Just the other day I posted a picture of my entire selection of balisongs, and I'm reporting to you now with great satisfaction that this picture is already out of date.

This is the Böker "Papillon," model 06EX116SOI. Just like the last Böker I sung the praises for a few days ago, this knife is in the process of discontinuation and is thus heavily marked down. I paid $40 for this, same as the 06EX227. But I notice right now at the time of writing BladeHQ actually has these slashed to $30. Link here, no affiliation as usual.

"Papillon" means butterfly in French. Indeed, that's what this knife is. (It's also a breed of dog. That's neither here nor there.) If you think that's gratuitous, look, it's better than if they named it in German. Then we'd have wound up with the "Schmetterling."

You can get this knife in a few colors... Black. Grey. Bor-ing. Instead, I just had to go with this Imperial Stormtooper aesthetic white model for something different. It's really quite striking.

The handles are gloss painted, and they are very, very white. This actually presented a bit of a photography problem for me because as you know, my trademark is knives floating in an infinite white void. Knives usually aren't white so this isn't normally a problem. I just overexpose the pants off of the shot so the background ends up pure stark white and I can bring out the contrast on whatever dark colored knife we're messing with, maybe paint over any stray specs of dirt or grease left on the background, and away we go.

Well, I can't do that here. If I do, the handles become invisible. Oh, sure, I could go find some black felt or something and shoot on a black background. But then the blade would disappear. I can't win.

Plan C is to fastidiously doctor every single photograph, hand-preserving the shadows, highlights, and edges. That's what I did in this shot, for instance, but my patience for this sort of thing is finite.

So some of these photos are going to show hints of a little more background than usual. You'll just have to put up with it.

Right. The Papillon. Is it any good?

Eh. I like it a lot less than the little 006EX227 Böker. This knife is a fair deal at $30 or $40 but if you ask me the quality is not in line with its original $90 asking price.

There, that's really the whole thing dealt with. I failed to hang on to the suspense until the end; if that was the only question you needed answered you can click away now and none of the rest of this treatise actually matters.

The Papillon is a full traditional or "competition size" knife at 10-1/16" long when open, 5-7/8" closed. The clip point blade is 4-5/8" long measured from the forward ends of the handles with about 4-1/8" of usable edge. It's powdercoated or painted or whatever in a matte black finish, made of D2 steel, and 0.147" thick. The blade has a full flat grind on it which is a little unusual, and a pronounced choil at the base of the edge because this is, as is becoming popular these days, a kicker-pin-less "Zen" pin design and the rebound pin on the bite handle slots into the choil (and the other one goes into a matching cut opposite it on the spine of the knife).

There is no clip provided. That's probably just as well; the Papillon is really just too humongous for practical daily carry.

The dimensions and construction methodology of this knife put me in mind of the Kershaw Moonsault and its related brethren, the Lucha and Balanza. Actually, there even is a "Stormtrooper White" variant of the Lucha already. This knife and those have very similar feature sets.

The Papillon, however, has a much more traditional shape with a tapered profile flaring wider towards the latch end. The handles are unitary slabs of steel, flat on the insides and milled with weight reducing slots and are concave on the outside. It's lighter than the Moonsault: 123.5 grams or 4.36 ounces.

The latch is a fairly traditional T shape and is not spring loaded. My example is also far too tight due to the handles hitting their endstops too far apart from each other, ultimately requiring a heroic squeeze to get the knife either latched or unlatched. The singular review of this knife on BladeHQ mentions the same thing. I also figured out why this is, which I'll get to.

Because of this it's already rubbed through the paint where the latch head rides over the tips of the handles.

The latch does at least have two endstop pins that prevent it from rotating more than 180 degrees. The blade is thusly protected from being struck and potentially damaged by the latch. So that's nice.

The pivot action and handle feel are also nice, although a distinct lack of refinement is evident as revealed by the wiggle test:

Which is weird.

Because the Papillon totally does have ball bearing pivots.

Normally this is an easy path to rock solid handle feel with no play, but that's not the case here. And once again, nothing in the product description or specs anywhere mention the presence of the bearings. I sense a recurring theme, here, and I really can't fathom why this is.

The pivot screws themselves are plain round Chicago screws with no indexing or D flats or any other niceties. So yes, if you try to unscrew the wrong side the entire thing will just spin, accomplishing nothing. The pivot holes in the handles on mine appear to be a little wonky, and I can't tell if that's down to the machine work or just buildup of the paint. I suspect there's a not insignificant amount of gap between the pivot screws and the handle holes by design -- if the handles are painted after the final machining, which it seems that they are, the tolerances there by necessity would have to be pretty wide to guarantee that the holes don't get so gunked up with paint that you couldn't get the hardware through.

Here's the whole thing in bits:

The knife is held together with the pivot screws and just one spacer in each handle, down towards the end, with a pair of screws in each side. There's quite a bit of flex in the handles themselves. And on the safe handle, with only two points of contact, the handle halves aren't kept square with anything relative to one another. The rebound pins, latch stop pins, and latch pivot pins are just slices of round stock and are not precision machined, nor are their tips particularly square, nor are they shouldered or indexed in any way.

The handle slabs aren't precision machined, either. For instance, due to a slight inaccuracy in the pocket drilled for it, one of my rebound pins always rests sightly crooked, as pictured below.

The hole it homes into is visibly slightly mis-drilled:

And it's no good swapping the handle parts around to try to luck into a better fit because the bite handle and safe handle halves are not the same, with the bite handle having one more pair of screw holes.

I did ultimately cure this by ~~precision remachining~~ hogging out the offending pin hole with a Dremel and a tiny carbide end mill bit. It worked; the latch is now noticeably easier to undo albeit still not perfect. I could go as far as grinding an offset into the pin but, do you know, I can't be bothered. If ever there were a candidate for de-latching a knife, it would be this one.

Note also that there is no cutout for the bearings to rest in on the insides of the handles. The blade is pocketed, but the handle slabs aren't. So the balls will just chew a groove into the paint like you see here.

On the previous Böker balisongs I reviewed I commented on the precise fit of the parts and ease of reassembly brought about thereby. Well, that's not the case here. Getting the Papillon's handle halves fully back together took some wiggling and fiddling around every time I did it.

Here's how the latch endstops work. This is simple, effective, inexpensive, and there's really no excuse for every balisong manufacturer not to do something like this.

One other foible I noticed is how close to the outside of the handles the edge rests when the knife is closed. This is thanks to the pronounced belly in the shape of the blade. I stuck the tail of my calipers down there and this reveals that the edge is only 0.054" away from the outside surface of the handle on that side. It is definitely possible to mash the tips of your fingers into the gap between the handles hard enough to touch the edge. So maybe don't do that.

Aesthetically, I really do like the Papillon. The black-on-white colorway is certainly fresh and, dare I say, attractive. Since it doesn't need kicker pins pressed through the blade, it instead has these hemispherical cutouts which are pretty cool. And it's got an actual name this time rather than just a meaningless robotic alphanumeric string. It's even fun to say: Papillon, Papillon.

Like apparently all Böker balisongs, the Papillon comes in one of their little fleece lined zipper cases.

This case is identical to the ones I've gotten before, including the one that came with the 06EX227 (which I did not mention due to rattling on so long in that writeup already).

It has various pockets in it, although as usual I can't explain why since they're all so flat there's no way you'd be able to cram more than one knife in this thing. It comes with the customary two pamphlets from Böker, one in English and one in German. I didn't post them because we've seen them before. They appear to be identical for all current Böker knives.

For your comparison, the Papillon (left), Kershaw Moonsault (center), and a CQC-6K (right). The Papillon and Moonsault really are nearly identical in length and for the most part width, notwithstanding the taper on the Papillon. The Moonsault is better built, dang it, but it also costs a lot more than $30.

If you ask me, the Papillon's feel in the hand is actually better, though. It doesn't have the clangy resonance issues of the Moonsault, and I like the smooth finish better, paradoxically, despite it having the potential to be more slippery. The Papillon is pretty quiet as you flip it. Even the latch doesn't make too much noise. So flawed though it may be, it actually has it where it counts.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Papillon turns out to be a middling knife. An in-betweener: A cut above flea market made-in-China garbage knives, but several pegs below the premium balisongs not only made by other brands, but by Böker themselves.

Maybe that's why it's presently standing poised to get the chop.

If you look at it from the perspective of being a poor man's Kershaw Lucha, though, it starts to become a little more appealing. At $30 it's a reasonably good bargain, and probably the cheapest way at the moment to get your hands on a ball bearing balisong. (Say that ten times, fast.) At the full original list price, though? Not so much.

I told you my next post would be shorter. Useless trivia of the day. The plural for "axis" is "axes." This is also the plural for "ax."

Edit: I didn't sufficiently caption this originally, did I? From lower left, going up the arc rightwards:

• Benchmade Full Immunity
• Benchmade 532 Mini Bugout
• Benchmade 556 Mini Griptillian
• Ozark Trail 6835
• Benchmade 560 Freek
• Ozark Trail 6842
• Benchmade 535 Bugout
• Ganzo G704
• Benchmade 537 Bailout
• Benchmade 550 Griptilian
• CJRB Crag
• Ganzo G729

Got your eye on the Spyderco Para Military 2, but haven't got $200 burning a hole in your pocket? Or, do you like the Spyderco but really wish it had an Axis lock? Brother, have I got a deal for you.

This is a Ganzo G726 and, yes, it bears a rather striking similarity to a certain aforementioned knife. Doesn't it just.

But it has a couple of key differences. The first is, yes, it's got an Axis lock rather than Spyderco's "Compression Lock." (Which Ganzo calls their "G-Lock," and have similarly equipped on many of their knives.)

The thumb opening hole is also teardrop shaped rather than round, presumably so Ganzo don't wind up getting sued right into the dirt. And while the Para Military can have the clip reversed and swapped between tip up and tip down configurations, this knife has mounting holes for tip up only. It is still reversible, and with the ambidextrous opening method and lock this knife is thus suitable for left handed users. The clip is similar to, but uses a different hole pattern than, the Spyderco one. So alas, interchanging parts or installing custom scales and clips that fit the Spyderco will be impossible. Bummer.

And then, the blade is 440C rather than Spyderco's CPM SPY27 custom crucible steel used in their current incarnations. It's a shame that this is not one of their models that's also available in D2. But we can probably excuse that, given that this model is only $22 at the time of writing.

And for $22 you get a lot of knife. As with the last Ganzo we looked at, despite coming from a Chinese manufacturer prone to, ahem, "borrowing" design elements from time to time and all the connotations that brings, the fit and finish of this knife is pretty much perfect.

This is 8-3/16" long when open with a 3-1/2" blade, 3-1/8" of which is usable edge. The blade has a full flat grind all the way to the spine which is very nice. The G729 is pretty broad, a full 1-5/8" across when closed at the widest point, which is the peak above the thumb opener hole. The blade is precisely 1/8" thick: 0.125". It's 117.3 grams (4.14 ounces) altogether, with textured G-10 scales over steel liners. You can get this in a variety of colors but I chose this nice slate blue finish just to do something different for a change. The world knows I have quite enough boring black knives.

Suffice to say, this is a knife on the larger end of the EDC spectrum. It's to be expected, considering it's pretty much exactly the same size as the knife it's mirroring.

The clip again apes the Spyderco one -- mostly, at least, see above -- and is not deep carry nor does it have any other fancy features. It's not even engraved. But it's got a good balance between spring tension and the grippiness against the scales. This knife draws easily from your pocket, but stays put confidently otherwise. That's more than I can say even for a few more expensive knives from a manufacturer whose name starts with "B," and ends in "enchmade," and makes knives that bite onto your pocket's seams like grim death.

The halves are separated with some nicely machined diabolo style spacers with little stairsteps in them. Swanky.

The G729's pivot rides on one bronze washer and one nylon one, which is a little weird. These are visible just peeking through the gap, there. It works, though. The blade centering is good, but that's easy to do when you cheat and use an Axis lock rather than a liner lock. With no mechanism inherently pushing the blade to one side, it remains resolutely square despite the mismatching washers.

I have to say, I really like the feel of the G729. That's not to say, I like it "for the price." I like it objectively, overall. The lockup is perfect, the action is nice, and the thumb hole feels good despite being a wonky shape. It opens and closes easily, smoothly, pleasantly, with no grind or drag or weirdness. There are no telltale signs of cheapness. Blade wiggle, none. No corners visibly cut, no details inexpertly executed. The spine of the blade feels nice. The subtly rounded jumping feels nice. The full flat grind helps make this an excellent cutter despite the broad blade and the edge geometry, at least on my example, is very good.

The lock mechanism and thumb hole opener bring to mind one other blue-grey knife from a particular manufacturer. The G729 (center) is longer, broader, but slightly thinner than the Griptilian (right): 0.518" across the scales and without the clip, whereas the Griptilian is 0.600". I think the textured G-10 scales ironically give you a better grip on it as well, and I like the full length steel liners of the Ganzo a lot more than Benchmade's current fascination with making most of the knife out of plastic and only putting little metal plates at the end around the lock. The surface finish on the Griptilian's blade is a lot nicer, but you'd fuckin' well expect it to be for $138 more.

