right again.

I will hasten to point out that the pivot play on this knife is so bad that if you look carefully, you can see that the only thing stopping it from getting even more off-axis is the fact that it's stopped by the inner face of one of the handles hitting the flat of the blade. Oof.

(I hue shifted that photo, by the way, because the gripper-stuff on those gloves I was wearing happens to be red and I just know the types of comments that would garner. The original, unaltered photo is here, you weirdos.)

You absolutely cannot tune this knife. Not in any way, shape, or form. There is no screw tension to adjust, no washers to swap, no bushings to shave. It is what it is, now and forever. And part of the problem is that the "pins," for lack of a better word, that make up the pivot and release mechanism don't even engage with the holes in the blade all the way through. The solid part only rises up a little less than halfway through the thickness of the blade so the top half is always left freely floating and able to wiggle around.

Mantis probably could have cured that by making the blade a little thinner. But they didn't. And lo, here we are.

So that leaves the question of the Mothra's balisong action hanging in air. Like a particular metaphor. One that I'm not going to make.

The answer is that it's distinctly weird. The enormous rattle and play in the blade notwithstanding -- that doesn't actually impact the moment-to-moment usage any. The Mothra's rebound action is also pretty okay, probably owing to its trendy but now common "zen" pin design which locates the rebound pins inside the handles rather than having them press fit through the blade. But other than that, since we're on the topic, there are no other fancy features. No spring latch, no weights, no interchangeable scales. Heck, no scales at all.

The Mothra's downfall is presented in two acts. Neither of them, surprisingly, are the weird handle texture. And rest assured that it is weird, but you can get used to that sort of thing easily enough. No, there's another uncanny feeling to its action that's tough to put you finger on until you really think about it. Eventually you'll realize that it's caused by the blade (64.6 grams) weighting significantly more than the handles (44.5 grams each) which is the opposite of most balisongs.

Beyond its pivot mechanism, a balisong knife's flipping feel is normally pretty much exclusively generated by its handles, which should weigh the same or more as the blade. Often they have thin blades that are carefully tuned to achieve this effect. Not so with the Mothra. As previously noted, its blade(s) are enormous, thick, and above all very heavy. So that leaves the point of balance not in the handles or even hanging around the pivot point but swinging around wildly somewhere out in space. And because of that, where it is also changes relative to where in its arc the blade happens to be at any given moment.

This causes the Mothra to feel a lot less like a competition balisong and a lot more like a medieval flail. Its spins are by necessity long and slow, and if you try to apply any kind of speed to any trick and break concentration even for a split second it will positively leap out of your hand and away, seemingly of its own accord. The action is epicyclic, with its center shifting around in an unintuitive manner; circles within circles. Again, this could have been remedied by a just using a thinner blade so it'd weigh less. Indeed, the monstrously fat blade is cool and all just in and of itself, but if Mantis wanted to do something like that'd it'd probably have been a better idea to put it on an ordinary folder or similar and not their flagship balisong. Just saying.

And here's the other thing. Have you spotted it?

The Mothra's clip is in the wrong place.

No, I don't mean on the wrong side of its handle because my objectively correct opinion is to prefer it to be rearward towards your pocket seam when clipped and I always complain about that, nerrr. No, it's on the fucking safe handle. The one you hold, and have to spin and roll over in your hand when you're manipulating the knife. That's not where it belongs. There's a reason it always goes on the bite handle, at least on other knives, and also why that's the side with the latch. But here it isn't, and there are no mounting holes on that handle so it can't be put there. So it's in the way. Always. And it's massively disconcerting.

The only cure for that is to just take it off.

Okay, yes, there's nothing stopping you from just popping the knife apart and flipping the blade over so the edge slots into the other handle instead. But now the latch is on what has become the safe handle, and that absolutely will come back to bite you (literally) if do that and then switch between this and a different knife.

I have no idea why this is. Do you hear me, Mantis? Fix it. Put the stupid holes on the other handle. There's plenty of room for them there; it'll be easy.

So yeah. It looks cool, it definitely has a gimmick, but it's all talk and nothing in the sack.

