It's the hip new show where I buy every knife again, but worse. So cerebral, because i r smert!

I've got a bit of a history with these two. Well, we have a history with the CRKT Provoke Zap, in any case. That's because it's the very second weird knife I ever posted here. That was two years, one month, and seven days ago. I know this because Lemmy tells me so.

The good times, don't they just roll.

All of that was back when I was just taking happy snaps of stuff at my desk on my mousepad. That didn't last long, but at least the upshot is that I didn't have to creatively name the folder for all the photography for this one, since I didn't bother to save the originals. Swings and roundabouts, and little silver linings.

The Provoke is a Joe Caswell design and not the H. R. Giger nightmare as you may have expected at first glance. It, and its now myriad derivatives, are mostly folding karambits, although there's now an "EDC" version with a more normal blade on it. And of course how they fold is deeply weird, because I wouldn't have it any other way. CRKT and indeed probably Mr. Caswell himself describe the Provoke's as having a "Kinematic(R) morphing" action, and the long and short of it is that the blade doesn't pivot on an axis, per se, but rather slews up, forward, then down on a pair of swinging arms.

Like this.

They bill it as staying "neatly tucked away in transit and comes to life when there’s trouble afoot." As a karambit the blade is distinctly hawkbilled and you're presumably meant to hold it in a reverse grip like this. It's a Special Purpose Operator's Tactical Device, and therefore more or less designed with doing unto fools in mind. This particular Grivory/FRN version is the budget model so it's the cheapest. Apparently its color is literally named "Zap," or maybe the model itself is depending on who you ask. The current aluminum bodied incarnations can get excitingly expensive these days, but I think I paid around $80 for this way back when. Obviously the neon yellow flavor is indeed the correct choice, as was rightly observed at the time, because no one can see this and later claim you were trying to sneak around with it.

But its clone and I have quite a history, because I've tried and failed to order one of these three times. This time it finally took.

I actually tried to buy one of these from Wish many years ago, long before I ever got my genuine Zap, and it never arrived. I ordered it again and I got something else in its stead which wasn't even a knife, plus a refund. I tried again on Alibaba some years later and my order was inexplicably cancelled. And not one of those fun inexplicable cancellations where your thing shows up in the mail for free months later anyhow. This was probably the universe giving me every chance there is to doge a bullet, but as usual I wouldn't listen.

So I gave up, held my nose, and ordered this one from Amazon since they seem to have finally turned up for sale there. It showed up in two days. Go figure.

This is the "Promithi Folding Morphing Knife, Retractable Pocket Outdoor Jungle Hunting Camping Survival Working Knife, EDC Multi-Function Tool, with Bottle Opener and Glass Breaker." Verily, it is possibly several of those things. What it's not, unlike our last outing, is an outright counterfeit of the Provoke.

This has actually been sloshing around my knife drawer for several months while I slept on writing this. The Provoke and its "Promithi" twin are satisfactorily mechanically absurd, but I'm sorry to say that I must report to you that the clone version is crap. One of these will only run you about $18 at the time of writing, but don't bother. I think one of the fancier combo meals from Taco Bell would be a better value, and would probably last you longer in the bargain. If you want one of these, there's no substitute. Dig deep in those couch cushions, spring the extra dough to buy the real thing, and that's our job done.

Except it isn't, because we still need to look at both of these. One of them in a manner quite askance. The latter of which because we've been handed a golden opportunity to do so again.

It's no wonder all of the marketing literature and website product shots invariably depict the Provoke in its open position. When it's folded it's just a hunchbacked little goblin, grinning at you licentiously. Your guess is as good as mine as to how you're supposed to measure it but I peg it at about 2-5/8 wide when it's closed, which proportionally is a bit like having an entire flattened lemon in your pocket.

The hawkbill blade is about 3-7/8" long in total if you measure the entire slug of metal it's made out of, but once you lock it out the effective portion is only 2-11/16" and the sharpened part is 2-5/8" if you measure it all in a straight line. The Provoke Zap version has a fiber reinforced Nylon handle and the armature widgets are the same, but there are metal reinforcement plates hidden on the back sides here presumably to add rigidity and prevent the whole thing from being a wet noodle.

There's a small but noticeable amount of rattle present in the armatures when you have the blade only partially deployed, but somehow once it's locked out it's as resolute as Gibraltar. Don't ask me how; it just is.

How it locks is nearly as bizarre as how it opens. It's via this sliding thingy towards the rear, which clicks towards the spine of the handle and takes a rather heroic effort to get to move. It makes it near as I can figure impossible to close this with one hand, even though opening it is so easy.

Apparently this version is made of 4116 stainless like a kitchen knife or an old Swiss Army. The others are made of D2. I like D2 better, but I like the price of this one more.

Even though it's altogether too clever, I really like the Provoke's clip. Despite how it may appear there totally is one, which is flush fitting and concealed on the back of the handle. When you press the textured part of it down, the whole thing flexes and the tip pops up. The back of it is utterly flat and thus snag free, and the Provoke draws effortlessly off of pretty much any fabric as far as I can tell, with your index finger falling naturally into the thumb hole.

So you actually could EDC the Provoke and occasionally I do, just for the perversity of it all. Never mind the slick draw and satisfying deployment, because all that winds up with you holding a reverse-grip karambit in a posture that leaves you no choice but to attempt to open boxes and mail by lashing out at them like an emu kicking a dingo in the face. To soften it up first, you should probably screech like a casuariiform at it, too.

Nobody's going to say anything about it. You're the one holding the knife.

Anyway, some part of the Provoke's lock also serves as a strong and clicky detent that keeps the blade from worming itself open in your pocket.

Let's start right there with the Promithi clone, because it hasn't got one of those. At all. Just put your finger in and your elbow out, and it falls right open if you wave it all about.

This is despite the lockup action being what amounts to an ordinary liner lock, with what appears to be a detent ball in the end and everything. Just, forget about it. It doesn't work. So never mind the clone's horrid and completely pedestrian clip, if you carry this and do anything other than sit stock still at a desk you'd better also make sure you're wearing chainmail underpants.

The Promithi's clip is neither flush fitting nor clever, nor is it positioned very well. It leaves a lot of the knife including the entirety of the finger ring sticking up above the hem of your trousers, whereas the real deal discreetly rides almost completely concealed. True to its specs, though, there is indeed what's ostensibly a glass breaker point down at the end which also doubles as a lanyard hole.

I have no idea what would happen if you actually tried to use it as such. It's just possible that the glass may win.

There's a bottle opener hook down below the nose, too. That bullet point wasn't a lie, either.

Unlike the genuine article, the Promithi version is all steel. The handle, the armatures, the presumably the blade. All of it. So it's heavier than the real thing: 152.8 grams (5.4 ounces) vs. 135.8 (4.79 ounces). It feels denser because it's quite a bit thinner, but otherwise the proportions are all pretty similar.

What the blade is made out of is anyone's guess. "Stainless steel," it says, and is otherwise silent on the matter. The online listing is just as nonsensical as ever, listing the blade profile as "clip point," the height as "0.01 inches," and claiming that it's "reusable." Okay, the last one I may begrudgingly grant them. But only just.

It has this gearsy vibe going on (no, definitely not her) which does it no good at all, sonny me lad, because it's all fake. The gear "teeth," such as they are, are simply inexpertly carved into the surfaces of the armature and don't turn or engage with anything.

It gets worse.

Once you add up the lash in all four pivots, there's more than enough rattle to allow the edge of the blade to clash with the handle if you're not careful when you're closing it. It's actually more easy to do so than not, since the liner lock is constantly pressing up on the rear arm all the time and making the blade want to obstinately cant in that direction.

There's a frankly disgusting amount of wiggle allowed in the blade. Hey, maybe that's another feature! It's not just a knife and a glass breaker and a bottle opener, but in a pinch you can use it as a pair of castanets.

Nevertheless, the action does work in a broad sort of sense.

If you were wishing this were some appreciable fraction of the quality of a real Provoke just to try it out, though, forget it.

As you've already guessed what with it being a cheap knife with a single sided handle and all, the Promithi's edge is chisel ground. It's cheap, it's nasty, it's 'orrible. It's likely to be dulled significantly towards its root as well, thanks to being routinely bashed into its own handle. It's not even remotely straight. Just look at it.

The real Provoke's blade actually isn't chisel ground, surprisingly enough, as evidenced with this back side shot showing off the rest of the markings. It, too, isn't really genuinely sharp from right out of the box but it's at least able to fairly reliably chop a Post-it in half whereas you'd have better luck whacking your stationery with a spoon than trying it with the Promithi.

One other point of order I should mention is that the genuine Provoke can't do the thing where its blade hits the handle. There's a small but unerringly enforced gap between the blade and the inner surface of the handle at all times, and no amount of twisting or cajoling seems to be able to cause the blade to crash into it regardless. Even if it did the blade is steel and the handle is just fancy plastic, so it's unlikely you'd deal any damage to the edge.

Let's rip this stupid clone to shreds the rest of the way.

Getting the Promithi apart wouldn't be an especially onerous task except the screw heads are All Weird (a technical knifemaking term) with some of them coming filled with paint, some accepting a T9 Torx bit, and others a T8 with no apparent rhyme or reason to it.

Inside are bar none the cheapest, flimsiest, most bullshit plastic pivot washers I've seen in my life. I'll bet they'd wish you think they're Teflon, but I'm positive they're not.

The Promithi's thickness is created by building it out of three distinct slabs of steel, shown here in their full and unctuous as-delivered glory with the gaps in between soaked in some manner of slimy lubricant. I threw caution to the wind and cleaned this off prior to the rest of the photography and didn't replace it with anything. Perhaps my Promithi will rust from within over the coming years as a result, but just see if I care if it does.

One of 'em has got the lock finger thingy on it. Calling it a "liner" seems wrong, since all that does is discredit the rest of the liner lockers in the world by association.

Here's the sum total of the mechanical components. Note the detent ball on the end of the lock finger which accomplishes nothing, and the fake gears engraved into the ends of the armatures.

The full kit and caboodle. Getting the Promithi apart in its entirety revealed at least one cause of its wonkiness: The lower pivot hole in the rear armature is drilled crooked, and causes the screw to kick off at an angle when it's installed. The pivots are all plain Chicago screws with those plastic washers as the only bearing surfaces. The ones in the upper pivots (in the blade, rather than the handle) are thinner than the other two for some reason.

The screws have no anti-rotation flats (although I'm not quite sure how it would work if they did) and the upper and lower ones are different lengths from each other.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Over the years there have been myriad attempts at compacting a karambit into some manner of folder, some more clever than others. The CRKT Provoke is one of the clever options.

Promithi... Isn't. For once I'm at a loss for words. Me, of all people. I know, right?

It's awful. All the nicks and gouges you see in it are exactly as it was delivered to me. I certainly didn't do anything with this knife to get it all banged up like this and it's uncertain if anyone else in history actually has. It takes everything pleasant about the Provoke and twists it until it's incomprehensible. The action is terrible. It's self-dulling. It's probably more dangerous to carry than it is to use.

I think the most interesting thing I can come up with to say about it at this point is that it won't sit flat on its rear surface, so in several of these photos I propped it up using this tiny knife as a kickstand, and even it is infinitely more competent and certainly more usable than the Promithi clone. So to this I award zero points, condemn it to straight back to whatever hell from whence it came, and may the gods have mercy on the soul of each and every asshole who assisted in its manufacture.

If you want a Provoke, buy a Provoke. There's no cheating it this time.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your […]

Spooky scary balisongs are flipping through the air

Because they bought the newsroom hype they're outlawed everywhere

Imaginary urban toughs lurk only in your minds

But in your reelection bid, you make up fake new crimes

Oogly boogly!

This is the Cold Steel FGX series Tanto Balisong. This is a very scary and very naughty knife because it's not only a balisong, but as part of Cold Steel's FGX line it's also completely nonmetallic.

...I was waiting for the crash of thunder and the howling of the wolves. In the old country, whenever you said something super ominous and spooky, you could reliably count on dramatic convention to ensue.

No? Nothing?

Well, anyway, the core conceit of the FGX Tanto is easy to guess. It's made through-and-through of injection molded fiberglass reinforced Nylon. Which, according traditions both ancient and incessant, Cold Steel has made up a frilly name for. They call it "Griv-Ex." The blurb also claims that "other strategic non-metal materials" are also used, most likely ABS or something similarly mouldable in order to pull off the rivets and latch. But no matter how you slice it (har), there's no metal in here whatsoever.

It's also black, from stem to stern. I understand that makes it extra scary. So stop the presses, duck and cover. Phone the President, call up the National Guard. Quick, ban it! Ban everything!

Indeed, with any luck the very existence of this knife and others like it are keeping our harebrained legislators from getting a good night's sleep any night of the year. Cold Steel's product page also goes on to mention that this knife "may" not be legal in all jurisdictions, and I imagine that's probably so. It may in fact be shorter to list the locales where it is legal than print a veritable telephone book of all the places where it isn't. When your ivory tower is so tall that the sum total of your tenuous grasp of reality is apparently informed only by cartoons and schlock 1980s ninja movies, it's easy to miss the clear and simple fact that there's nothing inherently any more dangerous about a balisong knife than any other kind except, perhaps, to its own wielder. And not a single person hoping to smuggle a shiv through a metal detector with malice in their heart is going to deliberately pick a style of knife that's specifically and notoriously difficult to use, are they?

They're going to use, er, a shiv. Like I said. Probably made of glass or wood.

But that's not going to stop people living in fantasyland from getting extremely hot and bothered about this thing. And then we wind up with silly laws.

Even outside of all of the above, the FGX balisong is awesome simply because it is monumentally absurd. It is a mustachio-twirling, damsel-to-tracks-tying, cartoon caricature of villainy. And for that I adore it.

Monstrosity

The one thing that becomes immediately apparent as soon as you have an opportunity to hold the FGX balisong is that it is absolutely humongous.

It's 6-1/2" long closed and a full 11-1/8" when open, with a 5-1/8" blade. The numbers don't do it justice. It is, bar none and without peer, now the largest balisong knife I own... And by a significant margin. Every proportion is exaggerated. It's 0.719" thick, nearly three quarters. Counting just the handles, it's 1.336" wide. That's without the latch! Across the ears at the heel of the blade it's 1.626" wide, near as makes no difference to 1-5/8".

It's bigger even than a Kershaw Moonsault. It towers over a Benchmade 87 and outright dwarfs the Model 51. It completely eclipses a Mantis Mothra. It's gargantuan. It's a B movie monster, ripped straight from the posters.

But due to being made entirely out of plastic composites, it only weighs 90.9 grams or 3.21 ounces. So despite having probably around double the displacement of a Model 51 if you dropped both of them into a bucket of water, it weighs about the same — and is only 70% of the weight of my titanium scaled BM51 clone, pictured above. And thanks to being made of the same material all the way through the point of balance is somehow still right.

That makes the FGX balisong, contrary to all logic and expectation, a fully mechanically functional balisong knife.

But needless to say, if some ne'er-do-well is hiding one of these about his person, it's so huge that you'd be likely to notice the attendant bulge.

Otherwise, there is a full compliment of familiar features. The FGX balisong has a real working latch, which even has a primitive detent built into it. The detent's just a pair of nubbins cast into the shank on the latch, which out of the box gripped ridiculously hard. They wore in pretty quickly, though, which makes me wonder if at some point soon they'll just plain old wear out and cease to function. The latch isn't spring loaded and doesn't have any anti-rattle or clash prevention features, but you can't have everything in plastic. Well, actually, you can, but who's counting? There's also a curious extra endstop pin built into the latch itself, which rests between the handles. This is probably an anti-squeeze device, which helps conceal the inherent noodliness of the handles when the knife is latched.

It's even got a real live pair of kicker pins, although perhaps "pins" aren't the right description, because these are moulded directly into the blade. They can't be dismounted. Nor, apparently, can the plastic rivets that act as pivot pins. These too are of course thoroughly nonmetallic, and appear to have had their heads shaped in place with the application of heat. I thought at first glance it might be possible to press them out again for disassembly, but they didn't budge even after applying a generous shove with a punch, and after that I gave up.

The upshot of this is that the FGX balisong has a small but manageable amount of lash in the pivots that results in a free end handle play of maybe just under a quarter of an inch. That's actually not bad, considering not only the length of this thing's handles but also that it's, you know, made out of friggin' plastic.

There are some visible mould release marks on the various components, including this prominent one on the blade. A couple of seam lines are also apparent, all of which make it clear that every part of this is injection moulded.

Teeth, Gnashing In the Dark

Note that I called the FGX balisong a "knife" earlier and not a "Balisong Shaped Object." Cold Steel go out of their way to point out that this is not a toy, and that's the truth. That's because — are you sitting down? This thing actually has an edge on it from the factory.

Okay, it's not much of one. And that may be for the best, because with the best will in the world consumer grade thermoplastics are not renowned for their edge retention characteristics. But the FGX balisong is at minimum the level of sharpness required to serve as, say, a letter opener. As you can see it can't cleanly deal with a Post it, and it's not enough to draw blood by just running your thumb down the edge. But there is a distinct sawtoothed sharpness you can readily feel, and which is several ranks above butter knife grade.

The blade is very thick, 0.270" all the way down its length, distally tapered to its edge with no secondary bevel. Yes, that's more than a quarter inch. It's a single flying wedge, with a flat... er, grind isn't the right word, but it's the equivalent shape. Except for its very point:

The latter of which is reinforced with a convex profile. Thus it's clear that Cold Steel's intended method of employ is probably thrusting rather than cutting. Fiber reinforced nylon is only rigid in a relative sense, compared to other readily available plastics. It's not a patch on even cheap steel, but it is extremely resistant to shattering or snapping which means this is likely to be quite brutally effective if you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to insert it into an assailant. It'd surely work at least once. Maybe don't go around telling everybody, though.

It's also strangely soothing to pinch the tip of the thing and feel the point where it gently transitions from flat to curved. I couldn't tell you why.

If this isn't mean enough for you, Cold Steel also do a dagger profiled version with serrated edges. That one looks even more menacing than this one, and I may just have to pick it up for the perversity value as well as the sake of completeness. If nothing else, these things are cheap: Cold Steel list the serrated ones at thirty bucks a piece, but the simpler tanto version is only seventeen.

It's got pretty much exactly a 135° tanto point on it, like a kid's drawing of a samurai sword. And what looks like it might be chromatic aberration around the point actually isn't, by the way.

It's a bit of mould flashing, through which we can deduce that the edge is not ground or milled on in any way, but is in fact moulded right in.

While we're at it, here's what the edge looks like right at the point, up close good and proper. It's not exactly precision work, this, but for a thing that's made out of plastic for only a couple of bucks it'll do.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I've heard it whispered in the dark corners of the Internet that when manufacturers make nonmetallic knives like these, The Man forces them to surreptitiously insert bits of metal into them someplace so they'll still trigger a metal detector. Well, I'm pretty sure this is bullshit. I took one of my imposing collection of unwisely powerful magnets and waved it all over the FGX balisong and came up with nothing. If Cold Steel did something like this, they must have used something nonferrous. Personally, I'd doubt it.

So the FGX balisong it exactly what it appears to be: A plastic bogeyman, a stab in the dark, seventeen bucks worth of pure annoyance aimed squarely at the types of people we'd like to annoy. Fuck 'em.

Needless to say, carrying this anywhere is certain to get somebody's panties in a twist, some way, some how. I should also point out that nonmetallic or not, this absolutely will not sail through one of the fancy X-ray backscatter machines the TSA is using these days. And, in fact, things just like this are precisely why they use those now. So don't try it.

But in the realm of security theater, I think it's fitting that we get to be dramatic right back at these bozos. If they fear monsters lurking under their beds, well. I say let them be spooked. Wield your FGX proudly and let it flicker as a tiny candle flame of common sense in a world of idiotic darkness.

Plus, it's cool. How can you argue with that?

Every once in a while I feel like somebody's calling me out. For instance, with this: QSP make a knife called the "Penguin." Could anything else have me written all over it in bigger letters?

Well, okay, it could have been a balisong. But it's not, so it seems thus far if you want a Spheniscidae-adjacent bali then mine is still your only option. But still, I think I was my most solemn duty to buy one of these so I can squawk all about it. You know how it is.

QSP seem to be a newish player on the market and up until now, to be honest, I'd never looked at them that hard. They're another quasi-faceless Chinese manufacturer attempting to cast off their homeland's reputation for low-rent flea market grade cutlery, perhaps so much so that they posit "QSP" stands for "Quality, Service, Price." Well, actually their about us blurb is rather long-winded but still short on actual useful details, and repeats the phrase "Better Knife, Better Life" instead, suspiciously frequently. The word on the street is that they might be trying to position themselves as the next CJRB or Civivi. That remains to be seen.

For some reason it seems that almost all of their models are named after animals. For its part, the Penguin comes in a frankly absurd number of combinations of action types, handle scale materials, and blade finishes. I got the "Glyde Lock" variant in green and with a bare steel rather than coated blade, which is naturally the objectively correct choice for anyone who wants to spend no more than $49 on it. It must be said that it's one of the less excitingly expensive options while managing not to be yet another boring liner lock. The Penguin as a whole is available in both frame and liner lock incarnations, plus a button lock version, and with large and small variants of some types. It's all a bit much to keep track of, if we're honest.

The Penguin comes in a nice lift-off presentation box that's not much bigger than the knife itself.

These guys sure know how to make a good first impression, though. This thing comes with not one but two penguin stickers inside the box. I'll happily accept a bribe like that any day of the week. Alas, the stickers are the only freebies I got because I paid for this one with my own money.

For some reason they also include a card with the specifications of the knife you now already own, as if that's going to help your purchasing decision any. I notice the various options checkboxes on mine are resolutely unchecked. I don't know what's up with that. The rear briefly outlines QSP's alleged limited lifetime warranty, which as usual seems to disclaim pretty much everything and explicitly also only covers the first owner. It also calls out being "taken apart or reassembled" as invalidating it, which as we all know means my personal example will remain fully covered only as long as nobody at QSP manages to read this column. No mention of reassembling it incorrectly, mind you; presumably just taking it apart and putting it back together at all is enough to do it.

What a load of krill.

The Penguin is a mid size, EDC oriented folder that's 4-1/16" long closed and 7" precisely when it's open. It's got a 3" long blade if we stick with our usual method of measuring from the forwardmost point on the handle, with a sheepsfoot profile and about 2-13/16" of usable edge. There's no ricasso so the sharpened part goes all the way from tip to root, ending in what amounts to a choil at the base which interfaces with the stop pin inside the knife. The blade's 14C28N, i.e. the current king of non-crucible steels, so it ought to be a halfway decent performer as well.

It weighs 83.5 grams or 2.94 ounces in this incarnation, including its injection molded fiber reinforced nylon scales. You can get these with aluminum or carbon fiber or with copper plating, or the gods alone know what all else, and undoubtedly those all have slightly different weights. No word on a black one with a white blade. What a combination to overlook, really.

The handles are 0.478" thick not including the protruding lock toggles, or 0.564" with. Including the clip the whole thing is 0.650", so it's not exactly wafer thin.

It's got has a decent heft in the hand, and the center of gravity is pretty much right around where the lock is, which is nice. It's neither front nor tail heavy, and has a pleasingly grippy texture that manages to not be sharp or annoyingly raspy in the process. I can confidently report that no part of it is made out of rubber, nor soft-touch anything. If nothing else at least it won't ever disintegrate into goo in storage and you'll never find it unexpectedly glued to your pants.

The Penguin's Glyde Lock is yet another take on the crossbar/Axis lock, with its major contribution being the elongated slider thingy in place of the usual round button jutting out. The lock's pretty easy to find and works the usual way, sliding to the rear to release the blade.

It's also got this groovy laser engraved flush fitting pivot screw head, which is an absolute must if you're going to show off to your friends that you're a top-shelf EDC bro and not just some uncultured chump who buys all his pocketknives from Walmart. Not that I'd know, or anything.

The other perk you get for going with the Glyde trim level is ceramic ball bearing pivots, so this Penguin's got a nice solid pivot with low-friction feel. The blade is 0.120" thick at the spine and thus has a fair amount of heft to it compared to, just for purest sake of argument, something like a Benchmade Bugout. So the Penguin is a champion at doing the Axis Flick trick, if that's what you're into — and you'd better believe that I am. What with the elongated easy to grab lock button and effortless pivot action, it's like it was made for it.

If, for some damn silly reason, you would prefer that your Penguin not have ball bearing pivots, you can purchase an aftermarket kit of Teflon and bronze washers to replace these. QSP themselves remain silent on the matter but the wisdom of the Intertubes indicates that this is favorable for people who work in exceptionally gritty environments. I propose that in that case, rather than sandblasting your nice knife on a regular basis, you might just want to invest in a cheaper boxcutter instead. But what do I know?

