^...Where^ ^we^ ^came^ ^in?^

One thousand and twenty one days ago, because I thought you might like to go to the show, I made my very... second... post in this series. All in all it might have been more appropriate if it were my first, but followup albums are usually better anyway. That was for the CRKT Provoke Zap, and it's post that's so old and busted that it doesn't even have a headline picture. I've kept promising to redo that one with better lightning and better photography and more words, and, well. I still haven't.

So anyway, here's this.

Now we've come full circle in a very roundabout fashion. Right back to the beginning, except... not the same.

This is the CRKT Provoke EDC, and if you're wondering if you ought to buy a Provoke Zap for general carry-about duty and $75 less: No, you shouldn't. You should buy this instead.

There have been lots of attempts to finagle the karambit idea into being a folding knife over the years, some better than others. The classic Provoke and indeed its Zap incarnation are probably among the better runups at this idea, but they're still kind of a single purpose apparatus. The Provoke EDC, on the other hand, is a karambit that somebody took the karambit out of. Cold, perhaps, as a razor blade, it ditches the hawkbill vibe and instead has a flat ground and more traditionally sharped drop point blade made of D2 that's about 2-1/2" long (63.5mm) with 2-1/4" or so (57.15mm) of usable edge.

It does, however, retain the original's rather byzantine "kinematic morphing action" mechanical arrangement that sees the blade transiting up and around and forward on a pair of swinging armatures rather than doing anything as predictable as merely pivoting. It's another Joe Caswell design, just like the original Provoke.

Unlike the Zap and its various grivory/fiber reinforced nylon bodied brethren, the Provoke EDC is one of CRKT's premium all aluminum jobbies. That results in a pleasingly refined action and a much less Fisher Price feel in the hand by comparison, although you do pay $185 for the privilege of holding it. But I'm alright on that score, Jack. Just keep your hands off of my stack.

Because of or possibly despite that, the Provoke EDC feels dense and solid at 3.47 ounces or 98.4 grams.

What with the big old ring on the back, the intended method still seems to be thumbing it open like this, which results in you holding it in this reverse grip sort of style. It's also possible, although decidedly less slick, to deploy it forward with your pinky landing in the ring instead if, for purest sake of example, you'd like to use your knife without winding up looking like Johnny in front of everybody.

Closing it again is more of a faff about. There's a toggle at the back you have to push down, which as far as I can tell is purpose built to be absolutely impossible to reach with the same hand as you're holding the knife in. It's still a lot easier to find and use than the one on the Provoke Zap, though, so it's got that going for it.

The Provoke's aluminum armatures interlock just about perfectly in both their rear and forward positions, presumably being obsessively and precisely shaped in order to do so. I hope somebody gave old Joe a nice bonus for his trouble. A set of notches are cut into the tips of these which at first blush appear to be just decadent visual frippery, but if you commit to holding the thing frontways around are revealed to serve as jimping for your grip. There's also a detent built into the mechanism for the closed position by way of the lock toggle half-resting in a notch cut out into the heel of the rear armature.

There's a clip on the back that's pretty much flush against the surface when it's not in use. There's a gap underneath it towards the back, and if you mash it right at that point the tip of it pops up so you can slide it over the seam in the pocket of your pants or your pinhole burned favorite silk shirt, or whatever else it is you've got.

Here's a gratuitous demonstration of that, because I'm certainly not showing you weirdos my pants today. The clip can theoretically handle fabric of just about any thickness but it's a real thumb workout to get it to open more than maybe 1/8", especially if you're doing it from the angle of actually trying to stow it in anything resembling a sane and socially acceptable position. If you've got jeans or any other thick fabrics, this can turn into a two handed job. Drawing it is nice, though, owing to the lack of any grip greebles on the back surface of the clip. It stays on by sheer spring tension, of which it has a more than adequate supply. Grabbing it in the way you're naturally inclined by pinching through the ring with your thumb and index finger also automatically puts it in position to open it into that reverse grip.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Your new favorite axe, a toy in the attic?

Or all in all, is it just another knife on the wall?

The Provoke EDC is a great option if you have the cash to burn and want to be able to rock a kinematic folder while wasting neither your money nor patience on a nasty horrible knockoff, and would also prefer a knife that doesn't make you look like the Park Street Slasher whenever you bust it out. It even comes in two colorways, this blue anodized variant as well as a black one. But the black one has a coated blade, so we know which one the correct choice is.

^Isn't^ ^this...^

As is tradition I am going to give you a bit of a story here. While I may not be as eloquent as Dual hopefully I can get half the charm.