Look, here's the Mothra with a pair of other full sized balis. That's a Kershaw Moonsault on the left, and a Benchmade 42 on the right. The Mothra's about the width of a Moonsault (although it's thinner in profile), but about the same length as the Model 42. Monkey in the middle, there you go.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The entire Mantis BladeXchange series is one of those situations where there's a solution desperately in search of a problem. I mean, sure, you can theoretically use this to arrange your life so that your trainer balisong and your real balisong are the same knife. But so many compromises and sacrifices need to be made to get there that you have to ultimately ask yourself, is it worth it? A nice live balisong can be had for $200 (or a lot less), and trainer versions of various knives even from major manufacturers are basically free by comparison. I'm feeling like a two-knife solution is probably a better strategy overall.

That brings us back to that point I stuck a pin in earlier, actually. Riddle me this:

Where, precisely, is the value found in a balisong knife?

I mean, physically, not philosophically. Dollars and cents. What part of it makes it cost what it costs, $40 or $100 or $300 or whatever it is? Half of the world will say it is in the mechanicals: in the precision machine work, the design, the pivot mechanism, tuning the balance, and all of those tactile but ultimately conceptual things that take time and care to get right. That's why a flea market knife costs $20 and is crap, and why a Benchmade costs $300 and it isn't. Right?

The other half of the world will say it's obviously in the blade, dummy, with whatever fancy alloy steel it is plus all that heat treating and cryo quenching and sharpening and polish work. Which is clearly why, say, a live blade Flytanium FlyOne costs $500 but a Flytanium Zenith trainer is only $60. You dig?

Well, a whole Mothra costs you $180 real world dollars or so, but you can buy its blade loose for $35. And there ain't much precision machine work in the handles, which is all that's left over. Hell, they're even cast to reduce cost, and not very well at that. And as we saw there isn't a single washer, bushing, or bearing in the entire damn assemblage. Somehow here, one plus one comes out equaling five.

So where, exactly, is fancy bred? Is it in the heart, or in the head?

G'day.

This little beaut is the Cold Steel Bush Ranger.

Come to think of it, "little" is an... imprecise... way to describe it. Completely wrong, in fact.

"Bloody enormous" is more appropriate.

It's 8-3/8" long when open, for a start. That's including its 3-1/2" clip pointed blade, which is an impressive 0.156" thick and made of very fancy, very tough S35VN crucible steel. The Bush Ranger is 4-7/8" long when closed, and weighs every bit of 164.8 grams or 5.84 ounces. It's also a very sturdy 0.673 thick not including its clip, and 1.787" in breadth at its widest point which is at the peak of blade right at the knurled thumb-opening plate doohickey.

With its remarkable bulk and Bowie-esque shape, this might just be the only folding knife Paul Hogan would ever approve of. And all this for around $100? Crikey. (For what it's worth, Cold Steel tries to MSRP this at $224.99 at the time of writing. Nobody actually has it listed for that price, nor I suspect would anyone actually be willing to pay it. So there are meaningless numbers in the world, and then there's that one.)

Actually, speaking of said thumb-opener doohickey. Its design is shared with Cold Steel's "AK-47" model, and the tiny gap between this horizontal plate and the spine of the blade means this has the unique property of theoretically being capable of hooking your pocket hem for automatic opening, similar to the Emerson "Wave^tm^" mechanism. But, notably, without stepping on Emerson's trademark.

I say theoretically because, alas, it doesn't actually work very well. The added breadth sticking out of the sides tends to cause it to snag rather than cleanly come off of your pocket, which leaves you with a half opened knife still clinging to your pants. And then there's you, standing there looking stupid. The gap between the plate and the spine isn't very big, either, which you'd think would preclude it from working with thicker fabrics but I actually found the opposite to be so. You probably don't want your pants fabric to actually fit in there, because that tends to lead to even more severe snagging.

So as a pocket-hook-opener, the Bush Ranger is kind of, shall we say, pants. Oh well. You can still open it one handed via a thumb easily enough.