It's bigger than the usual CQC-6K, also (left).

I don't have a Para Military to compare it to. Actually, I only own two Spydercos at the moment and one of them is a balisong, and the other one is made out of wood. So sorry, I can't help you there.

The G729 disassembles like you'd expect and looks like a typical Axis lock folder, mechanically speaking. Although the steel liners have speed holes in them presumably for lightness, which is pretty cool.

It's easy to take apart in theory, but I did encounter a snag. The male side of the pivot screw was the singularly most gooped up with threadlocker screw I have ever encountered in my life. It's ridiculous. Look at this:

An alarming amount of grunt was required to get it to let go. This was not helped by the wrinkle of having to guess which side is the male head and which side is the female, because the pivot screw is indeed D shaped and the female side will not spin freely in its hole. This is normally nice to see, but not when you're applying 600 ft-lb of torque to a tiny T8 screw. Especially if it turns out to be the wrong T8 screw. But I did ultimately figure it out (it was the left side, the side with the clip on my example, for what it's worth) and it let go without the head stripping. So the hardware is quality. But differentiating the screw heads would have been nice. Or, you know, not putting a Torx receptacle in the side you bloody well can't turn.

There was so much threadlocker on that screw, in fact, that some of it that'd likely been spilled at the factory was also gluing one of the scales to one of the liners. This was easy enough to push free through one of the big holes in the liner. So there is your obligatory Chinese Knife Baffling Construction Detail identified and sorted out. It could have been worse.

Note also the dissimilar pivot washers.

Everything else inside is typical. The usual hair springs, the pair of spacers (which are aluminum), the lock crossbar, and the endstop pin.

The lockup. I went through the trouble to take this picture, so you're going to see it. The blade has a fine as-machined surface finish on it which is very Spyderco-eque, and also causes it to go all striated under the LED's in my photo light.

My example would "Axis flick" closed with the lock held back, but would not open that way in its out of the box state of tune. Backing the pivot screw out about 1/8 of a turn (after busting it loose...) solved this.

Oh yes.

The Inevitable Conclusion

~Here~ ~it~ ~comes...~

Ganzo has once again made a decent knife and made it available for not a lot of money. Now, you get to make your own decision on the ethics; how you feel about somebody coming along and undercutting another manufacturer on what's pretty much their own design. I can't make that determination for you. But really, my take on the matter is this isn't really a knockoff of a Spyderco considering it's actually mechanically different. But it's definitely an alternative aimed at the same hypothetical buyer. Sure, Ganzo has copied Spyderco's homework, but they've also copied Benchmade's and put it in there as well, and changed the words around just a bit to keep the teacher from noticing.

The opposite point of contention here is that, overall excellent cutlery that they may be, the asking prices coming from some of the established major manufacturers -- Spyderco, Benchmade, Zero Tolerance, Microtech, Tops and all -- has really gotten out of hand in the last few years. And this is a point I'm probably going to be harping on a lot for a while going forward, so brace yourself. It seems like even in this hobby we can't escape corporate greedflation. Prices rose during COVID; inflation, transportation, labor shortages, I get all those excuses from then. But now it's now, it's also becoming apparent that all these brands are intent on keeping their prices at that elevated level forever. One wonders how much extra profit is there to be gained, though, by pricing your products out of reach of a greater portion of potential buyers? A plain Bugout was $105 in 2019 and it's $180 now. The Para Military was $140 in 2019 and it's $190 now. And so on.

That's not to say I don't respect these manufacturers, especially for being the pioneers who invented the mechanisms and some of the designs we take for granted today. Those which paved the way for others to follow. Buying a Benchmade or a Spyderco supports American jobs, pays back the R&D, and nets you -- historically, at least -- some guarantee of quality. Look at this picture. Count them Benchmade boxes. I don't think I, of all people, have taken a single morsel off of anyone's table in Oregon City.

But the fact of the matter is, regardless everything, right now at this very moment we live in the best time there's ever been for knife enthusiasts. Yes, prices on big premium brand name knives are high. But! These days there is a huge selection knives from all of these fresh faced makers like Ganzo, Civivi, CJRB whose products are frankly excellent. And not to mention that the selection and quality you can get from established budget brands like Kershaw, Boker, and CRKT is better than ever. I think nowadays it is no longer true to say that the "best" default answer is just to go out and buy a Spyderco or a Benchmade, because now there are so many options that are cheaper but damn near as or exactly as good.

Then there's the steel question.

Is it nice to say that you have a knife made of the current crucible process wonder-steel, S30V or S35V or CPM-154 or VG-10 or CPM-20CV or CruWear or whatever? Sure, of course. But is it actually, in this day and age, necessary?

Well, no.

Look. I own, at current count, 107 knives. At least, the ones I am able to lay my hands on right now and are not squirreled away somewhere inconvenient. I just counted. And not counting the swords or the multitools. Premium ones, cheap ones, new ones, old ones. I like to think I have a pretty wide cross section to play with, and getting wider all the time.

I remember back when 440C was the king of pocketknife steels. Teenage me cut a lot of stuff with 440C with no problem. We were none the worse off for not knowing about future supersteels. 440C was what to look for back then -- not 300 series, not 420, not 4116. Well, the properties of the stuff haven't changed. Only our perceptions have.

Maybe CPM-20CV is "better" than 440C in some specific property as measured in a lab. But is it 8, 10, 12 times better for the price? Of course not. Fancy steels are not more expensive because they contain much different or better ingredients. The processes they use may be a little more precise, sure, but they're mainly expensive because they're produced in small amounts and the economies of scale aren't there. But the "budget" steels are also produced with amazing consistency these days, and not to mention in great quantities. 440C wasn't a budget steel in 1999. It is now only because mass manufacturing has it figured out. That doesn't magically make it worse.

I also remember a time when a $22 knife would be guaranteed crap. So think on that one. All of this I say in defense of the Ganzo. Surely it'll never be worth anything more than what it is. It'll never be a collector's item or an investment vehicle or sought after once it's discontinued. That's not the point of it.

I like the Ganzo G729. I like it despite where it came from and what it's made out of. I think it's a fantastic value for the money. And I will end on this, which is perhaps a dangerous thing to say: If you're going to use it, and not just lock it in a drawer, I think it's a better value for your money than its Spyderco twin.

There's been a distinct lack of serrations recently so I figured I'd post my EDC.

I've had it for ~2 years really like the ABLE lock mechanism on it.

So, one of my very first posts here back when was an inventory of my array of balisong knives. I am happy to report that my collection has since grown.

Even if, it must be said, a couple of its members are... silly.

Top row, left to right:

• Kershaw Moonsault
• Benchmade Model 42
• Generic bali-fork
• and bali-spoon
• BudK Bali-comb
• Some weird thing I got on Wish (top)
• "Guro" Balisong (bottom)
• Jin Jun Lang JL-13A

Bottom row, left to right:

• 105XSSL
• A goofy brandless Chinese thing
• Benchmade Model 32 Mini Morpho
• Böker 06EX227
• Spyderco Smallfly 2
• Benchmade Model 53
• NedFOSS Karabit-Thing, Mantis Duja Ve Clone
• Böker 06EX228
• Bradley Kimura II
• Bradley Mayhem

Not pictured:

• Mantis Bottleneck
• Böker Papillon 06EX116SOI
• And I guess I forgot the Spyderco BaliYo

Hello, I am just learning more about pocket knives as I suddenly developed an interest in them recently after trying to get one and finding it fell very short of expectations (some cheap Gerber?). I replaced it with a civivi element 2 and have been loving it, but the original buy was meant for my wife and I don't think that the element will fit their needs. Here are their list of needs:

• The main usage of the knife would be related to their ecological research, so mostly removing bark or cutting twigs for analysis. They also camp, but we do that together so we have the element 2 on hand for anything "heavier", but something to cut through paracord or other fine material. I don't know how this would impact the blade metal type, but expect saps and other organic stickies)
• She has small, weak little hands, so tall knives (>0.75") seem to be out of the question for comfortable handling
• 3" seems huge and unweildy to them. I'd think something in the 1-2 range would be more than enough I think?
• They are still uncomfortable with blades (again, bad experience with their first getting stuck open because of lack of hand strength), so something where their thumb isnt in the way of the blade while closing is a requirement of theirs (slide locks and buttons were okayed, back lock was acceptable). One handed opening is also preferred, as they may only have one hand to work with and, again, weak hands.

And, the kicker, they don't want to spend a lot of money on it (<$100 pretax).

What options could we be looking at?

PS were in VA, so I'm unsure if they can have an automatic (or assisted?) knife, but if it is an option I'd be down to get one/ask more questions about those.

Dudes. The Day. Once more.

This is the CRKT Cottidae and, once again, I find myself at a loss for any authoritative indication of how you're supposed to pronounce its name.

This knife is a Jesper Voxnaes design, as the engraving on the blade will tell you. We've seen his work before. We will certainly do so again; I have at least one other knife in my collection known to be done by him.

As you may have also guessed from the logo, the Cottidae is a ball bearing pivoted flipper opener. So confident are CRKT and Mr. Voxnaes in these ball bearings that it has no thumb studs or equivalents whatsoever, and barely any of the spine of the blade is visible from between the handles. The only way to open it is via the very low profile rear flipper.

The handle scales are unitary slabs of textured aluminum.

The Cottidae has a drop point D2 blade that's a sturdy 0.135" thick with a full flat grind. That ought to give it very good cutting power despite its rather diminutive size. It's only 6-5/16" long opened, 3-3/4" closed, with a 2-9/16" blade. About 2-3/16" of the edge is usable due to a very long, squared, shallow choil at the base that forms a finger notch in conjunction with the flipper, which makes it easy to choke up very far with your grip.

It's thick for its size. 0.513" not including the (reversible) deep carry clip. It's dense, too. 93.6 grams or 3.30 ounces, giving it a solid feel in the hand. The ergonomics are pretty nice despite the overall squarish Bauhaus minimalism to the shape. The opening action is, of course, impeccable due to the presence of the bearings even if the tiny flipper takes some getting used to. The detent resistance is very light on this knife, possibly the lightest out of any pure non-spring-assisted knife I own.

Yes, I am deliberately beating around the bush here. "What is so damn weird about it?" I hear you shouting at your computer and/or phone screen.

Well, I've been coy and I haven't shown you the other side of the knife yet.

There's this switch thingy. "Aha!" Say the comments, "So, it's got some kind of goofy lock."

Well, no. It is a normal liner locker inside.

The switch pivots to the side, and then slides forward in its track like so. And then what happens is...

...the entire knife just...

...falls apart.

That is what Patent 10,226,871 is. CRKT calls this "Field Strip Technology," and for most intents and purposes this knife can be dismantled as far as normal people would want to take it with no tools.

No screws, no bits, no drivers. The Cottidae is apparently held together by witchcraft.

How it actually works is, there is a sliding metal plate between the aluminum handle scale and the liner on that side of the knife. When you toggle the latch, the plate is allowed to slide forward and a pair of keyhole shaped cutouts in that plate disengage themselves from the main pins inside.

Here is the pivot pin hole in both positions. Note the crescent moon slice of metal visible in the hole in the first picture that's gone in the second.

The tips of the main pivot pin and the tail pin are grooved, and these grooves get engaged by the plate.

These remain captive in the liner lock side of the knife when you take it apart. As does the pivot endstop pin, which rides in the semicircular channel in the blade. So there are no small pieces that can fall out and get lost. There are no little pins, tiny screws, springs, washers, or spacers. The knife breaks down into just three major components: The two handle halves and the blade. It should therefore be safe to pop this apart even in the middle of the woods to ungunk it, without fear of any of your vital hardware disappearing to live with the fairies beneath the forest floor.

You can take the rest of the knife apart further by undoing the screws on the outside which will ultimately release all the pins and liners. But doing so is totally unnecessary for normal cleaning and maintenance.

Inside, the thrust ball bearings and their carriers are plainly visible, and are semi-captive in cutouts in the heel of the blade. Note also the aforementioned channel for the endstop pin.

Compared to the traditional CQC-6K, the Cottidae's compactitude is thusly evident. This isn't small enough to truly count as a micro-knife, in my opinion, but it should be well within the bounds of blade length limitations in most places. Plus it hasn't got any springs, gravity action, or other Naughty Features. The blade isn't even black. So it ought to be legal to carry in a wide variety of locales.

The Inevitable Conclusion

For the habitual knife-fiddlers in the audience, this one gives you a whole new way to play with it beyond the usual flicking it open and closed, an action that tends to, with sufficient repetition, put everyone in your office on edge and slowly drive them insane.

Instead, you can incessantly reenact the scene of Forrest Gump field stripping and reassembling his M1 carbine in company record time. I highly recommend it.

(And if you want a larger but more expensive version, you can check out the CRKT Bona Fide, which uses the same system.)

Fellas, I think I might be in love.

And that's a problem, because you know I already have a gal and it's the Benchmade Model 32 Mini Morpho. But I want you to meet the Böker "Tactical Small" Balisong model 06EX227, and I'm in trouble because this one presses all my buttons.