The Penguin only looks like another one of those damned all-composite wunderkinds from the outside. It does indeed have full length steel liners concealed and encapsulated within its scales, if that helps you sleep better at night. That makes it a damn sight more rigid than the current crop of all-plastic EDC darlings, calling out the aforementioned Bugout especially. It's also just a shade over a quarter of the price of the latter, as well, which helps.

I really like the Penguin's clip.

Actually, no. Back up a bit. I really like that QSP have done with the Penguin's clip, which is a different story. The clip itself is just about average, and as is apparently all the range these days comes too tight as it is out of the box. It grabs just a shade too hard for a clean draw off of most fabrics, which to be fair can be fixed in a jiffy by anyone with moderate cojones and a willingness to tweak it slightly with a pair of pliers.

What I really like about the clip is how it's inset to be flush with the scales where it's mounted. And QSP didn't do a halfassed job with this, either. The screw heads themselves are also countersunk into the clip, so there's nothing poking out to snag. Other manufacturers could learn a lot from this. Other manufacturers who shall remain nameless, and charge a lot more for their knives.

The clip is reversible, albeit with only tip up carry provided, but these absolute Chads have also gone on and installed a shiny steel filler in the pocket where the clip would go on the opposite side, so you don't wind up with a stupid divot in the scale on whichever side it's not installed on. I know, I know, that's like three cents worth of metal getting me all excited like this, but now that I've seen it I can't fathom why other makers who have inset clips don't seem to bother to do this.

And it makes it look cool. Something to balance out that big shiny pivot screw, but on the other end of the handle. You have to look cool if you're a penguin. There's no other way.

You also get a lanyard hole down there if you're the type of person who cares about that sort of thing.

I like the Penguin's size. The sheepsfoot blade is not everyone's cup of tea, and if we're putting our cards on the table I'll admit that I usually prefer something with more of a drop point, myself. But the Penguin's blade profile does at least do one thing, which is make it look a lot more like a peaceful utility tool and not a tactical combat implement. It's also right at the 3" blade length limit which is in force in most locales, which means you ought to be able to carry this pretty much anywhere. So that's nice, and also not something you can say about the OG sized Bugout, technically.

(So naturally it's shown here with a Tactical Combat Implement, just because. Neener, neener, neener, et. cetera.)

The Penguin is quite acceptably sharp out of the box. I still don't have a rigorous way of assessing this yet, but it cleanly deals with a standard Post-It with no trouble.

I'm thus a little disappointed to see that its edge grind is noticeably off true from the factory. It seems like this is still largely inescapable in sub-$100 knives, even here in the future. QSP make a lot of noise about craftsmanship and precision and so on and so forth, but it looks like they missed this particular little bit right here.

Oh well. I have an imposing array of diamond stones and I'm not afraid to use them.

Otherwise, the grind is pretty good. It's nice and fine, and they didn't have to employ any stupid microbeveling tricks to ensure it actually wound up with a functional edge on it.

I'm quite fond of the stonewash tumbled finish on the Penguin's flats, but it's a shame this was done before rather than after the taper grind. The taper itself has a satin as-machined finish which is curiously slightly curved and also swept towards the rear, even though the taper itself seems to be flat. It's not unattractive, but having the tumbled finish only on the dinky spine section of the blade makes it look a bit cheap. Which, to be fair, I guess it kind of is.

Unlike a lot of cheap knives, though, the Penguin's blade centering is just about perfect. No doubt that's because it's both an Axis and a ball bearing knife, so it's starting out with two major handicaps not present. The pivot is extremely solid and doesn't wiggle one tiny bit, and the lockup is likewise just as solid as any Benchmade I've owned. You can't fault it there.

So, here's the part where I void my warranty.

The lock toggles are made out of the same fiber reinforced stuff as the scales, and they press fit onto the ends of the crossbar in the lock. The undersides are not as pretty as the parts that show, but you won't be looking at them all day anyway. Underneath are the usual Omega style hair springs, which remain captive under the toggles and the scales, but are otherwise easy enough to remove.

It occurs to me that somebody with a 3D printer and a huge predilection for cutlery related nerdery could probably make custom replacement lock toggles for these pretty easily. Now there's something to think about.

Anyhoo, whether you love them or think they're a dumb plasticky idea, the Penguin is a damn sight easier to take apart than most Axis/crossbar knives thanks to those separate toggle pieces. It means there's no need to try to maneuver the crossbar out of some damn silly slot like you're playing Operation. With the plastic toggle and spring removed, the inner steel liner just lifts off with no further gymnastics required. Inside you'll see the bearings — ceramic ones, no less.

I will say that the interface between endstop pin, both diabolo shaped handle spacers, and their attendant holes in the liners are ridiculously tight. On the bright side, that means no tiny parts will fall out the moment you take the bastard apart. But conversely, getting them to let go of each other the first time is a harrowing affair, and getting them lined up again to put the thing back together requires getting everything lined up perfectly.

The pivot screw has an anti-rotation flat on it and that means your swanky QSP logo always winds up the right way up, no matter how badly you put the thing back together again. All of the screws are threadlockered with the blue stuff, but all of them came out easily and I didn't have to declare war on a single one of them to get 'em to let go. The pivot screw takes a T8 Torx head and the others are all T6. A word to the wise: The scale/spacer screws and the clip screws are slightly different from each other, with the latter being slightly longer and with fatter heads. So don't mix them up.

All of this makes the Penguin the easiest to dismantle Axis locker I've ever had the pleasure of messing with, and that's still including the tricky lineup job for the pins and spacers. This makes it supremely approachable to clean and de-lintify as necessary... If only it didn't apparently instantly invalidate your warranty to do so.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I really like what QSP's come up with, here. It's fitting that it's namesake is the most intelligent, the most elegant, indeed, the greatest of all birds.

What with the sheepsfoot blade, the bearings, and the Axis lock and all, what this really puts me in mind of is a non-humongous rendition of the CJRB Crag. Maybe QSP can make themselves the next CJRB after all.

That's A-OK with me, Q.E.D.

Keep on waddlin', my friends.

There is something very compelling (to me) about the sodbuster pattern slipjoint. It is old (some say back to the Romans but that seems very suspect) and very utilitarian. A good working knife. It was compelling enough to Case Knives they got a trademark for "Sod Buster" and built a whole line of knives around it.

If you're interested in one telling of the history of the sodbuster pattern, this video is informative. (I have no way of verifying accuracy however.)

I'm pretty sure Case also popularized the yellow synthetic handle. At least enough that others copied from them. Imperial/Schrade* certainly did.

The Imperial Sodbuster, or as it's affectionately called "IMP22Y", is an inexpensive knife to be sure. I purchased it a year and a half ago during a brief "how close can I get to $10 and still get a good knife" phase. (See previously reviewed Watchman and Duratech.)

In terms of matching the sodbuster pattern and the classic yellow handle it gets high marks. It claims to be 7CR17MoV steel and it cost $7.99 at the time. After that everything goes down hill.

Out of the box a few things were noticeable:

1. the brass pivot and pins came pre-tarnished, with obvious green rings around each one, staining the handle.
2. the grind was pretty far off
3. very stiff opening with a pronounced gritty/grinding feel. There is no need for a half-stop with this knife because every part of the movement could be considered a stop. This is not a knife that will accidentally close on your fingers. This is a knife that will barely close at all.

It's this last part that gets us back to the title of this post. For you see, that gritty/grinding feel was not left-over debris from manufacturing, but indeed, is the rounded tang of the knife blade and the back spring slowly but surely grinding itself to death.

As best as I could do with the macro function on my phone (and some cropping) you can see the pivot end of the knife. You can clean the knife to perfection and within a few times of opening and closing it, you're left with a mass of metal shavings and a shiny knife tang. I have no idea if they are wearing equally or if one is going to "win" but in the end we all lose with this knife.

Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, is meant to represent infinity and the cycle of life.
This is not Ourorboros. This is more Pizza the Hut.

The knife sits on my desk as a reminder of the fact that no matter how bad something can be, there's always a way it can be worse.

• (The muddy history of Schrade and Imperial knives is probably best left to Wikipedia.)

As an aside, I've moved accounts from lemmy.world to piefed.world. I have no idea how this is going to post to the community. sorry in advance for any weirdness.

Here, as you can see, I have a Spyderco Para 3.

"Clearly that's two of them," you say. "We all knew you were an idiot, but surely you can count to two."

Ah, but you see, it isn't. That's because one of them's a fake.

A forgery, a fraud, a simulacrum, a sham, a fraud, a phony, and a knockoff.

The truly astute among you — or the sufficiently learned geeks of the correct stripe — will probably already be able to spot which one it is. But any unordained member of the unwashed masses would probably be unable to tell, and that's one hell of a thing.

Thus, I present to you my first entry in what I plan to make a new and recurring if sporadic feature...

Send In The Clones!

This all started innocently enough.

I was noodling around on Aliexpress looking for more dumb shit to waste my money on. I'm sure you know exactly how it is. I chanced to scroll by this very image, and immediately it caught my eye:

Your really have to be an advanced nerd for this kind of thing to excite you, but I damn well know a Spyderco compression lock when I see one. Even if it's only fifteen pixels' worth of a grainy thumbnail image. I was therefore pathologically obligated to score this thing from the "Fire-Heat Knife Maker Store," specifically because they were being extremely coy with the product images. All of them were deliberately vague. They very carefully refused to depict the signature Spyderco thumb hole, the top end of the pocket clip, or anything even resembling a full frontal shot of the knife. But they mentioned a particular Spyderco model numer, C223, about a zillion times in the product description. Not, notably, the word "Spyderco." Not even once.

So you know what's up. When you see that, you know you're in for one of either two things: An absolute flaming piece of shit which is nevertheless bound to be a deep well of hilarity, which we can milk for content; or what I was really hoping for, a top flight counterfeit the seller really doesn't want to get busted for listing. Which we can also milk for content. So I put down precisely $20.81, crossed my fingers, and waited for that slow boat from China.

I've got no affiliation with the aforementioned chumps other than deliberately letting them sucker me out of twenty one bucks, but if you're into this sort of thing they may be worth a look. As these things go, the listing for my particular knife has vanished without a trace you can't buy the same one anymore, or at least not from the same people. But they've got oodles of other fascinating dreck in their listings which are all to the very last item absolute counterfeits of other knives. At the time of writing their "C240" listing is still up, for instance, which is presumably a clone of the Spyderco Smock. Since one good theft deserves another, I've stolen the entirety of the product images for that listing (all four of them) and reposted them here, here, here, and here. But you can see what I mean. I say presumably because they're very keen not to show you what this thing actually looks like. But they're certainly ready to refer to its model number an awful lot. They know you know. A nod's as good as a wink, am I right? Say no more, say no more.

They've also got a counterfeit of the Mantis Gearhead, which is currently low-grade unobtanium but generated a lot of buzz when I posted about it back when. If you've ever fancied getting your hands on one of those but now can't, I can tell you at the very least that the original knife is basically built to the level of a middling Chinese knockoff to begin with, so a clone of it is unlikely to be much of a downgrade if it's even any at all. (Archived image here, in case that listing also evaporates at some point in the future. Which it probably will, about nine seconds after I posted this.)

I'll finally spoil the suspense. In these photos, and (almost) consistently throughout this column, the genuine article is the one on the left and the fake is the one on the right.

The tell, of course, is that Spyderco never did a carbon fiber handle version of the Para 3 like this. "Nerr, but you forgot about the Para 3 Sprint Run, didn't you?" No, but that one has textured carbon fiber scales, not smooth woven pattern ones. And it was S90V whereas this one claims to be S30V (but more on that in a moment, for sure). Flytanium made a set of aftermarket scales that look pretty similar to these, but not quite the same, and insofar as I'm aware no knife ever left Spyderco's factory looking quite like this one.

Other options were available that may have looked even closer to the real deal. But let's face it, the carbon fiber is cool.

But what's not cool is this entire concept. Or rather, the looming possibility that any knife you might buy from a random online storefront expecting it to be a genuine Spyderco could very well wind up being one of these, and without something to compare it to or a thorough familiarity with the genuine article it's pretty much guaranteed that your average buyer would be totally fooled.

I've touched on this sort of thing somewhat obliquely before, and don't get me wrong — I enjoy a good Chinese knockoff myself. Probably moreso than most, or maybe just moreso than is healthy for a normal person. But I'm bent enough that this kind of thing amuses me to no end, so I seek them out on purpose just for the thrill of the chase.

The "C223" is the absolute spitting image of the Para 3. Not just the shape and the design, nor even the cross-compatibility of many of the parts. But the markings, the trademarks, all of it.

These chumps even copied the packaging. It's uncanny. If a bloke down the pub handed you this in exchange for $50 you might think you got a deal if you didn't know any better, especially given that right now a genuine Para 3 is every bit of $250. But this isn't worth $250. It's worth about $20, even new in the box. There are minute differences here and there if you know where to look, but that's the thing. You'd already have to know. Subtle inaccuracies creep up here and there, like small differences in sizes of text and terminology. The real box reads "USA MADE," for instance, whereas the counterfeit says "MADE IN USA." The UPC is the same, though, as is the alleged model number.

The presentation inside is much the same. Oh, except that the real thing comes with a Spyderco sticker inside the box but the counterfeiters were too cheap to include one of those, despite the fact that it couldn't possibly have been much of a tall order. Oh well.

But, whoever made this did have the chutzpah to fully copy the manual. That's good for a laugh, because not only does it reproduce the text from the real thing nearly verbatim, but it even includes the contact and warranty claim information for the actual Spyderco company. Yeah, no problem, mate! If you have a problem with your fake knockoff knife, just send it to Spyderco and we're sure they'll cover it.

Come to think of it, I wonder if anyone's ever tried. (Somebody over there probably has a whole desk drawer full of broken counterfeit knives people have sent them, and if they don't I'll bet you someone at Benchmade certainly does by now.)

The coloration is slightly different from one to the other as if they made this by making a color photocopy of it.

But I know they didn't, because I did notice one odd difference between the real and fake manuals. The genuine one is as usual on the left, and the fake on the right. For some reason they've mixed up the trademark and (R) symbols, nearly but also not quite completely reversing them relative to the real manual. I have no idea why this should be. Maybe the fakesters feel pathologically compelled to intentionally insert subtle telltale errors in their materials while they snicker at us behind our backs.

Here's what I can say about the clone, though. It doesn't just look like the business, it's actually extremely well built. If this weren't a cynical counterfeit it could stand on its own and be one heck of a deal.

For a start, I really like the carbon fiber scales.

Well, I say carbon fiber. I'm not convinced that they're not just "carbon fiber look," because they look like G-10 underneath. But the effect is well done, and catches the light correctly and everything. So despite that, or perhaps because of it, the clone is actually marginally heavier than the real knife. It's 97.8 grams or 3.45 ounces, versus 95.7 grams or 3.37 ounces. That difference may very well be down to the mass of the blade itself or some of the other componentry as well. I'm not obsessive enough to go around weighing all of the parts separately.

The real Spydero is laser engraved whereas the clone is just laser marked. This may be a cost-cutting thing. If you examine it closely you can see that the genuine knife has thinner and more defined markings that have some depth to them. And the more you stare at the alleged Spyderco logo on the clone the more wrong it looks. It also purports to be made of S30V which is not only deeply suspect but also out of date. Current retail Para 3's like mine are made out of S45VN, although Spyderco has made oodles of versions of the damn thing over the years out of all kinds of different steels. I'm sure this is much appreciated by the rest of sane society, because it keeps the true Spyderco fanatics off of the streets and out of trouble by way of giving them something to do in cataloging them all.

The back sides of the blades are much the same story. The clone still claims to be made in Golden, Colorado which is of course categorically false.

The "C223" clone has a fine satin machined finish on the blade surface and is genuinely fully flat ground, but its finish is visibly coarser than the real thing. It's not too dissimilar from the finish found on older Spyderco knives, which is to say it's not bad. But it's not as nice as its inspiration, and it might be one way to identify a fake if you're holding one.

There's not much sense in comparing the rest of the measures because they're literally exactly the same, nearly down to the molecule. Blade length, 2-7/8", with 2-5/8" of usable edge. Overall length, 7-1/8" open, 4-3/16" closed. Thickness without clips, 0.445" on one and 0.446" on the other. The Para 3 is kind of the compact version of the Spyderco Paramilitary 2 (or sometimes rendered"Para Military 2," with a space). This is in keeping with the usual tradition of complete inconsistency with knife makers not being able to decide if models with higher numbers should be bigger or smaller than their lower numbered brethren. I picked the "C223" deliberately, because I do own a Para 3 to compare with but I don't have a Paramilitary 2. I don't have the 2 because I already own yet another knockoff of it, which is the previously mentioned Ganzo G729. I'm perfectly happy with the Ganzo for what it is and don't need another $265 hole in my pocket, but thanks all the same.

Spyderco must be very proud of their Compression Lock given how they like to rattle on about it in all of their literature. It amounts to basically just a liner lock, but positioned on the spine of the knife rather than the inner edge of the handle. Much noise is made about how this is safer than a traditional lock which has a grain of truth to it, since no part of your fingers needs to be between the edge and the handle at any point while you're manipulating it.

It's faithfully reproduced here, of course, and works very well. Externally, at least, our fake knife seems mechanically impeccable with a precise and positive lockup without any rattle or wiggle in the blade.

Because of where it's positioned, the Compression Lock also lets you perform a silly trick wherein you can hold it open and flick the blade in and out without having to touch it, rather like doing the Axis Flick thing with a Benchmade.

You can use this to open the knife without putting your fingers on the blade if that's an important feature for you for whatever reason, but more prosaically you can use it to convert your knife into a fidget toy and drive your colleagues bats with it whenever they're within earshot. Anyway, you would theoretically be able to do this with a normal liner locker, too, if it weren't for the pesky fact that the blade is in the way.

The jimping on the back of the blade is even 100% faithfully reproduced, with an indistinguishable level of sharpness and precision from the real thing including the number of spines. 13 in all. And yes, I counted them. And now you're counting them too, to see if I'm right. I know you are. (The jimping in the liners, though, has one extra spine. But that makes it superior, right? More is more than less. Obviously.)

Among the various parts on these that are mechanically interchangeable, we can include the clips. The hole spacing is the same and you can swap these back and forth if you feel like it, which maybe is no big surprise since the Chinese have been cranking out compatible aftermarket clips for various Spydercos and Benchmades forever. It's even engraved — really engraved, this time — with a logo. I didn't say "the" logo, though, because just as before it's still slightly wrong.

The blade centering is great, too. That's usually one of the places where cheap knives fall down. The one above is the clone. For comparison, here's the real one:

It turns out there's a good reason for that, and now that I've said so you may have already guessed what it is.

The Gubbins

You know full well I can't just leave it at that without taking this thing apart. So I did, and while I was at it I disassembled my Para 3 for comparison. That's part of why it took me so damn long to produce this, and the other part you'll see below. Both of these knives are of course incredibly similar on the outside, so since we're here let's see if they're similar on the inside, too.

Ostensibly it doesn't take much to get the Para 3 to give up the goods. This here is the real Spyderco, which uses their increasingly familiar (now that I've taken a total of two of them apart and documented them here) shouldered barrel pivot with captive bronze washers. Precision machine work is kind of Spyderco's stock and trade, and this layout is very reminiscent of the ones in the Smallfly 2 we looked at many, many, many moons ago.

Note also the semicircular track for the lock detent ball which is actually already machined in from the factory.

A superficial assumption might be that the Para 3 is one of those jobbies that's mostly made up of its scales, and that it doesn't have full length liners. It actually does, but they're concealed by being inset into the scales.

Despite Spyderco's insistence on the matter, the Compression Lock really is just a liner lock but backwards. It works the same way with the same types of components, in this case including a normal endstop pin which passes through both liners and is also visible peeking out of holes drilled in the scales. Because it's a Very Nice Knife, and bloody well should be for its price, the Para 3 includes a ceramic rather than steel detent ball in the lock.

All of the press fit components in the Para 3 have very close tolerances, and lock together firmly enough that you may think at first blush there's more than just the two screws holding it together. The pivot barrel press fits into the liners, for instance, and holds the washer on whichever side you didn't dismantle captive.

That theme continues with the lanyard hole backspacer tube thingy on the tail of the knife which is an extremely tight fit in not only the liners but also the scales, and takes quite a bit of wiggling and rocking back and forth to coax it out. It sits flush with the outer surface of the scales which, if you were paying attention a couple of dozen paragraphs ago, the one in the clone knife actually doesn't.

Oh, and for some damn fool reason the pivot screws require a T9 Torx bit but the spacer screw heads are T8. I have no idea why this should be.

Apparently the clone makers had no idea why this should be, either, since in the case of the knockoff "C223" it isn't. All of the screws on that one are T8 heads.

It also has ball bearing pivots. I'll be damned.

And they're ceramic ones, no less.

To make up for this, the detent ball in its lock is plain steel. It also includes one spacer washer only on that side, I assume to take up the extra thickness from the detent ball itself. I'm pretty sure it only has one, anyway. I didn't find a second one on the carpet, and after carefully ensuring that the washer ended up back on the side it came from my example went right back together perfectly. So your guess is as good as mine on that one.

The pivot screw design between this and the genuine Para 3 are completely different. They look the same on the outside, but that's where the similarities end. The Para 3 uses that threaded barrel that actually has as screw driven into each end; which end comes out is probably pretty much random whenever you try to take it apart. The "C223" doesn't, and uses a traditional Chicago screw. It does have an anti-rotation flat on it, though, and for once in a knockoff knife the liners are correctly broached to take advantage of this.

The blade heel is different. It's pocketed to accept the ball bearings, and it lacks the zooty pre-machined track for the detent ball. That probably explains the need for the spacer washer, come to think of it. It's obviously be hand tuned for lock engagement with a grinder, because a burr and a small burn mark have been left on it. This is pretty normal for cheap Chinese cutlery.

Otherwise, it comes apart just like the genuine article. The press fit components aren't as tight and are easier to remove. I don't think that has much functional bearing on anything; all of that is just Spyderco showing off.

The full set of hardware.

It occurs to me that I forgot to take a similar picture of the Para 3's hardware, and I'll be blown if I'm taking it apart again just for that. You'll just have to deal with it, I suppose.

You can interchange the clips, spacers, and scales between both knives freely. The blades won't go, not because they're shaped especially differently from each other on the outside, but the pivot hole setups are totally different.

The Edges

I was keenly interested to see what the actual cutting performance of this clone would be.

You see, you see, that was a pun. I don't know if you noticed.

Anyway, I usually don't get too far into rambling on about the edge performance of whatever random novelty bullshit I'm showing off, because in a lot of cases the actual knife aspect of it is secondary. But this purports to be "A Spyderco," and since it hasn't got any major gimmicks up its sleeve a prospective buyer of it (whether they know it is a fake or, more likely, not) would probably actually expect to be able to cut stuff with it. Merely being glow in the dark and with a trick spring loaded ballistic corkscrew on it won't be enough to carry it through, here.

I'm pretty ill-equipped to quantify this sort of thing, to be honest with you. I keep all of my working knives very, very sharp with the aid of a variety of sharpening gadgets — some of which we may some day explore — but outside of superlatively bad examples it's hard to convey a knife's performance in text.

Therefore I got very scientific with this.

Here's the usual lousy micrograph of the clone's edge. I was not too surprised to see that it's got a secondary or, if you prefer, "micro" bevel on it. That sort of thing is often a shortcut to ensuring that any given hastily hand-ground budget knife actually manages to achieve an edge — rather than its two sides embarrassingly failing to meet in the middle, as sometimes happens — and can cover up a blade made of shitty steel or with a shitty heat treat from becoming obviously dull after minimal use. A steeper edge angle is more durable and will remain sharp longer than a shallow one, all other things being equal, at the expense of lesser cutting performance. And the whole point of fancy high edge retention steels is to be able to keep a shallower and thus more performant angle for longer. Or, indeed, at all.

The point's kind of a mess. The grind doesn't quite go out to the end of it, so the very tip is actually just barely noticeably blunt.

The edge grind is of course also noticeably out of true. That will have to be ground out the first time you sharpen it for real, unless you plan on doing as off-kilter of a job as the factory did.

All of this is completely to be expected and well within acceptable tolerances for a $20 knockoff knife. Regardless of all of the above, the "C223" is still objectively quite functionally sharp right from the very moment you remove it from its fake-as-a-snake box, and will effortlessly cleave a Post-It note in two, or open your mail, or cut rope, or flatten a cardboard box. I predict this is in no small part because even if the edge geometry has not been accurately cloned from its Spyderco inspiration, the blade geometry itself with its full flat grind has been, and this is one of the signature aspects that makes Spydercos if nothing else very consistent cutting performers.