Unlike practically every other presumptive hook-opener (well, not every one, but you know what I mean) the Bush Ranger is a lockback mechanism.

Oh, sorry, that's Cold Steel's "Tri-Ad Lock." Sure, whatever you say, guys. Mechanically, it's really a regular lockback. It's just that Cold Steel must pathologically invent a trade name for everything, even if whatever it is has already been invented. They seem to think that their mechanism is the strongest out of all lockbacks and, if you squint a bit when you read the literature, they sort of insinuate that it might be the strongest locking mechanism, period. I'm not entirely sure I believe that. But the Bush Ranger at least does lock up solidly with a very loud clack, and no perceptible lash in any direction.

This is a half length lockback system, with the cutout where you press about midway down the spine of the knife. Just like everything else about this thing, the lock bar is very thick. The handle slabs are very thick, too, being made completely of sculpted G-10 without liners underneath. Cold Steel does not actually specify the color, but it is a sightly greeny earthy brown. So don't drop it into any dry brush or you'll never see it again.

This is a Mike Wallace design, and Cold Steel spend some words describing how comfort was one of the design goals, aiming for long term use without hand fatigue. Towards that end there is a generous finger notch and the fat handles are very rounded on the edges. The finger notch carries through across the face of the handles as well. Unusually, there is also an additional trough towards the tail of the knife where the heel of your thumb might naturally rest.

It's got a reversible clip that is comically dinky compared to the rest of the knife, too tightly sprung, too short, and honestly just not very good. It's there, but it presents yet another impediment to hook-opening this knife. The too-tight clip and very grippy handle texture conspire to bite your pocket hem like an outback crocodile.

The star of the show is really the Bush Ranger's blade. While its finish work isn't impressive, its robustness certainly is. There's no two ways around it, this is a serious chunk of steel. Cold Steel seem to think that heavy duty usage is the Bush Ranger's raison d'être and it's tough to argue with them on that point. Spearing sharks or fighting Mulga snakes or fending off drop bears or whatever it is you do -- The Bush Ranger is probably equipped to handle it. Well, outside of urban civilization, anyway. It's very likely to attract comment if you draw it to clean your fingernails while, say, standing in line at the post office.

Think of this as the diametric opposite of a Benchmade Bugout. Yes, both knives are made of very fancy steel sandwiched between linerless composite handles. But other than that they couldn't be any more different, and serve needs found as far apart from each other on the spectrum as I think anyone could possibly manage without trading either knife for a machete or possibly a battle axe.

If you've ever wondered what the hell all the fuss is about Cold Steel's Tri-Ad lock, here you go. All of the components are suitably beefy but there is no mechanical difference between this and a lockback.

The Bush Ranger's halves are separated by a backspacer made of some kind of composite. I think it is also G-10, and has a similar sort of structure and texture as the handle slabs. As you can see, the lock bar is sprung by a hefty leaf spring and this also serves as the closed position detent. A quintet (that's five) of shouldered threaded barrels accept screws that hold on the clip as well as secure the backspacer to the tail end of the knife. The lock bar pivots on a plain shouldered pin that sinks into both handle halves, and another one serves as the endstop for when you open the knife. Notably, these don't press out from the sides, so don't try that if you're taking yours apart.

Because apparently nothing about the Bush Ranger can possibly not be oversized, the pivot screw is enormous. Most knives can be disassembled with a T6 Torx driver, and the pivot screw might be a T8 or T10.

That's for paintywaist girly men. The Bush Ranger's pivot screw is a T15. You'd better hope you have one of those in your bit kit.

The pivot washers are PFTE and both the pivot screw and its hole have an anti-rotation flat on them. Accordingly, there is no screw head on the female side:

The thumb opener plate is held on with a single T6 Torx screw and is removable, e.g. for cleaning or to get it out of your way when sharpening.

All five of the threaded spacer barrels also have anti-rotation flats, so they must be placed in precisely the correct position to get the knife back together. It's not that hard, but for some reason they all face in different directions.

The Bush Ranger is cartoonishly huge.