This despite the decidedly unmemorable name and model designation. The 06EX227 is, obviously, a Balisong knife. An EDC sized one, too, not some kind of massive competition flipper, at 4-1/2" long closed, 7-3/4" open or so with a 3-1/2" blade in a shape that's a little weird. But we can look past that. Did not Francis Bacon say, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion?" Of course he did; Top Gear told me so.

Anyway, If those dimensions sound awful similar to that of the Benchmade Model 32 Morpho, that's because they are. And just like the Morpho, the Böker's blade is D2, which is a steel I like a lot. The blade is 0.100" thick. She's 93.4 grams or 3.29 ounces, so despite being roughly the same size she's a tad heavier than the Morpho due to having steel liners rather than titanium.

I'm going to stop referring to this knife as "she," now, because it's silly and we all got the joke by now. Right?

Aside from being nearly the same size and made of the same steel, there are a lot of obvious design similarities between this and the Morpho. Both knives have "Zen" kickerless rebound designs, with the choil in the blades as well as their opposite acting as the pockets and rebound surfaces for the same. But on the Böker they're elongated and stylized.

Both knives have composite scales over metal liners, G-10 in the Böker's case, and both knives have squeeze-to-pop spring loaded latches powered by flexible prongs in those liners. Yep, you know I like that a lot.

And I know what you're thinking. Didn't I already review a Böker knife that was the spitting image of the Morpho, and didn't I go on raving and mention all the similarities about 467 times back then, too? I sure did. That was the Böker Model 06EX228, which was also my very first post using my now-trademarked infinite white photography void! That knife is a lot larger than the smaller Model 32 variant of the Morpho whereas this one obviously isn't. And it has quite a few other little details that set it apart.

One of them a portion of you have probably failed to notice, but shortly will not be able to unsee: The 06EX227 has concealed pivot screws. See? Totally invisible. The blade pivots on magic.

Böker also figured out that the "ears" sticking out the sides of a traditional balisong knife are not, in fact, strictly necessary. So this knife hasn't got 'em. There are just two little vestigial bumps there which stick out just far enough to be tactile and let you know the point where you really ought to stop choking up on the handle before you slice your fingers off.

On a traditional bali these may have served as some manner of crossguard for fighting purposes, but these days I certainly hope none of us are fighting anyone with our pocketknives. I'm certainly not. So we can dispense with them, conveniently leaving nothing sticking out to snag on your pocket. (I also feel compelled at this juncture to point out that I already figured this out myself last year, when I designed my silly but functional 3D printable Harrier Utili-Song. Plug, plug, plug.)

And whereas the Morpho's scales are ventilated to show off the fancy finishwork underneath, the 06EX227 's aren't because the liners are just plain flat steel. Instead, you get these carved double helixes. They're attractive, but understated. This gives me an ace-of-spades sort of feeling, but I don't know why.

Here it is (center) compared to my 32/Mini Morpho (left) and the big Böker 06EX228 (on the right).

The Morpho comparison is really tough to escape. The 06EX227 is definitely a love letter. A tribute. An homage. Or, perhaps, a crazed groupie. Not only are the latches so similar, but the liner spacers are even shaped the same.

But believe it or not, the 06EX227 has a couple of things about it that I like better than the Morpho, which feels wrong to say. Unfaithful, even.

I guess an obvious one is that the Benchmade Morpho is very, very discontinued. No longer produced. The only way to get your hands on one now is to go used, and deal with the used collector's market. The Böker definitely isn't. At least I think. (Edit: Actually, now it is. Get them while you can. If you're reading this in the future, well. Sorry.)

And right now BladeHQ has it for $40. Which is frankly incredible. (No affiliation as usual, of course. I bought this with my own money. If any of their staff are reading this and want to hook me up with some free stuff I'll write a big pile of words about, though, have your people call my people.)

That means the 06EX227 is an EDC-sized-spring-latch-D2-with-clip balisong you could actually carry and go out and use, without giving yourself an anxiety attack over getting a scratch on it. Nor having to part with a kidney to even obtain one in the first place.

To assist in this, the 06EX227 comes with a clip. It is steel, and very short, and I'm afraid it's not a patch on the Benchmade Morpho's clip. The 06EX227's clip is very plane-Jane and doesn't even have a perfunctory attempt at any kind of engraving on it, which means it'll be useless for showing off to passers-by what you have in your pocket. It is, however, completely and easily repositionable. That is not to say "reversible," although it is that too. As usual, for some reason, it inevitably comes on the wrong side of the handle, i.e. the one that will place the clip furthest from the rear corner of your pocket if carried on the right side by a right handed user. But it can be easily moved to the other, correct side. Or moved to either of the two remaining completely incorrect positions, which are both sides of the safe handle. This would be a stupid thing to do, but it can be done.

Another feature difference is, the 06EX227's latch can spring-pop if you squeeze it from the latched open position as well. The Morpho doesn't work that way -- it's latch detents in that position, rather than making ready to spring back to the center. So you can put the 06EX227 away just as quickly and elegantly as you can bust it out.

And the other major thing... Look, I'm going to need a minute to work myself up to this. I'm not sure I'll be able to live with myself afterwards.

Okay. Here we go.

~TheBoker'sactionisbetterthantheMorpho.~

There. I said it.

This is all the play in the 06EX227's pivots. All of it. I'm pressing hard in this photo. It's rock solid. Astoundingly so.

And yet, it flips with a degree of silky smoothness that is every bit as good as the Morpho's -- but without any rattle whatsoever. The Morpho's action feel is, of course, fantastic. But when you compare the two, you can detect the minute amount of slop in the Morpho's pivots which is not present on the 06EX227. This knife's handles swish on a mathematically precise single two dimensional plane, unerringly, always. It feels uncanny, almost artificial. Like you're manipulating a simulation, and nobody's yet added all the variables and imperfections that make it "real." And I think the added weight of the steel liners versus titanium actually improves it. That can't be right, can it? There's no way.

Guys, the Böker 06EX227 has ball bearing pivots.

I was not prepared for this when I put it in my cart. Go ahead and check out Böker's listing for this knife, or even BladeHQ. This isn't mentioned anywhere. Nobody said anything about ball bearings when I bought it. I thought it was just going to ride on plastic washers like the bigger 06EX228, or maybe brass or phosphor bronze like the Morpho if we were lucky.

It should not be allowed to be this good.

And now, on to the strip tease.

With its clothes off, you can see how the 06EX227's pivot screw heads fit into matching recesses in the scales.

The pivot screws themselves are D shaped, and fit into matching machined holes in the liners. This is very nice; Böker could have easily cheaped out here, especially since regular users would never even see the screws concealed as they are, but they didn't. There are Torx heads only on the male screw sides. The female sides are completely smooth on the heads, but since the pivots are keyed by their shape there is never any need to get a driver into the opposite side anyway, and undoing them once revealed is easy. (This is also different from the last Böker balisong we looked at all those months ago; that one used threaded barrels for the pivots with a screw in each end and is very sensitive to changes in screw tension.)

You can also see how the spring latch works. This mechanism is nearly exactly like that of the Morpho (and the bigger Böker from earlier), in that a pair of prongs in the liners are joined with a cross-pin, which engages the hook on the latch.

The natural flex in the metal puts this under tension all the time when the knife is latched, but all it takes is a squeeze to let the latch head clear and it pops out on its own via the spring action.

Once removed, you can easily see that the latch has two hooks on it, one of them replacing the little hill and valley present in that spot on the Morpho's latch. As above, the Böker's latch will not detent in the open position. It puts the spring prongs under tension in the opposite direction instead, ready to spring out when squeezed in the open position as well. But just like the Morpho, the spring latch design prevents the latch head from being able to contact the blade and potentially nicking it when you're flipping the knife. Which is excellent, and something a lot of makers somehow miss.

Here is the full, as it were, spread. The 06EX227 was very easy to disassemble, with none of the screws being tough to undo or overtorqued from the factory. There are only a few hidden pitfalls for the unwary: The latch spring cross-pin, in particular, is retained by the scales themselves and can fall out once one of them is dismounted. Same with the two large cross-pins that hold in the liner spacers. The spacers are also threaded to accept two each of the scale mount screws, one per side, and until these are in place they can pivot on their pins. You have to make sure these didn't get out of alignment upon reassembly or else you won't be able to put the last screw into each of the scales.

Reassembly's pretty easy. The pivot screws are foolproof. They'll only go in the right way, and as is typical with ball bearing knives the torque on them really doesn't matter. Just button them down until you have all the play removed from the handles and you'll still probably find that the pivots work freely. All the scale screws are the same as each other, save for the three that go into the spacer blocks. Why three? Because one of those is also one of the pocket clip screws, and these are the longest of the bunch. Other than that, get the screws in vaguely the right locations and they're all otherwise interchangeable. The parts fitment, as with the previous Böker, is all excellent. All the pins slot home easily but don't wiggle, and sandwiching all the liners and scales back together gave me no trouble. The only bugbear is, once again, that damn clip. Its screw holes are drilled a little large which means it can slide around and get out of alignment if you don't carefully, and thoroughly, torque down its screws.

There's one other personality defect with the 06EX227, and that's this:

There is a massive amount of gap left over from the difference in the thickness of the latch heel and the space between the liners. The latch can slide up and down its pin noticeably, and while objectively it can't move far enough to actually affect latching or unlatching mechanically, it still annoys me on principle. But, as has been said by many a swain, I can fix this. I will absolutely be able to lap down a pair of washers to precisely fit in that gap and center the latch. It should only take a few moments.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Don't sleep on this. The Böker 06EX227 is hands down the best value I have seen in a production balisong knife in a long time -- possibly ever.

Edit: I made a gaffe, here. The number on the blade I was under the impression is this knife's internal model number in fact, isn't. It's the serial number. I confirmed this via the simple expedient of buying another one of them. 1760 is the serial of my first example. 1818 is the serial of the second. 06EX227 is the correct manufacturer's model designation of this knife.

Also, BladeHQ has apparently noticed the popularity of this model and raised the price to $60. Even at $60 this is a great deal. But what the hell, guys?

I herewith swear that I will write this entire post without ever once making a joke about that Kudu that you do so well.

...Damn.

This is the Cold Steel Kudu. Specifically, the ring locking version.

As is typical for Cold Steel, they've come up with a story with the intent of attaching some manner of vague mystique to this knife's design. Cold Steel knives are seemingly always a style once used by traditional ninjas, or Navy SEALS, or KGB operatives, or Shaolin Monks, or Aztec warriors or Scots berserkers or Cherokee indians or Sir Francis Bacon or Elvis or whoever they think will help get whackers to buy the things.

This time they bill the Kudu as a modern reimagining of traditional ring pull folders, specifically singling out the ones commonly used throughout Africa. Which probably has, it must be said, at least some historical validity. You can read the entire block of bumf here if you're inclined.

This isn't something you hear about very often but there is apparently a small but very dedicated fanbase devoted to these sorts of knives. And some prone to affixing to them... let's just call it a helping of nebulously quasihistorical woo. Check this sort of thing out, for instance.

Significance of the mystical symbols, my left toe.

Anyway, suffice it to say that the idea of this type of ring pull folder has been around for a very long time, far predating the advent of mass manufacturing, and was most likely initially of European origin and then spread throughout the world via the usual channels. (I.e., white men in tall wooden ships sailing around planting flags on shores that already belonged to someone else, bringing all their junk with them.) Today's machine made examples are to some extent surely mechanically copies of an idea that craftsmen have been hammering out by hand for centuries.

The Kudu and its ilk are back locking folders, but not in the typical manner we're used to seeing on this continent and in this era. As you pivot the rather large blade it humpity-bumps over six very distinct detents thanks to a series of lobes around the heel. Only the last position truly locks, with a square edged peg going into the matching slot on the external lock bar which is a single piece of springy steel riveted to back of the handle.

This locks it in place quite solidly, but if you pull up on the attached ring (which is clearly just a regular split keyring that otherwise dangles freely) it'll unlock and allow itself to be closed. The lock bar is extremely stiff and doesn't bend very much, but you hardly need to lift it any distance at all to unlock the blade.

It must be said that closing it with one hand is difficult, but opening it with one hand is outright impossible. This is quite possibly the least "tactical" knife design ever devised.

The Kudu is surprisingly large. It's a full 10" long overall, with a 4-1/4" clip pointed blade made of 5Cr15MoV. The blade is 0.90" thick and is polished to a near mirror shine which both causes it to smudge like a son of a bitch and also makes it tricky to photograph. Closed, the knife is about 5-5/8" long and measuring its breadth is a tricky proposition because of the presence of the ring. So minus that, it's about 1-5/16" across at its widest point which is the peak of the blade. It's 0.637" thick including the heads of the rivets holding the lock bar on.

The handle is made from glass filled nylon (which Cold Steel is calling "Zy-Ex" this time) and has a hot-rod flame inlay in it which is made out of some type of steel. It's probably some manner of austenitic stainless like 304 or 18-8 because a magnet is only weakly attracted to it.

The inlay is only on one side, so the reverse isn't nearly as interesting. The markings on the other side of the blade list the manufacturer, steel, and made in China origin.