My old man is an engineer coming up on the end of his career and has lived working with CAD of some flavor for the majority of it. This past Christmas to his fatherly discontent the kids got him a Bambu Labs PS1. Even with is himing and hawing about it being too expensive and he was not ready to use it, it got the ball rolling. Come the tail end of February he has a standing desk, dual monitor, a Dell refurb with a Nvidia fancy ECC GPU that I told him is overkill....yet he got bit by the bug which I am greatful for. Warms my heart to see the old enginerd excited.

Now, time for the part that is actually pertinent to this sub. He has been having fun learning his new software and tools so I asked him to print me some new scales for my Penquin as I was not a fan of the tan ones I ordered. I am a big fisherman so he learned how to create textures and what you see is an attempt at fish scales. It took a bit of manual filing in some areas as he is a perfectionist and wants the tightest tolerances. Then the small buttons that actuate the sliding lock(press fit) are too tight of tolerances for the PS1 so I might try another solution there or even leave it as is.

If anyone is interested I am sure he would be tickled pink that others are using his design so let me know and I will pass them over. Just be ready to do some minor filling, although I will give him notes so he can update the files, fingers crossed yours will fit even better.

As a last note, I have some DCM I was planning on attempting some vapor smoothing on PLA with. I have a degree where I took plenty of chemistry and slung around my fair share of nasty solvents in labs so I will take the correct precautions so my progeny have the correct amount of digits. But if anyone has experience here I would take any insight as I tested on some BambuLabs silky PLA and the results were ok but not stellar.

The main image is my attempt as a sexy photo, but here are a couple more simple ones.

Life is full of things that are special, but cruel reality ensures that you won't realize it at the time. Like the fireflies dancing over the meadow at dusk leaving their trails of curves and loops in the air that last a just a second or two each, thousands of them, glimmers that form a whole that can only truly exist in memory.

Long summer days spent with friends, when the world was still full of wonders and anything might still have been possible. New adventures, new experiences, new horizons to explore. And, perhaps, a new knife in your pocket. You can never go back to that time, and to someone without the right kind of mind you may never be able to explain it. That's how it works; some things are only clear afterwards, when any curious thing may take you right back to that fond memory.

Youth is wasted on the young.

It's been easily twenty years since I last bought a Benchmade balisong knife. It's been twenty two, I think, since I bought my first. I didn't note the date. You don't think of that at the time, because you won't realize that it's one of those moments.

It was my Model 32, which was not my first balisong and truth be told it wasn't my first Benchmade either, but it was my first balisong that was actually any good. Truly, a revelation after a whole procession of ghastly flea market rattletraps. It immediately became my daily companion for many years, and to this day is a treasured old friend living in prominent position in my knife rack. It's the knife I wore to my wedding, and one of the very few in my collection of a couple of hundred to meaningfully appreciate in value since I bought it.

I pedaled my bicycle to the local gun store to pay $199 for it, an incredible amount of money hard earned from my dinky part-time job to pay for a mere pocketknife, but being pleased as pie the whole time to finally be 100% of the unimpeachable legal age to do so and thus there's wasn't a damn thing anyone could do to stop me. Maybe in some small way I already knew this was one of those pivotal moments, the otherwise unforeseeable kind that firmly sets somebody on one of life's inevitable paths.

I've bought a couple of Benchmade balis since. A Model 53. A Mayhem. Oodles of clones of the 42 of various stripes from appealing to awful, some of which I may some day write about here. But never again have I quite managed to recapture that magic of the first time. It's said that sort of thing is actually impossible.

But we can damn well give it a good try.

When I was given an opportunity recently to pick up a Model 82 "Laro" in person new in the box for slightly less than MSRP and well below the current going rate, I might have felt that little spark, that lift, the wind beneath my wings one more time. I knew I couldn't pass it up.

The thing about angels, you see, is that most people only get one.

If you can get your hands on an 82 — a prospect that is as usual getting increasingly unlikely, although some of the lesser known retailers purport to still have a couple — you will pay the thick end of $650 for it. With that type of price tag, the Model 82 absolutely must be something special, because otherwise its entire existence would be moot. This immediately delineates the world into two types of people: those who get it, and those who don't.

In order to explain, let's talk about Harley Davidson for a moment.