I mean, just look at it. The CQC-6K up at the top there is not a small knife, but it's handily overshadowed by the Bush Ranger.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Don't buy this knife if you want a non-Emerson hook-opener on a budget. If you want one of those, and you want it to be huge and bushcrafty, consider a Kershaw CQC-11K instead.

But there is something to be said for the Bush Ranger's gargantuan slab of high end steel, if you have a use for such a thing -- especially for the price. Probably not if you have small hands, though. Or if you're planning on going to town today.

Fair go, mate, she's a whopper. No worries.

The Microtech Halo VI is stupid, and that's precisely why I love it.

Normally this is the part where I would say, "The Microtech Halo VI T/E is an unassuming aluminum bodied knife that..." and so on, and so forth, until I make you try to guess what its quirk is.

But that's wrong. Because it isn't unassuming in any way. Not even a little bit.

First of all, it's massive: 10-1/2" long open, 6-1/8" closed, with a 4-1/4" long tanto pointed blade that's got a devil-may-care rakishness to its point. It's not light either, at 141.6 grams or 5 ounces. And carrying it? Pfah! Who cares about such trivial details? It has no clip and no lanyard hole. Nothing. Suffice it to say, no one is going to discreetly tuck this into a shirt pocket.

You see, the Halo VI is a single action out-the-front automatic knife. Not -- and this is a very important distinction -- your typical dual action in-out mechanism. Those are for losers. Losers who are concerned with stuff like safety and practicality. Losers who didn't have to go completely bonkers designing a solution the very problem that they deliberately created for themselves, because they can and who the fuck is going to stop them?

I can only imagine what the design process for the Halo VI must have looked like, but I'll bet you it started with doing a massive line of coke right off of the boardroom table.

The Halo VI has this fat obvious fire button on it. It's big and chunky and has a fascinating sawtooth texture on it, and you really, really want to press it. The oblong dingus in the middle is a sliding safety, a button within a button, much like the safety on a Glock trigger. It's there because as a single action knife, the blade is always spring loaded, positively quivering with tension. Ready to launch out and ventilate your shorts, put a hole right through your dick, deliver you an express vasectomy.

A typical switchblade's dinky spring only pushes the blade for a tiny fraction of its travel and inertia does the rest. Not so with the Halo VI. Its blade is full-time under power, all the way throughout its range of travel, and its spring pushes hard. It absolutely will not be stopped by such puny inconveniences as any part of your personage being in its way. Everyone who's ever owned an in-out switchblade has at some time, most likely while giggling, fired it at a solid surface like the top of a desk and found that the end result is that no real damage was done to the presumptive target and you're now just a chump holding a flaccid, unlocked blade flapping loosely in its track.

That is not how the Halo VI works. You absolutely do not want it going off in your pocket. If the blade hits something during its travel it will do its level best to puncture it, and then once the unfortunate obstacle is removed it will instantly carry on the rest of its merry way, without fail.

Hence the safety.

So you light the thing off, and the blade rockets out the front and slams open with an thunderous cacophony, and locks there. It's glorious. Everyone in the room knows when you've triggered it. Even when they know what's coming, it makes people jump. Watching such an enormous length of steel spring into your hand with such viciousness would surely take the fight out of anybody. There's pumping a 12 gauge shotgun, and then there's this.

But, uh. Then what?

On a normal limp-wristed switchblade you could flick the switch the other way, and the blade will slither back into the handle aided by its wimpy little excuse for a spring. But the Halo VI is a single action auto, remember, so retracting it requires stuffing the blade back into the housing somehow, against the spring. And that seems... safe?

Ah.

So on the other end, the Halo VI has what can only be described as a goddamn AR-15 charging handle on it.

You pinch the two little spring loaded grabber tabs to unlock them, and yank this aluminum bar...

...all the way back, which pulls in the blade.

There's no getting around it. The verb you're looking for is "rack." This is a knife you reload.

Here's a complete demonstration of the action.