There are no thumb studs, but a large fingernail nick is provided. Both the marketing and the markings on this knife try very hard to play up its Africa-ness, and the critter depicted on the blade is, well, a kudu: An antelope endemic to southern Africa that's got some very spiraly antlers.

From a latter-day EDC perspective, the Kudu is enormous. Mostly it's just very long. It just towers over the CQC-6K, which is already on the larger end of the spectrum of modern EDC knives.

Since the Kudu is partially riveted together I did not bother to take it apart. The blade is held on with a pair of Torx head screws and is thus theoretically dismountable, but since the mechanism on this knife is on the outside I don't think there's much to be gained there. How it works is already on display for all to see.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The appeal of a ring-pull folder like this is in a way its simplicity, and the Kudu definitely has that. This is a super budget knife, usually retailing for around $10. But despite that it seems to be built tolerably well. I personally put it in the same category as the various twist-lock Opinels, slip joint Texas Toothpicks, Svords and other extended tang friction folders, and similar low tech knives. This is a crocodile: archaic in its way, largely unchanged since ancient times, but that's because it didn't need changing.

Due to its length, lack of clip or any other carrying provision -- it doesn't even have a lanyard hole, although I guess you could tie one through the ring -- and awkward protrusion of the ring itself the Kudu would actually be kind of tough to carry in the typical way that we're used to. But it'd make a great camp knife, scout knife, or tool to leave in the shed or tackle box. Or, if you must, to be carried for hipster purposes.

The beauty of the, frankly, crude mechanical design means it should continue to work even if it gets dinged, dented, abraded, or otherwise fucked up in a manner you probably wouldn't want to subject one of your exotic supersteel pieces to.

Plus it's neat. That's got to count for something.

~~Numerous Knife Disorder~~ New Knife Day it is once more.

This here's the CJRB Crag.

Just how the hell you're supposed to pronounce CJRB is not the only unknown to me. I'd never heard of this brand until recently, and apparently it's a cheaper sub-brand of Artisan Cutlery that's been around since 2019. They have a web site, which unfortunately stops short of specifying how you're supposed to say it or even what the heck "CJRB" stands for. It does, however, go on to specify that CJRB knives carry a 14 day "no DOA guarantee." That just raises further questions.

Anyhow. The Crag.

This is a stonking huge ball bearing flipper opener with a blade made of Artisan/CJRB's proprietary AR-RPM9 steel. It's also available in D2, and I do like a good D2 knife to the point that I have at least ten of them. But for once I figured I'd give something different a shot, so here we are with the weird proprietary steel.

Artisan has this to say about their steel, which is full of the usual fluff you'd expect along the lines of their steel being so great, not to mention corrosion resistant, hard wearing, tough, and easily sharpenable -- as if several of those properties aren't mutually exclusive. Every manufacturer says this about their steel, and why wouldn't they? Nobody's going to make any sales by blathering about what specific things their steel sucks at. You can get a little more objective information on it from ZKnives, which indicates that it probably won't hold an edge as well as D2 (darn), but ought to be mechanically superior to the likes of 8cr and the 440 series. It's sure to be more rust resistant than D2, also, rust being something that's a perpetual thorn in my side on all my D2 knives. So that's nice.

The Crag has this big cleaverlike reverse tanto point. Suddenly all the cool kids seem to have this kind of blade profile nowadays, although search me why the sudden interest. Back in my day we just called this thing a Wharncliffe blade and didn't make such a big deal about it. I selected the version with the groovy carbon fiber handle scales. Other variants are available. This one has a finish on the blade described as "satin," which appears to be a tumbled stonewashy kind of process over the bare steel. The surface finish is very nice overall, especially for something billed as a budget knife, and does not sport any of the exposed machining marks we've gotten sick of looking at recently. The bevel is a hollow grind, although the top near the spine is left square.

The Crag is 8" long open, 4-5/8" closed, with a 3-3/8" blade in that reverse tanto shape. The blade is 0.127" thick at the spine, so a tad beefier than most. Despite this the Crag is not excessively large in terms of overall or blade length, but it's quite broad: The blade is over an inch and one quarter wide, 1.274" to be precise, at its widest point. The entire edge has a subtle upsweep to it that presents a highly usable "all belly" edge. There is a very generously sized combination choil and finger notch at the base of the blade, but it's forward of the kicker (which along with a cutout in the handle forms yet another finger notch) so you have to be super choked up on the blade to use it for anything.

It's similarly broad when closed as well, with the widest point actually being at the transitional angle between the main blade and the reverse tanto point on the spine of the blade, and it 1-9/16" at this location. That's huge. If you have skinny hipster jeans, this knife probably isn't going to work for you.

It's 0.510" thick not including the clip, near as makes no difference to half an inch. The clip is a deep carry design and is reversible via a pair of screws that go directly into the steel liners. With the clip it's 0.808" thick in total, including the swanky brass-embellished pivot screw heads that sit proud of the surface (by 0.058", if you must know). It's 132.5 grams (4.67 ounces) in heft, an unknown portion of that contributed to by the carbon fiber scales. The variants with other materials may weigh more, I don't know. You all are going to have to give me a raise if you want me to buy them all and compare.

The Crag is a flipper opener through-and-through and does not have thumb studs. The only way you can open it is by kicking the flipper on the rear.

The pivot is riding on ceramic ball bearings, and the opening action is buttery smooth. Exemplary. Nearly flawless. I love it.

Oh yeah, and it also purports to have a funny lock. We all know that kind of thing is my jam.

There's a liner locking version of this knife under the same name, too, but that's for boring wimps who don't get invited to parties. CJRB calls this their "Recoil-lock," but they don't mention anything more about it. In fact, the product blurb for their Recoil version still mentions having a liner lock, which this knife very definitely doesn't.

Instead there's this sliding toggle thing on the spine of the knife. It's jimped sightly on its top surface, and also has some stairsteppy grip surfaces machined into the sides. It's hard to notice in operation but it actuates aft and then back to the fore when you kick the knife open, and when you pull it rearward in its little track the blade flops around freely. (Editing note: "Machined" is the wrong word to use here. The lock trolley is clearly cast, and all of its grip ridges are part of the casting. The inner surfaces are machined to be flat, however, and the pin holes in it are surely drilled as part of some final process to ensure that they actually have sufficient precision.)

Well, there's a humdinger. A lock that toggles with the blade action and completely disengages when held back. That sounds awfully familiar.

Yep. There's an Axis lock hidden in there. But rather than expose it with the traditional two buttons sticking through either side, CJRB has added a little trolley on top of it so it's accessible from the spine.

That's... actually slightly problematic if you're not careful, because unlike the typical Axis design your natural inclination when operating this control layout is to slide the lock back with your thumb while the rest of your fingers are still wrapped around the handle, unlike the pinch operation you'd give a normal Axis knife. So if you do that, the blade can swing closed and it'll bite you. Manipulating this takes a concerted mental readjustment if you've just switched from a different knife, I find.

And yes, you can Axis flick it both open and closed. When closing, the blade is so heavy and the pivot so effortless than you can actually allow it to just fall shut. Hold it upside down and you can, with a modicum of practice, get it to fall open as well. Jury's out of this makes it count legally as a "gravity knife." If I were you, maybe I wouldn't show off that aspect of it to any policemen.

If you hold the lock back and swing the blade out to open it the knife literally rings like a bell when the blade hits the end stop pin. Here's an MPEG of it, with sound.

It's glorious. I could do that all day.

The Crag was very easy to disassemble, in that all the screws came out cleanly and without fuss, all the hardware fits together impeccably, and overall it just feels like an enthusiast's knife in general mechanical fitment.

There are hidden dangers lurking inside, though, specifically that the Crag is absolutely brimming with tiny parts that'll fall out of it and get lost if you're not careful.

The major offenders are these tiny pins that are what hold the lock trolley into its track:

Those are the ones all the way on the left. There are four of them in total, two per side, although only two are shown in this photo. The other two are safely... elsewhere. They're tiny. Like, 2mm long. Maybe not even that. They're also not held in by anything so they will fall out when you remove either handle scale and you'd better be ready for it or you're going to be grovelling around on the carpet.

Also visible there is the crossbar from the lock, and the end stop pin for the blade's travel to its open position. Or, if you prefer, the part that makes it go "ding."

Here are the bearings. They're ceramic, in nylon carriers.

The brass garnishes around the pivot screws are separate pieces. I believe this is also a contender for knife with the widest pivot screw head. Look at that thing -- it's a goddamn Frisbee.

There are no surprises to be found on the edge, neither good nor bad. Mine came sharp enough out of the box to easily cleave a Post-It in two without much effort. If CJRB's hype is anything to be believed, it ought to be a doddle to make it even sharper.

The edge on mine was just ever so slightly out of true from the factory. That's a touch disappointing, but not unexpected given the $40 or so price point. Reprofiling this on your Ruxin or whatever ought to be easy; there are no thumb studs to get in the way, and the spine of the blade has a usable flat section on it that ought to help keep everything in alignment in your jig.

Compared to the usual CQC-6K, the Crag is longer, wider, thicker, and considerably more swanky.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Ask not for whom the knife dings. It dings for thee.

Just when you thought it was safe to walk down the camping goods aisle...

Here's number two out of three. I haven't found the third variant of the fabled Walmart Axis lock knife yet, and to be honest I didn't expect to find the second one, either. We looked at the "6835" variant about a month ago and now I'm back at it again with this, SKU 6842.

Tl;dr: Walmart unexpectedly started offering a trio of "Axis" lock-alike crossbar locking folders to very little fanfare, and then discontinued them instantly. Normally we would say this is totally unexpected, if it weren't for the fact that a couple of years ago they did exactly the same thing: releasing some very similar knives that were likewise dropped just as quickly. While they last, if you can find one, these are $5 each -- A ridiculously low price point, even for trash quality knives. But luckily these aren't trash quality. In fact, if you ask me they're about on par with what you'd get for an inexpensive brand name department store knife from a few years ago. Think along the lines of a Gerber, Buck, or Camillus.

I randomly found one the other day, in addition to one (1) more of the model I already owned. I bought them both. (My double is still sealed in its original packaging... I can feel my investment appreciating in value by the second. Some day, that knife might be worth $6.50, maybe even $7.)

These come on brown hang cards, pictured both front and rear here. There is no name or model designation on these other than "7-Inch Folding Knife," and the SKU on the rear. In this case, 6842. Insofar as I have been able to determine these are no longer listed on Walmart's web site, so the only way to find one is to be a big enough nerd to paw through the selection of cheapo hang card knives at the sporting goods counter at your local Walmart(s) and look for the telltale Axis/crossbar lock.

See, there it is. Just like daddy's Benchmade. Except in every other detail.

This variant is definitely a chip off the same block as the 6835 knife, and is probably made by the same manufacturer... Whoever that is. Hangzhou Great Star Tools Co. Ltd. is my best guess, who have been the historical manufacturer of most of the previous Ozark Trail branded knives. The combination of mechanism and price is what makes these, for lack of a better word, special. They're not great knives but they're surprisingly competent given the price point. One of these would make a fine knockaround camping knife, tackle box knife, glovebox knife, or find a home for any similar application where maybe you won't care too much about its appearance or condition.

The quality and specifications of this knife are nearly identical to the last one. So I'll try not to waste too many words treading the same old ground. You get the same polypropylene handle scales -- a very unusual material -- unspecified stainless steel alloy, drop point blade that's precisely 3" long, deep carry reversible pocket clip, and 72.8 gram overall weight (2.57 ounces). That's all the spitting image of the 6835 SKU, and this one even does the same dumb thing where the screw heads inside the pocket clip aren't flush.

There are, however, some differences.

For a start, this time the blade has this fairly attractive stonewashed finish.

Oh, and the damn pivot screw heads are actually flush with the scales on this one, which is nice. And in addition to the ambidextrous thumb studs, this one's also got a flipper opener. And it almost even gets that part right!

Just like the last knife, this one came shipped packed full of unctuous crud that probably at one point had the intent of being a lubricant, but isn't anymore. So the action was pretty awful until I took the whole knife apart, cleaned it, and regreased it. But the flipper design has one other personality defect built in, which is that the crossbar can bind on the inside surface of the flipper if you pull it back all the way, and that makes it impossible to flick the knife open while holding the lock back.

Using the flipper as intended, by pressing it into the spine of the handle and adding a slight but absolutely mandatory flick of the wrist works fine and does indeed get the knife to snap open easily. (After, of course, the obligatory disassemble-clean-reassemble-tune song and dance.) But you cannot "Axis flick" this knife no matter how hard you try, because there is no position whatsoever you can hold the lock in where it won't have to contact one side or the other of the slot it rides in during the blade's travel.

What we're up against is this.

There's a track cut into the heel of the blade for the crossbar lock to ride in, but it's not actually semicircular. It's slightly elliptical, but the blade's pivot is obviously an arc of a perfect circle. So no matter what, the crossbar crashes into it at some point along its travel. That's just tickety-boo if you're opening the knife normally, since the surface is smooth enough and the springs behind the lock weak enough that it just slides over the surface. But if you're holding the crossbar still in some particular position, that just plain old don't work nohow. On a normal Axis knife you can pull it all the way to the rear so it's clear of the blade entirely. On this, you can't.