Meanwhile, here's how the real deal does it:

Needless to say the genuine Para 3's edge grind is noticeably finer than its clone under magnification. I was surprised to see a micro bevel from the factory on here as well, but maybe I shouldn't be given how Spyderco apparently expect you to sharpen your knives this way as a matter of course, e.g. if you follow the unintentionally hilarious instructional video that comes with (on DVD!) their Tri-Angle Sharpmaker sharpener.

Note also the difference in surface finish between the two. Much more finishing work has been done on the flat of the Spyderco versus the competition.

Check out the difference in the grind out to the point, too. I don't know if this is the full $230 extra's worth of precision, but there it is nevertheless.

Needless to say the edge on the real Spyderco is also within true from the factory. For $250, they'd have a riot on their hands if it weren't.

(The above trueness shots were made on the red part of the glossy box lid from the clone knife's packaging, by the way. That's because for some reason my shitty digital microscope decided to absolutely freak the fuck out at that angle on both of these knives when viewed against a black background, for reasons I cannot begin to guess at because it's obviously never had a problem taking a picture from exactly the same angle on many other knives before. My little microscope cost even less than the clone "C223," so maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere. One that I will surely steadfastly refuse to learn.)

Anyway, we need some kind of head-to-head. Real world cutting performance, the guesstimation thereof, two knives enter, one knife leaves. Which one performs better?

I'll let you take a fuckin' guess.

I used a massively ~~rigorous~~ testing methodology to determine which of these knives performed the best. In fact, in the interest of laziness I deliberately structured it thusly: If your average Joe took either one of these knives right out of its box and put it straight to use, what could he expect? I know a fairer and possibly more scientific test would have started by grinding out both knives to the same level of edge at the same angle, which to be fair I absolutely did do after my initial tests. But to make an assessment from that point, I think I may need to find or devise some more precise equipment.

In the meantime, since both knives would cleanly and effortlessly cut paper with their factory edges, I hacked at some strips of cardboard until periodic checking revealed that each knife started to snag on paper rather than cutting it cleanly. So, neither knife was actually dull at the end of my test but had reached approximately the same level of lack of initial sharpness.

Getting the time and materials together for this is indeed part of what contributed to my sitting on this writeup for so long. The other major factor is that I've been doing other stuff with my time lately, and pissing away my money on other projects that are not knife related. Notably, on massive lenses and aiming the same at birds. Sacrilege, I know. Sorry about that. But I made it all come full circle anyway, because the source of cardboard for this was the very same giant box my shiny new lens shipped in.

So, that's the clone "C223's" pile of cardboard in the picture above. It made it through 46 cuts of a 9" wide slab of cardboard before losing its luster, for a combined total of 414 linear inches of cutting.

Look, we knew full well from the outset that the "S30V" mark on its blade was a bold-faced lie. Obviously its seller didn't actually specify what it's made out of even if its original listing hasn't by now inevitably vanished into the black hole of fly-by-night malarkey. And it has. It may be 7cr, or 440C, or maybe even D2. I can't tell you.

I can tell you that my real Para 3, which still had its factory edge up until I did this, easily hacked through 210 strips of the same cardboard for a total of 1890 linear inches before reaching approximately the same reduction in functional cutting power. So who can say what the "C223" is made out of, but I can damn well tell you that for 12.5 times more money, the Para 3 is at least four and a half times better.

That's not to say that the "C223" is trash in an objective sense; only by comparison. For one thing, it's only $21. Even after 34 and a half feet of cardboard it was still well within the bounds of working knife sharpness, and would probably be perfectly acceptable for any garden variety oik who only uses his knife for work and not for gibbering on all over the internet for imaginary knife bro cred. It could still continue to cut cardboard perfectly well after that point, it just wasn't capable of shaving paper just by breathing on it anymore.

And then I put it on my Ruixin Pro RX-009. Hey, more Chinese knockoffitude — I'm sensing a pattern, here. Within just a handful of minutes I lashed it into this:

At 15° per side, or a combined edge angle of 30°, the "C223" cleaned right up. Whatever kind of steel it's made out of sharpened easily, certainly more easily than when I did the same to my Para 3. The Ruixin is capable of making just about anything supernaturally sharp, but the real test will be to see if this thing stays that way.

Finding a good way to fairly test and articulate that will take some planning and cogitation on my part. So stay tuned; given what we do around here, cooking up some kind of consistent testing regimen will probably come in handy and we'll have a use for it more than once. (Yes, I am aware of schemes like the BESS testing methodology. I'm angling for something cheaper, less proprietary and, let's face it, hopefully less silly.)

In the meantime...

The Inevitable Conclusion

When we were young, our mothers all said to us, "If you just put half as much effort into your schoolwork as you put into that damn Nintendo/computer/football/card game/whatever, you could graduate with straight A's and go on to be a doctor!!!"

And I know I keep harping on this point, too, but I think it's kind of the same thing with the Chinese and these knockoff knives of theirs. Many of them, not least of which this one, are so damn well made that if they could just see their way clear to give up the friggin' chicanery and just invent something bespoke for a change they could really have a hit on their hands. But it seems that some people are just averse to making an honest buck, even if it'd be easier than the dishonest one.

Hell, I wouldn't even care if they just stole the Compression Lock mechanism — which, let's be honest, even the independent reinvention of wouldn't be that much of a leap. I think we'd all be 100% be down with that, if the resulting product didn't wind up slathered with fakes of someone else's trademarks.

But as it stands there's just no world in which I can recommend this "C223" the way that it is. It's incredible just how convincing of a fake it is, but that's the very problem. Any possibility, no matter how remote, that one of these might worm its way into the supply chain and somebody winds up paying a single penny more than the $20.81 I did for it or worse, possibly believing that it's worth any more than that, is nothing less than unconscionable.

But.

If this weren't an unabashed forgery there's no chance I would have even bothered to pick it up, because without anything else novel to offer I would have scrolled right past it. And again, that's the whole point of this exercise to begin with: Find a fake, and marvel at just how it stacks up against the original.

Maybe that's the rock and the hard place the makers of this knife find themselves between, then. Maybe you can't win after all, on either side of that checkout page. This knife is a knockoff, but it has to be or else probably nobody would buy it. And you can't make a living selling your product if nobody buys it, no matter what it is. The Chinese have been turning out so much trash for so long that now they've got a trust problem. How ironic, then, that one way around that is to just be even less trustworthy.

There's another aspect to this, as well, which probably not a lot of people will think of but I'm positive some members of this very community have confided to me that they employ. Let's just say for the sake of argument that you were thinking of picking up a Spyderco Para 3 (or maybe a Benchmade or a Microtech, or whatever else) but you're not sure you're actually going to like it. $250 is a big risk, especially if you're going to encounter a hassle returning it. But $21 isn't. It's probably less than the loss you'd take buying a brand new one and then reselling it in a month on some knife forum after it turns out you hate it.

Most importantly, this is a mechanical carbon copy underneath all the fake logos and counterfeit box and all. It looks the same as the real thing, yes. But it also carries the same, opens the same, functions the same, feels the same, weighs about the same... Maybe it won't hold up as well, but who cares? Carry it for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, whatever. If you like it, then you can buy a real one. And if you don't, or if you break it, well. It wasn't much of a gamble. I'm sure we've all spent $20 on less, at some point in our lives.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/post/379789

You know, sometimes I think I might just know exactly how knife designers feel. Like, the pressure to complete something that not only has to be novel and entertaining, but also functional and appealing. Where I have the advantage, of course, is that whatever bullshit I come up with doesn't exactly have to be marketable. And as the designer of not one but four whole knives, I also get to come over all smug about it as if I'm not just talking out my ass all the time. (Well, okay, maybe more like three and a half.)

Do knife designers ever get the equivalent of writer's block? I'll bet you Tom Hitchcock doesn't.

No, not the footballer. The guy who designed this:

This here is the CRKT Daktyl and it is, without a doubt, slightly bonkers.

I imagine that's because with the best will in the world, by now pocket knives are kind of a solved problem. Just like wristwatches and handguns, we've achieved kind of a core competency in figuring out how such a thing ought to work. Thus in order to anything novel in the field a designer's major recourse is often to fall back on, well, doing it slightly wrong.

Uh, yeah. Kind of like that.

The Daktyl is thus another entry in the series of transverse folders that pivot the wrong way. I'm not sure what it says about the field as a whole that this is apparently a genre that exists now, nor what it says about me that I've now amassed three of the fucking things in various flavors.

At first I was prepared to dismiss the Daktyl as just another piece of hipster bohème nonsense that exists only for the sake of novelty, write something hyperbolic and sardonic about it, and move on. But in this case we really shouldn't do that, not least because Mr. Hitchcock maintains a sparse but fascinating website, and through it we can catch a glimpse of the design process of this knife which is a unique opportunity we don't have the luxury to enjoy with your typical faceless piece of off-the-wall novelty garbage.

Because garbage is what this isn't.

It turns out, for instance, that one prototype of this design incorporated a fully formed iteration of its mechanism in a frame that holds a standard utility knife blade. I've casually stolen a picture of this from Tom's web site and rehosted it here, just in case some day this jewel is lost from the internet forever. So it turns out that great minds think alike; damn if it doesn't feel good to vindicated sometimes. And Tom's a real professional designer of stuff with a career and everything. Much unlike myself, who's just some jackass on the internet. If we're not careful, I'll rub some of his credibility off.

This design seems to have progressed into the Hole In One which got built by CRKT and is now discontinued, thus mocking me forever and becoming yet another of my saved eBay searches, languishing in the vain hope of ever scoring a non-fucked example to complete my perpetual quest to amass a pile of all the damn silly knives I'm never going to use.

The Daktyl is more recent and, importantly, readily available. And cheap, too: Just $45 right now. So for not much outlay you too can be a proud owner of a funky knife with a big ninja finger hole in it and...

Design with a Capital "D"

CRKT's blurb about the Daktyl specifically calls out the "Slide Lock" mechanism, which if you ask me rather buries the lede on how this thing works.

Undoubtedly they're referring to this prominent crenelated dingus on the heel of it which, yes, does indeed slide back and forth. This comprises the sum total of the controls on this knife, and until you slide it outwards it locks the knife totally solid and no amount of mashing it up or down will release the blade. You'll have the devil of a time figuring this out, too, because the cursory instructions leaflet packaged with the thing doesn't explain the slightest bit about how the hell this is supposed to work.

It's not until you work it into this position that the Daktyl will give up the goods. With the thingamadoo correctly positioned, you can press down on it which cams against the springy loop of steel that forms the Daktyl's handle and spreads it apart just enough to release the blade and allow it to swing out sideways. Left or right, it's your choice; if nothing else the Daktyl is thoroughly ambidextrous.

This whole thing puts one rather in mind of the CRKT Van Hoy Snap-Lock, which we very briefly inspected going on for two years ago and holds the distinction of being only the fifth knife I've ever showcased in column. In fact, at a time when I hadn't even made this a column yet and was still taking janky photographs of things on my grubby mousepad with my phone. For fuck's sake, have I been doing this for that long? (Maybe some day we'll revisit that one in some better light.)

Anyway, the Daktyl is a little more confidence inspiring in the hand probably thanks to its generous index finger rest, plus that big old hole right around the pivot. It's also possible with a bit of practice, and if you hold the thing precisely right, to snap it open one handed in such a way that your index finger naturally falls into the ring.

This is immensely satisfying to get right.

And all this works. The Daktyl is impeccably machined such that the blade locks home in both positions perfectly, with nary a wiggle or rattle. Despite a key aspect of its operation relying wholly on the noodle quotient of its handle, it feels remarkably solid. Your grip on it naturally puts one finger through the hole, and the sideways action means that even if you manage to make this fold up on you somehow it won't be the sharp edge you wind up in contact with. If you need even more piece of mind — a concept that every brand loves to sell but nobody can quite seem to point to on the parts diagram — you can slide the lever into its locked position when the knife is open as well as closed, rendering the blade totally immobile.

Unlike the Snap-Lock, the Daktyl's svelte profile completely lacks any kind of clip and there isn't really even anywhere on it to put a lanyard. So you'd think the Daktyl doesn't give you any assistance towards actually carrying it.

But you see, that's where you're wrong. Because there's a carbiner gate built into the finger hole. Its spring motive is also provided by the handles and thus it can eschew the need for any type of tiny fiddly spring. This is clever, but in accordance with the ancient rites of inevitability there is also a notch in the nose of it designed to allow you to use it as a bottle opener, which serves to make it altogether too clever by half.

You can also use this to dangle the knife off of stuff. CRKT suggest that you ought to do this with a belt loop, where it will be plainly visible to all passers by and ought to be a sure fire panty-dropper in any social situation. Virtually guaranteed to not make you look like a colossal nerd in any capacity whatsoever.

The Daktyl has a highly ventilated design. If we were arteurs we would claim it has "a minimalistic aesthetic providing positive reinforcement of form via the exploration of negative spaces, with an implication of a unified whole in silhouette." But we aren't, so we won't.

But there was a time when getting your hands on a skeletonized Spyderco or CRKT was the height of cutlery chic, so here is at least your golden opportunity to reclaim those glory days. Or, more likely, actually get around to achieving them in the first place if you're anything like me.

All This Whiffling And I Still Haven't Talked About The Specs

The Daktyl is precisely 6-11/16" long open, and 4-3/8" closed provided you slide the manipulatory hoojadinger into its locked position. The blade is 3-1/4" long if you measure from the tip to the pivot axis, but the sharp part of it is only 2" long thanks to a significant portion of it being forward of the wasplike narrow waist. Thus it's a matter of interpretation as to whether or not this counts as above or below the mystical 3" figure. Either way, just looking at the thing it's unlikely the law will be able to label you a domestic terrorist for owning one of these and still be taken seriously afterwards.

The blade is a Wharncliffe profile, fully flat ground, and has three jelly bean voids machined into it. There's also a perfunctory round hole which appears to be a holdover from the Hole In One Design. The shape of the cutouts in the blade are the primary differentiators, but there may be other differences. Hell if I know, due to not owning one of the latter.

Despite being constructed entirely of steel of one flavor or another, the Daktyl isn't too heavy owing to a lot of it being just air. Just 67.4 grams or 2.38 ounces, which would make it a much more appealing EDC candidate if only its carry method weren't so damn silly. Even so it's a nice size, and if you can figure out a way to work it into your wardrobe without looking like a dweeb or, preferably, if nobody in your workplace cares this could make a nice light duty EDC piece.

The blade is made of 420J2 which has, let's just say, a high degree of sharpenability. Hey, they make surgical implements out of the stuff, right?

Edge retention notwithstanding, light duty is what the Daktyl is likely to see. What with those holes in the blade it's not bound to do anything but slowly drive you insane if you tried to use it for camp food prep. And thanks to the same it's probably unwise to apply much twisting, prying, or impact force to the blade. Which is a shame because it has an excellent factory grind and a slight upsweep to the edge with a gentle curve that'd otherwise make it highly usable.

The finish is bead blasted all over with a pleasing satiny vibe. This extends to the expertly machined and jimped lock lever, the carbiner gate, and even the cross pins.

The Daktyl's all riveted together and contains no screws, so I didn't brave taking it apart. It seems to consist of a sum total of only four parts, though, not including the pins. So it's not too tough to imagine how it goes together, nor grok how it works just by looking at it from the outside. It's elegant, I'll give it that.

Tom Hitchcock's designer's mark is laser engraved in one side, lest you forget that in your hands you hold an objet d'art from none other than the inventor of Bottle Blocks.

On the reverse is CRKT's logo, an ever-present reminder that sometimes your pure vision runs into the mundane tedium of having to enlist somebody to actually make it. And so it goes.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Did not Nietzsche say, "We have art in order not to die of the truth?"

Do I not say, if I got any more pretentious or used any more gratuitous French in this column I'd have to disembowel myself with a spoon?

The truth is, regardless of whatever else we should celebrate the path the Daktyl took from one designer's vision to a physical thing we can hold and appreciate. While we're quoting, I love the frank assessment on the mechanical design on Tom Hitchcock's web site, which is thus: "I began looking at the trend to knives with finger holes, and I also saw an interesting side-opener. I thought that I could integrate the two ideas, and make a much safer, friendlier utility knife in the process. But it wasn’t as simple or easy as I first thought."

I've been there, Tom.

So I can already hear it:

"Production Rockhopper when, Dorkus?"

I have a couple old pocket knives that belonged to my grandfather. I've looked at a lot of information about removing rust, polishing, etc. I used a gun cleaning solvent with wet/dry sandpaper to take off the heavy rust and brass wire brushes. I have polishing cloths and metal polish. I got them looking a lot better, but there is some damage to the metal itself on the oldest knife. It looks dimpled. Is there anything that can be done to help with the damage short of machinery to refinish the blade or something? I'm pretty new/inexperienced so I'm open to suggestions as long as it doesn't require buying expensive tools. The knife that is the worst was from my grandfather's tackle box so it was used hard.

You know, sometimes I almost miss the pre-Internet days. Or at least the early Internet era. Back then, the junk purveyors were all on late night television instead. In those pre-dawn hours, if you wanted to get your hands on the truly godawful and macabre you had to call the 1-800 number now, where operators were standing by, ready for your credit card and one easy payment. All of that took effort. Dedication, even. You had to be up at that hour, for a start, and even then you'd have to peel yourself out of your chair.

Nowadays it's just too easy. And some of us have a reputation to uphold and a show to keep going. So you scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and then you wind up with crap like this.

This is the NSOUR "Stainless Steel."

I'm serious. Its model designation is literally "Stainless Steel."

Or be precise, it's the "NSOUR New Stainless Steel Sharp Outdoor Camping Handle, Portable Meat Handle, Unboxing Fruit Knife for Self-defense."

I will let the record state that I am leaving the Portable Meat Handle completely unaddressed. At least this time they managed to get all the letters into "self-defense," and even in the right order. And NSOUR sounds like it ought to be the name of a Chinese knockoff boy band.

If a cigar cutter got drunk and fucked an out-the-front switchblade, the resulting crack baby would undoubtedly be this.

It's tough to miss the NSOUR's most prominent feature, which in fact isn't its silly name, but rather is this tantalizing trigger mechanism behind the big hole in the blade. At first blush it appears that sticking your finger in here ought to be an express ticket to amputation, but no part of the circular cutout is sharp nor contacts the edge in any way. This is a slide opening knife — not a side opening knife — and here's what that looks like:

The action is slightly gritty and drags noticeably. But it is not spring loaded and thus very emphatically, definitely and clearly, and by all legal precedent is absolutely not a switchblade. It just wishes it were.

The NSOUR weighs 57.8 grams or 2.04 ounces and is constructed entirely of steel of some description, most likely stainless per its blurb but with these things you can never really take anything at its face value. And it's not quite as compact as you'd think. It's nearly exactly 4" long when closed, call it 3-15/16". But thanks to a good chunk of its length being taken up by the finger hole the blade itself is actually a comically stubby 1-7/8". Open, then, it's 5-5/8" long overall. The heel of the blade ends in a short ricasso and somehow this knife manages to be the only one I think I've ever handled that actually has more length of sharpened edge than is actually presented to the user. Even with the blade fully extended there's about 1/8" of edge that doesn't come out far enough to ever actually make any contact with the outside world, instead preferring to hide in between the handle plates.

I guess that bit will never get dull, at least.

Because this sort of thing is contractually obligated to contain one on it somewhere, the front of it also serves as a bottle opener. Let it not be said that every part of this is useless, then. (And at this rate my collection of dumb bottle openers is nearly as large as my collection of dumb knives. Many of them are, in fact, one and the same.)

The NSOUR is nearly completely flat, made up of just two shiny polished handle plates made of sheet steel (also presumably stainless, or at least one would hope) separated by a springy backspacer. Only the screw heads protrude past this. Without them it's 0.217" thick. The designers probably could have countersunk the screw heads and made this much slicker, but they didn't. So with them, the total thickness is 0.304". That's still not much.

There's no clip. However, you do get a triangular lanyard/keyring cutout in the tail and a cheap split ring was included in the baggie with mine. For the paltry $10.25 this costs, perish the thought of actually getting a box. That's not how it works.

What It Do

Rather, here's how it works.

Opening this with one hand isn't quite impossible, but it's harder than you'd think. The blade doesn't lock in the retracted position, thankfully, because with only that trigger to work with unlocking it would probably take three hands. It simply detents there, but it does so just exactly too firmly to be convenient. The track the blade slides in isn't polished in the slightest, and despite the typical Chinese predilection to douse everything in petrochemical-smelling grease my example showed up entirely unlubricated. Matters improved a little bit once I dripped some machine oil in the track, but not much. Fidgeting with the thing a whole bunch helped, too. Even so, the amount you have to scooch the blade forward to get it locked open is too far to do in a single operation with one hand. You have to play this little game of push, scoot, push, scoot, regrip, and repeat which is not only inelegant but also makes to feel kind of like a twerp. Like you're doing it wrong. Every time you think if you choke up on it a little further, really reach for it, and contort your fingers like a sleight-of-hand magician, this time you'll get it in one smooth movement. And you can't. Not now, not ever. That's just how it is.

I think perhaps it would be best to ignore the purported self-defense application of this knife. I don't know about the fruit or the meat handling, either.

It might be better if there were some manner of grip greebles on the edges of it. But there aren't, and every face is polished smooth.

On the bright side, I thought for sure this would also be a self dulling knife with the edge raking across the bottom of the track every time you opened it. Surprisingly, it isn't and it doesn't, at least if you open it the usual way. Trust me, I'm just as shocked as you are. You can knock the edge into the bottom track if you deploy it halfway and deliberately push it down, but thanks to the spring action built into it, it won't want to stay there and it helpfully cams itself back up into a position where it won't damage itself. If you value what little edge this has from the factory, don't do that.

As a consolation prize, the frame totally does scratch up the mirror polished faces on the flat of the blade every time you open and close it. What, you didn't think we'd manage to skate by so easily without some crucial aspect of the mechanism being fucked up in such a way to perfectly annoy you, did you?

The trigger does indeed lock the blade in the open position. The lockup's not very solid and there's a great deal of rattle left in the blade in every direction you can think of even when it's ostensibly locked. But it won't close up on you until you deliberately pull the trigger back, which both unlocks it and retracts the blade back into the handle as you'd hope and expect. This brings your index finger with it so it's actually damn difficult to cut yourself with this even if you do accidentally cause it to fold up unexpectedly. So that's nice.

Obviously there's no real forward finger guard, but if you hold this the way it appears you're supposed to you'll have your index finger through the hole, which ought to do a good job of preventing your grip from sliding up onto the edge no matter how much of a muppet you are.

Since there's no externally visible mechanism on this thing whatsoever you're probably wondering, as was I, just how the hell it works. Well...

One. Moment. Please.

The NSOUR's external construction is superficially very simple, with just four Chicago screws in the corners holding it together. They're threadlockered and obviously they don't contain any anti-rotation flats, so getting the plates apart requires sticking a T6 driver in both sides and giving a hearty twist. Preferably without slipping out and stripping the screw heads, or stabbing yourself with your own screwdrivers.

Inside you can see the NSOUR's secrets, which are simultaneously brutally crude and ingeniously clever. It's just all dichotomous like that.

Which side you get off doesn't matter. Most of its mechanism is not only contained in, but also comprised of the backspacer. A selection of prongs carved into the spacer serve as both the detent and lock-open springs. A tiny ramp and notch carved into the top of the blade engage with these.

When the blade is retracted there's a pair of prongs that are just mashed against it and prevents the thing from just falling open in your pocket. It's not great but it works, in a broad sense. It's certainly better than nothing, and all this is what prevents the NSOUR from just being a gravity knife. I believe the lower one is also meant to assist in preventing the edge from riding against the lower surface of the spacer. There's a notch on the lower heel of the blade that I think is supposed to make the closed lockup a little more positive and less squidgy, but it doesn't quite accomplish that. Just by looking at it I have to figure that the assembly of one of these requires a fair amount of hand finishing and tuning with a file or more likely a tiny grinder. Expecting whoever-it-is to nail it perfectly every time is probably a reach. In my case they certainly didn't.

Out on the business end, another prong serves as an endstop and one more just barely falls into the notch on the back of the blade once you push it to its fully extended position, acting as a one way gate and preventing it from backing up. The trigger is very lightly spring loaded and pivots on its top screw, camming upwards when you pull it back to minutely push the locking prong out of the way so you can retract the blade.

The trigger itself is the most complicated part of the entire assembly. It's made of two plates held together with yet more Chicago screws, with a pin pressed into one of them. There's a hair-thin torsion spring around the lower screw which pokes into the little hole you see there and goes off "ping!" as soon as you take it apart. I couldn't get it to stay in place without putting the top plate back on, so I left it out for this shot. The interface with the prongs is a tiny lobe made out of what I presume is hardened steel, which is clearly the only precision machined part in the whole damn knife and rests in a dovetail notch on top of the blade.