Like them or hate them, the one inalienable truth about a Harley is that it is the one motorcycle in the world that anyone, even non-motorcycle people, can name. Harley Davidson did not invent the motorcycle. They did not, if we are going to be completely truthful, even meaningfully innovate or iterate on motorcycles as a whole in a mechanical sense. There are manufacturers in the world who make motorcycles that are cheaper, motorcycles that are faster, motorcycles that are more reliable, motorcycles that drip less oil in your driveway, and in fact in some cases all of the above. But none of that is the point.

What Harley Davidson has is the quintessential essence of the motorcycle. The shape, the outline, rumble in the seat, the wind all around you, the chrome flashing in the noonday sun, the zeitgeist and indeed the very image of the motorcycle is Harley's stock and trade. Tires, engines, handlebars, spark plugs, tanks, and paint; All of those are mere details afterwards.

When you sit on a Harley, regardless of all else, there is the ineffable sense of occasion. Nothing else is a motorcycle, only this. It is James Dean and Hunter Thompson and Evel Knievel and Danny Trejo and even Clark Gable, and nothing can change that. Not management missteps, not the coddling with kid gloves by the Reagan administration, not even being owned by a bowling pin company; love them or hate them, it's unlikely anything is going to diminish the legacy of Harley Davidson any time soon.

And so it is, winding our way circuitously back topic, with Benchmade and as it follows the Model 82.

Benchmade certainly didn't invent the balisong knife — far from it. But a balisong knife is literally where Benchmade began, a fact which they celebrate to this day on the 82's box and indeed even its blade with their now iconic bali-song logo. With it comes that same sense of occasion, a certain gravitas that's impossible to quantify but somehow doesn't come with a balisong from any other maker.

But before you accuse me of being the brochure for this thing, let it not be said that I haven't been hard on the big B many times myself in the past. Often have I decried the ludicrous list prices on their mainstream models while they stolidly cling to an apparently static lineup while their competitors in many regards cruise right past. Finally being in a position to see things from the other side of the counter myself, so to speak, now I understand. It's expensive because what goes into it is expensive and getting moreso all the time, especially if you're still going to make it in America. So I get it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

But some part of that is by the opposite side of the same token something that makes the Model 82, yes, that little bit special. Objectively, perhaps, there is no call in the world just yet for a $650 general purpose pocketknife. But if we were going to be purely objective all the time there would be no call whatsoever for any high end knives at all.

The 82's drop pointed, stylized, and ventilated blade is made from Magnacut. That's Larin Thomas' home grown supersteel and the current state of the art and darling of high end knife steels.

This marks another first for me as well as it's my first Magnacut knife.

That is to say my first that's actually made from Magnacut, and not just one that says it is. (That "CLA" there is, I'm very sorry to report, fake as a snake. If the lack of a choil didn't tip you off already. It's mechanically impeccable and very interesting, but still fake. Perhaps we'll discuss it later.)

I have no experience with Magnacut other than what I read. It's supposed to be the all-singing, all-dancing, does-everything perfectly balanced wunderstooff of, if not the future, certainly this very minute. I'm sure I'll find out about all that at least a little bit. But probably only a little, because it's unlikely I'll use this heavily.

But does it keeeeeel?

Probably. The Model 82 scores respectably for a factory edge out of the box. It's an unfair comparison as usual, because the Bugout I use as my control has had its edge fanatically hand-polished by yours truly and then used for no purpose whatsoever other than producing these chart figures. The Model 82 has a tumbled stonewashed finish on its blade surface which no doubt introduces a tiny amount of drag, and at 0.104" or 2.64mm in cross section it's also 20% thicker than the Bugout's blade. All of these will negatively impact it on my dinkum paper cutting test by its very nature.

For whatever it's worth I used it to open a pack of Gummi Bears last night and it went through the plastic packaging like it wasn't even there.

The 82 is a compact number for a balisong, measuring up at 4-3/4" (120.65mm) closed and a whisker under 8-1/4" (209.55mm) open. The blade is 3-5/8" long (92.08mm) from the tips of the handles, but the usable edge starts before a large choil and is about 3-5/16" (84.14mm).

The styling is of course reminiscent of the Model 87 and/or the 85, or perhaps vise-versa, although the 82 is much closer to EDC sized. It has the same channel milled solid billet titanium handles, glaive headed screws, and even the same pattern of slots and holes milled in for lightening. It's 125.3 grams or 4.42 ounces. With that plus the size, in reality maybe the more obvious comparison is my beloved Model 32 instead.

The 82 would be eminently EDC capable except I'll bet you wouldn't actually do it, you chicken. It also lacks a pocket clip, although in its stead you get what is, for lack of a better description, a holster. You may have spotted it nestled in the box above.