Here's the whole thing smashed to pieces. Getting it apart wasn't too tough, but did require two T6 drivers to grab the screws from both ends at once. The construction is extremely simple with the handles and liners being held down via the same pairs of screws into threaded barrels that also serve as the spacers between the two handle halves.

The pivot rides on two PFTE washers and the centering's pretty good for a cheap knife, but not perfect. The blade does not contact either liner when closed, at least. One of the thumb studs is visibly longer than the other one, too. I'm not sure what that's about.

All the screws are the same except the rearmost one in the clip, which is inexplicably longer than the others. This goes in the threaded barrel and not in the second screw hole in the clip. If you do that, it's long enough to stick all the way through the liner and contact the blade. You'll figure it out.

The edge grind is pretty good for a cheap knife and mine came off the card with an edge on it that ought to be sharp enough to please ordinary oiks who aren't knife maniacs.

If you're not one of those, you'll instead be pleased to learn that the edge (at least on my example) is perfectly within true. Turning this into a razor ought not to be too hard, then, if that's what you're into. I have no idea how long it will stay that way because no one will admit what kind of steel this is made out of.

No surprise, this knife is almost exactly the same footprint as its sibling Ozark knife. It's a hair thicker at 0.548" not including the clip. It's also not very deep across the other dimension, from spine to channel. That makes the cross section feel almost square in the hand. The scales have a crosshatched texture on them which I found give it a much more confidence inspiring grip than the other knife.

Both of them are dwarfed by my CQC-6K except in thickness.

The Inevitable Conclusion

If you want to trade your ability to Axis flick your knife open for a better grip texture, a flipper opener, and a stonewashed finish that almost -- but not completely -- hides the machine marks on the blade, go with this knife over the other one. What the hell. It's still only $5.

Custom carved for kitchen wall decoration. Yes the two parts separate and can easily fit in your pocket.

Ancient Ninja Secret.

No, wait. The opposite of that.

This is the Cold Steel Spike. One of multiple variants, but this is the tanto point rendition which has, it must be said, maximum ninja cred. Just about everything you need to know about it is encapsulated in this one image.

The Spike is true to its name and it does not have an edge as such. Or rather, it is all edge. Maybe that depends on how you look at it. But it is a quarter inch thick triangle of 4116 stainless steel, tapered from spine to edge all in one shot.

And needless to say it comes to a wicked point.

If this knife is not on the Naughty List, it is only on a technicality. There is little to no utilitarian functionality built into the Spike. It is a knife for stabbin', plain and simple. Although that's not to say I haven't cut many -- probably ill-advised -- things with this knife over the years. This knife lived on one of my backpack straps pretty much full time for a while, and when you've got something like this what else are you supposed to do with it other than debark firewood, baton things, and chuck it at tree stumps around camp?

Cold Steel calls this configuration a "zero grind." This is an OG Spike, the original super dangerous version before they added the overmolded grip with built in crossguard. Without it, this variant of the Spike is incredibly slim. Employing it in the old icepick tradition, though, is a fraught proposition and you'll want to ensure you have a very confident grip over the bird's-head pommel so you don't have yourself a bad time.

The Spike is 67.9 grams, 2.39 ounces, and basically all of that is steel. The grip is very tightly wrapped in cord; undo it at your own peril. It's 8-1/16" long with 3-15/16" of usable, er, edge. The sharp part ends in a beefy ricasso with just a bit of a finger notch behind it which may or may not help said digit remain attached during use, slightly. It is every bit of 1/4" thick at the spine, at least at the base, tapering down its length finally to a needle-sharp point.

This version of the Spike is proudly (?) made in Taiwan. At about $30 back in the day this was never going to be a super premium piece of equipment. Rather, this is more the sort of thing you'd find in the back pages of all your seedy martial arts magazines, if such things even still exist in this day and age. It'd make an excellent movie prop, too. It has precisely that air about it as you'd find in something rated R and from the late 90's, early 2000's. Think the Matrix, Blade Trilogy, V for Vendetta. That kind of deal.

This is helped somewhat by the injection molded Nylon hard sheath, which just has so much of that Sam Fisher vibe. Notably, no provision was provided from the factory whatsoever for actually attaching this to anything, save for a length of black beaded chain which I lost instantly. Cold Steel apparently expect you to use this as a neck knife, which is profoundly silly. There are a pair of slots in it that will just about fit 1" webbing, and some rivet holes that are, alas, slightly too small to easily pass 550 paracord through. The Nite-ize Eclipse clip on it is not from the factory. (Eyy, "eclipse." How topical.) I added that myself to alleviate all of the above, and in my case it is solidly epoxied to the sheath. This allows it to easily ride in one of those otherwise useless little webbing loops that inevitably appear on the face of your backpack strap, or if you were a real smooth operator you could stick it through a MOLLE mount.

Oh, yeah. And you're not imagining things. The blade on my usual CQC-6K is now etched and stonewashed.

That is indeed a thing that has happened.

The Inevitable Conclusion

If your job regularly involves fighting vampires wearing Kevlar, you shouldn't leave home with out this.

Here's another oldie; a knife from my youth. I bought this when I was a teenager, I don't remember exactly when, and while it's not the oldest knife I own I do believe it's the oldest one that I still have and that I bought with my own money.

This is the Gerber Mini Remix, and all of the above is not to say I have any particular nostalgia or fondness for this knife, because I don't. But you can see that even at an early age the penchant for weirdness was already there.

That because, you see, just like John Denver's guitar this knife has a big hole in it.

The hole also comprises the pivot on the knife. Rather than the usual pivot screw, the blade rides on a hollow threaded tube that goes through the frame and it's held centered by way of two big aluminum spanner nuts not unlike the ones go on the steering stem of a bicycle. That does mean that getting it apart is a bitch, requiring an appropriately sized spanner wrench, and thus is something most owners are probably not equipped to do. I am, but I can't be bothered. So you won't see any disassembly photos today.

The hole is about a size 9 ring and you can get your finger through it for twirling around -- with the blade closed, preferably, but it's also possible open if you like to live dangerously. If you have fat fingers it's also possible to get it stuck if you're not careful. Which is bound to be a very embarrassing phone call to the fire department if you haven't got an angle grinder handy to hack the thing off. Unlike the typical mood ring, let's say you are unlikely to be able to clip this off with a pair of wire cutters if you get it stuck on one of your meaty digits.

Other silly possibilities also present themselves.

The Mini Remix is no longer produced although it's larger sibling, the OG non-mini Remix is. That's a shame, because the full size Remix is crap and the Mini version is much nicer.

Now, I'm not a fan of Gerber knives and I never have been. This was department store dreck from back in the day. I'm quite certain this particular example came from K-Mart. In those dark days Gerber had a pathological aversion to admitting what kind of steel their knives were made out of and the Mini Remix is no exception. So I have no idea. It's not published anywhere, and nobody knows. This is a cheap knife, manufactured by those without much of a budget, for those without much of a budget either. You'll never mistake it for premium cutlery.

The Mini Remix is, well, mini. At 5-9/16" long open and 3-1/2" when closed it is a very pocketable EDC size. The sheepsfoot blade is 2" long and surprisingly sports a bit of a choil at the base so the entire edge is usable. The profile should make it appear fairly inoffensive and not "tactical" in any way. You're not stabbing anybody with this. The blade is 0.097" thick and the total weight is 65.2 grams (2.3 ounces) due to the mostly steel construction. And the hole, if anyone is wondering, is precisely 3/4" in diameter.

This is an "open frame" body locking knife, which was all the rage back in the day. Despite this, the Mini Remix still surprisingly has a double-sided grind and is not a chisel edge. If this knife were produced today, that'd be the immediately obvious method of cheaping out that any budget brand would be inexorably, irresistibly, inevitably sure to employ. So be grateful we got what we got.

One side effect of this (which unfortunately did not seem to carry over to the full sized Remix) is that this pivot method effectively completely eliminates any pivot wiggle in the blade. It does ride on Nylon washers that are just visible sandwiched between the spanner nuts and blade. No other tuning tricks are required; the contact area is so broad that any minor clearances in the mechanism are practically unnoticeable. But despite this, the blade pivots fairly freely.

Mind you, the large amount of surface area in the pivot inherently adds some friction to the mechanism. You can't flick this knife open. Not even after you overcome the detent ball in the lock. The pivot doesn't grind as much as you'd think, but it does drag noticeably and you have to consciously push it the whole way through its entire travel.

With a bit of a rethink Gerber probably could have made this knife ambidextrous. But they didn't. This is especially curious because the OG full size Remix is ambidextrous. Lefties need not apply for this one -- There is a thumb stud only on the right hand side of the knife. The blade is fully exposed on the right side as well due to the open-frameness, but there is an aluminum endstop that completely encloses the edge when the knife is closed as well as provides a little bit of thickness so you can actually hold the thing when it's open. The actual closed end stop for the blade's travel is the forwardmost screw that holds this on, which contacts the choil at the base of the blade.

On the left side, or the back, or whatever you want to call it, things are very different. This is a single sheet of steel with some slots milled into it for the lock and so forth. There's a non-reversible deep carry pocket clip there, which is a little small but works pretty well. There's a lanyard hole also, which is drilled through the entire knife as well as the clip. The clip is thus rather... ventilated... with both screw holes plus the lanyard hole in it. There's not a lot of metal left around the edges and if you snag your knife on things a lot, or if you're the type of dimwit who clips their knife to the outside of their pants or off the belt, I think you'd soon find this to be a failure point.

They don't call this the "Mini" for nothing.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Hashtag, kniveswithholesin.

If you find yourself in a time warp and as part of your travels are forced to buy a folder from K-Mart in, like, 2002 you could definitely do worse than to wind up with one of these.

It's definitely novel, and compact and cheerful looking enough that you could probably get away with having it about your person in polite company. It's a shame about its inherent Gerber-ness. It'd be nice to know what it's made out of, and it'd be nice it were built out of better materials overall. As you can see my example has some rust on the tips of the screws just from sitting around, and the other materials are likely to be just as cheap.

But I kind of like it. As with so many things, we're not likely to see its kind again.

Our regular program of cutlery-adjacent shitposting will now resume.

By the way, never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Especially this one.

This is a 10-930GY from ElitEdge. What, you've never heard of them?

But they're Trusted Brand! Military-Tactical-Rescue-Outdoor and everything.

So, while I was ~~screwing off on the internet at work~~ researching as best I could for the writeup I did on that fidget spinner knife a while back, I stumbled upon the Top Quest Brands catalog, which is a rabbit hole well worth falling down. Right there on page 58 I saw, if not exactly this article, one very much like it. And I just knew I had to get my hands on it.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a knife, it's shaped like a gun. And of course it's crap. That's not the point.

The point is, this is how it works:

Rack the slide and the blade pops out. I mean. Come on. What's not to love about that?

To be fair, and if you're a wimp, you can also open this normally. It's a regular spring assisted liner locking folder underneath.

The rack-to-deploy mechanism is deceptively simple, with the slide just riding -- none too precisely, I might add -- on a track in the body with a spring behind it. When you pull it back a little nub cast into it catches the protrusion on the heel of the blade and kicks it out just far enough for the spring assist to take over.

The nub is just visible if you look down into the slot when the blade is out.

The melodiously named 10-930GY is modeled kinda-sorta after a Beretta M92, but many of the details are just odd enough that I'm left wondering if the designers only had a crunchy 240 pixel wide picture of one to work with, or if they're doing that thing where they deliberately fuck up the details in the hopes they don't get sued but inevitably wind up doing so in a way that just makes them look incompetent. We may never know.

Much of the exterior is cast zinc over some flat steel liners. And the castings definitely have a whiff of the dollar store about them. It's quite tough to measure, but it's about 4-11/16" long closed, from the muzzle to the tip of the spur on the back of the grip.

Those are... words I don't usually get to employ when describing a knife.

It's 8" long open, with a 3-3/8" blade again measured from the forward end of the muzzle, drop pointed with the expected ghastly half serration. That must be the part that makes it "tactical." (The "military," "rescue," and "outdoor" mentioned on the box are nowhere to be found, though.) The blade alleges to be made of 420C and the knife purports to be designed in the USA and "hand" crafted in China. The veracity of any of these claims is, of course, suspect. As usual there are highly visible unpolished and unrefined machining marks on the blade bevel, and the edge geometry is all wonky. I didn't bother to take a macro shot of this. Do you know what? I don't care.

The grips are plastic. You can see all the gubbins by peering down into what's not the magazine well. You can also see how deploying this via the intended slide racking method is actually more difficult that it'd appear at first blush, because if you hold the thing the way you naturally want to -- that is, like a pistol -- your fingers on the grip are in the way of where the blade wants to swing. So you wind up having to hold it like a teacup with a dainty grip between thumb and forefingers, and that makes the little bugger tough to hold on to when you find you have to give the slide a surprisingly firm yank to get it to move. I don't think a child would be able to reliably manipulate this which is really just as well, because this is precisely the sort of thing that children shouldn't have it and would give Kyle's mom the fits.