Here are all the trigger components separated out, including the spring:

Reassembling the stupid tiny spring is exactly as annoying as you'd expect. The long arm of it doesn't go anywhere in particular and just rests against the back of the hole in the blade. Keen readers will have already spotted it in some of the other photos, but in the exceedingly unlikely event that you also own an NSOUR knife and have also unwisely it apart for some reason, here is where the other end of the spring is supposed to go when you finagle it back together:

And, the full spread of parts:

The left and right handle plates are identical, and you can swap them from one side to the other if you like. They're even polished on both sides.

All the internal bits, such as they are, in action:

It's always deeply satisfying once you get one of these weird knives apart and understand how its screwball action works. In some small part it represents a triumph over whichever dickhead designed it. It's even better when you can get the fucking thing back together without losing any parts, and it even still works. I'm happy to say I won this round, for whatever it's worth.

This knife's action is novel, but also really a stupid way to go about it. It's inevitable, though. The longer any mechanism exists, the closer the probability of some turkey trying to use it in a knife gets to 1:1.

And speaking of inevitable...

The Inevitable Conclusion

I have a friend who is an engineer. No, really. I do. For many years, he's told me he's kicked around the idea of writing a book. He wants to call it, "Why We Don't Do It This Way." I think I might have just found him a new chapter.

History is littered with dumb ideas that never caught on. How fortunate we are, perhaps, to have this opportunity to witness one of them unfolding right in front of us in real time. But the truth is, if nobody actually gave it a shot we would never discover what the next big thing might turn out to be.

Whatever that is, though, it probably isn't this.

It's easy to declare it's all been said already, everything's been done before, and there's nothing new under the sun. I don't think that's so, myself. But that doesn't mean that the next radical idea won't be a bloody stupid one.

With a name like "Chong Ming," you just know you're in for a good time.

We've touched on this sort of thing before, at this rate over a year ago. Yes, we've been at it with this nonsense for that long.

Anyway, as Darth Vader once said: Spinning's a good trick.

This is the Chong Ming CM78, and with it welcome to the current state of the art of the Chinese knockoff fidget spinner knife. I've scrolled by and passed up many of these over the last several months, but there was something about this one that I couldn't resist. I mean, just look at it.

That is some serious filigree. The CM78's vibe could probably best be described as, "overwrought." The fleur-de-lis styling even extends all the way down the blade.

For $13, you get 6-1/8" of ~~top quality~~ Chinese spring assisted stiletto-ish liner locking folding knife with a blade made of, er. Some manner of metal, surely.

Its product description goes on to propose that its intended purpose is "hunting," and describes its theme as... "sport?" But then, it also claims that it includes a pocket clip. Which it categorically does not. You really just can't believe everything you read these days.

As you can see, it's also sold as the "Ziekeer ZD00" and probably a myriad of other ridiculous and inscrutable monikers. If you see any of these anywhere you can rest assured that they're all probably the same.

But this one even bears an honest to goodness model descriptor, laser etched into its little aluminum backspacer. That's miles beyond how far we usually get with this sort of thing.

It's also singularly irritating to take a clean picture of when it's lying on a flat surface, because, well...

Yeah. That.

The CM78 actually works as a fidget spinner, but not as well as you'd hope. It does have one thing going for it there, though: It's only 3-1/2" long closed, about half an inch shorter than our old spinner knife, which makes it significantly easier to use as such without whacking it against the web of your hand all the time. That means you don't need to have hands like a catcher's mitt to use it. With only thin steel liners and handle scales made of aluminum it's quite a bit less hefty, though. 73.5 grams by my scale, or 2.6 ounces. So it doesn't carry as much momentum as perhaps it could, which puts it in the curious position of being possibly the only object on Earth that could have been made better if more of it were constructed of some kind of potmetal. Its mass is also pretty evenly distributed throughout its length which is fine for a normal knife but not so much for something that's meant to be a fidget spinner. So the net result of all this is that it doesn't carry on spinning as easily or as long as you might like.

For comparison, my bog standard metal fidgeter I bought at the mall gods only know how long ago is 86.2 grams or 3.04 ounces, despite having a footprint of only around 2/3 of the size, and is correctly designed with the majority of its mass concentrated out at the tips of its arms. Despite both that and this being equipped with ball bearings, the former can easily remain spinning upwards of two minutes at a stretch while exhibiting a pleasing gyroscopic effect, whereas the CM78 runs out of steam after around eight seconds, even if you give it an unwisely vigorous flick to start it going.

Bummer.

The knife part is a downgrade from previous incarnations, as well. It has a good lockup, but a noticeable amount of wiggle in the pivot when it's open. The pivot washers are just plastic, not brass and alas not ball bearings, either. So it loses out there compared to our last foray, as well.

The blade triangular, ventillated, and short. Just 2-5/8" long and trying hard to look double edged, even though it isn't. I do like that it's spring assisted, though, because the assist mechanism also serves to hold the blade shut when it's at rest. It takes a concerted effort to get it over the hump and fire it off, which also serves to provide you a little peace of mind that the blade won't just spontaneously fling itself out when you've got the thing spinning away just half an inch from the palm of your hand.

...Probably.

It's totally symmetrical with one of the crossguard nubs serving as a kicker to push the blade open, whereas the other one resolutely doesn't. There's no real tactile indicator as to which side is which, and the spine of the blade doesn't even protrude past one side of the handle to give you a hint. Thus, opening this without looking at it carefully requires some trial and error, or an element of luck. A self-defense tool it is not.

The vaguely crucifix shaped profile is generally reminiscent of several other less ridiculous knives I can think of off the top of my head. Or, at least, ones that are ridiculous for different reasons. It's very Knights Templar, and the eagle-and-shaved-head crowd also tend to get all excited about things shaped like this for some reason. As you'd expect, it's not too tough to find a "Masonic" rendition of these, either. For "ceremonial" purposes, per the blurb.

The Chong Ming Branded version has this rather more tasteful logo on its injection molded neon green pair of center buttons instead, with an (R) registered trademark symbol and everything. I was certain at first that this had to be fake, just one of those nod's-as-good-as-a-wink japes we've come to expect from the Chinese to add a layer of superficial yet fictitious legitimacy to the proceedings. But blow me down, I was able to find a bonna fide US trademark registration for the "Yangjiang Guanfeng Industry and Trade Co., Ltd," who are the apparent force behind this thing. There's the C and sideways M marking listed right there, bold as brass, exactly as it appears (incessantly...) on the CM78's box. Go figure.

These guys have zero presence on the web other than their trademark registration, which makes you wonder if they're a front for somebody else. There's also the tantalizingly hilarious prospect that some other anonymous joker in China counterfeited the trademark of this shitty knife company and slapped it on a different shitty knife, for purposes completely unknown. There are a myriad of "Chong Ming" branded low end knives of various flavors all over the usual Chinese storefronts, so either these guys are a shadowy OEM of cheap novelty cutlery, or somebody's rebranding and reselling white box goods from elsewhere on the mainland under this name. We'll probably never find out for sure.

Anyway, you're probably just chomping at the bit to see me smash this to pieces and see what all's inside, so here you go.

First up, the fidget spinner portion of this totally does ride on ball bearings. They're press fit into the scales and recalcitrant to come out, so lest I break the thing I left them alone. One side also houses the zigzaggy spring that powers the assist mechanism, which rests in a pocket hogged out in one of the scales and seems to be a common way to go about it. It is, of course, absolutely slathered in Chinese axle grease.

Inside is nothing much surprising. The only odd thing is the driver sizes for the various screws. The pivot is a T8 screw head but for some reason the rest of the assembly screws are T7, which you almost never see. Otherwise there are no fancy construction tricks. There's no anti-rotation flat on the pivot screw, for instance, so you have to stick a driver in both sides simultaneously. Nothing I found was threadlockered, but at least nothing was stripped, either. Bor-ing.

The fidget spinner buttons are held on with little wood screws that are just reamed into the plastic. The back faces of the buttons aren't flat so they don't quite sit on there straight, which gives the net effect of making the knife exhibit a noticeable wiggle when you're spinning it. I cured this by giving both of them a short lash on one of my diamond sharpening stones. This may be putting pearls before swine but it did at least straighten the damn thing out.

Here's your shocker of the day. The edge actually isn't completely terrible out of the box. The grind out to the point is pretty good and it's acceptably sharp for a dime store novelty. This'd make a serviceable letter opener or, more realistically, bong bowl scraper. I've seen worse.

It's out of true, though. Imagine how disappointed we'd be in the state of the world if it weren't.

While we've got the microscope out, here's something interesting. Despite ostensibly being just black and white, the pattern printed on the handles and blade is actually in color. Check it out:

The red and blue dots are not an optical illusion, as superfluous as they may be. I imagine whatever they're using to print these is also capable of producing full color output and whenever they're not cranking out these is probably used to make containerloads of all those other horrid Joker/Trump/Skullybones/Pot Leaf/Camo/Anime Tiddies/etc. patterned knives you'll find festooning the plexiglass case in your local truck stop. And I'll bet you whoever is in charge of the graphic design is not paid enough to apply a lot of care or attention to what they're doing, so we wound up with these little color fringes. They're only really visible under magnification.

The gold bits are even printed with some kind of metallized ink. The overall effect is pretty damn swanky, but I'll bet you it won't hold up to wear very well.

The texture appears to be a bitmap graphic that's been stretched in a manner that included some kind of fuzzy interpolation, probably because the Chinese tend to treat image aspect ratios as a bourgeoisie Western plot, so when viewed very up close it appears a bit blurry and indistinct.

The Inevitable Conclusion

From arm's length, at least, the CM78 is a slick looking little number for sure.

It's just too bad for it these days that it's so far behind the times. 10 years ago, sure, it'd probably be a sterling recommendation for $13. Instead with this we seem to be regressing rather than progressing; the Wish fidget spinner knife I showed off previously was built better than this, and it was cheaper to boot. Nowadays $13 (or less!) can buy you a lot of knife if you're careful with your choices and don't just jump on the first shiny novelty you see.

But that's not how we do things around here.

Good is boring. Sometimes you can have more fun being dumb.

Scissors?

Scissors?

You thought this was a knife show and now I'm telling you I made you wait an entire week with no update and I'm showing you scissors?

You're damn skippy I am. Just wait until you get a load of this thing. These? These things.

Look, these are the "C5 Dismantling Chicken Bone Scissors." They're straight from China. The gods alone know who the hell the actual manufacturer is, but you can find similar things all over the Chinese market because apparently people over there are very keen on being able to dejoint chicken parts. I suspect, but can't prove, that the Chinese are probably the largest bloc of poultry consumers on the planet. This is Serious Business, so every pair of shears you see for sale from the Mainland makes a big deal about being able to cut up chicken bones.

But these aren't quite just like every other pair of random Chinese scissors.

Because you can break them apart into a bottle-opening-fish-scaly thing and...

...Yes, a knife.

"Big deal," you say. "My Faberware kitchen shears from Target come apart, too. That doesn't make 'em a knife."

Well, that's true for your common-or-garden loppers. One thing people don't realize until they try to use one as a letter opener is that your typical pair of shears has an edge on it that's not exactly sharp, per se, in the sense you're expecting. Scissors cut by way of having edges that are extremely square, usually shaped with a very steep angle in the order of 75 or 80 degrees. But you need two of those to tango — Without both halves coming together you're not cutting diddly squat.

So, uh, yeah. That's not how it works here.

One half of these shears has an honest to goodness knife edge ground onto it that's got an apex on it of exactly 30 degrees. I know this figure because that edge is so wide I'm actually able to firmly stick my Harbor Freight magnetic angle gauge doohickey to it, which is a feat you can't manage on most other cutlery.

It has a flat ground taper, too, albeit one that's extremely roughly machined. As is the edge.

Verily, it is capable of chopping things all on its lonesome without the aid of its other half. Although to be fair, this is far from a surgical slicer. Perish the thought of shaving tomatoes into paper-thin wafers. You're not shaving with this, either, at least without a significant effort in honing it. It's more for whacking indelicate foodstuffs into rough chunks. Or possibly chopping down a tree, in a pinch. It didn't quite make it cleanly through this Post-It, for instance, but it made a pretty respectable attempt nevertheless.

The blade is of course chisel ground by necessity, since its reverse side has to meet up squarely with the scissor edge on the other half, which has the typical 80-or-so degree steep and square angle on it. If you manage to ding up the knife edge this is also likely to adversely impact the scissoring performance dramatically, so try not to do that. The back side is dead flat, and you'll want to keep it that way as much as possible.

It doesn't come included with a sheath and its box is obviously designed for shipping and not for storage. The scissor handles are spring loaded and when not in use you can hold the ensemble shut with this little latch. The latch is spring loaded, too, and only the barest squeeze is required to make the thing pop open. Thus, handling the shears in the closed position is kind of annoying. Before just tossing them in your kitchen junk drawer all willy-nilly you might be advised to put a rubber band around the handles or something. Otherwise they'll be prone to pop open at random unexpectedly. Here's the latch action:

This is a complete multipurpose Ninja kitchen accessory. Thus, it has various tools and functions festooned all over.

For instance, there's this prybar end in the tip of one of the handles. The artwork on the box shows this being used for levering open clams, but it'd probably do a dandy job of opening a paint can or, if you whacked him smartly with the pommel, permanently embossing the enemy's forehead.

There's a lanyard hole in the other handle too for some reason.

You can dismount the halves by pressing on this little spring loaded pawl which allows the pivot to rotate beyond its usual endstop. Then, the knife portion and the fish scaler portion just slide apart from each other and you're ready for battle.

A torsion spring resides on the fish scaler side and is thankfully captive.

The scaler itself is very thick and does not posses any real edge anywhere on it. Cutting anything with it is out of the question.

I had something like this on one of my Swiss Army knives when I was a kid, too, and I've never successfully managed to descale anything with it. I'm not entirely certain anyone ever has, to be honest with you. All I ever managed to accomplish with the thing was debarking sticks, so maybe you could use this for a similar purpose if you could find somewhere to fit it within your culinary repertoire.

Never mind that, though. Because having both halves in hand lets you go all JTHM, thoroughly announcing to any passers-by that you are the goddamned boss motherfucker of this kitchen, thank you very much.

Not a single thing within your reach will go unstabbed, unpried, or unsnipped.

Special mention is due to the box.

Mine arrived just slightly crushed from its long trip from China. The front just shows off the article through a clear film window, but rear is considerably more interesting.

These are available in two colors, silver and "gray," the latter being notable as a color which this absolutely isn't. The handle scales are anodized aluminum and are really sort of mauve. It's not a trick of the light; they really are that color.

Note also the "scraping fish scale area," and that the knife can be separated... separately.

The feature list also calls out the slot in the back of the blade as a "peeler." And lo, on the spine of the box is depicted a bloke apparently using it just as such:

And a close inspection reveals that there is indeed an edge ground into the slot; here's yet another hidden function.

A hook on the ricasso of the fish scaler component also serves as a bottle opener. I tried the bottle opener and it works great. I can't speak for the efficacy of the peeler because I couldn't find an apple on short notice.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is easily the best-worst kitchen gizmo I've ever owned. You've heard of a combat knife? Never that, these are combat scissors.

For when you have to chop the carrots at 5:00 and fend off Triad goons at 5:30, just make sure you've got a pair of these tucked into your apron pocket.

The CobraTec Quick Strike is exactly the kind of thing I would have been all over when I was a lad, just starting out with my knife collecting career. Here we have a tactical folder with a stiletto point profile that makes a sly insinuation along the lines of its Ninja Special Operator status. But, importantly, without yet another goddamned tanto point on it. It's got a pocket clip and injection molded reinforced nylon handles with rubber grip inserts that would have been state of the art... 25 years ago. And you can tell this is a tactical knife because it's all black, see?

With a pair of ambidextrous thumb studs and plain pivot action, the Quick Strike is nevertheless a 50 state legal liner locker.

...

Oh, of course it isn't. If it were, I wouldn't be showing it to you like this.

Surprise, motherfucker.

The Quick Strike is actually another entry in CobraTec's "Hidden Release" lineup. But this one is definitely an oddball, because it's both a normal side opening manual folder (that's not even spring assisted!) and also a side-firing automatic. You can open it the boring way, for instance if you're doing so in front of the normals. But if you're in good company or just by yourself where no one can see, you can let your freak flag fly and use it as a switchblade, too.

The release button is right here, on the side:

What, you can't see it? That's because it's concealed underneath the rubber grip insert on that side. There's no visual indicator as to where it is, or even that it's there at all, and it's actually quite a bit further down the handle than you'd expect.

That means the Quick Strike is something that's sure to make any right minded individual grin: A switchblade that's probably actually very likely to go unnoticed as such, even if the individual prepared to frown upon both it and you heavily -- your boss, a parent, a policeman, whoever -- is given an opportunity to handle it. You'd have to already know what it is or be extremely curious to make the rather obsessive effort at fiddling with it that'd be required to find out. Somebody just groping around on the handle isn't going to set it off.

And it carries within itself the constant, ineffable sense of getting away with something.

(Although of course now that I've spilled the beans everyone and their grandmother will know the secret.)

Stats

The Quick Strike is 7-11/16" long when open with a 3-3/16" long blade that's technically a drop point, I guess, with a spine that's nearly but not quite straight and a point that winds up just a smidge above the centerline. You can bicker amongst yourselves in the comments whether or not this truly counts as a "stiletto" or if it's just an emaciated drop point. Anyway, there's 2-7/8" of usable blade length and the rest of it forms a square ricasso at the base of the edge, which is actually mechanically important. More on that later. I would be remiss, as well, if I didn't mention that it is also available with a tanto point if you're really into that sort of thing.

It's nearly exactly 4-1/2" long when closed and it's not especially broad, only about 1-1/4" to the peak above the thumb stud when it's closed. But it's pretty thick, thanks to its injection molded scales: 0.675" not including the clip, or 0.810" with it. As a consequence of its narrow profile but thick handles, it feels pretty fat in your hand and almost totally round in cross section, even though it mathematically isn't.

It does have full length steel liners but despite this it's still pretty light for its displacement: about 3.8 ounces (107.72 grams), the majority of which seems to be the blade.

There's another point of contention with the specs, wherein CobraTec themselves claim the handles are made of "G-10." I'm quite certain they're not. They look, feel, sound, and taste exactly like reinforced Nylon. They're also quite clearly injection molded, which is something that G-10 isn't. So there's a mystery.

You absolutely could not use this as your Tactical Special Operator's knife if it didn't have a clip, so it does. It's single sided, not reversible, and not deep carry, either. It's held on with one long screw that sinks into the backspacer, and it's also inset into a little pocket so it can't wiggle around.... much. There's no lanyard hole, though, so you'll have to find somewhere else to mount your paracord lanyard with custom solid anodized titanium skull face pace counting challenge beads, or whatever.

I have a bone to pick with the clip, actually, because it's entirely too tight. And matters are made worse because it pinches whatever you clip it to against the absurdly grippy rubber insert on the scale beneath. The net effect of this is that it's damn near impossible to get the Quick Strike to let go of your pants, which really rather defeats the purpose if you ask me. I remedied this somewhat by taking the clip off and bending the shit out of it in a padded vise so that it's less grabby and thus a little more tolerable. Without this, or perhaps adhering some manner of smoother material to the scale where the clip touches it, the Quick Strike's chief contribution to proceedings would just be destroying the hem on the top of the pockets of all of your pants while you give yourself a wedgie. Perish the thought of getting it out in a hurry; without some kind of modification that's a total non-starter.

The blade is 440C, which is probably not too exciting to most people these days. But it's an excellent throwback to that early 2000's era that makes dumbasses like me go all nostalgic, so I guess that's cool. So far its edge retention performance is unknown to me, but it doesn't show any telltale signs of the edge having been burned when it was manufactured so it'll probably be perfectly acceptable. My all black example has a nice etched and stonewashed finish on the blade that seems reasonably durable. You can get this with a green, red, or tan handle if you prefer but all four color variants have the same black blade. CobraTec's viper logo is laser etched there, too, even though cobras still aren't vipers. Has anyone told them?

Should we tell them?

CobraTec is an American company and many of their models are indeed made in the US. Nothing on the packaging nor the blurb for the Quick Strike, though, goes as far as admitting where it's made. So it's certainly possible this is an imported knife, a notion backed up by its lower than average price compared to most of CobraTec's other models. At least for any shortcomings it may or may not have it's cheap: Only $49, which is peanuts for any decently competent automatic these days.

Regardless of where it's made, the Quick Strike is reasonably well put together. Despite being a liner locker the blade centering is nearly perfect. The blade lockup is precise and positive, with no rattle or wiggle. There is blemish on mine down at the tail, where there's a smudge of melted handle scale material left over from when it was shaped at the factory. This leads me to believe that the handles and liners are ground to shape in their final assembled positions, like smoothing the backstrap on a 1911, so there will be no gaps and everything winds up flush fitting. I could foresee someone being bothered about this, but I'm not too worried about it, personally. I may be motivated enough to grind it off later, or maybe I won't bother.

The blade grind is not terrible for a factory job on a budget knife, but it could be better. There's a secondary apex on it past the bulk of the main grind, or perhaps a micro-bevel if we're being all modern and hipster about it, which is decently fine and good enough to chop a Post-It in half without any effort. I gave it a quick once over on my dinkum homebrew strop, which is just a scrap of leather glued to a block of wood fuzzy side up, and doped with some Flitz metal polish (yes, really), and after about ten strokes on each side the factory grind became sharp enough to readily shave my arm hairs off. I call that success, I don't know about you.

The edge grind out to the tip is excellent, which is good because the tip angle is very shallow and the Quick Strike is extremely pointy.

The secondary apex is pretty true but the main grind behind it isn't even close. This will require fixing if you're the type of nut who gets bothered by this. Otherwise you can just sharpen to the angle of the secondary grind and find other things in life to worry about instead.

~~Night~~ Operations

The Quick Strike is deeply satisfying to set off on its automatic mode, but actually accomplishing that is a lot more of a faff than it ought to be. That's a disappointment, really. I like the bolster sliding mechanism on CobraTec's other knives better, which feels more natural and is a damn sight easier to use. But the tradeoff there is that those can't be opened manually at all.

The fire button is hidden nearly exactly 1-3/4" back from the forwardmost point on the knife and is decidedly difficult to find. You can feel it beneath the rubber insert on the left hand side of the knife if you know approximately where to look, but you can also feel what seems to be a fairly long and very pronounced hollow in front of it. You have to mash the concealed button very hard, and you have to do so accurately in order to get it to do anything. Mushing around in the open space in front of it doesn't produce any result. Moreover, missing the button and mashing the void, then trying to roll your thumb back into the correct location from there also usually doesn't work. You're then left holding the knife probably much further down the handle than you'd like to, especially if your next move was going to be sticking it in the enemy. As a self-defense tool, then, the Quick Strike is actually a bit of a miss.

It has to be said, it's actually less of a hassle most times to just open this normally. It doesn't make you feel nearly as badass, of course, but it's significantly more practical. That relegates the switchblade mode mostly to fidget toy duty, and also baffling and amusing your friends. Bummer.

Its lockup puts me in mind of the CRKT M16, with how it eschews the usual endstop pin and uses the thumb studs crashing into the liners as its travel endstop instead.

The engagement of the liner lock is positive, accurate, and solid. It's not terribly noisy, either, although it does make a distinctive hollow sounding noise probably caused by echoing around inside those injection molded scales. There's a typical ball detent in the liner which is actually perfect. It's not too tough to overcome but neatly keeps the blade from falling open in your pocket.

Of course this thing can't work the way a normal side opener does, which is self-evident because you can open it as if it were a normal folder without having to fight against the spring in the process.

Instead of the usual torsion spring around the pivot, the Quick Strike's automatic component is powered by a leaf spring which is restrained by a little triangular wedge block that's hooked up to the fire button. At rest it's pressed against the inside surface of the backspacer that separates the two handle halves. You can see the wedge peeking out in this picture, and the spring behind it. The fire button slides the wedge out of the way, which allows the leaf spring to pop up and smack the ricasso on the heel of the blade, flinging it open.

Thus the blade's only under spring power for a short part of its travel and inertia does the rest. You can partially close the knife to this point right here after the spring's been triggered, at which point closing it further also takes up the spring and reloads the mechanism.

Of course you can also set off the spring when the knife is already open if you feel like it. No harm is done (I think, anyway) although it makes an ear splitting snapping noise. The mechanism will be reset the same as usual the next time you close the knife even if you do this.

Parts

I'm zero for two with CobraTec knives so far, vis-a-vis being stymied trying to take them apart. It's pretty clear CobraTec don't want you dissembling these, and maybe we should take it as read that you ought not to.