It's either made from Kydex or something moulded very much to look like Kydex. I can't tell if it's an injection moulding or simply pressed with some manner of hideously complicated jig. It's certainly not pressed around your individual knife, as it has distinct clearance and relief areas built into it to facilitate a clean draw without, presumably, scratching up the knife.

It's got a clip on the back picked out with the Benchmade butterfly logo, and which is obviously intended for a belt and is not a pocket clip per se. It's hooked over on the end and very highly sprung. There's a grab tab on the tip of it but flexing it to snap onto your belt while you're already wearing it is kind of a three handed job. Threading your belt through it is a better bet. The clip seems extremely robust and is just wide enough to clear a 2" pistol belt and even has adjustable retention, which is the sort of thing that'll surely get any old whacker to pitch his tent.

The clip is folded over the top of the holster and screwed in through the back, which seems like it ought to be a tailor made recipe for scraping and damaging the finish on the handles.

...Except there are a pair of wings formed into the edges of the holster that space it out so it doesn't touch. You have to be very ham-fisted indeed to shove the 82 into its holster such that it runs the risk of getting scratched.

Which is just as well, because it is an absolute thing of beauty.

The Torx and glaive headed hardware create a cohesive style throughout the entire ensemble. It's a kicker pin design, so there are no Zen pins to be found in the handles here. But the pins and even the latch head carry the theme.

Squeeze the handles and the latch springs open of its own accord. Spring is the wrong word, though. This puppy is actually magnetic, with a trio of opposed doughnut shaped magnets tucked under the screw heads and on the shank of the latch. When the handles are squeezed far enough for the crosspin in the latch to clear its keyhole shaped home, it's silently pushed out by magnetic repulsion and kept there proud of the handles and blade so it can't clash.

The action is faultless. The 82 is a ball bearing pivoter and it's also extremely rigid. There's nary a wiggle, no tap, not a rattle to be found anywhere within it. It's quiet, too, producing only a single understated click with each rebound. It is the polite, distinguished cough of the professional butler, nothing more. Just as you say, sir. Very good, sir.

Originally I was going to take this apart to show you, but I found that the screws were highly threadlockered and mine came from the factory in a perfect state of tune. The screw heads are matted just like the handles, and pristine. Do I really want to sully all of that? I don't think I do.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I went out to breakfast with my wife the other day and the bill came to just over $50. It wasn't anything fancy, just diner fare with a menu modification or two. Maybe that puts it all into perspective, these days.

Maybe we really are all headed to hell in a handbasket. Maybe it really was better back when and it's not just that we remember it so. Cherish the special moments as we find them, then, and recognize them for what they are. They'll never come around quite the same way again.

So maybe six hundred bucks is a bargain after all. Mere nothing, for the opportunity to hold perfection.

This is another ad. Since the last time I mentioned this sort of thing it worked so well that you guys cleaned me out completely, let me see if that works again.

So you remember how I said I wasn't going to let this gig turn into another web development project?

It turned into another web development project.

I just pushed out an update to my website. In light of the debacle last time, vis-a-vis more people buying knives than knives I've got, I finally decided it's time to get off my duff and do the right thing. I mean, if I have to. I guess.

So now I'm a Real Boy. No more dinkum prefabricated credit card form. Inventory tracking, an actual shopping cart system, checkout, it's got the works. I could rattle on about all the clever things I did to make it work because I'm a colossal nerd and also apparently some kind of special purpose purist who probably belongs in a padded cell rather than anywhere near, say, power tools. For instance, it uses absolutely no Javascript whatsoever. None. Could I? Yes, absolutely. I know Javascript. Did I feel like using it? No. I abused the shit out of the quirks and foibles of CSS instead. And so on, and so forth. I could go on all day about if you let me.

Now if you want to buy more than one thing, you can do that. And it won't let you buy more than what's available, to avoid embarrassment on my part and having to send apologetic emails to people with my sombrero gripped pensively in front of me by the brim and all. By the way, for the people in said camp: The steel for your knives arrived today, which was sooner than expected. I'll be getting back into production in a little bit and then I can actually send you the stuff I owe you. You know, now that I'm done spending two days fighting with integrating with my credit card peoples' system with their stupid janky incomplete documentation which is exactly the pain in the ass I predicted it would be which is why I didn't want to do it in the first place.

Ahem.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. I also have two fancy new colorways for the Adélie for you. Okay, they're not that fancy, but I still think they look cool. A royal-ish purple and azure blue.

And. And, and, and.

You saw the headline image: I have boxes for them now. Just like everything else I do the boxes are completely bespoke and I make them myself.