Of course this doesn't actually need sights, but a tiny part of me is disappointed that it doesn't have any anyway. I nothing else, they'd give you something more to grip.

It doesn't have a clip or even a lanyard hole, but that's okay!

Because it comes with a tiny little holster which you can stick on your belt.

I really feel that I should not have to point out that you should not go strutting around with this on your belt in public. You'll look like a real goober. Among other issues.

This knife both looks and feels remarkably similar to a ratty old .25 ACP Saturday night special I had back when I was a lad. I can't tell which comes off worse for the comparison, either: This knife, or my old gun.

Alas, your only options for fiddling with it at your desk are listening to it rattle and racking the slide. None of the controls nor the trigger move. I have to say, I had die cast Hot Wheels cars as a kid with more realistic moving parts than this. What a bummer.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There is a time in every male's life when he intensely desires a thing such as this, and that time is ideally over by the time he reaches the age of 12.

Alright, I know you all are tired of me posting nothing but low rent Sino-bullshit lately. So here's a pallete cleanser from the opposite end of the spectrum. This is the Benchmade Model 32 "Mini Morpho."

You don't have to ask the question, because this is already the answer. This knife. Is my favorite knife. In the world. I also personally believe it to be one of the finest production knives ever made.

I actually took all the pictures for this post twice, because I was reviewing all the photography and realized halfway through the shame and dishonor I was bringing to my ancestors by showing it off in the condition of filthiness that it was in. Believe it or not (and most collectors probably won't), this knife was my EDC companion for years before I finally retired it and replaced it with my current CQC-6K. My Morpho went with me everywhere. Work. Camping. Riding. Hell, out of all my probably hundred or so knives this one is the one I wore to my wedding.

So I did what I should have done along time ago, before putting it away in the first place, and dismantled it completely for a thorough cleaning. And then took all the pictures a second time. (And you get not one, not two, but three stacked focus shots in this post as well, by the way.)

Through this we can see, yes, the wear and tear on the scales and liners. But also a few of the things that make the Morpho a special knife even among balisongs. To start with, you can see right out of the gate that this knife breaks down into a prodigious number of components.

It goes without saying that every single part and piece of this knife is precision machined and it all fits together perfectly. Just so. The total bill of materials is nine screws in total both male and female (the main pivot screws are not in this crop) as well as two precision bushings for the latch pivot and its release mechanism, plus all eight scales and liners, four washers, two spacers, three precision pins, and two threaded and shouldered barrels, the latch, the clip, and of course the blade.

I believe, but don't quote me, that the Morpho was released in or around 2004. I bought mine in 2006. It was regarded as Benchmade's first "modern" balisong, along with its larger brother the model 51. It includes a few key innovations which were a big deal at the time, namely a contemporary scale-on-liner construction, the "zen pin" rebound design that does not use or need kicker pins pressed through the blade, and a new style of spring loaded latch release.

That is illustrated thusly, in crunchy gif-o-vision:

The "Morpho" name, by the way, comes from the Morpho butterfly which not only shares an aesthetic with this knife but also achieves it in the same way. Here's a science fact for you turbo-nerds in the audience: Both the anodized titanium handle liners and the butterfly's wings are blue due to refraction of incoming light. Neither are actually pigmented or dyed blue.

The handle liners are jeweled beneath the scales. That's not to say they're studded with diamonds and sapphires, but rather it's a surface finishing process that results in a pattern of faceted concentric embellishments that catch the light from all different angles. The pictures do not do it justice. You have to handle it and see it in motion to get the full effect.

The latch is sprung by way of a pair of these prongs machined into the liners, which are joined with a cross pin. Squeeze the handles together and the latch pops open automatically, but without the need for (and bulk of) the extension spring traditional in Benchmade balisongs. The pin also acts as a both a detent for the latch in the open position, and also serves as a soft endstop to keep it from striking the opposite handle or the blade when the knife is being flipped. That's all thanks to an especially funky and specific shape machined into the heel of the latch.

The Morpho model 32 is the smaller of the pair between it and the model 51. It is actually unusually small for a balisong, and thus a perfect EDC size. It's 7-1/4" long open, and 4-3/8" long closed with a 3-1/4" blade (measured from the forward ends of the handles) with a 3" usable edge. The blade is D2 tool steel, the handle liners are titanium as mentioned, and the scales are carbon fiber. All of these materials were varying degrees of unobtanium in 2004. Getting them all on the same knife was practically unheard of. But that makes the Morpho pleasantly light: 79.1 grams (2.79 ounces) by my scale. And yes, it is provided with a pocket clip which is reversible. Mine is showing its fair portion of wear in that picture above.

The blade is a spear point profile, single edged, and features a prominent choil at the base which is mirrored on the blunt side. That's because this cutout serves double duty as the part that strikes the "zen" pins inside the handles for the blade to rebound from.

That works like so, and makes the heel of the Morpho's blade quite svelte and also completely smooth, with minimal fore and side protrusion and no pins to snag on anything. (And no, I don't know what that divot is for at the 6 o'clock position below the pivot hole. It's obviously there on purpose, because there's one on both sides in precisely the same location.)

The design gives the business end a nice clean look.

The package is rounded off, possibly literally, with "impossible" pivot screws which are smooth on one side. This side also bears the patent number which describes the spring-prongs which in this case drive the latch mechanism. Curiously, this patent does not appear on Benchmade's current patents page.

The reverse features the Benchmade butterfly logo. Look, I took a lot of pictures of this thing just now and I'm going to show off all of them, got it?

If you ask me, the Morpho's fit, finish, and feel are impeccable. The pivots ride on phosphor bronze washers and the action spins freely despite having extremely minimal play in the mechanism.

The wiggle test reveals all, and despite ball bearings being after this knife's time, the Morpho still scores very favorably. It ought to please anyone who is bothered by having a ton of slop in their balisong, because it has about as close to none as you can get with washer pivots.

The Morpho, particularly this mini 32 variant, is both light and short. That's very different from most other balisongs people get used to, which typically have quite long and very heavy handles. The Morpho is practically weightless by comparison and rather than the big, ponderous spins you get from a traditional balisong you can flip this thing lickety-split. If you're good, you can bust the Morpho out extremely quickly. The spring latch helps there, as does the ability to position the clip on whichever side suits your manipulation style so the latch winds up where you want it. Draw, squeeze, windmill, cleave whatever it was in twain, double rebound, latch, pocket. Onlookers won't even have time to pick their jaws up off the floor.

To help you not fling your $350-and-appreciating collector's item across the room, the handle spacers are jimped just like you see here on both sides.

Here it is with two more Benchmades, plus the usual article. As you can see, the Morpho is much more the size of an ordinary EDC pocketknife. The Model 42 on the right dwarfs it.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This knife is Benchmade's version of Sgt. Pepper, their Nevermind, their Mellon Collie. That is to say, despite numerous follow ups and going ever onwards to fame and popularity, it's that one entry in their back catalog that has still yet to be surpassed.

In a McMainsion somewhere, some legislator is being kept awake at nights by the very thought of this knife.

They've done their very best to ban knives that are too big, have to many edges, are spring loaded, or can flip open. In some places they've even banned knives that can lock open or be opened with one hand. But this knife is still out there haunting them.

"Can I get a knife?"

What kind?

"A shiny one."

Okay, what size?

"... Schmol."

If you're an enthusiast in this hobby you are well acquainted with dumb knife laws, and you can bet your bottom dollar the hype your local council member will spin about this one is about how it's "easily concealable." If it's not one goddamn thing, it's another.

This little tacker is only 1-9/16" long. Not the blade; the entire thing, fully opened. It's only 1" long closed, and that doesn't include the little keychain loop on the back, about the durability of which I maintain a quaint, childlike faith. The blade is not surprisingly 9/16" long, but what is surprising is that it's actually got an edge on it albeit not exactly a surgically sharp one. With a real choil. And a "thumb" opening hole for ants. Sharpening it shouldn't be too tough, since it should only take one pass on your stone per side. The usable portion of the edge is barely longer than the width of the flat side of a Spyderco triangle stone.

It only weighs 2.9 grams. One tenth of an ounce.

The construction is all steel, although I'll certainly be damned if I know what kind. This, and others like it, are yours for around $3 from the usual scumbags. There is no brand or model number, but numerous variants are available. On this one, the blade is polished to a mirror finish and the handles are brushed and satiny.

Ant it actually has a genuine little tiny slip joint mechanism, with a prong on the spine that detents the knife in both the open and closed positions.

This knife "ought" to be legal anywhere due to falling, shall we say, well within the bounds of blade length limitations. It is not spring loaded, it doesn't lock, and if you can open it with one hand (without using your teeth) I'll give you a dollar. It hasn't got a single feature from the naughty list.

If a ruffian assails you, be prepared with a few hundred of these. You can throw a handful of them in his face like pocket sand.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Honk honk. Why so serious?

Despite the obvious intent of just being a little novelty trinket, this knife actually is functional insomuch as you could use it to, say, open packages or sharpen a pencil. And for all your friends who have little "urban carry" micro-knives, show them up with this which is just about the most micro of them all.

Do you feel like your knife hasn't got enough of a mechanism in it? Brother, have I got a deal for you.

I have seen these kicking around online for a while now and up until lately I've ignored them. This one, for instance, cost the suspiciously low sum of $8.28 and was billed as, and I quote: "New High-Quality Antler Stiletto Knife Folding Camping Knife Automatic Knife Spring Knife Outdoor Survival Knife."

Antler? False. Stiletto? No. Automatic? Not that either, as we'll see. Spring? Well, there is one in there but it doesn't do what I think they're implying. Already we're off to a rough start.

But. I did perchance to spy in the pictures on its listing this logo, one which we now know very well. So far we've looked at two other Jin Jun Lang knives and been pleasantly surprised. So I bought one a while ago. Will we manage to score a hat trick?

Actually, speaking of tricks. Let's just cut out all that talking and skip right to the money shot. Here's how this knife works. Not all of that skeletonized steampunky nonsense is there just for looks.

You are now thinking to yourself one of two things. You're either thinking, "Wow, that's dumb." This is because you are a normal person. Or, if your immediate thought was, "That's rad," well. Turns out you're one of us.

Never mind all that antler-stiletto-automatic crap. This is, completely unremarked upon by its seller, a Jin Jun Lang model JL-16011A. (There is also a "B" variant, which is black.) The family resemblance to the other JJL knives we've seen is clearly evident.

The JL-16011A is a fairly large 8-1/4" long open, 4-7/8" closed, and has a 3-1/2" long tanto pointed blade (measured from the forward edge of the handle as usual) that's hollow ground. It's made from an upsecified grade of stainless steel (3cr most likely, 5cr maybe, 7cr less so) as is the rest of the knife. This knife is so metal that if it had an album cover it'd feature, like, ten skeletons. Minimum. It weighs 144.4 grams, 5.09 ounces, which is to say it's a lot to be hanging off your pocket.

To assist in this it has a deep carry pocket clip. No, really, it does. The clip wraps all the way around the knife from one side to the other, and rides on the rear half of the articulating mechanism. It is not reversible, though.

The understated styling on the deep carry clip, at least compared to the rest of the knife, means no one will know just what kind of malarkey you've got in your pants.

And because there are so many pivots and clearances inherent in the design, it's very thick. 0.608" without the clip, or 0.722" with it. Yes, going on for three quarters of an inch. The blade is 0.110" thick as usual, which seems to be a common thickness for steel stock.

Right. So all that aside, mechanically this knife is a very odd duck.

It has no lock, at least in the traditional sense. There is a long armature with a pivot through the heel of the blade, offset from the main one. When you deploy the blade this is pushed back, and then pulled forward as the blade goes 'round its arc, like the drive arm on a locomotive. This also causes the block at the rear to tip up and then down. All told there are four pivots in the chain, and at the end of the blade's travel both the armature and the block rest home against the handle with a noticeable click.

After this point it is impossible to rotate the blade back towards the closed position because the pivot between the rear block and the armature has gone over-square, so to speak, and doing so would just push the armature further against the handle. You unlock it by pressing on the rear block, which pushes the armature up out of this position and starts to pivot the blade rearward.

Opening it is a bit of a fiddle because there is a lot of drag caused in all those pivots. Plus, there is a clothespin spring under the rear block which makes it want to naturally spring back into its rest position:

So it takes quite a shove to open this one handed via the usual method, using the (ambidextrous) thumb studs. And just to add a little spice to your life, part of the opening action opens up a big hole between the armature and the nonmoving part of the handle, which tends to deliver a pinch right to your palm when you lock the blade open.

But I know what you're thinking. You could totally open this by just mashing down on the rear block, right?

Right?

Well, about that.

The finesse and timing required definitely takes practice. The penalty for failure is that the clothespin spring will case the blade to snap back shut, and it will bite you. Even so, you still need two hands. But it's rewarding to finally get it right.

That's not to say that it's a practical way to open it by any stretch, though. In fact, I'm not sure there is a practical way to open it, other than with two hands: One on the blade, one on the block.

The JL-10611A is big. Decidedly, obviously, flagrantly large. And it's wide and broad and heavy, too.