There's a T8 Torx head on the male side of the pivot screw but as you can see here, the other side is smooth and doesn't have anywhere to stick a driver. That'd be fine if there were an anti-rotation flat in the screw and a matching D shaped hole broached into the liners, but there isn't.

You can twiddle the screw all day long and the assembly will just spin in its socket forever, bringing you no closer to getting the stupid thing apart.

This annoys me on pure ideological grounds, of course, so I carefully if not quite accurately cut a slot in the head of the pivot screw on mine, what for to engage with a screwdriver. With this, you can at least get the blade out.

(You can also cheat these types of things by putting two blocks of wood in your vise and clamping the top spine of the blade very firmly down into the handle. The expectation there is that the force of the pivot hole in the blade being smashed into the barrel of the female half screw will bind it in place enough to get the male side out. The wood is to prevent marring the finish on your knife. This often works, but I'll be buggered if I'm ever doing that in the field, so I used my slot cutting method instead.)

The result of this was only marginally ugly, but it worked.

CobraTec claim that their knives carry a lifetime warranty, but I have a hunch that they will not extend this generosity as far as giving you a new set of screws if your break your knife trying to get it apart.

From here we run into another problem, which is that there's no non-destructive way to dismount the scales.

If I'd known this in advance, of course, or if I could have managed to work up the foresight to check for this sort of thing first, I wouldn't have bothered with the main screw.

There are two screws driven through the scales and into the liners which also poke out in order to restrain the leaf spring inside, and the only way to access the heads on these is to rip off the rubber inserts in the scales, which are glued in place. Or I guess note their positions and then extremely accurately lance a hole in the rubber directly over them.

Whatever the inserts are glued down with appears to be some kind of epoxy. This is evidenced by the tiny droplets of it you can see that were squeezed out from under the rubber before it cured. It's hard as nails, and doesn't respond to heat. Any solvent that would break it would surely also eat the scales themselves, and it seems unlikely that you'd be able to pry the inserts out without destroying them utterly.

I considered this for some time, and then concluded that I just couldn't be arsed.

It's self evident that the Quick Strike has nylon pivot washers, which can be seen even without taking it apart. If you can muscle the pivot screw out these could at least be cleaned if necessary, or relubricated. Despite the unglamorous hardware, the blade still doesn't wiggle any even when it's deployed.

Having the pivot screw out also presents the opportunity to find out what happens if you press the button when the blade's not held in with anything. In fact, I can think of no more irresistible pursuit in the universe right now.

What happens is, it makes an extremely amusing "ping!" noise, not unlike a Garand that's just run out of ammo. And the blade goes flying. (Here it is with sound.)

With the blade out we can also get a good look at the leaf spring inside. Here it is in its triggered state.

Looking at it from the end you can see how far it swings out. The spring is curved like a bow, and just the very tip of it engages with the heel of the blade. It's much more stout than you'd think, and having to pull its trigger wedge across the surface against all that spring force probably goes a long way towards explaining why the button is so hard to press. On the bright side, that obviates the need for a safety, the presence of which would be a giveaway of what this knife is. You can rest easy -- or walk, jump, climb, or roll around on the ground as much as you like -- knowing that there's no way you could set this off in your pocket.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's easy to admonish the Quick Strike as a gimmick. And fair dues where they're owed, that's exactly what it is.

But it's also a rare breed, one wherein its gimmick can be completely ignored if it annoys you, and it still works just fine. You don't see that every day. Usually when some jackass comes down with a case of vision trumping practicality, the end result winds up being something that expects you to suffer for someone else's art.

But the Quick Strike isn't artistic. It's damn well cheeky. And it's not sorry about it, either.

And I love that.

All aboard! This train bound for another episode of Sino-silliness, Chinese chicanery, Oriental oddity, and points Eastward.

Insomuch as it has a name, this is the "Originality Pendulum," third of three by our friends from YESISOK. But that, of course, is only the first tidbit of its name, which makes it sound like it ought to be a Lancrastian resident. As usual its full name is longer and rather less melodious: It's the "Originality Pendulum Folding Knife Mini Sharp Stainless Steel Fruit Knife Carry Key Chain Pendant Portable Open Express Knife." If you expect to actually use this for fruit, I'll just say there is a definite upperbound limit of fruit to which it'll be applicable.

Rarely can we judge a book so readily from its cover. The Originality Pendulum is a breath of fresh air in that respect, since it's easy to see precisely what it has to offer.

Originality is right. Yes, this is a small slip joint folder that's long on the joint but a bit short on the slip. This is because it has what can only be described as a real live and functional locomotive drive arm on it. The arm is spring loaded and is what serves as a detent to keep the blade positively, albeit gently, held in its open or closed positions. For this its maker consistently refers to it by using the word "pendulum." I don't think that quite means what they think it means. I would have said "piston," personally, but what do I know? We'll roll with it anyway.

That's because this is pretty rad, it must be said. I'm just chuffed to bits over it.

The Originality Pendulum is definitely angling for the keychain knife or possibly urban micro-EDC category. It's quite small, but not unusably so: 4-3/16" long when open with a pseudo-sheepsfoot 1-1/2" blade. It's 2-11/16" long when closed and just 0.280" thick across the flat of its handles. The piston mechanism actually sits proud of the handle slightly and bulks the whole thing out to about 0.322". The blade has a section of sharpened edge just a hair under 1-5/16" with a genuine choil behind it, so that all of the short length is at least usable. Of course, exactly what that blade is made out of is a bit of a mystery, per usual. The specifications claim it's 7cr which is certainly within the realm of plausibility but it's likely we'll never know for sure. Still, for a novelty miniature knife that's likely to be used only for non-demanding tasks, that's probably fine.

It's 42 grams precisely or 1.48 ounces, being made entirely of steel of one description or another, except for the piston which is prominently made of brass. So it's small and arguably light enough that you genuinely could dangle it alongside your keys. Or, perhaps, from your pocketwatch chain. Here it is with a quarter for scale.

There's no thumb stud or anything but there is what amounts to a fingernail nick on the form of a triangular hole through the spine of the blade. You might think this is for use as a thumb hole like a Spyderco knife, but not much of it is left exposed sticking out of the handle and it's really too small to access with your thumb. A fingernail really is the best way to get at it. There are some ridges around the spine and a small heel on the back of the blade, though, so you can just barely and with a fair bit of practice open this as if it were a rear flipper. It's not easy, though, because the piston is indeed spring loaded and it will want to snap the blade back shut if you don't manage to rotate it far enough. Fair dues, though, once you get it tipped past the halfway point it'll snap the blade open for you instead.

If you're used to a traditional small slip joint folder the Originality Pendulum is actually a bit easier and, if you ask me, a lot nicer to use. It's not as tightly sprung, and its spring action is longer and more progressive. It feels like it's working with you rather than against you. It feels more modern and refined, despite basically just being the same thing arrived at via a silly avenue.

There's no clip or anything but there is a hole on the tail you can use for a lanyard or keyring. And this time you actually can use it, without interfering with the function of the knife... The maker (or possibly seller) demonstrates such in this picture, which I've gleefully stolen because it means I don't need to bother to put forth the effort to find a keyring and then take my own. Hey, this must be efficiency. (While we're at it, get a load of those fake keys!)

Surprisingly, the Originality Pendulum's product photos are 100% accurate, which for fly-by-night Chinese cutlery may actually be a first. For instance, no polishing job whatsoever has been done on the taper grind on the blade. It's left with machining ridges on it so pronounced they'll stop your fingernail if you rake it across. But that's exactly as it's depicted in all of its photos, so you can't say you've been misled. Also, that grind may in fact actually be flat. Or if it's not, it's a hollow grind that's so subtle it's impossible to detect as such. The flats, meanwhile, are very shiny. Nearly mirror polished. The net effect is kind of attractive, but if you know what you're looking at it does broadcast "cheap."

What's carefully not depicted is the back side of the knife, probably because it's boring and just flat:

It's got a satin bead blasted finish which doesn't look too bad, though. I would have liked to maybe see a small clip here as well, but given that this retails for $10.27 at the moment -- tariffs and all -- at that price you probably can't have everything. It didn't come with its own keyring, either. Nor a box; it just shows up in a plastic baggie.

Obviously I was drawn to this purely for its mechanism and I was far less concerned about the rest of its qualities. It's a bonus, then, that this thing manages not to be complete crap in the bargain.

The Originality Pendulum is definitely built on a budget, but it's still surprisingly competently put together. Mine, for instance, barely had any lash in the pivot.

The cost saving features include making all three of its assembly screws identical: The two at the tail and the one through the pivot are the same. The pivot is spaced out with some small brass washers, which is a damn sight better than what I was expecting, which was nothing. That explains the solidity of the blade on its pivot, and its lack of rubbing against the handle plates.

Here's the piston, which we all know is what we really came here to see. It's two pieces, a hollow tube that comprises the rear half and a rod that goes to the front. There's a tiny coil spring inside which provides the, well, springiness. This is what keeps the blade held in either of its two positions. There is also a fantastically tiny spacer that goes between the end of the piston arm (which is threaded!) and the blade, keeping the former from rubbing against the latter. If you ever one of these apart, do not drop that part on the carpet lest you never see it again.

The end of the piston attaches to this screw, which is sunk into a machined pocket on the back face of the blade. The screw spins freely in its hole here and machining this pocket into the blade must have contributed a nontrivial amount to this thing's production cost.

The hardware. None of the screws have anti-rotation flats on them and they are threadlocked from the factory, so you will need a T6 driver in each side to disengage these, should the urge ever strike you. The pin there is the endstop for the blade which lands in the choil when it's closed and the heel of it rests against when it's open.

The edge grind is not exceptionally fine, but mine arrived sharp enough to be serviceable for light package-openeing duty, at least.

It appears that a slight secondary apex has been put on the edge which is presumably what actually manages to make it sharp, or at least as sharp as it is. At the angle the primary edge is ground at, the two sides wouldn't have actually met at the apex.

The tip is not especially pokey because it's been rounded off slightly in this process, as you can see. I imagine the final sharpening was probably done by hand. (The backdrop here is a random piece of mail I had on my desk, which the microscope reveals to actually be printed on security paper. Hence the rather festive 1990s confetti pattern, there. They say you'll discover a whole new world under a microscope, and it turns out they were right.)

You can see here how different the edge angle is on either side. In all honesty I've seen worse in terms of factory trueness even on much more expensive cutlery, and 7cr isn't exactly a difficult steel to sharpen. Given this knife's short edge length to begin with, fixing this up if it annoys you should easy for anyone equipped with pretty much any stone, and a modicum more care and skill than was possessed by whoever-it-was at the factory. I don't think either of those will be an especially tough bar to clear. So making this little tacker unwisely sharp should be the work a mere moment.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There's just something about the way the Originality Pendulum works that inherently makes any man or boy grin. It's probably the locomotive-adjacency to its mechanism. It ought to come with its own miniature conductor.

It's steampunkishness is there, for sure, but it's restrained. More subtle. Refined.

Less in your face. It's much more New Atlantis than New Atlanta. A gentleman's (or woman's) knife, then.

If this were sold by The Sharper Image I'll bet it would cost sixty bucks. But it's not, so you can have one for not much more than a single Hamilton. You could absolutely use this in polite company and if you did, the comments you'll receive would probably all be positive.

In case you couldn't tell, I really like the Originality Pendulum. Even despite its cheapness and its stupid name. Every once in a while that happens, with what you thought for sure was going to be a piece of junk worth it only for the memes turning out to be a genuine diamond in the rough.

The problem is, that'll embolden you, tempting you to buy the next one. And then... Well. You know how it usually goes.

Pure, unadulterated cool. The cat's pajamas. That je ne sais quoi, distilled.

Style, folks.

Everyone wants it. This knife's got it.

This is the CobraTec Gideon, in its silver and abalone incarnation. Which is, of course, not only absolute swankiest but also the shiniest version. Hey, if you're going to ride into battle against the Midianites you may as well do it while looking fabulous.

CobtraTec is an American knife company based in Texas, but for most of you they're probably not one of the household names. But based on some internet sleuthing, I have a pretty good hunch that they're actually the force behind the Böker balisong knives we like so much. That drew them to my attention initially, but their catalog of fairly samey out-the-front switchblades thoroughly fails to captivate me.

But then, there's this.

The Gideon is a side opener. But you'll note the utter lack of thumb stud, button, switch, toggle, latch, or plunger. It's profile is svelte and nearly completely smooth.

You'll never guess how it opens. Go on, just try.

This is part of CobraTec's "Hidden Release" series. And not even, you'll be surprised to learn, the weirdest of the bunch.

This is its opener.

To set it off you slide the diamond textured bolster to the side. Its spring action is quite firm, and you need sharp eyes to notice the hairline gap between this and the handle which'd clue you in that it is in fact a moving component. It's pretty damn unlikely that anyone would figure out how to open this if you didn't tell them or they didn't already know.

The Gideon is precisely 7-1/2" long when open, with a 3-3/8" long drop pointed blade made of 154CM. CobraTec call the blade "3 inches." To be fair, that's roughly the length of the usable portion of the edge. It's subtly hollow ground with a thin, stiletto-like profile. It's 4-1/8" long closed, and 0.481" thick across its sleek aluminum body not including the clip. It has a pleasing density at 76.4 grams or 2.68 ounces, but thanks again to its aluminum handle it's not especially heavy overall.

All of this makes it uniquely suited to EDC duty for sufficiently stylin' people. With no crossguard, protrusions, or other greebles on its surface it rides superbly in or on your pocket. (What? All of the sudden my CQC 6K is silver again? No, silly, I have two of them.)

It's got a traditional pocket clip with a single position only, tip up carry for right handed people. The clip is not very tightly sprung and since the Gideon's abalone handle insert is completely smooth this means it draws supremely easily. There's just enough retention that it won't fall off of its own accord if it's dangled upside down while clipped to normal-ish fabric (i.e. my shirttails, which I just tested this with) but if you're the sort to be habitually rolling around in the mud upside down while Solid Snaking it in the bush, I think it goes without saying that the Gideon is just maybe not the knife for you.

There is a lanyard hole on the tail of the knife which is left exposed even when the knife is clipped.

There are indeed ambidextrous knives in the world, with thoughtfully symmetrical controls suitable for both righties and lefties.

The Gideon is absolutely not one of them.

Never mind the irreversible clip. The opening mechanism is accessible from one side, and one side only. This one, shown here with its textured bolster. Left handed users will probably find this uniquely difficult to use. CobraTec invite you instead to go whistle. That, or buy one of their myriad of out-the-front models with a spine mounted switch instead.

You've all watched me spend a lot more on pure nonsense, but at a list price of $130 the Gideon is still not exactly cheap. To make up for it, it's packing a deceptively intense amount of precision machine work. It starts with this snake's head embossed in the bolster opposite the one you use to open it.

Come to think of it, CobraTec's logo looks distinctly viperid. I wonder if anyone ought to tell them that, uh, cobras aren't vipers.

You get it again on the blade, along with the Gideon's steel descriptor. There are no other markings.

It's also assembled very, very competently. Every part of it feels incredibly solid. There is no wiggle in the blade, and it doesn't touch either side of the handle despite the minuscule clearances around it in its channel.

It's also got a fully concealed pivot. When CobraTec were constructing this monument to elegance they absolutely weren't fucking around. The Gideon reveals none of its secrets about how it's constructed from the outside. The only visible screws are the three holding on the clip, and a single lone one in the tail immediately behind these.

Undoing this doesn't lead to much, either. The Gideon's pivot must be press fit; the two halves of the handle can be separated minutely with the tail screw out but the pivot remains resolutely locked together regardless of any amount of wiggling, twisting, or trying to slide a spudger up the gap. Beyond this I'm disinclined to fool with it -- It's a side opening automatic which means that the blade is under spring tension all the time, which means even if I did get it apart it'd go "sproing," and then be annoying to reassemble.

CobraTec backs this with a lifetime warranty. But I'll bet you that won't cover breaking it trying to get it apart.

From the outside we can see that the Gideon is actually a lockback mechanism. The sliding bolster is attached to a hook on the backstrap, and this seesaws on a cross pin in the usual way with spring motive provided by a leaf spring underneath. This is separate from the one for the blade itself, which is presumably a torsion spring. Unusually for a lockback, of course, the lock engages in both the open and closed positions so that the thing won't spring open in your pocket. You can't open the blade manually, despite appearances.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This may be sacrilege, but despite its show-off looks and price tag I actually bought my Gideon to be a knife to use -- not just for looking at.

Sure, at $130 it's not cheap in an objective sense. But that's only before you start comparing it with other American made automatics. The Covetousness Tax ensures that switchblades remain expensive these days, but if you ask me you can spend a whole lot more on one than this and get rather less for your money.

The Gideon's got a lot going for it in that respect. Its textured anodized handle does a great job at hiding fingerprints, it's extremely solid, and 154CM is still a quite competent alloy. All in all, this may just be the ultimate gentleman's knife.

And for fuck's sake, it's still $50 cheaper than a Benchmade Bugout. Come on. You can't tell me this isn't at least 300% cooler than a Bugout.

I just picked up a couple of "flamed titanium" pocket clips, and I love the look of them. I've always been attracted to the blue-on-black color combo for most things I own, and I love the way the color pops on my Vision FG!

I've noticed, however, that even the slightest touch from my fingers will dull the shine and really mutes the color. It comes right back with a simple wipe on the clip with any dry cloth, but it's a little annoying just how well this finish attracts skin oils.

I was thinking about picking up some flamed ti scales to go with this, but after seeing how quickly the color fades after being touched, I'm not sure how I'd feel about an entire handle with that finish.

I am not a Spyderco guy, which is an notion I've opined several times before.

This goes a long way towards explaining why I have five of the damn things. But to be fair, one of them is a pen, one of them is a balisong, and one of them is made out of freakin' wood. The fourth one is boring, and we won't talk about it here. Yet.

I will at least say one thing about Spyderco, which is that they're darn consistent. It's got to be a hard day's work over there making all those models that are the same damn knife. Triangular blade, flat grind, big hole instead of a thumb stud. It's like the bagpipe song. Sometimes they play it fast and sometimes they play it slow, and sometimes they play it backwards. But you can't fool me, guys. You can call it whatever you want but it's still always the same song.

It's no wonder, then, that every once in a blue moon one of their designers probably goes a little stir-crazy and gives us something like this.

This knife probably holds the crown for shortest time between my learning about how it worked and there being one on the way to me in the mail. This kind of thing isn't a fetish, I tell you, it's a romantic abnormality.

Anyway, this is the Spyderco JaniSong. Designed by Michael Janich, hence the name, Spyderco's marketing department goes on to describe it as, "a one-of-a-kind folding knife that elevates the spirit of the traditional Filipino balisong to a practical yet dramatic modern cutting tool."

Although it very clearly isn't a balisong knife, you say.

Except it is. But it isn't. Except it kind of is.

The What?

Look, this is going to take some explaining.

The JaniSong takes the idea found in the last two stupid knives we looked at and carries it all the way through to its logical conclusion. This is thus another one of them there balisongs-with-one-pivot arrangements. With the key distinction of, this one's not dollhouse sized and it actually works.

It's much, much larger: About 8-1/4" long, 4-15/16" closed, with a 3-1/4" flat ground S30V blade in a drop pointed profile with, yes, a hole in it.

Here it is with a short list of, if not its peers exactly, at least a couple of knives in its EDC size class. You genuinely could carry this around and use it for stuff.

Its core conceit is that it has an inner handle inside its outer handle, and the blade inside of that. All of this shares one pivot.

And rather than a traditional tail latch, it sports this sliding switch that locks everything in either the open or closed position.

The inner handle/blade carrier thing swings out freely along with the blade itself, the latter of which hits an endstop at the 180 degree mark while the inner handle can swing all the way around to a full 360. Then you can flip the inner handle freely back and forth, ultimately slotting it back into the outer handle but leaving the blade out. It has its own separate 180 degree interface with the blade so grasping it along with the main outer handle keeps the blade solidly deployed. Or if you prefer, you can slide the switch back up and totally lock everything solid.

The jury's still out on just how practical and/or dramatic this may be.

The How

Thus the JaniSong is trapped somewhere in the space between a traditional pocketknife, a gravity knife, and a balisong.

It can be opened via a subset -- but certainly not the entire litany -- of balisong-esque maneuvers.

Partly that's down to being short an entire pivot point, but mostly it's down to the unequal distribution of weight between all of its parts.

With its steel liners and G-10 scales, the JaniSong weighs a not inconsiderable 153.3 grams or 5.41 ounces altogether. But while its inner handle is made of steel plates the same thickness as the outer liners, it's lightened with speed holes and has neither the scales nor the lock attached to it, so it weighs noticeably less than the outer handles. The blade is likely somewhere in between, and that puts the point of balance just about a half of an inch rearward of the pivot screw... when both the blade and the inner handle are fully swung out. The inner handles on their lonesome thus carry considerably less inertia without the blade than with it. Just a smidge too little inertia, in fact, if you ask me. This means an unequal and much more concerted flick of the wrist is needed to bring the inner handle back than it was to send the combo of inner and blade away.

Spyderco claim in their literature than the JaniSong is "safer" than a traditional balisong because the only handle you can grasp is the safe handle. That's so, but consider that a fair few of the more advanced opening tricks require starting with the bite handle, in particular the various finger rolls e.g. the Y2K, precisely because doing the inverse would put the edge in contact with your fingers. So maybe don't try to pull any of those with the JaniSong unless you're either very brave or your knife is very dull.

The ol' reliable double windmill works well enough, though.

The JaniSong has two more wrinkles related to its action. The first is that where and how hard you grab its main outer handle has a slight but noticeable impact on how free the pivot action is. And the second is that it exhibits a distinctive and pronounced bounce off of its endstops, which you can see in this slow-mo:

The latter is only something to get used to, but the former requires constant care and attention lest you set yourself up for looking like a bit of a berk.

The Details

Considering that the JaniSong has an MSRP of $314 and retails for the thick end of $235, it goes without saying that Spyderco put an awful lot into it. And let's face facts, even with the best will in the world nobody is going to be picking this up from a hang card at their local sporting goods store.

It's a sandwich consisting of no less than seven layers, including all four liners, the blade, and both G-10 scales. It's very square with no protrusions to snag, but it's still a chunky number at 0.605" across its scales and 0.762" thick including the clip. That's over three quarters of an inch, which is a lot.

The blade is ostensibly a drop point but has a pronounced belly, with a distinct out-and-back recurve to it. It's nearly symmetrical, so you can decide whether not this is enough to count as a leaf point or a spear point.

The clip is indeed a deep carry design, and it's picked out with the Spyderco logo laser etched into it. In typical Spyderco fashion it is reversible and repositionable with a total of four locations for both tip up and tip down carry, or in this case whatever you prefer to actually be able to bust this thing out. You'd better remember how you set up the clip and which side is which afterwards, because otherwise the JaniSong has absolutely no tactile indication whatsoever as to which side the blade comes out of, and from the outside it appears 100% symmetrical.

You'd think this jimping would help you identify which side is which, but it doesn't. That'd be too easy, you see. It's exactly the same on both sides.

One side of this particular mushroom bears the Spyderco logo again and steel descriptor.

The other has the Michael Janich designer's mark rune, and manufacturing origin listed as Taichung, Taiwan. Neither side indicates which makes you larger or smaller.

I don't have a little .gif of me wiggling the blade around on this like the last two, because the blade doesn't wiggle. Some how, some way, Spyderco has managed to make this rock solid. It doesn't rattle either around its axis or laterally, which I guess is what you get for $235 rather than $3.

The Parts

Needless to say, I absolutely had to see how this thing works on the inside. But that said I really don't recommend you try to take your JaniSong part unless you absolutely have to. Content yourselves with these pictures, secure in the knowledge that I am a highly trained moron; this knife is designed by nerds, for nerds, and is absolutely stuffed full of pitfalls and booby traps vis-a-vis tiny easily lost parts that absolutely will fall out and disappear the moment you crack the sucker open.

For instance:

Here's what's underneath one of the scales. It seems simple enough, with the lock bar extending down the sides and its little toggle switch that rests on top.

...Which is detented with a tiny ball bearing that is just in there loose, completely unrestrained in any way.

Ripe to just fall out, and it absolutely will unless you're ready for it. Preferably with a small but powerful magnet. There's also a minuscule spring inside each of the lock switches which is very nearly but not quite captive, and prone to falling out precisely at the most inopportune moment.

Each half of the lock bar also includes a drop-fit guide pin which can leap out and roll away.

Here you can see that it bears phosphor bronze pivot washers. I would have liked to see ball bearings which surely would have cured the inconsistent pivot feel problem but also probably made it even thicker. Oh well. Also in evidence is the semicircular track for the end stop pin which is pressed into the blade. There's one each on the inner handle and outer liner plates and, yes, it is absolutely possible to install the former backwards because of course it is. Greasy fingerprint and stray hair optional -- I was too lazy to edit these out.