Yes, I had a hoot designing these. Some folks who ordered recently have already received earlier revisions but I've been keeping mum about it up until now.

Here's a quick off-the-cuff snap of one of the prototypes. I assemble them with the glue stick that came with my 3D printer. No, I'm serious. Up until now I've categorically failed to find a use for it, so I'm just chuffed to pieces about that as well. According to my calculations at the rate I'm using this thing up I predict that in three years I will have to buy a second glue stick. Maybe I'll upgrade my printer before then and I'll get another one for free. Hmm.

If we're honest this is in no small part due to the tiny seedlings of regret that are starting to sprout from my decision to provide my Rockhoppers in bespoke 3D printed cases. These are neat as hell and I love them to bits but each one is a print job that's just a shade under two hours and that's really kind of the pits. The Rockhopper is an agonizingly complex multipart printing and assembly operation and I'm mostly bothering to crank them out at all because I love you guys (and for some reason they sell). New colorways for those are coming soon, also. I just... uh... have to print more boxes, which is my bottleneck. And do the photography.

This is turning into a second job.

I have two new real steel knife designs in the works also which will be along at some point. I promise I'll have shiny new review content in the upcoming days, also. I may have spent some more money. You'll see.

Dork, out.

These are now sold out! Thank you to everyone!

Original text commences:

I've been staring at an empty text box for the last couple of minutes now, wondering how I'm going to start this.

Guys, I kind of messed up.

The other day I set about to make some knives, and in particular I wanted to try a slightly smaller rendition of my previously showcased Emperor using thinner stock and resulting in a marginally lighter weight final product. That seemed like a solid plan. In the hypothetical hierarchy of flightless waddly birds, the king penguin is one notch down in size from the emperor, so I called this one the King... S.

S for slim. Don't worry; I'll probably make a couple of fat ones later.

Then I had the brilliant idea to try the same radiused Scandi grind technique as I used to make the last batch of Macaronis, of which there is just one out of four left in stock (hint, hint).

Normal people, professional people, they do this by spending a bunch of dough on a nice solid tilt table for their grinder. I haven't got one of those. It will probably not surprise you to learn that the beveling jig I used for the Maraconi was one that I developed and 3D printed. That's fine when your bevel angle is 14° instead of 5° and your work piece is only three inches long instead of ten. I have to say, though, it very nearly worked. But then I encountered rigidity problems. At the polishing phase my platen started to dish. Then my tool rest shook itself loose and wandered out of square without me noticing. And the thing about metal, see, is that once you grind it off you can't put it back.

In short, I wasted 140 bucks worth of steel producing, in assembly line fashion, three ugly knives. Oh, for sure the third one wound up a bit less ugly than the first one as I tried everything I could think of short of actually purchasing the correct equipment to rescue myself from my mistakes. But I still didn't quite succeed. One of them I gouged slightly. The other two have noticeable surface imperfections.

Oh well. Is the journey and not the destination, right?

The Japanese have this thing they call "wabi-sabi." It's a zen kind of philosophy of appreciating things for their flaws. My own perfectionism drives me towards the goal of wanting to produce a hand made knife that's as visually perfect and flawless as a commercially machine made one. Which is, once you get right down to it, silly. I can't find the quote right now but I'm positive it was Terry Pratchett who once wrote that the makers of, for instance, handmade souvenir knick-knacks no matter how skilled downright have to leave the occasional lumps and fingerprints in them or otherwise nobody would believe that they're hand made. If anybody wanted a geometrically perfect knife I'm sure they could go and buy one from Benchmade or Spyderco or Esse or hell, even the Chinese.

No, this absolutely isn't a bunch of sour grapes. Perish the thought.

The King is a couple of inches shorter than an Emperor at about 10-5/8" long and half the thickness at 1/8". It's still D2 that's tempered for toughness, and I cunningly recycled the exact same handle design so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. Learn to expect a lot of that sort of thing in the future. There are the same hollow handle bolts that accept cordage and a Kydex sheath for each.

I also printed up a couple of different colors for the handles. I did super thin 0.1mm layers this time which actually make them look and feel really nice. It's the only part of this entire debacle I'm really happy about.

The red one I've already promised to a friend (it's also the ugliest of the bunch and he won't care), but the orange and the green one are up for grabs. If you really want a particular color I could also just print it for you. Heck, I have a whole new spool of blue lying around I haven't even opened yet.