And the upshot of this is, aside from all the machine work and fine tolerances in the latches on the tailcap and its fitment against the handle body and so forth, the Halo VI's mechanism is actually caveman levels of simple. It consists of a big spring, a button, a little spring for the button, and a blade with two notches bitten into it. And that's it. Unlike a double action auto which requires a multilayered sandwich of sliding plates and extension springs and little latches and ramps and all. There is very little in there to go wrong.

All those people who are annoyed by the fact that every single double action auto in the world has an off-centered blade in it will thus be pleased to note that another side effect of the mechanical design is that the Halo VI's blade dispensing port is exactly in the middle.

And it's an attractive thing in its own weird way. It's flawlessly anodized and held together with Microtech's stylish but baffling triangular headed screws. Clearly much care went into the design of the ergonomic yet alien curvature of the handle and the diamond pattern on the trigger button. Never mind that you have to buy a special tool to take it apart, and the warranty will be voided if you do. Who has time to care about that?

It's massive. Gargantuan. Vulgar, even. I'm running out of words for it.

I told you a lie earlier. It actually comes with this Kydex holster thing. It's cool, though; the holster is also wildly impractical. It does offer just a soupçon of retention, and it also holds the knife proudly erect and high on your belt, clearly visible at all times so people can see what a cool guy you are. Probably from space.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I don't think there's any way to fully -- let alone succinctly -- sum up the completely bonkers nature of this knife. It is an entire gallon of moonshine, a four wheel burnout in a billowing cloud of tire smoke all the way down the street, Hendrix blaring on the stereo unironically, on fire, wearing shades.

You can't carry this knife anywhere because it'd be illegal. You can't hand it to anybody, lest they unavoidably find a way to injure themselves with it. You can't keep it around your desk, because you'll always be playing with it and never get any work done. Its design is so purposeful, and yet it can have no purpose. It's too weird to live, but too rare to die.

It's terrible. It's perfect.

A fixed blade today, and it's not even Friday. Luxury.

This is Böker's PSK, or "Personal Survival Knife." So think of it like a personal pan pizza but, you know, made of steel and different in every possible way.

This diminutive, now discontinued knife is a Tom Krein design and Böker seem to want you to think of it as a fixed blade version of their Krein designed Pocket Bowie. I think it's better described as a smaller version of the Böker Vox Rold, but that's just my take on it. And it would be a funny old world if we were all the same.

The original run of these are made of 12C27, but the later ones got downgraded to 440C. If you find one of these, the 12C27 version is the one you probably want; it's a tougher steel, which for a knife like this is exactly what the doctor ordered. 440C is fine and all, but I think the 12C one is better. Mine seems to be from pretty early on, since its serial number is 0315. I've never been able to nail down exactly when the changeover happened, but by at least serial 0780 they'd already switched steels. So if you've ever wondered why half of all online retailers listed this as one steel and the other half as the other, now you know.

The PSK is a little 6-5/16" long jobbie with a 2-3/4" long drop pointed blade. But it is ridiculously stout for its size, with a blade that's 0.185" thick at the spine or 4.71mm. Böker themselves call it 4.7, so you get a whole 0.01mm more than what you paid for, gratis. Shrinkflation ain't got nothing on this.

The other headline feature is that the handle is a massive 0.786" thick (near as makes no difference to 20mm) so this combined with the thick blade means despite its compact footprint the PSK is, to use the vernacular, not fucking around.

It weighs 159.4 grams in total or 5.62 ounces, so "ephemeral" is precisely the wrong word to describe it. This is not a bantam weight holdout knife destined to spend its entire life unused and quietly rusting under your shirt. Besides, if you tried to use it as a neck knife you'd probably wind up looking like Rubiel Mosquera by the end of the week.

The handle is made of two thick slabs of sculpted G-10 with red fiber/rubber spacers beneath. The PSK presents a pleasantly ergonomic grip that is a far cry from the flat, barely-there perfunctory handle scales or dinky cord wrapping of most compact fixed blade knives. This is especially important if you plan to actually seriously use your knife for an extended period for any serious task. That is, beyond opening packages, cleaning your fingernails, and showing off to your buddies at the camp site. In the tail, the rearmost handle pin is hollow and also serves as a lanyard hole in case you're one of those lanyard people.