And I will be stuffed if I'm taking this whole damn thing apart again just to retake that one photo.

Because the JaniSong otherwise breaks down into a frankly absurd number of components, as befits and justifies its status as an enthusiast's knife. This includes a bevy of no less than six diabolo spacers, four of them threaded and two of them not; a scad of screws, 12 in all; two springs, two ball bearings, two guide pins, all easily lost; four phosphor bronze washers and their attendant pivots; four plates, comprising both the inner and outer layers; one blade, two scales. And the lock bar. And a partridge. And a pear tree.

And reassembling it is quite tricky.

Here are two thirds of the spacers, as they ride in the tail of the inner handle. The bite you see taken out of it is for the lock, which slides to the rear when disengaged:

And slides forward into that notch when engaged, holding everything in place:

You can also click it into its locked position while the inner handle is swung out in between someplace, which accomplishes nothing but can allow it to bash into the lock's barrel spacer, probably dinging both it and the edges of the inner handle plates depending how much gusto with which you go about it, and detracting from your collector's value in the process. So maybe resist the urge to do that.

Here's most of the hardware. Note that the main pivot screw has an anti-rotation flat, and be mindful of this before you start reefing on either screw head. This lineup is also short two screws from the scales, because I forgot I left them in their holes which you can see in the main disassembly photo above, and didn't realize it until it was too late. Look, I'm just chuffed that I was able to get all of this lined up without anything rolling away, all right?

The Why

That's the big question, isn't it?

Well, why not? We climb the mountain because it's there. We collect the weird knives because they're weird. I think that's really the JaniSong's real purpose for being, despite any post-hoc mumbling Spyderco may do about making a balisong design that's "safer," or whatever. Because not only is that the definition of a fool's errand, but we wouldn't have it any other way, would we?

So it's weird. And I know that's what you all paid your tickets to see. So there you go. Nobody can say you didn't get your money's worth.

You know, I like to think of what I do here as a public service sometimes. I am honored to make it my duty to find these inevitable types of blogspam EDC gadgets and be the one to belly up to that checkout page and say, yes, I will take one of the team and put down my $7.46 to determine once and for all of said item is utter crap. Because someone has to. For science; for the betterment of mankind.

Here is the "D2 Blade Titanium Alloy MINI" from, which I did not twig to at the time, our good friends YESISOK. Its full moniker is the "D2 Blade Titanium Alloy MINI Gear Folding Knife Multifunctional Outdoor EDC Self-defens Tool Outdoor Portable Utility Keychain." (The E fell off, presumably in some manner of industrial accident. Perhaps similar to last time.)

It's another one of those twin handle/single pivot jobs. Except this one's got fuckin' magnets.

This knife makes a fabulous fidget toy because its entire deal is its retention mechanism, which is solely comprised of four small neodymium button magnets flush mounted in the tips of the handles. They're oriented so that the handles elegantly snick into their open and closed positions with basically zero effort, and no other mechanical consideration required. Which is just as well, really, because as we determined last time such mechanical bits are at this price point very likely to go slightly wrong.

Rather like unto a balisong knife and quite a bit unlike most other pocketknives (those not appearing in this column, anyway) the D2 Mini's two handle halves swing in opposite directions meeting up with each other again at the 180 degree mark, leaving the blade exposed. And since the retention is magnetic you can even with a bit of practice do this with one hand. If you just manage to shove the handles vaguely near enough to either of their home positions the magnets take over and snap them home for you.

You can also of course just fidget with it incessantly by sliding the magnets across each other, without actually deploying the blade. It's even unlikely anyone watching would notice that the thing is even a knife, unless you were dumb enough fully deploy it in their presence. Rather, it's not unreasonable to assume that it's akin to one of those magnetic sliding playing card fidget thingies, which is not too far off the mark in any case.

But rather than a playing card motif, the D2 Mini is very minimalist chic, just a rectangular lozenge with twin faceted handle plates and otherwise eschewing any other decoration. It still excels for this kind of use case since it can be actuated reasonably quietly (and with practice, can be done in near silence), doesn't require any open space around it so it can be manipulated in a hoodie pocket or under your desk where nobody can see, and if you ask me it provides a rather satisfactory tactile experience.

Somewhat disappointingly the spec chart for this one is a little bit less amusing than last time...

...But it's probably close to accurate. The handle slabs claim to be made out of titanium and it's possible that they genuinely are. A magnet does not stick to them, and they're once again in that category of too dense to be aluminum and too light to be zinc. The blade might even genuinely be D2 as well. Damned if I can tell, but for the price it's unlikely to matter. If you're expecting an exhaustive edge retention testing regimen on this, well, prepare to walk away disappointed.

There are really only two problems with this, if you even want to call the first one a problem. Like its predecessor, they don't have "MINI" in the name all in caps for nothing. This is quite small: Just 2-13/32" long when closed and 3-3/8" long open, with a titchy little 1-7/16" long drop pointed blade. The blade is 0.98" thick, so far from robust, but with its stubby shortness this is unlikely to be an issue. The handles are dead rectangular with rounded corners and edges, 0.688" across, and the entire ensemble is 0.380" thick from peak to peak across its handle slabs. It weighs 39.2 grams or 1.38 ounces, another clue that a large portion of it may indeed be genuine titanium.

Look how weensy. Isn't it cute.

Edginess

I did not initially expect to write anything about the D2 Mini's cutting capability. It's a $7 fidget toy from China, and it'd take three of them just to comfortably fill out the Zippo pocket on your jeans. You're not really expecting anything groundbreaking, are you?

Hawk-eyed readers of course noticed the chip in the edge in the blade photo above, however, which is precisely as it was delivered from the factory. If you missed it, here it is under high magnification:

This isn't the end of the world but beats me how it happened, because the D2 Mini has absolutely no spacer pins, pegs, screws, or indeed anything at all that the edge could have contacted in any part of its operation.

The blade rests neatly in a machined pocket in one half of the handle, and its travel is restrained by a pin that rides in a little semicircular groove cut into one of the slabs. You'll see more of that later.

All that aside, I was floored to discover that its blade geometry is precisely 20° per side, or a 40° combined edge angle. So dressing that chip out of the blade took all of about four seconds on my Spyderco sharpener at one of its stock blade angles, with no effort.

The grind is also even and consistent all the way to the point which is a rare breath of fresh air with cheapies like this. All in it could have been a lot worse, and while I could have done without the chip in it right off of the starting block, at least it was trivially easy to make it possibly unwisely sharp.

Gubbins

The D2 mini is only held together with one screw. It's only lightly threadlockered and required no gymnastics to remove other than sticking a plain T8 Torx driver in either side.

Contrary to all logic, reason, or expectation it's got ceramic ball bearing pivots. At its current price point it may be literally cheaper to buy one of these, throw 95% of it away, and just keep the bearings to stick in your next custom knife. At the moment a pair of 6mm inner bore ceramic thrust bearings retails for about $10, bought in non-bulk quantities.

This is all the hardware you get. Or need, for that matter. This is industrial design simplification taken all the way to its maximum extent.

The handle slabs are pocketed to accept the bearing races and here you can also see the track for the endstop pin to ride in. The machine work is impeccable. Say what you like about the Chinese, but they have this sort of thing down.

Well, except for one thing.

The endstop pin isn't 100% accurate in its track so there is a bit of rotational rattle in the blade. If you're holding the handles it's not going anywhere beyond that, mind you -- having it fold up on your knuckle is out of the question. There's no lateral play, either, thanks to the bearings. And when it's in the closed position you can't rattle the blade by shaking the knife, either, probably due in no small part to it being restrained magnetically due to its proximity to the magnets.

That's not the annoying part, though.

The Annoying Part

This is billed as a "keychain" knife. There's a hole all the way through the tail end of it, perfect for installation of said keyring. In fact, my example even came with one in the package.

Except.

You've figured it out already, haven't you?

The keyring hole has to separate when you pivot the handles. With a ring installed you can't open the knife.

That really renders the entire exercise pointless. They may as well just not have drilled that damn hole in it, for all the good it does you.

The little zipper-tab knife we looked at previously solved this by relegating its loop to only one of the handle halves. Whoever designed this was altogether too clever by half, but not quite clever enough.

The Inevitable Conclusion

In that race to have one more bullet point on the spec sheet, sometimes it's possible to go one step too far.

So it is with the D2 Mini, which would be tough to call anything but perfect -- especially considering that it's so cheap that it's near as well free -- except that some dipstick somewhere decided that it must have one more feature, and absolutely insisted that somebody drill that fucking keyring hole in it. This simple inclusion moves the D2 Mini's slider quite firmly from "neat" and sets it to "dumb." Because everyone's going to be annoyed by that, and that stench of ineptitude will follow it around forever. Now it's a joke. Can you believe these morons? R&D doesn't talk to the guys in product testing, am I right? With those kind of skills, these guys ought to be designing cars. Har-de-har, et cetera.

What a drag.

IS OK? YES?

IS ARE SURE?

Yes, today is more faceless made-in-China garbage. Straight from Aliexpress again this time. This one drew my eye because it explicitly bills itself as "mechanical" in its product description which is, in full: "Stainless Steel Mechanical Folding Knife EDC Mini Paring Knife Keychain Portable Emergency Self-Defense Knife Express Cutter Too." (Presumably the L fell off, unless in Lionel Hutz tradition it's actually, "Cutter, too!")

"Um, actually, surely all folding knives are inherently mechanical, by their very definition," comes the inevitable comment from some clever individual. Yes, Melvin, we are aware. But plugging that into your search query is often an shortcut to finding the weird stuff.

And the other reason I clicked on this is because its "brand," insofar as any of these types of things may actually have one, is listed as "YESISOK." Perhaps ironically.

I am not making this up.

Behold such tremendous features as:

• Sharp Blade: Yes
• Blade Material: Stainless Steel Trowel
• is_customized: No

Truly, we are living in the future.

The Yesisok is also fantastically small. If you had a bit of creativity you could probably just about employ it as the tab on a zipper pull on your bag or jacket, and you'd probably get away with it unnoticed in a number of places.

Maybe forget I said that last part.

It's just 2-3/8" long when closed and the slightest hair under 3-5/8" long open with a teensy little 1-3/8" blade. That's 6.0325, 9.2075, and 3.4925 centimeters en metrique, so at least we can say one thing on the spec sheet is actually accurate.

In its blurb it claims to be made of 4Cr13 steel which is feasible, given that this alloy is both very cheap and very Chinese. It's straight backed with an upswept tip, and at 0.079" thick but only 0.288" across it must be said that its bevel is very steep.

Steep enough that if you are habitual jig sharpener it may actually give you some trouble, since the primary bevel is close to 35 degrees. The actual apex is even steeper still, as close as I can figure to a full 40 degrees per side, coming out to a combined 80 which is very nearly square.

So this will never be a chopper or surgical slicer, but despite all expectations it does come out of the box reasonably sharp enough to serve as a dinky little package opener, envelope cutter, and fingernail picker. The little blighter only weighs 0.6 ounces or 17 grams precisely (also accurate on its spec sheet) so you could just stash it around your desk or just about anywhere else, really.

Of course I wouldn't have been drawn to the Yesisok at all if its mechanism weren't weird.

There's actually a whole litany of these types of little knives on the Chinese wholesale market, all with the same action which could basically be described as, "Like a balisong, but with only one pivot."

I also have to imagine having only the one significantly reduces the cost.

Both halves of the Yesiok's handle swing out 180 degrees, in opposite directions, and come back around to meet up on the other end leaving the knife open in the process.

There is no latch, but there is a detent ball on the little spacer on the tail end which clicks in both the open and closed positions. There is no mechanism other than this; The sheer flexibility in the presumably laser or waterjet cut handle plates plus the inherent lash in the pivot is the only thing that allows the detent ball to clear its pocket at all.

The pivot is plain, equipped only with a brass washer beneath and even then, curiously only on one side. This is the side with it. You can see the opposite side further up the page, there, which reveals the conspicuous absence of its twin. I have no idea if it's supposed to be this way, or what. Maybe it's to provide more spacing for the detent ball to clear, who knows. Omitting one washer likely removed a whole two or three cents from the total bill of materials cost.

Two pins are pressed through holes in the blade opposite each other, and these are what serve as the endstops for the mechanism's travel.

As you would expect these are none too precise nor is the track they ride in, so the blade can rock and roll noticeably even when it's ostensibly locked open.

The whole process works like this:

It's also worth mentioning that you can only open the knife one way, so if you try to shove from the wrong side not much will happen. There's just enough imprecision in everything that you can push one of the handles a couple of degrees past the closed position, but that's it. Of course there's no tactile indication of which way you ought to try to push, though, so you'd better just get used to how the thing works. From closed, the handle without the spacer screwed to it swings away from the edge, i.e. push it towards you if you're looking at the spine of the blade. It can also be assembled such that the opposite is true, and given that there is no mechanical impetus to choose one versus the other I would not be at all surprised to learn that half of these left the factory with the blade facing in one direction and the other half facing the other.

All this adds up to making the Yesisok maddeningly fiddly to use. Part of its description implies "self defense" as one of its applications, but needless to say you can forget that. Opening it is tricky and ideally requires both hands, is tough to do quickly, and even once done the end result is unlikely to impress ruffians of any stripe.

It's well and truly comically tiny. But not, it must be said, the smallest folding knife I currently own.

It's got a loop on the tail that's built into the spacer which you can use to turn this into a keyring knife, or possibly attempt the aforementioned zipper pull strategy. You're on your own figuring out how, though. For nearly five bucks, the manufacturer didn't even bother to include a dinky split keyring. Nor even a box. Mine just came in a plastic baggie with a sticker on it, the truly traditional harbinger of top flight Chinese cutlery.

There's not much inside to look at. Note, however, the lonely and singular brass washer. The spacer screw is a T6 head and I think the pivot screws are meant to be T8, but I found a T9 driver actually fit better. You'll need a driver in each side if you care enough to disassemble this, because...

...While the pivot screw does indeed have an anti-rotation flat on it...

...The holes in both handle plates are just round.

This makes me wonder if all the pieces of hardware in this are commodity parts.

The tail spacer is the most interesting part of the entire knife, if you ask me. It's got the detent ball mounted there, and is also prevented from rotating by having yet another pin pressed into it. Based on the texture around the edges plus the lack of telltale machine marks, I think it's actually a casting. It is steel though. The entire knife is, actually, sans the washer. A magnet sticks to all of its components.

I took a picture of the blade separately, but I already said most of what needs to be said about it so I'm not sure what's to illustrate. I'm going to show it to you anyway, though, because I went through the effort to take the snap and process it, so you're going to look at it at least once.

Unsurprisingly it's had no polish or finishing work done to it at all after grinding, but the flat is pretty smooth and shiny. I imagine that's because the raw bar stock it was made out of was pre-polished.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There's very nearly something resembling a valid use case for the Yesisok and others of its ilk, but only barely. If you're in an environment where a big traditional and dare I say "real" pocket knife clipped to your pants is frowned upon, this could stand in as a very cheap and at least reasonably serviceable substitute. Moreso if you are in a locale with insane blade length requirements, or one of those places where one handed opening knives are forbidden. Since you'd have to be a damn wizard to get this thing open with one hand.

But otherwise its main appeal is as a fidget toy, since its mechanical design is deeply silly.

It's OK.

I guess.

All aboard, and Welcome to the Wondrous Weird Knife Wednesday Weaboo Wagon.

I am fully aware it's Thursday in most time zones. Never mind that. Get a load of this thing.

For anyone in your life with a custom body pillowcase, a hatchback covered with ahegao stickers, and an imposing DVD collection, here's the perfect accessory.

This is the "New Animation Game Genshin Impact Butterfly Knife Toy Unsharped Metal Weapon Wolf's Last Road Stick Cyno Weapon Model Gift," which I received for a whole 99 US cents from Aliexpress as an "introductory offer" item. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of things. I am positive that even though I knew exactly what I was getting into when I ordered it I still got ripped off. But the grist mill of Content hungers evermore; I've got to feed something into the damn thing or else I won't have anything to write about. And hey, it was still only a buck.

This is... Look, we have to go down a whole damn rabbit hole for me to explain it to you. Obviously the moniker tipped you off that this is ostensibly a piece of cynical tie-in merchandise for the exasperatingly popular video game, Genshin Impact. There were a whole range of these things apparently replicating a variety of "signature weapons" from the game, but for some inexplicable reason they're all balisong shaped which is of course right in my tree. But also hard to make much heads or tails of, since they're all without exception described with inscrutable titles in transliterated Chinese.

I picked the absolute silliest looking one of the bunch, which is named "Tian Kon."

The fact that its frilly and overwrought decorative trappings have a distinctly Zelda-eque vibe probably also contributed.

I have to admit I don't know a whole heck of a lot about Genshin nor do I really care to, although that's not to say I have no experience with it. I did try it out very briefly back in its early days, when the consensus about it on the internet was still in its initial phase of howling about how it was superficially a Breath of the Wild ripoff, just to see what all the hubbub was about. I concluded that while it had a veneer of this, it was overlaid on a bedrock core of Gacha Waifu Slot Machine Harem Simulator For Whales, a genre in which I have no interest.

I slept on this writeup for a few weeks longer than I should have, as well, since this specific product and all of the others in its range have vanished from the face of the Internet entirely in the meantime. It's useless for me to link you to the item anymore even if you did want one of these yourself for whatever reason. It's just gone, although the Chinese knockoff sphere is still absolutely packed to the gills with junk in a broadly similar vein. The top search result if I try to look for what I've got verbatim is now this, which I'm pretty sure is made in the same factory that used to be making the thing I've got. (In case interested future historians click on this eight, maybe nine minutes into the future when this page has likewise inevitably disappeared, I also saved a screenshot.) This contains such hits as "Fo Nu Huo Lang," and "Mo Dao Zhu Shi," and "Qi Sha." So you see what I mean.

I think my "Tian Kon" is supposed to be a hack representation of Genshin's Skyward Pride. (Not the Skyward Blade, which was my initial thought based on the translation.) "Tian Kon" is likely actually a bastardization of "Tiānkōng", which is broadly speaking "sky." No points for guessing (or looking it up on the wiki) that the Skyward Pride's Chinese name is Tiānkōng zhī Ào. (And the Blade, Tiānkōng zhī Rèn.)

Case closed. That was entirely more research into this 99 cent piece of junk than should be undertaken by anyone, and now if you'll excuse me I think I'm going to go wash my hands.

One thing I sure didn't expect was for this to show up on a full color hang card. I was predicting the usual nondescript plastic baggie in a bubble mailer with a smudged and barely legible sticker on it printed in Chinese. If you found this hanging on a peg in FYE or Hot Topic it'd probably run you twenty bucks.

Let it not be said that I've completely slandered Genshin Impact by calling it a mere Waifu simulator. To its credit, it contains a couple of token himbos as well. The bloke depicted here is Diluc, a fire elemental guy who you can obtain fairly early on. He has absolutely nothing to do with the Skyward Pride, so it beats me why he's on the packaging. Maybe he's on the packaging for all of these. Maybe he's not, and it's random. I'll probably never know.

In case anyone cares, the back of the card is thus. I am particularly fond of "wyth," and "under 12 vrars old." Not that I'm any better at Chinese, mind you. I butcher their language, they butcher mine. That's how the cultural exchange works around here.

The Chinese on the rear at least reveals that this is (allegedly) manufactured by Jinjiang Animation Hardware Factory, of Fujian Province. So now we know who to blame.

Because this is crap.

No, I did not put 99 cents down on this with high expectations. But as usual for Chinese knockoff goods, much effort has been spent meticulously touching up the photos of the product in its online listing to make it look more attractive than it actually is, and very little on the actual manufacture of the thing itself.

Obviously this isn't a "real" knife in that it's not sharp. But calling it a balisong trainer is really a bit of a stretch. It's entirely made of cast zinc, sans the screws, at least if the packaging is to be believed. That seems plausible to me since zinc (or its myriad alloys) is cheap and braindead simple to cast in a die. A magnet doesn't stick to any of it, it's clearly not aluminum, nor dense enough to be lead.

The finish is airbrushed on.

And, it must be said, not very well. The base color is some kind of metal flake enamel in a color that is precisely that of the Oldsmobile Allero your great aunt bought in 2002. The blue details are sprayed overtop presumably with the aid of some kind of mask, but as you can see on the blade especially the factory, er... missed.

It's also all a façade anyway because it's only finished and fully detailed on one side. The reverse side of the handles are flat with none of the bass relief and no spraypaint job. Here you can see the commodity Phillips (or possibly knockoff JIS) screws holding it together. Don't cry that you've been misled -- You got exactly what was offered, since the product photos religiously depict the knife from only one side. Remember: 能骗就骗.

Mine also showed up slightly bent. It was worse right out of the package, to the extent that the inner face of one of the handles would rub on the blade. I suspect it got crushed in transit somehow, and since it's only made of potmetal in any case it's not especially rigid. No big deal, though. I just took it apart and bent it back before I took my pictures.

The blade has a hole in it and also a split, running all the way down to its tip, which puts one in mind of a fountain pen nib. This makes it look cool, though once again it's probably a good thing that this can't hold an edge. You could try dipping it in ink and writing with it, but I'll bet you that wouldn't work too well, either.

It's not tough to take apart, which is especially beneficial if you find yourself having to smash any of its parts back into being flat. Just to throw a pure hypothetical out there.

The "blade" itself is quite a detailed casting, and it is so on both sides unlike the handles. I have no doubt that the majority of the pennies that were spent on producing this were spent here. What I don't have any idea of is what the runes down the fuller are supposed to mean. Initially I thought they may have been an outright fabrication, or possibly lifted (or mutated) from some other script, but apparently they do indeed appear on the original digital blade if you peer closely enough. So there's dedication to detail. If you're the type of turbo-nerd who can read Genshin runes, do let us know.

No doubt as part of its ruthlessly cost-cut industrial design, the Tian Kon's pivots are cast into the back sides of the handles. There are no female screws at all, just these escutcheons which have a hole drilled and tapped into them. On the bright side that means there are no screw heads on the decorative side of the knife.

Conversely, though, this means that the pivot clearances are hilariously awful. There's probably a full millimeter of rattle in the pivots, and they are by necessity tapered. Otherwise the part wouldn't come out of its mold, but that probably doesn't help matters from a precision standpoint.

So don't expect any of that and you won't be disappointed. The Wiggle Test with the handles in the closed position reveals the Tian Kon's continued proud tradition of cheating, looking better than it is at first blush only because the raised portions of the blade hit the inner surfaces of the handles down around the pivot area where it's tough to see and prevent the handles from wiggling further.

With the handles in the open position you can see just how dire matters really are. The Tian Kon wins the coveted Ching Chow Award, being one of two (2) balisongs I now own that are so awful that you can cause the latch to miss the opposite handle entirely. It's fabulously awful.

In spite of all expectations, the Tian Kon is actually functional. For suitably small values of "functional," anyway. The pivots work, and you can swing the handles and blade around.

But because all of the contact surfaces are zinc-on-zinc, it squeaks incessantly while in operation. Because of this it is in at least one sense also now the loudest balisong I own. I'm not sure that's a compliment, exactly, but it is damned hilarious. It's also guaranteed to annoy the hell out of anyone else in the room with you.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is still probably cheaper in a real world sense than a round of gacha pulls and at the end of the day, probably leaves you holding exactly as much value.

That's got to count for something, but I'll be damned if I know what.

I picked up this hinderer eklipse about a week ago. I wasn’t a big fan of the light green color so I dyed it dark purple. What do you guys think? I was also thinking yellow but I figured if I dyed it yellow it would look like a weird banana…

Either way, I’m loving this bad boy :D

I've seen things, I've seen them with my eyes. I've seen things, they're often in disguise. Like:

• Carrots
• Ninjas
• Cheese
• Mermaids
• Russians
• Slingshots
• Spinners
• Choppers
• Sine Waves
• Antiques
• Chinese Knockoffs
• Monsters
• Warlocks
• Chinese Knockoffs

I realize that lately I've let this column get a little too long winded and boring and, dare I say, practical. Sorry about that.

Let's get this crazy train back on the tracks.

This snaggletoothed monstrosity is the Model CH0107 Tanto Blade Tactical Folding Pocket Knife W/ Belt Clip, sold by -- and I promise I am not making this up -- "CozyLiving Furniture Store." It is yours for really not much money at all from China. They have this to say about it:

Made from 440 stainless steel with a black anodized finish, this Killer is a much needed companion on your next hunt. Sporting a partially serrated tanto style sawback blade and a thumb stud to assist with opening, the knife has an extremely strong reinforced point that is very good for piercing and stabbing. The handle is made of a heavy duty green ABS that is textured for a firm grip and has a lock back release on top. Included on the handle is a belt clip so you can take your Tanto Blade Killer Pocket Knife with you when you are on the go.