I thought long and hard about this, and ultimately concluded that I can't sell these for anything approaching my full price. Instead, I'd be happy to break even on materials. So until I manage to get rid of them I have these on my website right now at the fire-sale price of $75 a piece, shipped.

Yes, I just made you read this whole thing and it turns out it's an ad. I'm sneaky like that.

So do me a favor, will you? Help me get rid of these things.

Transient, the knife

Like cherry blossoms in spring

Vanished from the Earth

I'm back. Did you miss me?

I figure I ought to finally show my face around here now since other people are finally starting to post as well. I've been so quiet lately because I've been focusing on other things. Making knives rather than buying them, for a start. Possibly sacrilege, I know. Don't worry, I have several ill-advised recent purchases lined up to write about.

For instance, this. Which I actually bought on a lark a quite while back with the intention of writing about it and never did.

This is the "Japan Design Samurai Style OTF Knife Outdoor Pocket Knives D2 Blade Zinc Aluminum Handle Utility Camping Portable EDC Tools," apparently inherently plural. I paid a whole $27.87 for this, which is not exactly dirt cheap as far as commodity Chinese cutlery goes but as it turns out you get a pretty good deal for your money with this if it's the kind of thing you're after. Well, you did; I dithered too long in putting pen to paper over this, because in the meantime it's apparently disappeared from the Internet completely as these things tend to do.

All of the above doesn't exactly roll off of the tongue, either. Portable EDC tools, indeed. So I'm going to call it Kibagami Genjuro's Toothpick instead.

It's not difficult to spot the kind of vibe this thing is going for. I, I, I am your tiny samurai; not quite a sword but a switchblade little guy.

If nothing else the Toothpick's ornamentation is rather a master class in minimalism. The pattern of diamonds and lines is actually much simpler than it appears at first glance, but it's just enough to let your imagination do all the heavy lifting required to see it as representing the ito wrapping on a katana's handle. It's clearly just a casting, as the Toothpick's handle is made of zinc or some similar potmetal alloy thereof (the blurb claims both aluminum and zinc, which I suppose could be a plausible alloy) but it's a nice one with clean, defined details and nothing in the way of blemishes visible to the naked eye. It affords a decent grip and feels nice in the hand, too, which is surprising.

It also allows me to present this gratuitous bit of showing off by way of illustration:

Look, if you nerds were laboring under the impression that I am not a truly dyed in the wool weaboo, I don't know what show you think you've been watching all this time.

While we're capitalizing on opportunities, I'll take another one to show you that Kigabami-san's knife here is in fact not the smallest katana adjacent thing I own. That'd be this:

Which I've had for decades and I'm certain is meant to be a letter opener. I have no idea where it came from, but I used it to equip this guy...

...Who resides on my credenza and I am surely never going to have a more appropriate moment to show off ever again. (Yes, his obi is made out of black hockey tape. Truly I have brought dishonor to my ancestors. I'll do something about that some day, but not today. If you can name the origin of the glyph on the scabbard, by the way, I'll give you a gold star. Go on, you'll never guess.)

Genjuro's Toothpick is indeed an out-the-front switchblade, which is far from an unknown commodity coming from the Chinese. Typically, however, you see this sort of thing ruthlessly knocking off some Microtech or Benchmade model or another, complete with counterfeit markings and all. I own a fair few of those, but the Toothpick drew my eye because as far as I can tell it's a bespoke-ish design that clearly benefits from the experience gained from cranking out all those clones — the glass breaker and clip assembly on the end definitely riffing off of Microtech's groove, for instance — while nevertheless doing its own thing.

Historically this has not been a recipe for success. The Toothpick, however, manages to be a breath of fresh air in that regard. For what it's worth it's also quite possibly the single most spring loaded in/out compact switchblade ever manufactured by the hand of Man, for reasons which we'll explore later. All in all, I rather like it.

You'll get no identification help from the packaging. This comes in a plain black box with no maker's mark, model, or UPC. It is apparently impossible for the Chinese to manufacture an out-the-front switchblade without also pathologically including a webbing buckled nylon pouch, a further clue that this is probably being stamped out at a factory that normally makes counterfeit Microtechs. This is despite the Toothpick self-evidently coming with a perfectly serviceable pocket clip which renders the stupid nylon pouch redundant.

Including the aforementioned glass breaker, the Toothpick is precisely 5" or 127mm long. It's about 8-3/8" (212.7mm) open with a 3-3/8" (87.7mm) blade. Nearly all of that is usable save for a small choil at the bottom. It's not terribly thick, just as these things usually go, at 0.086" or 2.19mm. And it is, of course, distinctly upswept with a rounded point. It hasn't got a kisaki although it would be totally rad if it did. It has got a fuller or, if you must, a blood groove in it, though. Which actually turns out not to be as pointless as you'd think in this case. It purports to be made of D2 which may or may not actually be the case.