Nobody would carry this except for ironic and frivolous purposes. The best purposes.

Now, I'm not going to take it apart. Much of the mechanism is riveted together, so I'm not sure we'd see much other than watching me struggle to put the spring back in. All of the pivots do ride on brass washers, which are just visible if you peer at it from the sides. Except for the main blade pivot, which has what appear to be PFTE washers in it -- not that it matters much.

As we saw on the JJL slingshot knife, this thing bears a Chinese patent which is proudly displayed on the reverse of the blade:

It also bears the Jin Jun Lang logo as we've seen, and its model number. There are no other markings -- not even a perfunctory "Made in China."

The blade grind is okay, but not great. It has what I think could best be described as functional sharpness out of the box.

Disappointingly, the grind is actually noticeably out of true from the factory unlike the last two JJL knives we inspected which is a bit of shame.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I think this is a meant to be a toy for fiddling with, not a tool for using. But that said it's reasonably well built and certainly doesn't cost very much, albeit with a design that's really a hindrance to usability even if it is, on paper at least, clever. So maybe it'll be a fun little lighthearted novelty addition to your collection rather than spending $300 on the next Benchmade. That's not to say it'll be as good as your next Benchmade. It won't, clearly. That's not why it exists.

Two things drew me to this nondescript, brandless knife. The first thing is that it came in the absolute fakest Benchmade box...

(Dramatic pause.)

...In the world.

And here's the reverse, for good measure.

In case the sticker on it didn't tip you off, this absolutely is not any kind of Benchmade. Let's just say, somehow I highly doubt the validity of that Lifesharp promise on the back of the box in this particular case. Another clue to an astute observer might be that this doesn't resemble any particular model of knife they've ever made.

Except, it must be said, for one other detail. Which is in fact the second thing that drew me to this knife.

It has a Benchmade Model 42/62/63/etc. style extension spring latch. Boing!

Those of you who are regular readers know this is exactly the kind of thing that gets my motor going. And it's not something you find very often coming in at $14 from Dongguan, China. Alas, the only designation I can find for this is its product description, which melodiously states: "Benchmade Guro EDC Balisong Knives Tactical Butterfly Knives Trainer Flipping Practice Folding Knife Combat Multifunction Tool Gift."

The "Guro" is a full 5-3/4" long closed, and an absolutely massive 10" long when latched open. Because Long Knife Is Long, the blade is 4-1/2" with a drop point and a depression in it that I am not in this context going to call a "blood groove," because that's silly. There is a large choil at the base, but only on one side because this is a traditional dual kicker pin design. No Zen pins here. The blade's alloy is of course unspecified, but don't expect miracles and you won't be disappointed. It is 0.110" thick and is very shiny, to the point I think it might actually be chrome plated.

Actually, the entire thing is hella shiny thanks to the deep metallic blue finish on the handles which upon close inspection is somewhat iridescent and is sprayed on over the outside of the handles. A bit like anodized titanium or the scales on a butterfly's wing, its color seems to come from refraction rather than any type of pigment because the hue shifts where the knife is smudged, and comes back when it's cleaned. In the areas where it's sprayed on more thinly, or in the corners and groves, it takes on magenta and then gold tones instead. It's not sprayed on very evenly and doesn't appear to be terribly durable, either, since my knife arrived with several bits of the finish already rubbed off on the edges and sports a few thin spots and holidays even from factory fresh. The thing also fingerprints like crazy.

The Guro rings in at an absolutely ridiculous 170.2 grams (6 ounces) thanks to its all metal construction which gives it a mix of both old and traditional cheap Chinese balisong construction along with some new. It's an odd combination.

The handles are for instance single piece solid castings, like we're used to on the cheap potmetal flea market butterflies from the bad old days. Within you can see that the glossy blue finish is indeed sprayed on, because it's not sprayed on the insides where you can see it peters out. The handle material appears to be brass.

But, inexplicably, it has that spring latch.

The blade also rides on a quartet of nice brass washers, which is certainly unexpected. That means the action on this knife is better than it has any right to be -- on both ends. Thanks to these plus the long heavy handles, the flipping feel is quite free albeit rather slippery with the gloss finish.

The results of the wiggle test put us back on track for Chinese cheapness. The pivot holes in the blade aren't very precise, so a lot of slop and play is left in the blade.

And it wouldn't be a Chinese knife at all if it didn't have some aspect that wasn't completely inexplicable, and in our case it's this:

The latch shank is threaded, and the head is a knurled nut that can be screwed up and down it.

This includes being able to screw the latch head up the shank so far the knife can't be latched. Or, if it's already closed, such that you can't unlatch it. Theoretically this is "tunable" although why you would ever want to do so is beyond me. Once you have it where you like it, which is probably at its maximum anyway, a drop of threadlocker on there would probably be a good idea.

On the bright side, the extension spring ensures that the latch stands to attention well away from the handles and blade at all times when it's out, so it can't strike either one and blemish your, er, collector's value.

This thing is bigly yuge. Really. There is no clip provided, but it's probably too long for pocket carry anyway. It did come with a very cheap and nasty nylon belt pouch with a Velcro closure that's so boring I didn't even bother to photograph it.

And now, what I just know you've all been waiting for.

The Guro is not too tough to take apart, surprisingly. The pivot screws are T9 Torx heads with some decorative carvings in them, and they are completely round Chicago screws with no clever tricks or design aspects to them. You can undo them easily enough by undoing the male sides with the knife latched, or just grabbing either side one each with a pair of screwdrivers.

Inside are our four brass washers, completely unlubricated from the factory in my example (which I rectified before putting it back together), the latch spring, and nothing else.

The latch itself is easily the most nicely manufactured part in the entire ensemble.

Call me old and out of date if you like, but I do remember those dark days when the grind on every cheap knife -- even low end brand name ones -- was crap. Therefore I am continually surprised when I receive garbage knives like these that still manage to show up with a competent edge on them. The Guro has an unexpectedly even edge on it that is quite sharp enough to do yourself a mischief with it if you handle it incautiously.

It is also actually within true. I'm absolutely astounded.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I can't fathom why whoever is selling these decided to try to brand them as "Benchmades." I have to wonder who they think they're actually going to fool. This would be a perfectly fine cheap bali ready to stand by its brethren on the dusty card table at your local flea market without the baffling branding decision, anyway.

Make no mistake about it, some aspects of this knife are definitely crude and still of the old school. But what we're getting out of the PRC for what you pay these days is continuing to amaze me. Admittedly, so far we've only had a sample size of two. And I've deliberately picked the ones that give me the impression that they might have something to offer. But on the whole I've definitely seen worse, and sometimes that's the finest praise you can give a thing.

My AD-15 Lite with custom micarta scales

Oh boy.

This thing. This thing is a jape and a half. I know we don't usually do it this way but I'm going to start with the box.

"Microtech," my pinfeathered ass. And I'm sorry, is that... is that the Philosoraptor?

It is, isn't it?

Alright, so there have been a ton of attempts to make a karambit knife portable, practical, or otherwise able to be put away in some manner. Various methods of folding, some clever, some less so. Well, here's how this one does it:

That's right, it's an out-the-front karambit. Double action, too. In and out. It is immensely satisfying.

This bears no official model number or designation, and as you can imagine the actual manufacturer isn't specified anywhere on it, nor its box. But its seller did render it "Mi Crotech" in the product description, just like that with a space in it. Probably so they don't get the banhammer for trademark infringement. It was of course only a couple of bucks from China and if you ask me it's well worth the price of admission.

And this knife is huge. 5-7/8" long retracted, 8-1/2" deployed. The blade is about 3-1/4" long with a wicked talonlike curve in it and yes, that means that the switchblade track inside also has to be curved. The blade is 0.110" thick and the entire knife is a meaty 0.542" not including the clip. It's not very sharp and the blade is made from who-knows-what, but that's really besides the point. The body, at least, is aluminum which is what you want on a cheapo OTF. That's because the plastic ones tend to break quickly. I don't foresee this one having that issue.

It does have a clip, a meaty one that's not reversible. It's mounted at the back, along with the actuation switch so you can fire it off with that cool guy reverse grip. There's just one minor problem with the clip, which is that for right handed users at least it's on the wrong side of the knife.

If you carry it in the typical way, first of all a lot of it is left sticking out. But the biggest issue is when you draw it it'll be backwards, with the switch on the wrong side for you to reach it. If you're a lefty, though, you've got it made in the shade.

It is heavily spring loaded and fires with a forceful and satisfying thwack. As a double action out-the-front it is theoretically possible to misfire but I haven't had it happen yet despite fiddling with it hundreds of times so far since I got it. I didn't have to do anything to the action out of the box; no lubricant, no tuning. I haven't even bothered to take it apart yet and I'm honestly not sure I will. The lockup is remarkably solid and there's surprisingly not much rattle in the blade in any direction when it's deployed. Which is practically unheard of in a cheapo Chinese auto.

Where it falls down, of course, is in the blade grind. And probably the steel, too, but we'll never know. (The product description claims it is "D2." If you believe that, might I also interest you in this deed for the Great Wall of China?) This came with practically a butter knife edge from the factory, and the machining in the blade is visibly very crude. Our old friend is here indeed, familiar old highly visible unpolished machine marks all down the bevel. The blade is partially blackened, partially exposed steel. It is incredibly pointy, to its credit, but that won't help you open your mail.

You'll have a rough time sharpening it, too, because as is tradition the edge geometry is way out of whack. A fair bit of material will have to be removed to get both sides of the grind even. And inward curving karambits are hard enough to sharpen to begin with, while it's functionally impossible to do so if all you've got a flat whetstone. You will have to use some manner of rod sharpener on this, or maybe one of those horrible drag-down-the-edge zip sharpeners. This might actually be one of the only valid use cases for such a thing, actually.

The gargantuan nature of this knife really cannot be overstated. It's not a slasher movie prop; it's a slasher movie villain all by itself. I Know What You Did In Shenzen.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is glorious crap and I love it. This knife is absurdly stout and a blast to fiddle with. You like it for exactly the same reason you like B movie schlock. It's not meant to be great, and that's exactly why it kind of is.

The only problem with it is it's not especially competent at the knife part of being a knife. It's dull, fixing that will be a bitch, the layout is wonky for carry, and you wouldn't want to anyway. It also wasn't very cheap in objective terms, for being "cheap." $22 American freedom bills were spent on this, and while I've certainly gotten less for that amount of cash at various points in history, even just in recent days we've seen how I've gotten more.

You may recall from my post a couple of days ago about the surprisingly competent (and very cheap) Jin Jun Lang JL-13A that one of its points of incompetence was a design that allows the latch to strike the blade, like so:

Well, sure I put a stop to that.

This half-gram piece of plastic slots right into the handle like so:

And means the latch will only swing in a 180 degree arc such that it stops just short of the tip of the blade.

It works the other way, too.

Grab it here:

https://www.printables.com/model/811990-latch-no-strike-spacer-for-jin-jun-lang-jl-13a

Solving real world problems for a hilariously tiny number of very specific people. That's how we do around here.

That's right, today is a treat especial for anyone who is of a very, very specific bent. You know who you are.

Here's a bit of white whale. Or maybe not a whale. More of a white gopher? These cheap crossbar/Axis lock knockoff folders from Walmart have become strangely sought after lately. Possibly that's just down to their memeworthiness, or maybe it's the novelty factor.

Because of that they've actually been rather difficult to find. I'm sure that's a combination of Walmart not actually distributing all that many of them for whatever reason (see the Braille skateboard fiasco, for instance, to see just how inept Walmart's merchandising and logistics can be), plus now that the cat is out of the bag I'm sure various punters are buying them up in the hopes they can be scalped later at a profit.

But here one is, and both sides of its packaging:

The other day I rolled a natural 20 and found one of these while I was pawing through a random Walmart's camping section several towns over from mine. Just one. And I checked their web site, which claimed that they didn't have any.

There doesn't seem to be any name or formal designation for these other than the SKU, "6835" for this variant, although there are (were) to my knowledge three different types of these.

So what is this and who cares? Well, @cetan already did two good posts on these previously, both the current and previous incarnations. TL;DR: This is a an "Axis lock" style folder that Wally World now sells for $5. If you can find it. Good luck with that.

That's cheaper than most of the cheapest Chinese knockoff crap you could order from Wish, Temu, or Dealexteme. That's cheaper than any flea market trash, any gas station knife, any bladed crud you might find in the glass case at your favorite bong shop. And frankly, I think it's an astonishing result of massive economies of scale that you can get anything at all for that little money these days.

But is it any good?

Well, you know how it works around here. I'm going to talk about that. A lot.

The 6835 is an otherwise unassuming folder that's 7-1/8" long open, 4-1/8" long closed, and knowing those numbers you won't be surprised to learn that its drop point blade is precisely 3" long measured from the tip to the forward edge of the handle. There is even a real choil at the base of the blade, and the grind goes all the way down to it. Talk about luxury! It's pretty light at 74.8 grams (2.64 ounces). The blade is 0.110" thick at the spine which is not hugely stout, and is made of... uh... Well, no one seems to know.