"Killer?"

Oh, yeah. It says this on the other side of the blade:

I, meanwhile, have this to say about it: You think your knife is serrated? Your knife isn't even barely serrated. My knife is serrated.

This knife is so serrated, it passes beyond mere serration and emerges out the other side, into the brightly sunlit valley of pure cold insanity where the air is clear and still, so silent there isn't even birdsong.

The CH0107 is ostensibly a fairly normal lockback folder with a single piece injection molded plastic handle, and just so happens to have a blade profile with a rather... particular... aesthetic design. Perfectly normal in a maintaining-unwavering-eye-contact-through-its-greasy-forelocks sort of way, anyhow.

It is also very, extremely, flagrantly, unquestionably, eye-searingly green.

And covered in Chinese axle grease, so much so that every time you open and close it more gets on the blade and you have to vainly try to wipe it off before taking another picture.

It's 7-13/16" long when open and 4-1/2" long with a 3-1/4" long tanto pointed blade that is, yes, serrated. And has a bunch of holes in, just because. The description also calls it "sawbacked" but this is not so, or at least not in the functional sense. While the spine of the blade does indeed have quite a mohawk on it, the points are not sharp enough to actually be useful for anything. Which is really just as well, because otherwise the main thing they'd be useful for is shredding your pants fabric if you actually carried this anyplace. If anybody cares it's 84.8 grams or 2.99 ounces. The blade alleges to be made of 440 series stainless, but which flavor is left unspecified.

Its entire construction is also a retro throwback, in case you needed a nostalgia trip back to those good old days of low-budget Chinese cutlery, only without the good and just rather long on the old. Revel in how good we have it with cheap knives now, because trust me -- it used to be a whole lot worse. There was a time when they were all like this.

Like how? Well, for one it's not screwed but rather riveted together, which makes taking it apart completely impossible. As to be expected there's a large amount of wiggle in the blade when it's locked open, and thanks to this low tech construction strategy there's precisely fuck all you can do about it.

The action is otherwise begrudgingly serviceable and it pivots open without much fuss, although as a cheap lockback you have to fight the rather stiff lock spring the entire time. You're aided in this with a thumb stud, but curiously only on one side. Left handed users get to dodge a bullet, here.

You may have also spotted that it has a pocket clip.

It does, for sure, and this is the only thing that's actually screwed together on the entire knife. Even so it's noticeably wiggly, and no amount of messing with the tension on all three (!) of the wood screws chunked into the plastic through it has any effect on that. Otherwise it's reasonably serviceable and quite springy, although mounted a bit far from the tail of the knife.

It's also extremely dull.

I've opined before that I don't care much about the factory sharpness on a knife provided the final grind is reasonably even, because any owner worth their salt is going to have to sharpen the thing eventually and thus the degree of sharpness out of the box is really only a temporary concern to begin with. But this thing is in a special category all on its own, because from new it is outright blunt.

Here's what its point looks like. This isn't a case of damage from packaging or shipping. The grind doesn't even go all the way out to the tip.

The tanto point portion is quite literally butter knife grade. It's physically impossible to cut anything with it, because the factory didn't actually manage to grind it far enough to create an edge. Here's what that looks like:

Its entire length is flat-spotted. The left side and the right side, nary in the middle do they meet.

The rest of it is not much better, but the primary edge could at least charitably saw through something as high grade as cardboard if, and only if, you sawed at it diligently enough.

The serrations aren't left out of this, either. Although surprisingly, they're not chisel ground; the edge (such as it is) is double sided for its entire length. But the points are rounded off and while they come closer to achieving sharpness than the portion near the tip does, they still don't actually manage to actually achieve it.

From the tail you can see that this is a one piece injection molding. Producing these in bulk for the manufacturer has got to be nearly free.

I'm not providing the usual disassembly photo because this would require drilling out the pivots, and I'm not doing that for no other reason than I can't be bothered.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There's really not much to conclude, here. Never mind zombies, the CH0107 is barely capable of opening your mail.

A knife like this really only has two functions: Looking mean, and getting confiscated from teenagers by the cops for the same reason. While we're at it, I'm sure the marquee on the side will look great on you in court.

Oh, and it has a third function, too: Appearing here, giving us a sterling opportunity to speculate just what, exactly, its designers were smoking.

Once you reach a certain age, you find yourself prone to dreaming about all the could-have-beens you've had between then and now. What would have happened if you moved to the other town instead? What if you went to the other school, married the other girl, bought the other car, took the other job? All those decisions, compromises made in the name of circumstances or convenience or, more usually, your finances.

In these long nights of quiet retrospection: Did you miss out? Did you make the right choice? Or did you just settle? Just what, exactly, did you compromise?

This is an easy trap to fall into in our hobby. Part of the reason knife nerds have so many knives is because we're forever trying to find whatever the perfect knife is, and that always engenders some kind of compromise. Price is the usual one, of course. Even if you do it in nickels and dimes, which is the way most of us try, you can spend any amount of money chasing the damn unicorn and still never catch it.

And then, if you're a balisong dork it's even worse. All the household names are extremely collectible, and they're without exception limited production items that start off shockingly expensive and only get ludicrously more so over time. The venerable Benchmade Model 42. The BRS Replicant. The HOM Basilisk. The Flytanium Zenith. And if you want anyone to take you seriously in this gig, if you want to have the right experience, you just have to get your hands on one of those, don't you? Because otherwise you're going to have to compromise.

Well.

What if I said you don't?

This is the Böker Tactical 06EX229. We can excuse the completely unmemorable name plus the fact that yet again Böker has forced me to remember how to type an umlaut over the O, for one simple reason, which is this:

The 06EX229 is at present hands down one of the best values in a balisong knife at the moment. It may just be the best value, period.

Unicorn: Slain.

You may recall that I kinda-sorta reviewed this knife already, in the form of its smaller sibling the 06EX227. That is the "tactical small" variant of Böker's design, in a more pocket friendly size that's rather akin to the rather spectacular (in my opinion) but now very collectible Benchmade Mini-Morpho Model 32. This, however, is the "tactical big" version. Exactly as you would expect, it's... bigger. Precisely like Benchmade's Morpho Model 51 is unto the 32.

There is of course a critical difference, since we were talking about compromises just a few paragraphs ago: The Model 51, just like the 32, is now purest unobtanium. It's discontinued, no longer available anywhere, a valuable antique, and even when it was new it last listed for damn near $400. Nowadays you are unlikely to get your hands on one for less than $500.

I already posted a deal alert on the various Böker balisongs a few weeks ago, and imagine my surprise when I just clicked and learned that these are still (at the time of writing) on sale for $40. This despite several weeks of procrastination and staring at my proverbial typewriter with no output. All that's still relevant.

Not $400 -- $40. Drop that zero right off the end.

Yes, you can certainly buy a clone of the Model 51 (although curiously not the 32, at least so far as I can find) for a lot less dough than the real thing, and I am and have been keen on that sort of thing in the past as well.

One of those can be a competent poor man's stand-in for a Benchmade, sure. But the Böker tacticals share the distinction of actually being better in at least one critical aspect than not only the clones, but the genuine Benchmade models you may be tempted to substitute with them.

Which is astounding.

Physicals

The 06EX229 is a full sized balisong knife constructed of steel and G-10, similar in proportion to the Benchmade Model 51 and quite a few other traditionally sized flippers ostensibly in its class.

It's the spitting image of its smaller sibling, as you can see here. It sports the same type of harpoon profiled blade made of D2, understated black G-10 scales with the same double-X embellishment carved into them...

...And the tail end shows off precisely the same type of spring loaded squeeze-to-release latch, which is of a similar design and intent to the latch found on the Benchmade Morphos.

The incessant comparison to the aforementioned Benchmades is impossible to escape. I'll be bringing it up a lot because there are incredible design similarities between those and this. Not only the spring latch and the very way in which it works, but also the big knife/little knife dichotomies in both brands' lineups. The blade steel is the same across both brands as well, D2 on each, and they're all kickerless designs with concealed Zen pins in the handles for the rebound instead.

It's easy to see that the smaller 06EX227 is roughly Mini-Morpho sized and this 06EX229 is the proportional twin to the full sized Morpho 51. I don't actually own one of those, but I do have the TheOne clone of it, because I'm poor. So that's what I'm showing off above all the way on the right, there.

The 06EX229 is 9-3/8" long from tip to tail when opened, with a 4-1/4" blade, 0.119" thick, which has a roughly 3-3/4" usable edge. And indeed, a usable edge is what it has, exhibiting ruthless sharpness right out of the box which for most people won't require any going over before being put into service.

It's clear that putting this knife into service is precisely what Böker expect you to do with it, since it also includes a reversible steel pocket clip. I can respect this even, if as usual, it comes out of the box on the wrong side of the handle which is where it appears in most of these photos. I fixed that when I took the knife all apart for my usual disassembly photo, which we'll get to later.

The presence of the clip, oft omitted on collectors' or competition balisongs, plus the immensely satisfying spring loaded latch put the 06EX229 once again in the same camp as the Benchmade Morpho, or at least the camp the latter was in 15 years ago: Namely that of an EDC capable balisong that's designed to be carried and actually used rather than just locked in a cabinet and gazed at wistfully, lest you scuff its collectors value.

One critical difference is the weight, since due to its all steel construction rather than the titanium of the Morpho it is heavier: 149.6 grams or 5.28 ounces. That's 1.98 ounces more, or about 37.5%. Weight is one of those things that balisong nerds get super hot and bothered about, so that's sure to ruffle somebody's feathers somewhere. Since the 06EX229's liners are steel for their entire length and are completely solid, not ventilated in any way whatsoever, that makes it a slightly slower spinner than lighter knives and also moves the point of balance a touch further towards the tips of the handles. Latched shut, that point is 1.693" by my measure which is 3/8" or so further back versus just for sake of example my BM51 clone, since the blades are roughly the same density as each other. Probably by no accident, this is directly on the crosshatched portion of the handles.

But enough about the Morpho. Where the 06EX229 shines is all the differences, all the places it's allowed to stand on its own.

For instance, it has concealed pivot screws that live underneath the scales, and make it appear to function by magic.

And rather than plain utilitarian round cutouts for the Zen pins, it has elongated stylized ones that form and merge with the choil, making the entire length of the edge usable.

The pins themselves are visible peeking through the handles.

Ephemerals

It should be obvious to anyone that the 06EX229 must be a budget knife even at its full list price of $126, at least compared to its contemporaries.

So how much play has it got in the pivots, and how much blade tap against the inside of the handles?

Would you believe none?

Like its sister 06EX227 but completely unlike the vast majority of balisongs not only in its class but even considerably above, the 06EX229 is a ball bearing equipped knife. Both pivots ride on a pair of thrust bearing assemblies each, which ensure not only impeccable low resistance action but also a completely wiggle-free pivot assembly. The key is that traditional balisongs are highly sensitive to pivot screw tension and the tighter you make them the less they wiggle, but also the more resistance you encounter up until the point that they won't pivot freely at all. Bushing equipped knives typically aren't, but they have an inbuilt amount of lash that can't be adjusted out, because their bushings are always a hair longer than the blades are thick by deliberate design, which ensures a free action but a guaranteed minimum amount of rattle.

Bering knives are constrained by none of the above. You can crank the ever living fuck out of the pivot screws to the point that any lash whatsoever is not only squeezed out of the mechanism but also driven by horsewhip clear into the next country, but the handles will still pivot freely.

Achieving no play and no tap is the holy grail of balisong knife design and it's always the sort of thing manufacturers try to put at the top of their bullet point lists, even if they have not in fact actually technically managed it. An excess of either is the first thing that makes a knife feel cheap, and this one doesn't have any.

And thanks to, rather than despite, its full length steel liners and especially the thick G-10 scales, the handles are incredibly rigid and resist flexing to a large degree. This even though it is a sandwich construction, consisting of two separate steel liners and scales per handle, rather than each handle being channel milled out of a single slab of material.

The 06EX229 is pure functionality. Unlike most of its peers its styling is very understated, with just these two lacelike crosses milled into its scales.

It has few other embellishments. It has no speed holes or channels, nothing on it is anodized, nor engraved. Nothing's neon or holographic or glows. But it doesn't need any of that. Other knives may be a flamboyant Ferarri Daytona, but the Böker is a BMW M3.

The balance and heft of any particular balisong knife is highly subjective, of course. People have preferences -- lighter, longer, shorter, whatever -- So it's certain that someone out there will be displeased by the 06EX229's action for some reason or another.

But in some ineffable way, the action feels right. I find the 06EX229 to be extremely controllable, moreso even than knives which the hive mind of the internet assures us to be perfect. I don't know why this is. Maybe it's the bearings. Or the weight distribution. Maybe I'm just predisposed to like it.

All of its attributes taken together make this preeminently qualified for use as an EDC knife, despite the typical drawbacks inherent in being a balisong. The clip is small, but in this case small enough to be unobtrusive -- It's the same part as the one on the smaller 06EX227, but with the longer handles on this it's much less in your way when manipulating the knife -- it draws cleanly and easily, and the spring latch allows you to put the knife into action right away. The ability to reposition the clip to either side of the handle also ensures you can draw your knife with it in your preferred orientation which is a big help.

The only oddity is the 06EX229's only concession to flamboyance, as it happens, which is that weird harpoon profile on the blade. The horn of the back of it is fairly pronounced and is just pointy enough to be distinctly uncomfortable if you windmill it right into your finger. Typically it's far enough away that you don't, but for specific types of finger roll tricks it's possible to get hung up on the hook. If you're really going to be Captain TikTok Flipper Showoff Bro, you might want to grab your grinder and round the point off on it slightly.

The Bits

The 06EX229 is dead easy to take apart.

This is good news for habitual balisong twiddlers, which I suspect is a neat cross-section of basically all balisong owners to begin with. There's no recalcitrance nor screws that refuse to come undone. Nor do you have to employ any tricks. This puts the 06EX229 head and shoulders above quite a few Chinese clones, while still cheekily occupying the same price bracket.

Every screw head on the knife takes the same T6 Torx driver, even the pivot screws.

The pivot screw heads as well as the Zen pin holes are hidden beneath the scales. The heads recess into pockets on the back side of the scales. The only knock against this is that you need to remove the scales to tune your pivot tension, but conversely since this is a ball bearing knife you realistically should never have to do that anyway, provided you remember to re-threadlock the screws if you ever have occasion to take it apart.

You only need to dismount one side anyway, because the female sides of the pivot screws don't have any driver heads.

You'll find those on the other side. Not also the ball bearing assemblies, two each on each pivot. The pivot screws have anti-rotation flats so undoing them is no trouble, even without screw heads on the other side. The Zen pins also live here and are captive, with shoulders preventing them from falling out.

The spring latch assembly is dead simple, and Böker lifted this directly from the Benchmade Morpho. (I did, too, with my Rockhopper printable knife.) The pin here isn't captive and can fall out when you dismount either of the scales on that side, so watch out.

The cammed heel on the latch pushes on that pin, which is sprung by the natural tension in the steel liner. Note that this would be absolutely impossible with a one piece channel milled handle design. But due to this, not only can you easily kick the latch out by simply squeezing the handles together, but it's also handily stopped from hitting the blade and, by and large, even from contacting either handle when you're swinging the thing around.

Treachery

As part of Böker's "Plus" line, this is not actually technically manufactured by Böker themselves and is rather actually subcontracted to any of a potential number of outfits worldwide.

I can't quite come up with a definitive origin for this knife. At least one source claims it's made by CobraTec which, if true, adds another interesting layer to things. At the very least there is a prominent "Made In USA" legend printed on the label on the end of its box, which lends some credence to this theory. Score one more, then, against the Chinese knockoff brigade.

The rub is that this is heavily discounted and seems to be so everywhere, by and large. Not just on Böker's site but at other retailers as well. When I see that sort of thing on a particular model or another that indicates to me that it's poised to get the chop, which in this case is highly disappointing. Some day soon this too will go away, and the world will be left slightly worse off because of it.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Because you see, the Böker 06EX229 is exactly the knife the world needs. A competent and highly usable, potentially US made, well built, and extremely featureful balisong that can wrest or hopefully at least steer the whole damn hobby away from insanity, even if just by a little bit.

Because the balisong market is famously insane, and probably many of its participants no less so.

As it is, it's also a spectacular entry point for non-insane people looking to get into the swing of things. To get more people included, rather than excluded. And, without shelling out for a cynical knockoff or ghastly non-brand piece of junk. And don't get me wrong, I like a good non-brand piece of junk sometimes. But there's a lot of room for something in between limited edition collector's pieces that are never meant to be used, and flea market card table crap.

The 06EX229 is the unicorn after all. Just, nobody noticed because it wasn't shaped like one in silhouette.

So maybe you never bought that Ferrari. But the insurance on the Subaru is a whole lot less, it's taken you way more places over all those years, and you don't have to have a heart attack if it gets bird shit on it.

Maybe you didn't marry a supermodel. But the girl next door's been here the whole time, and she's a hell of a lot more fun to be around. And she's down for a whole lot more.

Don't get caught up in being sold a dream, and don't get wrapped around the axle if you think you've missed out, or you can't afford it. In the end, all of that's just marketing. It turns out you really can have it all, even without getting lucky -- provided you're looking at it the right way.

You're lying in your tent in the dark. In the unfamiliar woods outside, a nocturnal cacophony. There's just one thin scrap of Nylon between you and whatever's out there.

So you have everything you think you'll need carefully arranged right next to your sleeping bag so you can reach it, all in order, just so. Your watch, your flashlight, your bear spray, your knife. Maybe your gun, if you're a wimp.

Before going to sleep you've practiced grabbing your knife in the dark. Don't try to tell me you haven't at least once. I know you have.

Well, Glow Rhino think they've got another solution for you with this, their Fermi.

I'm sorry, The Fermi. They consistently render it with the definite article attached.

This knife was kindly lent to me by a reader, which is such an astonishing turn of events I can still hardly believe it. I'm just chuffed to pieces. I won't name names, but the guilty know who they are. So thank you.

The Fermi is named after Enrico Fermi, the physicist who's famous for developing the world's first nuclear reactor. That, plus the Glow Rhino name and the fact that I wouldn't be showing this off to you if it didn't have some kind of trick might clue you in to what's going on here.

You see, this knife is radioactive.

The Fermi is an unassuming and somewhat compact liner locking folder that happens to have not one, not two, but three radioactive tritium glow inserts embedded in it: One each in both of the handle scales, and another titchy little one in the thumb stud. Note that the green ring in the stud is not the glowy part, that's just neon plastic which you can even order in a variety of colors. The tiny dot in the middle is the part that illuminates.

And yes, this puppy is nuclear. Tritium is a weak beta particle emitter, decaying into helium in the process, and this is what powers the Fermi's glow. Or rather, just like Doc Brown's DeLorean, this puppy is ultimately electrical. Beta particles are fast electrons, after all, and these are what excite a phosphor coating on the inside surfaces of the glass tritium capsules, which captures this energy and re-emits it as visible light. The phosphor stuff is apparently zinc sulfide based, but nobody seems willing to admit its exact formulation in any easy to find place online.

So the glow inserts produce a very small amount of wan green illumination, but unlike your typical glow-in-the-dark stuff they glow of their own accord, constantly, without the need to be charged up via external light. This also means they'll glow all night without your intervention.

That's not to say they'll glow forever, though. Tritium has a half life of about 12.3 years, meaning that in that time frame the emitted radiation and thus the brightness of these will be reduced by half. In 24.4 years it'll be a quarter of what it was when new, and so on down the line.

All that may sound like a long time but bear in mind I've shown you plenty of knives in this feature that are already twenty-plus years old. So it's up to you if you think this is worth it for a $100 piece of kit, versus just getting a normal folder of similar construction and, most likely, a significantly smaller price tag.

There is an evergreen temptation for sleazier manufacturers of these types of things to claim that they're "permanent" illumination but as we've just observed this is obviously not the case. For their part, Glow Rhino only claim a lifetime of 12 years, matching the half life of the tritium itself, but whereupon in reality the inserts should still be emitting some type of visible output. The output of the glow vials will constantly diminish more or less linearly until they reach whatever point the owner decides they're dim enough to be considered spent, but where you draw that line is up to you. The waters will be further muddied by the fact that while the raw falloff of the light output may be broadly linear, human perception of it is not.

Interestingly, when I received this in the mail it had clearly been opened and tampered with, then resealed by the post office. At first I thought this might be because we'd tripped some radiation detector somewhere along the line, no doubt installed in a bout of post-9/11 hysteria in some godforsaken sorting facility someplace.

But now that I've read up on it I think this might not be the case. Because while beta radiation is indeed a type of ionizing radiation, i.e. the bad kind, tritium is an incredibly weak emitter of it. It's throwing out beta particles -- electrons -- with comparatively a very low energy per particle. So much so, in fact, the beta radiation from this stuff is quite difficult to detect and has a range of only about 1/6 of an inch (just a hair over 4mm) in open air. And then, that light emitting phosphor layer should theoretically capture pretty much all of it anyway. In fact, the stuff is so weak that trying to use a Geiger counter to detect tritium emissions is generally considered to be futile. So it's more likely that they opened this to ensure, ye gods forbid, that it wasn't a switchblade, which for some unfathomable reason you're not allowed to send through the post.

This also dovetails neatly with the inevitable comment this thing is sure to garner, vis-a-vis, "You expect us to take this radioactive motherfucker and clip it to the inside of our pants?"

Well, the energy of the beta particle emissions of tritium is slightly less than, say, the electron emissions of a garden variety cathode ray tube as found in a television. Tritium throws particles with an energy of 0.019 MeV or if you prefer 19 KeV, compared to the typical emission energy of a typical boob tube at 20 to 35 KeV. You spent your entire youth staring at one of those and while the content on it may have rotted your brain, the particle emissions certainly did not lase your lobes. (In fact, basically none of it escapes the front glass, just like how vanishingly little-to-none of what these tritium capsules emit escapes their glass, either.)

So yeah. This type of thing is really fantastically unlikely to do anyone any harm. Even if you busted one of the capsules, I think the little shards of broken glass would be a bigger risk than the tiny quantity of tritium itself. The only real exposure risk with tritium is ingestion, which I think would be quite difficult to achieve not least of which because the amount of the stuff inside is really very small, but also because at the end of the day it's fancy hydrogen, which is far lighter than air and would surely go "paff" off into the atmosphere before you got a chance to have much of a whiff.

The Glow

The light that the Fermi's inserts emit is extremely dim. This is on par with various tritium powered thingies, both those made by Glow Rhino and others. You may be familiar with these via various glowing keyfobs, gun night sights, and other gadgets. Your gizmo having a tritium glower in it is sort of the peak of EDC nerd appeal, in some circles at least, so the Fermi certainly scores there. The only way it could do better would be to have superfluous titanium components and or maybe some fidget magnets in it somewhere.

If you've never played with one of these tritium emitters in person before, note that the light is completely invisible in even moderately illuminated ambient conditions. And forget about using the glow emitted to read anything or even find something other than itself in the dark. It's just about perfect for marking its own position, and really nothing else.

It's also remarkably difficult to photograph properly. I used a two second exposure for these.

Given the green shade of light emitted by the phosphor and how similar it looks to the classic glow-in-the-dark green, I had a hunch that whatever the material is might also be fluorescent, and glow under ultraviolet light.

And I was right. Boy howdy.

But even after shining a strong UV light on it the phosphor doesn't remain glowing any brighter than it started once the light is removed. (In this case the source in question is my little 1xAAA 365nm jobbie which is, yes, the same model Big Clive was showing off.) It can't be "charged" like a traditional glow-in-the-dark material.

But while we're on the topic of traditional glow-in-the-dark stuff, why not just use that and be, like, a zillion times cheaper?

Well, for comparison -- and for Science -- I lined the Fermi up with one of my Rockhoppers made in glow PLA and as an added ringer, a random tracer glow airsoft BB.

This is just after a couple of minutes of exposure to the ambient lighting in the room, nothing special, and nothing especially scientific.

This, however, is what happens if I give the entire arrangement a short cooking with my UV flashlight. When it's fully energized, traditional glow-in-the-dark material is miles brighter than the Fermi's tritium capsules. Enough that here you can actually use the raw shine coming off of the Rockhopper to see the outline of the Fermi below it.

But after ten minutes...

...And then an hour...

...And then three hours...

...The semipermanent glow of the tritium capsules demonstrably becomes a significant advantage.

Mind you, once your eyes are well adjusted you can still see the shape and outline of the Rockhopper for 8 or 9 hours, even if only just, which is tough to convey over the and still ought to be good enough for finding it in the dark over the course of most nights. Provided you don't live in Hammerfest or something, anyway.