It's not very broad, though: Not including the toggle sticking out the handle body is a slim 0.771" across or 19.58mm. It's 0.441" or 11.21mm thick, again not including the clip or any other protrusions. The blade itself is 0.478" / 12.14mm wide for basically all of its length, save for up around the point.

The whole shebang is a hefty for its size 4.37 ounces or if you prefer, 123.9 grams. That's because it possesses the one attribute you should absolutely strive for if you insist on buying a cheap Chinese out-the-front automatic: For all that is holy, do not get one that's made out of plastic. That's because the inevitable end of all of those is to crack at the muzzle, whereupon you have an ineffective ballistic knife of the sort that only works once.

Even the Toothpick's toggle is cast, and that's a good thing for squeezing as much durability as possible out of the little thing. The clip and glass breaker are steel.

By the way, both it and the clip complete with its tiny lanyard hole in the tail are definitely showing some, ah, let's call it inspiration from Microtech.

This thing has an aesthetic to uphold, vis-a-vis coming over all katanaesque. So its overall banana quotient is rather high, with its curved blade neatly firing out along a curved track into a similarly curved handle. I have no doubt that if you got your hands on about twenty of these and laid them all out lined up tip to tail they'd add up to form a perfect circle.

Somehow for the cheap bauble that it is, though, it's remarkably solid. Getting a traditional out-the-front not to have any wiggle in its blade is difficult to nigh on impossible, and for the big brands also typically a very expensive feat to accomplish. The Toothpick's blade base is very square and at least generously sized, and slots in as nicely as can be expected with the throat on the end of the handle given the materials being used and the fact that there probably isn't much if any actual precision machine work done anywhere in here. It has a small and noticeable amount of rattle left-to-right, but basically zero fore and aft along the axis of the edge. You've got to shake it very hard indeed to get it to make any noise when the blade is out. When it's closed it doesn't rattle at all. There also seems to be enough material at the business end that it's likely to be a very long time before any breakages might occur that'll find your blade rocketing off into the sunset never to be seen again.

You can, or at least could, get this is black, green, or tan. I actually bought two, a black one and this green one. The black one I'll keep sealed in its box for now in the delusional hope that it may accrue in value or, more pragmatically, in case I need to loot it for parts in the future to keep this one going. If I'd have known I would have bought a tan one as well and completed the set while I had the chance. Oh well.

I'm astonished at how well this thing is put together. It appears nobody at the factory used a lug wrench to drive any of the screws, either; mine came apart without fuss. Putting it back together, of course, is always a different story with these things.

The glass breaker unscrews easily enough by way of sticking any suitable object through its holes. This reveals that the clip is reversible, since its mounting hole is centered on the tail of the knife and there's nothing stopping you from sticking it back on facing the other way. It's also not curved, unlike basically every other component of this knife. So it won't even look wrong if you do.

A couple of things stand out to me about the Toothpick's construction which lead me to believe that, against all rationality and expectation, I made the right call in picking this particular model out of the metaphorical hat. I've owned and handled any number of cheapo Chinese OTFs over the years that were so ghastly it'd still be a bad deal if somebody paid you to take them away. The Toothpick isn't one of those.

The handle body is either a hideously complex casting operation I can't begin to fathom the mechanics of, or it's got a second machining step in its production. It's got overhangs, it's got pockets, it's got the works. The gate latches are sprung with their tiny hair-thin springs as usual but they're captive in their places and don't go pinging off under the furniture the instant you open the thing which I think is the nicest present a cheap Chinese OTF has ever given me.

It also turns out the silly blood groove in the blade isn't pointless after all. It actually serves as a guide which rides on a pair of rails inside the handle which keeps the edge from ever striking the inside of the body. Even if you shake the thing as hard as you can when the blade is retracted you can't get it touch. This prevents the Toothpick from being self-dulling, which sounds like a low bar to clear but you might really be amazed.

One other unusual wrinkle I noticed is that the mainspring is under a ridiculous amount of tension all the time, even when the blade is at rest. So much so that it's a three handed job to keep it in place before you can slap the cover back on it before one or both ends leap off of their own accord, which must provide no end of merriment to the urchins who have to assemble these in the factory. That probably accounts for the vicious amount of force the blade rockets out with every time you flick the switch. The actuation force required is likewise rather absurd. You can consider this tacitly childproof, as youngsters with small hands will probably be unable to muster enough strength to set it off without a couple of years of bushido training first. Needless to say there's no safety interlock, either, but it's not like that'd actually be necessary.