The spine contains an interrupted section of very square and precise jimping which is really my only gripe with the PSK's design. Not from an ergonomic sense, but rather because the cuts are so square and closely spaced that they tend to accumulate crap in them, which is a minor league irritation to pick out afterwards.

The PSK has a full flat grind and a relatively shallow factory edge angle, which gives it surprising cutting performance for its size and the thickness of its blade. Thickness is what it's got, too, in abundance. Böker's blurb for this describes its design as "nearly indestructible" and I believe it.

And let's be honest, the 2-1/2" blade length is all most outdoors people actually need -- despite any mumbling they might do to the contrary about bears or mountain lions or whatever else. The reduced length mainly means it is much easier to carry without swinging around all over the place or knocking against everything all the damn fool time. If you need a fucking machete, carry a machete. Otherwise, don't.

To assist with this, it comes with an injection molded sheath patterned very much to look like Kydex, but it isn't. The pictured Tek-Lok clip comes with it in the box, too, which was a nice surprise. Usually if the manufacturer provides a hard sheath they just leave you to your own devices to figure out how to carry it or mount it to anything. But in this case that's probably because the Tek-Lok is basically mandatory. The PSK is very handle heavy -- the balance point is about 3/4 of an inch rearward of the front handle pin -- which is great for ergonomics but means that without a very solid attachment mechanism you'll wind up with your knife wanting to do a backflip off your belt. And that's only funny the first time.

The sheath does not have adjustable tension and its retention is achieved by a pair of round nubs molded into it that go just behind the knife's finger guard. The retention is positive, but only just. It doesn't take much of a tug to draw it which is a mixed blessing depending on how you prefer to carry your knife. If you're one of those cool guys who likes to go handle-down, you might want to revise that strategy with the PSK. Contemporary reviews mentioned the loosey-goosey sheath also, though I have to say that even shaking mine vigorously I can't get it to drop out of the sheath of its own accord. But if you hang it upside down and anything so much as brushes against it while you're pressing through the bush, it'll probably get pulled out and you'll wind up with bruised toes.

And for all you low-drag tactical operators out there, yes, the blade can audibly rattle in the sheath laterally. Give it a rest; You're not Solid Snake. If this really annoys you, you'll have to pry the sheath apart and line it with felt yourself, or something. Or just press your own sheath out of actual Kydex.

Böker is proud enough of their association with Tom Krein that they put his logo right here on the reverse of the blade. The steel descriptor is on that side as well, so if you wind up handling a used one of these remember to look for it there. Pay no attention to the "China" marking in the finger notch. This knife cost $45 when it was new. What do you want?

If you haven't gotten a handle on the PSK's proportions yet, this ought to shed some light on it. (I don't know if you noticed, but that was a "pune," or a play on words.) The PSK is shorter than the Usual Article, my CQC-6K that I carry nearly every day, both in overall length and length of the blade.

The Inevitable Conclusion

History is just littered with knife designs that tried hard to be folders with fixed blade performance. If you ask me, that sort of thing will always be a fool's errand. If you want fixed blade toughness with folder-like convenience, just go on and get yourself one of these instead.

Needless to say, I think the PSK is boss as hell, with only the minor letdown of its factory sheath. That's easy enough to rectify, though, for anyone with access to some foam and a blowdryer. Or failing that, there's room enough to drill your own hole for a tensioning screw on the stock sheath. Swings and roudabouts; nothing is ever perfect.

So I have no idea why Böker discontinued it other than the usual relentless march of capitalism. What a drag.

As in cheap, perfunctory, and thoughtless.

In a previous column I mentioned owning only two knives, or suitably knifelike objects, that I received without actually wanting them. This is the second one.

This presents the usual difficulty in showing off a generic knife, because typically I can just say that I have a Manufacturing Co. Model XYZ or whatever and there is at least some hope that A) people will know what the bleeding hell I'm talking about, and B) find an example of it out there in the world, even if it is just in the form of more reviews of now-discontinued knives.