The thing is, the blade steel isn't specified. Anywhere. Not on the package, not on the knife itself, and certainly not on the Walmart.com product description (which has since been pulled anyway). The package goes out of its way to specify that the handle scales are made of polypropylene, which is very strange, but doesn't say anything about the blade other than "stainless steel."

If I absolutely had to guess I would say it's one of the cheaper Chinese alloys, 3cr or maybe 7cr if we're lucky, 420C, or maybe at the very outside a lower grade 440. But I'm not holding my breath for that last one.

The 6835 has dual thumb studs for opening and sports a non-reversible deep carry (!) chromed clip. The clip's actually not so bad, but its mounting screw heads are not flush and if you wear thick pants (jeans) they may snag on the seam a little.

Screw heads standing proud is actually kind of a theme, here. The pivot screw heads on both sides also stick out on both sides, roughly the same amount as the toggles for the lock.

Ah, yes. The lock. This knife, for $5, sports an honest to goodness Benchmade "Axis" style crossbar lock. A few years ago this would be unfathomable, not least because Benchmade held the patent on this until it expired in 2016. Now, it seems, anyone can have a shake. And I do mean anyone.

"Anyone" also apparently means no one. In this case, anyhow. There is no indication whatsoever on the knife's packaging or anywhere else as to who actually manufactures this thing. There's only "Distributed by Walmart Inc.," and "MADE IN CHINA." No points for guessing the latter. Ozark Trail is Walmart's private label, and historically most of the those knives have been manufactured by Hangzhou Great Star Tools Co. Ltd., who are a Chinese OEM who also manufacture Sheffield and Swiss Tech knives, among a myriad of other things. That is probably the case here as well, but thus far impossible to prove.

But cheap as it is, it works. Now, out of the box mine would not do the "Axis flick," where you can hold the lock back and swing the blade out without touching it. But it didn't take much tuning to get this happening (more about that below, of course).

Though there is one itsy bitsy, teensy weensy, tiny little comment I have to make there...

The lockup is very solid and actually surprisingly precise. But there's a square point on the heel of the blade left behind where the pocket is machined for the crossbar to rest with the knife in its closed position. And it's got a burr on it that knocks against the crossbar ever so slightly even when it's fully held back, which is a detectable tactile notchiness if you open the knife that way. I cured this by giving that corner about four strokes on a diamond sharpening stone while I had the knife apart.

There are a few other foibles that indicate that this is a cheap knife that's probably not assembled with much care. For instance:

The polypropylene (apparently) scales look like aluminum at first blush, but they're not. They have a subtle machined texture in them. But my knife, which I'll point out was completely unused and it went straight from the package to photography, had these visible rub marks in the scales on one side. The packaging does leave part of the handle exposed and that's probably to save a penny on plastic. That might have something to do with it.

The blade grind is not bad, but certainly not spectacular and no one will mistake this knife for premium. As is perhaps contractually obligated on cheap Chinese knives there are rather pronounced machine marks on the bevel, and no time or care has been spent polishing or stonewashing or even painting the blade. But on my example there is also some marring evident towards the point. This doesn't affect anything. But it says "cheap, cheap, cheap" like a basket full of newly hatched chicks, loud and clear. It was usably sharp from the factory but only just.

While we're at it, here's the trueness. It's not perfect, but I've seen worse -- and I've certainly seen worse that cost a lot more. One side is definitely slightly visibly steeper than the other, though, and that'll have to be ground out if you ever want to do a proper sharpening on this.

With exactly a 3" blade length the 6835 is precisely at the gold standard legal carry length limit for most places. Here it is compared to a couple of knives which at their combined MSRP would buy you just under 49 of these:

The 6835 is a shade smaller than the usual benchmark Kershaw/Emerson CQC-6K, but while we're talking benches is about the same footprint as a Benchmade Bugout 535. Except...

With full scale-on-liner construction the 6835 is significantly thicker than the Bugout. Which makes sense, because being thin is kind of the Bugout's entire deal. Regardless of that, svelte is not what this Ozark is, at 0.528" thick across the scales, not including the pivot screw heads (0.647") or the clip (0.702"!).

For a $5 knife, the 6835's feel is... mixed, but not as terrible as you would expect. Despite the lined texture in the scales I find it to be a little bit slippery. There is a big positive index finger cutout in it, though, and some pretty squared off jimping on the back of the blade forward of the pivot. Once tuned the opening action can be nice, although out of the box (or rather, off of the hang card) mine was pretty dire. One thing I can say, if I'm allowed to get to these points out of order, is that once I got the pivot cleaned up, properly lubricated, and the screw tension tuned such that the blade could be flicked open there is a small but noticeable amount of up-and-down play in the blade once locked open. It's not a lot, and it's miles better than a flea market knife from yesteryear, but it is there.

Right. Smash.

This is what you get inside. Before we dig too far into detail, here is a different detail.

Dismantled, but with the crossbar lock in place, here's what that looks like. It follows the typical dual hair spring design; there is one of these on both sides.

The crossbar is a single piece and does not unscrew in the middle like some. It is captive with its springs in place, but can be removed from the liners after complete disassembly via the cutouts in the liners you see above.

The halves are spaced with two shouldered barrel pins that are threaded in both ends. The blade endstop is a simple crosspin that is not shouldered and can fall out of either side with the scales removed. A pair of T6 head screws hold both the liners and scales by going into the spacers. I found all of the screws with a smear of colorless Chinese threadlocker (or perhaps just glue) on them, but they were all torqued inconsistently. Some came out nearly of their own accord, and one took a worrying twist to make let go. The pivot is a T8 head and you will probably need two drivers to bust it loose because it is a plain round Chicago screw pair with no indexing or D flat or anything. So it's prone to just spin rather than unscrew if you don't have a way to grab both sides at once.

All of scale screws are the same including the rearward one that goes through the clip, but the clip has a smaller secondary screw that drives into a hole in the liner as well. It's shorter and a narrower diameter.

The blue accent details around the pivot appear to be anodized aluminum and are just friction fit, held down by the pivot screws. Be careful; they'll remain resolutely in place until you're not paying attention, then leap out and roll away.

The blade rides on white PFTE washers but the effect of this is rather diminished because the insides of my knife were slathered in some kind of unctuous, sticky crud that if I didn't know better I would describe as like Cosmoline. I'm sure this is to prevent corrosion during the long boat ride from China, but it's got the opposite effect of a lubricant and it made the pivot draggy and sticky. Even moreso than the situation the too-tight screw tension would create. Cleaning all that crap off with naptha and greasing the action up with silicone oil improved things significantly.

About this much, in fact.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There are definitely worse spends of your money than one of these. I have to say, I'm surprised -- but not too surprised -- about the level of superficial quality in one of these. It didn't come out of the box quite right, and although making it right wasn't hard it'd take some foreknowledge of what you were doing.

For the price, this knife is phenomenal. Not in an objective sense, mind you, but nor is it actually bad. A decade ago, though, $5 would buy you a piece of unusable trash. You know the type: One of those "Eagle" flea-market-card-table knives, or one of those horrible things they used to sell in lots of 100 pieces on QVC. Rattly, bendy, plasticky, with handles and blades snapping near instantly, and a barely functional lock if it has one at all. This knife is somehow none of those things which is noteworthy in and of itself.

What we don't know, and what only time can tell, is how well it holds up. Especially the edge. We spend a lot of money on fancy supersteels to have a knife that'll take a keen edge and keep it. A fancy supersteel is exactly what I guarantee you this knife hasn't got. So the next task will be to put on the whetstone and see if it can keep from having to come back for more than ten consecutive minutes after some real world use.

So stay tuned.

For those who are indecisive about their knife steel, there is the Kershaw Rake.

Here it is along with some wood. This is another one of Kershaw's composite blade steel knives, with a spine made of 14C28N and an edge made of D2 tool steel. They're joined together in a jigsaw-like fashion so the hard wearing D2 winds up where it counts, but the part you touch all the time is made out of a more corrosion resistant alloy.

This is another Tim Galyean design like the Junkyard Dog, and that's a knife that this'll inevitably draw a lot of comparisons to. They both share pretty similar design philosophies and identical construction techniques, although the Rake is smaller and is also has Kershaw's "Speedsafe" spring assist mechanism whereas the Junkyard Dog doesn't.

The Rake can be opened either via the flipper or with its dual thumb studs, and is a true liner locker with steel liners on both sides, overlaid with G10 scales. It's a hefty 162.6 grams (5.73 ounces) and just about 8" long open. The blade is 3-1/2" long with about a 3-3/8" usable edge, 0.120" thick, with a very upswept almost scimitarlike profile. The blade is very broad and the curve in it makes the closed knife even more so: About 1-5/8" across, all told at the widest point.

That doesn't necessarily translate to thickness, though, and the Rake is 0.537" in cross section not including the clip. Not surprisingly, almost exactly the same a the Junkyard Dog (that's just over half an inch, like 17/32").

There's a lot to recommend the Rake for, despite its quirks. Fast snappy deployment, ambidextrous, rugged, and well built. It is not a svelte knife for people with small pockets, though, nor one that's unlikely to attract comment if you bust it out in public.

One thing I don't like about it is the clip, which is inferior to the one on the Junkyard Dog. It's reversible, at least, but it's kind of small and where it's positioned plus the pronounced boomerang curve in the knife when it's closed makes fishing it out of your pocket more of a fiddle than you'd think. That's why it has that tiny braided lanyard on it in all my photos.

In lieu of a disassembly photo, because I can't be bothered, here's one of how it rides instead.

Compared to some of its brothers. It is noticeably larger than the CQC-6K (left) but shorter than the Junkyard Dog (right).

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Rake a very usable and well thought out design -- possibly minus the clip -- and if you want a big stout knife it's hard to go wrong with it. The pronounced curve and belly makes it a great slicer even for camp food prep, if you're into that sort of thing, while not being a dainty little fillet knife lookin' thing that feels like it'll break the minute it touches some bark.

It's so competent, in fact, that it's really tough to come up with anything funny to say about it. Other than the name, anyway. Why's it named after a gardening implement?

Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to the Atropos Trapper.

This rather dapper (rhymes with Trapper) balisong has asymmetrical handles that...

...Wait. What the hell?

The Trapper isn't a balisong at all. And it's not quite a gravity knife, either. It's like somebody stuck an Opinel and a balisong in that machine from The Fly, slathered it in beard wax, and this is what came out the other side.

I guess you could call it some kind of handle locker? The Trapper actually has no real mechanical lock at all, but when the handle halves are separated the blade freely pivots and falls out the front. Once deployed, it is held in place by way of a cross-pin that engages with its heel when you bring the handles back together. Your grip on the handle halves serves as the "lock," and as long as you're holding the handle the blade's not going anywhere.

The cross pin is through this large brass thumb screw, which theoretically adjusts the tension on that C shaped flap of brass that ever so lightly touches the larger of the two handle halves and keeps them together with just a kiss of friction.

Atropos Knives -- or rather, Atroposknife as they seem to render themselves -- is a Russian company that makes a variety of mostly balisongs. Several of which are indeed quite funky. They also make a couple of leather products. Their entire jam looks quite hipster, but this is easily the funkiest thing in their entire lineup.

Well, it was, anyway. The Trapper now appears to be discontinued.

The numbers. The Trapper is 4-5/8" long exactly when closed, and 8-1/4" opened. The 3-7/16" blade has a drop point profile with a full flat grind, made of D2. For some absolutely unfathomable reason there is a fingernail nick in the blade as well, although this doesn't help you open it in any meaningful way nor is it actually necessary. The whole knife is quite broad as well, about 1-1/8" across. The thickness measurement is confounded somewhat by not only the clip, but by that weird thumb screw sticking out of one side. But without either of those it is precisely 0.30" thick. That is, three tenths.

The handle profile is completely rounded over the edges and is made of aluminum with a satin finish that feels very nice in the hand. The entire ensemble weighs 71.8 grams or 2.53 ounces. It's very lightweight.

There is a pocket clip on it as you can see which is either titanium or aluminum very carefully bead blasted to look like titanium. It works okay but it's rather short, and if you pluck it you'll get a note like plonking a leaf on a rumba box.

Carrying it in your pocket is theoretically a fraught undertaking because like I mentioned earlier it doesn't really latch shut in any way. It looks like the brass thingy should be able to fold over and hook the opposite side or something, but it doesn't move and it wouldn't be long enough anyway. The possibility, then, of this just falling open in your pocket presents itself.

Luckily it came with this stitched leather pouch, which doesn't feature a belt loop or closure or anything, but might help you slip it into the pocket of your flannel shirt. The color is not an optical illusion in that picture, by the way. The leather really is dyed a deep forest green.

The Trapper is deceptively small. It's rather svelte, and I think it gives off an art deco kind of vibe. Compared to the usual CQC-6K here you can see that it's not really much longer, and is actually shorter than a typical balisong knife.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This thing is cool.

Impractical, not terribly utilitarian, and devilishly strange to manipulate, but cool. It is just possible at the outside with sufficient practice and skill you could open and close this one handed. But I'm not about to invest the effort, or the blood. This is for looking at, not for using.