The Knife Part

Other than its atomic party trick, the Fermi is otherwise a fairly unassuming liner locking ball bearing folder with modern looks, but a pretty spartan feature set.

It's fairly compact, 6-7/8" long when open and 3-7/8" closed with a 3" drop pointed blade. The usable edge length is just about 2-7/8", ending in an angular cut that's not quite technically a choil, I guess, but has the same function. So given all that maybe this isn't quite the best tool for fending off bears invading your tent, even if you can find it instantly in the dark.

There is no ricasso, nor is there a flipper heel on it. This is a pure thumb stud opener, and while the stud is ambidextrous it's only illuminated on one side. The other side is just a plain black screw head.

The blade's D2 and is flat ground, although it's not quite a full grind. There is a small flat spot near the spine for about half of its length. It's finished with a nice even PVD coating. Not a single part of this knife is shiny other than, you know, the parts that shine in the dark. This should make any tactical ninja operator happy.

The Fermi has flat G10 scales with full length steel inserts that have lightening holes in them. You'll have to take my word for that last part, though, for reasons we'll soon discuss. The blade's spine is plain and square, with no rounding and no jimping on it, either. Overall the whole thing is very plain-Jane.

It has a deep carry pocket clip with nice flush fitting screws in it, but this is not reversible for no particular reason I can fathom, nor is any option except tip-up carry provided. Beats me as to why because the scales and overall construction are completely symmetrical. I don't see any technical reason why the clip couldn't have been made reversible. They just... didn't.

Likewise, there is no lanyard hole. Nor any assisted opening or any other spring action.

One thing the Fermi does have is this groovy totally flat pivot screw on what's presumably the female side of the pivot. This gives the back side a very attractive minimalist look.

Here's a lineup of this plus a couple of likely EDC contenders.

It's smaller than not only the usual Kershaw CQC-6K, which isn't much of a stretch, but also a Benchmade Bugout -- but versus the latter, only in terms of footprint and not thickness and definitely not weight. That's because it tips the scale at 86.4 grams or 3.05 ounces, nearly triple that of a Bugout.

But on the bright side, the Fermi's G10 scales plus full length liners made it perfectly rigid, and the thicker construction -- 0.499" or nearly precisely half an inch not including the clip -- I think made it feel a lot nicer in your hand.

It may look like it only has partial liners, but that's because they're rebated into the scales with only the jimping sections sticking out.

The Fermi is indeed a ball bearing pivot knife, although you wouldn't know it by reading Glow Rhino's own writeup on it. One upshot of that is the near perfect blade centering, which is unusual for a liner locking knife.

The bearings don't make it any easier to open, though. That's because the Fermi has quite possibly the most ridiculously overdone ball detent in it that I've ever experienced.

Opening it is deceptively tricky. Overcoming the detent takes a lot more force than you'd expect. The studs don't stick out past the scales in the slightest and there's not much gap between them and the scales, either. Nor is there a scallop in them in right spot for access. So there isn't much of a space to work your thumb into, and if that sort of thing matters to you I think that'd make this near impossible to use while wearing gloves.

"Positive" is certainly one word you could use for the closed lockup. If you get the blade even vaguely near home the detent grabs it and snaps it shut for you.

On the bright side, the open lockup is extremely solid as well. As usual with a bearing knife there's no perceptible lash, wiggle, or rattle in the blade when the thing's open.

On Failure

I did ask its owner for permission to disassemble this knife. You won't see that, though, because it's with no small amount of shame I admit to you that I couldn't get it apart.

Not without resorting to barbaric methods and levels of force, anyway, which I wasn't comfortable with.

The main pivot screw has a T8 Torx head on one side, but as we observed earlier it's got nothing on the other side. It sure feels like it has an anti-rotation flat in it, but it's still not enough to do you a fat lot of good. The screw is glued into place with permanent threadlocker and anti-rotation flat or no, the whole thing just spins in its hole without coming undone no matter how you crank on it. You can feel it grab, and there's a distinct lobe where the flats should engage and keep the shank from spinning around in its hole. But it doesn't quite work, and the whole assembly eventually rotates past the hump before the screw will actually let go.

I have various tricks I could employ to circumvent this, and if this were my knife that would start with cooking it with a soldering iron or possibly just grinding a slot into the female side of the screw.

But at the end of the day it ain't mine, and I did pinky swear not to break it. So I won't.

We can see what we can see from the outside. For instance, here is my level best at capturing the speed holes in the Fermi's steel liners.

The handle halves are separated by an aluminum backspacer into which the clip screws and scale screws on both sides sink into. I think this also has threaded inserts in it, because some of the other screws spin forever without coming undone also.

To get that apart, getting in there and grabbing the inserts with pliers would probably be necessary. But that would require getting the blade and pivot screw out as well, and there's a darn hole in my bucket there; see above.

So the hell with it.

Cutting Observations

D2 steel ought to be a known performer provided the manufacturer didn't fuck it up.

Glow Rhino is not a known quantity to me; their specialty seems to be tritium-laced geegaws, and while they do offer several knives I can't quite be sure if these are made in house or outsourced, or if they're just a side hustle for these guys or what.

What I can tell you is that Glow Rhino's website is one of those damnedable cesspits that's constantly popping up (assuredly fake) "So and so in [city, state] added this item to their cart!" messages in the corner of the screen all the time in a limp-wristed gambit to either imply legitimacy or insinuate that these are flying off the shelves in a manner that would require them to be more popular than they probably actually are. Anybody who resorts to that sort of thing automatically gets a bit of side-eye from me.

But what their website doesn't do is specify the Fermi's country of origin, and nor is it marked on the knife anywhere. Maybe it says on the box, but I don't have that.

The marking here appears to be a model descriptor and not a serial number, since from what I can see of about a third of it on the pictures on Glow Rhino's site, the numbers appear to be the same on this example as what they're showing. That, or we got phenomenally lucky in getting the same unit that they used for their product shots. Do you know, somehow I'd doubt that.

And I know they specified both materials in the engraving just to be cheeky. D2 is the steel, obviously, but the H3 is tritium.

Anyway, the Glow Rhino logo is on the reverse and these are the only two markings on the knife.

As it was delivered to me I found the cutting performance of the Fermi to be pretty dire. It was not capable of cleanly cornering a Post-It note.

This example appears to still have its factory edge but I don't know how much its owner has used it.

The edge is also slightly out of true. One side is about 20 degrees and the other side is closer to 25.

I further don't know if this nibble taken off of the tip is how it was manufactured or if it was busted off at some point during use.

However, I did have explicit permission from this knife's owner to treat it as I saw fit.

So I dropped on my Ruxin Pro to reprofile, and sharpened it up real good. Nothing crazy, mind you; I maintained the factory edge geometry although I did reprofile the off edge so that now both sides are the same angle.

Here's what it looks like now.

I'll also mention that this is one of those darn silly arrangements that requires you to remove the thumb stud for a proper sharpening, otherwise it's in the way. At least this unscrews easily.

And lo, its cutting performance is drastically improved. I did not notice any diminishing of cutting ability after using it to eviscerate my last two Post-It notes, and there is no visible sign of burnishing in the coating around the edge so we can probably assume that there were no catastrophic fuckups with the Fermi's heat treatment.

This shouldn't be a praiseworthy attribute in this day and age, but somehow it still is.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I have the same opinion of this as I do of other people's dogs, and for that matter their children.

I'm glad to have had the opportunity to play with this, and it was a fun time. But at the end of the day, I'll be glad to give it back.

For $99 the Fermi's build quality seems a bit hokey to me. Sure, I know that the lion's share of its price tag is down to its included tritium thingamabobs and not the knife itself, especially given that Glow Rhino charge $40 just for a simple glowing keyfob.

There's also the point that the Fermi's main selling feature, just like a Nexus 6 replicant, has a built in lifespan. 12.3 years, if you care to think of it that way, or maybe just a little longer before it reverts back to being a normal knife.

I don't have much room in my collection for a working knife that can't feasibly be disassembled, and for that kind of money you could buy two CQC-6K's. Or a CRKT Cottidae and a glow-in-the-dark paint pen, with change left over.

But then, you wouldn't be able to tell all the ladies that you have a nuclear fuel rod in your pants.

Here, instead of shilling my own stuff let's shill something somebody else made for a change.

In my last actual column I mentioned in passing, and at the tail end of a very long wall of text, the possibility of a better value for a balisong trainer in today's market than even a Chinese knockoff. While we're at it, we can simultaneously answer a question nobody asked, namely which trainer knife do I actually use?

The answer is this one.

This is the Kershaw Balanza. It's brought to you by the color grey. I think this might be the most monochromatic set of photos I've ever taken that didn't involve black and white film. Not that you'd know by looking.

Note that I didn't say trainer version -- That's because for some twisted reason, no live blade version of this knife seems to exist. Kershaw do make a couple of other balisongs that come in both live and trainer variants, just... not this one. This comes as a trainer only. It's just one of those things, I guess.

The Balanza has list price of $60 with a real world street price of about $42, which means it's slightly cheaper at present than the knockoff I reviewed last week. So for once in history maybe it's a better idea to get this instead of the Ching Chow Special.

Even notwithstanding that, it's got a couple of highly attractive features up is sleeve which I think make it a genuinely good value for what it is. And in the bargain you can also buy it from an actual company you've heard of and might even like, rather than some anonymous shitheads.

Yes, I am well aware of the heat I am about to bring down on myself from the various balisong nerds all over the internet by defending this product. It seems that the Balanza is universally reviled. Everyone hates this knife, apparently. Complaints abound about it being "too heavy," or "handle biased," or allegedly "breaking all the time."

And yet, I like the Balanza. And for once not just for deliberately contrarian hipster purposes, either.

And it's undeniable that the Balanza is ostensibly constructed in much the same way as Kershaw's other balisongs, one example of which I own: That'd be the Moonsault, which I tore a new asshole in one of my very first writeups on here.

So what gives? With its ignominious reputation and our inauspicious start to things, can the Balanza ultimately be redeemed?

Sizing Up

It is inevitable when talking about this sort of thing that the comparison between this and a bunch of other knives will come up. Kershaw's other knives, sure, and my Moonsault in particular. But to use a technical term, there are a shitload of other popular balisong trainer knives out there in the world, all competing to be your entry point into the world's most sedentary extreme sport.

One of my knocks against the Moonsault is that it's too damn large. The Balanza is noticeably smaller, and much more in line with a "traditionally" sized balisong. It is neither comically huge nor uselessly tiny, and therefore doesn't achieve anything interesting in that department at all. I know this is heresy, coming from me.

When closed the Balaza is 5-1/2" long, and it's 9-3/8" or so opened with, once again, a groovy skeletonized blade that's completely symmetrical (almost) and also obviously not sharp. That puts it at "only" 7/8" shorter than the Moonsault, but that fractional reduction in bigness is actually very important for its usability.

It's actually noticeably slightly shorter than the Krake Raken as well, initially to the tune of a very deceptive 1/8" overall when closed. Its blade is almost the same length but the handles are quite a bit shorter, about half an inch, which also has the net effect of moving the pivots back by roughly 3/8".

Similar to most other balisongs, the handles are tapered. At their widest by the tail they're 0.486" across and up at the pivots they're just about 0.414". At rest the knife is noticeably flared in both the open and closed positions, about 15/16" in total at the narrow end and 1-1/4" at the tail, not including the latch. The handles are 0.406" thick, and achieve a very pleasing feel by being subtly rounded over on all the corners, slots, and edges. This means the profile is somewhat flat, but not excessively so. The assembled handles are slightly wider than they are tall (or shorter than they are wide, if you prefer). The entire knife has a satiny stonewashed surface over a finish that looks, at least, as if it's been blued. Kershaw calls this "blackwash," and it's a gunmetal grey that's not only attractive, albeit a bit boring, but so far also appears to actually hold up pretty well. Since as usual mine has left several craters in the Earth as a result of fucking around with and subsequently fumbling it.

All of this is in stark contrast to the aforementioned Moonsault, which feels slightly weird because it lacks the taper (although the inner edges of its handles are wavy instead), is more angular and less roudned, and also has a rougher, snaggier surface that seems to show scuffs rather than hiding them.

There's a lot to recommend about the Balanza's design, or at least it has a couple of features that I like which really ought to amount to the same thing. The biggest headline, of course, it that it's a ball bearing pivot knife. As such it's guaranteed to have consistently effortless and low-drag action, and head and shoulders above its similarly priced competition which is usually bound to have bushings or worse, just plain washer pivots.

Lots of trainer knives promise "no play, no tap" in their descriptions. The Balanza, meanwhile, actually achieves it. The pivots are authoritatively solid with no wiggle. There's only a small amount of flex in the handles themselves.

It has a kickerless mechanism with Zen rebound pins in the handles as well, rather than traditional kicker pins pressed through the blade.

One of these is shown here with the aid of my little Lumintop Tool AA 2.0 flashlight, because otherwise it's awfully dark in there between the handle scales. And while we're at it, just check out the texture on the sheet of paper I use as a background.

While its latch isn't zooty and spring loaded, at least the Balanza has one -- unlike a lot of trainer knives -- which not only keeps it from flapping open in your pocket but also opens up the possibility of using it to practice tricks that rely on the presence of a latch. It's also good practice if you plan to use it as a stand in for a live bladed equivalent that's got a latch, which if you'd like to not irritate the shit out of yourself you might want your actual daily carry knife to have. (I certainly do, anyway.) It's nicely tensioned on my example and easy to kick loose with your pinky without any undue effort, although it rattles around a bit on its pin.

There is no clip, but this is not unexpected given that none of Kershaw's balisong offerings have one, whether they're trainers or not.

Breaking Down

The Krake Raken knockoff we looked at previously is all aluminum, and is one of those flash high speed modern jobbies that weighs very little and is very springy. Which if we're honest, maybe makes it a little too lively.

The Balanza, meanwhile, isn't. It's constructed entirely of steel -- Handles, pins, blade, all of it. That means its heavier at 129.8 grams or 4.58 ounces. (Meanwhile, however, that is around 3/4 the weight of a Moonsault, which is a knife that I think is just about on the far side of being impractically heavy.)

It's a sandwich design, with each handle comprised of two steel slabs separated by some nice diabolo shaped spacers.

It's also a nice palate cleanser after our last disassembly debacle with that Krake Raken clone. The Balanza is gloriously easy to take apart.

It just comes apart with regular Torx screws and without even requiring a heroic amount of effort. No blowtorch, pry bar, or tactical thermonuclear warhead is required. The screws are factory threadlockered, but not excessively so. The body screws are all T6 Torx and the pivot screws are T8. Just watch for which side of the pivots house the male versus the female screws...

...Because the screws do indeed have anti-rotation flats on them and the female sides can't be unscrewed. This is unlike the Moonsault, which has plain round screws.

It's subtle, but the heads are slightly different on each side. The male ones, i.e. the ones you can actually undo, are a tiny bit flatter. If you know this in advance it can help you identify them. If you don't, well. Flip a coin.

The Balanza is extremely simply constructed but it has it where it counts. The kicker pins and the latch pivot pin plus its endstop are shouldered and just drop into holes drilled in the handle slabs. All of the spacer screws and pins are the same as each other, so it's impossible to mix them up.

And the latch does indeed have a built in endstop in the form of an extra pin to prevent it from contacting the blade. It's stopped in its travel in the other direction by bumping up against one of the handle spacers. This system is simple, but it's nice to see that Kershaw actually put some thought into it... unlike a lot of knife makers.

Of course, the ball bearing pivots are what we really want to see. Kershaw is very proud of these, to the extent that they're one of the few manufacturers who bother to even mention when one of their knives has got 'em. In fact, they never seem to shut up about it so they're probably making up for all the other manufacturers who don't.

Note also the subtle difference between the pivot screw holes in the handle slabs. There's a matching D shaped cutout for the anti-rotation flat on the pivot screws only on one of them, but it's also marked with an extra notch to indicate this. The pivot screws can only be put in one way.

The hardware lineup. For a budget toy, the Balanza has a pretty long bill of materials. Eight body screws, four machined spacers, four shouldered pins, the pivots, and four sets of nylon caged ball bearing assemblies. The bearings are steel, not ceramic. Whadaya want for $42?

All the markings are hidden here on the edge of the blade. It's up to you to decide if this edge is the "safe" or the "bite" side, but it's the side that faces the latch handle from the factory so I'm in the latter camp.

Also note all the gumpf and pocket crud stuck to the inside of the cutouts, there. Woof. I should have cleaned this off better prior to photography, but I guess this is what I get for this being my actual working... er, not-knife. It lives in my pocket most of the time.

Hidden like the proverbial rake in the grass is the Balanza's country of origin, laser-etched near the pivots via this near microscropic marking. Despite how I took this picture it's still visible when the knife is assembled, but you have to know where to look.

It's a little disappointing to see that this is one of Kershaw's imported models. I figure it'd be an even better and much more fitting Fuck You to the clone manufacturers if this were made in the US, but it isn't. The rest of Kershaw's balisong lineup is US made if that matters to you, though: Both the Lucha and the Moonsault, in both their trainer and live bladed guises. So search me why this one isn't, although the others (even the trainer versions) are all north of $200. That's probably got something to do with it.

Alas, at the Balanza's price point a US manufacturing origin is probably unrealistic. Oh well.

Flipping Around

If you believe the internet, a lot of people sure hate the Balanza. I'll be damned if I know why.

I mean, I can guess why -- It's a heavy, stolid, unassuming looking, and dare I say highly conservatively designed balisong whereas the current fashion is zany brightly colored lightweight aluminum or titanium thingamabobs apparently all designed mostly to look good in a TikTok.

The Balanza is none of those things. But it makes up for it by being extremely controllable, with a consistent center of gravity and a predictable rebound feel. On our last outing I complained about the aluminum Krake Raken clone bouncing off of its rebound pins like it was on a goddamned trampoline. The Balanza doesn't do this. When it hits its endstop, it stops. If you want it to bounce off, you have to make it bounce off. You've got wrists, don't you? You're in control, all the time.

This sort of thing is all highly subjective, of course. People like what they like and get used to what they've got. When your hobby is largely reliant on muscle memory, switching to anything that behaves differently is sure to honk you off at first, especially if any bystanders watching happen to mistake lack of familiarity for a lack of skill.

I get a lot of noise about the Balanza being "handle biased." This is a pretty rich sauce, considering "Balanza" literally means "balance" in Spanish.

Well, I've got news for you, chief. All balisongs are handle biased, and the very few that aren't wind up being nigh uncontrollable.

"Nuh-uh," comes the chorus from the comments. "My favorite knife isn't!"

Yes it is. But don't just take my word for it.

Here's a smattering of knives I've got lying around my desk. Yes, I am showing off. Quiet from the peanut gallery.

They're all balanced on their centers of gravity on a scrap of wood which is about 3/8" of an inch thick and an maybe 1-1/4" tall (note the shadow). It doesn't take much of a push to tip any of them one way or other, or just a small shake to make the entire ensemble fall over.

I am ashamed to report that this getup doesn't fit in my photo box, so this is taken on a trestle table lined up under my desk lamp in front of my keyboard. If this isn't pure journalism, I don't know just what the fuck is.

Amway, from left to right here is the Kershaw Moonsault, Benchmade Model 42, the Balanza, our Krake Raken clone from the other week, a HOM Chimera (with the latch retracted just because), and a Bradley Kimura. I'd say that's a pretty decent spectrum of both new and oldschool. The Kimura and Moonsault are steelies, just like the Balanza. The Raken and Chimera are aluminum, and the '42 is titanium; all different weights and densities.

Did you know that you can use a $549 professional graphics editing package as a screen ruler? I mean, while we're talking about value for your dollar and everything.

This allowed me to judge with ludicrous precision the proportionate distance from the tip (red) and tail (blue) to the point of balance (green), as well as the offset from the center of the pivots to the balance point (yellow). Note especially the similarity between all those yellow bars.

Here are the results, in my very first Lemmy markdown table ever. Will it render correctly on your app or device? Add a new layer of excitement to your day; spin the wheel and we'll find out:

What did we learn, kids?

• Competently designed balisongs have similar ratios of blade to handle mass, to the surprise only of keyboard warriors.
• The Balanza is marginally better balanced than a Model 42, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
• It's also 0.2% less handle biased than the "mathematically tuned" Krake Raken. (Or maybe the Chinese copied mine inaccurately. Who knows.)
• Overall length of a knife has a lot more to do with how far in total distance the point of balance is from the pivots than much of anything else, including what its handles are made out of.

...So pick the knife with the length and total weight you're comfortable with, and don't worry so much, sport.

In real space, the point of balance of the Balanza is 1.588" from the center of the pivots, by my calipers. That's a negligible difference to the Krake, which is 1.518", and I find it is perfectly to my liking. Maybe that's because my actual carry knives are not neon colored and helium-filled fidget spinners with blades, but rather by preference my heavy and dependable BM51 clone or big steel linered Böker, or the Kimura. My other favorites are the dinky and short TGZUO titanium box cutter, or one of my Rockhoppers, or a Benchmade 32 Mini Morpho. All of which are either so damn tiny or strange -- or both -- they have no real analogue anyway, so they're all their own thing. Trying to use any full sized trainer as a stand-in for those is probably a fool's errand, so I don't even try.

One point to mention is that the Krake Raken's handles are overall longer than the Balanza's despite the proportion of mass being about the same. So if you prefer a handle that's just bigger, there you go.

Anyway, you like what you like and more importantly you get used to what you get used to. If you give me a minute to acclimate I can do thumb rolls all day long with my plastic Rockhoppers, with or without a blade installed, despite the fact that they weigh so little that if a stiff breeze comes by you'll never see yours again. And quite notwithstanding the insistence of any internet balisong bro that this is clearly impossible. (Proof. Suck it, physics. Slow-mo here.)

All this to say that the Balanza probably isn't everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. It's got me written all over it, but your own mileage may vary. Maybe you really wish your knife's point of balance were right on the pivots. Maybe you want it to only weigh a quarter of an ounce. Don't let me tell you what to do.

(And of course, if you're only ever going to use your balisong as a working knife for some reason and never learn or attempt anything more complicated to open it than a double-windmill, you'll probably never even need a trainer knife at all, in which case the whole thing's moot. You've already let me waste your time over it anyway, though, and now it's too late.)

There are things the Balanza hasn't got but it'd be bomber if it did. I guess the only thing I really miss is not having a spring loaded latch. That'd require a rethink of the spacers to make happen, for sure, but there's plenty of room in there so they could have done it if they felt like it.

Oh, and you know. Maybe an edge.

It's got one other major thing going for it as well: It's actually pretty quiet. Certainly not silent by any stretch of the imagination, but the racket it makes at the very least manages to be pleasant. This is again quite unlike its sibling Moonsault, which is a dissonant nightmare of weird resonances, clangs, bongs, and vibrations. The Balanza exhibits none of this, and it's anyone's guess as to why since superficially it's constructed the exact same way. I don't know if it's just a fortunate coincidence that the Balanza is so much acoustically better or a terrible fluke that the much more expensive Moonsault is worse.

There is some jingle from the latch, which is not especially well fitted to its pin. But for the rest, just a single metallic click from each contact with a Zen pin, and nothing more. (Side note: Doing finger rolls is deceptively difficult while you're wearing rubber gloves. But not nearly so much as using the slippery silk liners I usually wear whenever I need to show my hands in frame, speaking of craters.)

If you slap the side of the Balanza while it's latched shut it does produce a tuning fork note. But it's short and subdued, lower pitched, and not nearly as long nor as harsh as the nails-on-blackboard buzz the Moonsault makes if you do the same thing.

Forging Ahead

If you want a decent budget trainer for your money, buy this instead of some random faceless clone.

There, the gauntlet is thrown.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good random faceless clone. I like them even better when they show up and they're not crap, but part of this is because I'm weird and I love the thrill of the chase even more, where you never quite know in advance what you're going to get. Normal people probably don't.

The Balanza is a known quantity from a known manufacturer. Like, with an actual warranty and stuff. Kershaw backs this with their same lifetime warranty as everything else they make, and my singular past experience with Kershaw's warranty is that if you ask them for one replacement screw they'll send you about 60% of the components to build yourself an entire new knife, ship of Theseus style. That's what happened to me when I needed a clip screw for a Brawler back in the day. I still have the extra entire clip, washers, pivots, and extra screws somewhere.

Consider the Balanza if you aren't an aspiring TikTok star, or you don't care what punters on the internet think. Buy it to practice. Buy it to use.

Just don't buy any of Kershaw's other balisongs, because they're five times the price of this and somehow they're worse.

There really needs to be a live blade version of this and I can't fathom why there isn't. That'd be clutch, and I'd happily buy one on the spot. Even in a cheap budget steel like 8Cr or D2.

...Maybe the Chinese will knock one off for us.