With this, I have no such capability. I have no idea who makes this or what it was called. You can't ask for it by name even if you wanted to. And it's certainly old enough that I can no longer find incarnations of it being sold via any of the usual Chinese drop-ship bottom feeders. The closest I can find in these modern times is this "Elk Ridge" folder, and this "Sarge Knives" model, both of which are clearly the same idea but neither of which are an exact match.

So rejoice; this knife may be well and truly extinct.

It's all academic anyway. You don't want one of these. It's absolute flea market crap of the worst kind.

I ordered a couple of knives from somewhere back in the day and this arrived as a "free gift," unannounced and unsolicited, with my purchase. I think it was from BudK, but I could be wrong. Obviously its shtick is that it has two blades on it: One absolutely ghastly mostly serrated blade, and one "razor" blade that is of course astoundingly useless for its implied purpose.

The "razor" blade is just a regular cheap pocketknife blade, but with a square profile. It predates the current stupid Joker razor fad by a couple of decades, but this arrived precisely at the time when the Johnny Depp/Sweeny Todd movie was the height of fashion so back then every damn fool thing was pretending to be a straight razor for a while. Notably, the razor blade lacks any of the features actually required to work for shaving. It's hilariously dull, for a start, but it also doesn't have the deep hollow grind that a traditional straight razor has and indeed requires to achieve its microscopic edge. A real straight razor doesn't have much if any of a secondary bevel, and certainly not one as thick, pronounced, and obtuse as this one. The surface finish is also so abysmal that it would actually be actively detrimental to its performance. I think more work would be required to get this shaving fit than it would be to build a new razor from scratch, so forget it. And even if you did, nobody knows what kind of steel this is made out of and that's usually a strong indicator that it won't hold any kind of edge for very long.

But that's not what it's for. What it's for is to bamboozle uneducated buyers into effectively setting their money on fire.

The normal blade somehow manages to be even worse. It's exactly 3" long and about two thirds serrated, of course with the usual trashy chisel grind. It is poorly machined, has a terrible surface finish just like the other blade, and because it's got those dumb 1-2-1-2 serrations down most of its length it'd be a hassle to make sharp even if you wanted to.

This is a slip joint folder, meaning that neither blade locks open in any way. The mechanism is very crude and the action is extremely stiff. Opening the serrated blade with one hand is tough, but opening the razor blade with one hand is downright impossible. I suspect the pivot is riveted rather than utilizing any type of screw, but it's underneath the rubber overmould which doesn't come off, so I can't tell.

The entire knife is wonky. The assembly is off-kilter, and neither of the blades open straight. If you peer down its length you can see it's slightly corkscrewed. A simple brass sheet divides the two blades when they're closed, although...

...The mechanism is so twisted that if you try to open both at the same time they actually collide with each other.

There is no model, but the country of origin is obvious even if it didn't say so. If "Stainless" is the most compelling feature a manufacturer can tell you about their knife you are probably looking at a problem. The medallion on the handle also just says "Stainless." It looks like it ought to be a brand, but it isn't. This is surely a case of monkey see, monkey do. Real knives put a shiny emblem there, so we'll put a shiny there, too. Never mind what it says.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's clear why these were being given away, since obviously its vendor was having trouble selling them for actual money. So why, then, do I even keep this piece of shit around?

As a warning from history. You see, this is an inglorious time capsule, describing the way all cheap knives used to be back in the bad old days. It still serves as a concise illustration of most of the design and construction details you'll find on a shoddily constructed knife. Absolutely everything about it is wrong. Every single aspect is a warning sign, and to see it -- or better still, to hold it -- is to immediately and intuitively understand what all those signs are. The awful surface polish, the pock marks and rust spots fresh from the factory, the halfassed edge grind, the lack of serviceable hardware, the shoddy etching, totally nameless, and with the grinning implication from its anonymous origin that it's more than it actually is. Oh yes, it's all there.

You've heard of the ur-example. This is an un-example. Precisely not what to buy, under any circumstances, for any purpose. No matter how desperate you are. You'd be better off sharpening a rock.

So in retrospect, I'm glad I got this one for free.