The glass breaker terminates in a shiny ball bearing which is theoretically hardened and pressed into place. Whenever a shiny spherical object like this is present it is obligatory that a gratuitous high magnification photo of it must be produced. Don't blame me; I don't make the rules.

Also, don't expect the edge on this thing to be true from the factory and you won't be disappointed. It's also not terribly sharp out of the box, for instance utterly failing to complete my usual Post-It note test. I suggest that a contemplative evening spent in the moonlit bamboo grove with your water stones will be in order before you put this into service.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I await with interest the first comment insisting that, acktshully, I should have displayed this with the edge up rather than the edge down in all of these photos in order to be truly authentic and correct.

Well, this thing is about as authentic as a Disneyland animatronic, and it doesn't balance very well on its spine, anyhow. But, hands up everyone who's surreptitiously flipped all the fake swords in the daishō behind the counter at your local sushi joint the right way up? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Well, I had a whole post written up. Bunch of photos. Talked about YouTuber's designing knives and then PieFed.World just decided "oh here's an error, how about you lose all that work"

So, I'm not re-writting all of it. Here's the summary:

This is a great knife. Blade is really thin. Crossbar lock is very well tuned. The burlap micarta is very much burlap micarta. I've used it for food prep, made fatwood shavings, cut a bunch of paracord, and reduced boxes to confetti. It's been very solid. It displaced my previous long term EDC (the CJRB Maximal) for the time being but honestly both of these knives are excellent. You cannot go wrong with either.

If the 2.88" blade is too small for you, there's a newly released "Over Yonder" with a 3.35" blade that might be to your liking. Same blade thinness, just longer.

Here's a bunch of photos, including some comparisons to the Maximal.

I got this knife as a gift several years ago, I don't really use it a whole lot but I do like to take it camping and such. However, on a camping trip a year or so ago, it got stuck open.

There is some little wire loop looking thing that seems to pop out of wherever it's supposed to be and blocks the thumb unlocker from working. I can take a tiny screwdriver or Allen wrench and poke around in there and pop the thing back into place, and then it works and closes just fine. And it'll be fine for a few times, opens and closes correctly, but after a handful of times that piece inevitably pops back out again and locks it open.

I've tried to use a tiny torx bit to remove the sides to see if I can figure out what's going on, but the screws just spin. The big screw at the hinge unscrews as expected but all the little ones all act like they're stripped.

What else can I do? Is there some trick to removing the sides? Any help would be appreciated.

Here's what it looks like opened correctly with the little piece still wherever it's supposed to be:

And when the piece pops out and gets stuck:

Somewhat useful red circle if you couldn't see the problem:

Crossposted from https://slrpnk.net/post/38255937

It is a Kansept Model 6 Left-Handed with liner lock.

For years I have dealt with a right-handed, or "ambidextrous" pocket knife. Like many of you, struggled with and eventually got used to things made for righties, but marketed as "works in either hand" but really is garbage.

The blade shape is not my first choice, and I would rather a thumb knob. But I have always liked liner locks, and anything that met all of my check boxes was over $500. This was $170 from knife center.

It just arrived, so I have not used it much yet.

Made a notch in the handle to make opening the blade easier, burned the handle, and gave the blade an artificial patina with lemon juice. It's an old knife I don't use much - just keep it in my bike backpack - but it's great for carving and food prep thanks to the thin blade.

The image is my current EDC, it is close to 30 years old. I cannot remember where or when I first got it. I do like the knife, but it is 100% right-handed. The image above shows how far I can open it one-handed before I have to place my thumb on the blade to finish opening it.

I am looking for a knife that is 100% left-handed, not ambidextrous. Those knives always have some part, typically the blade lock, that most be made for either left or right and right always wins.

I would like something with the same kind of blade, minus the serrations. I hate sharpening this thing because of them.

The handle is decently thick, I would like to stick with something like that. I have a Ken onion knife that has a really thin handle and I do not like it.

I would like to keep it under $150, but for the left blade that is negotiable.

I'm generally not a knife whore since I basically carry my Sebenza everyday unless there are reasons not to like camping. I picked this up late this winter when I went looking for something with a reasonable blade length that was also light for the more stretchy lighter weight pants I've been wearing.

This is one of the best knives I've ever purchased and have half a mind to pick up another just in case