Some noodling around, and just a touch of chest-beating, as usual. I put the finishing touches on this last night, which I've dubbed the Pinfeather.

How do we feel about this profile?

This is some kind of mutant hybrid between a small hunter and a paring knife. This is another offcut deal, this time not only the steel (CPM154, if it interests you) but also some leftover bits of walnut that I used for a prior commission which is now in the hands of another denizen of this very board.

Truth be told I'm not entirely happy with the outcome, here, but largely that's due to my own ineptitude in woodworking. Originally the idea was to Corby bolt this together but it turned out my bolts were too long, so I changed horses in the middle of the race to pinning it with some brass rod instead. But that required drilling the old Corbies out, and this explains the small but noticeable mismatch between the diameter of the pin holes and the pins. I backfilled these with epoxy, and likewise with the small gouge taken out of the reverse of the handle.

I'm told that this sort of thing confers charm, and is evidence that the article in question is hand made.

Next time, I think I'll just do a better job.

In light of all of the above, it may surprise you to learn that I had enough steel to make two (2) identical blanks. I haven't hewn the handle for the second one yet. I'm planning on giving the first one away, but I haven't decided on what to do with the second one yet. Perhaps if anyone here is interested, drop me a line and I'll make it available.

Well, it's finally happened. At long last I've devolved or, perhaps, succumbed to making my contribution to the One True Purpose of the Internet.

You know. Cats.

What did you think I was going to suggest?

Verily, the CIVIVI Purr has a certain design philosophy. A multitude of variants are available, although alas none of them fully match the colorways of any of my household's furry tripping hazards. Since you can't have everything, I went with this grey and white number. In addition to the obvious, it doesn't half look like a certain someone, doesn't it? That certainly helped my decision.

Just look at him face. It's got two front kickers for ears, the eyes are a pair of Torx screws, and it's even complete with a tail made of accessory cord. The tail could even be unwound into a lanyard, but it's just so twee as it is that I can't bring myself to do it. And not least of which because then I'd have to learn how to tie it up like that again.

The CIVIVI Purr has precisely two buyers, to wit: Complete and utter dweebs like me, and men (universally men) who are hoping to get their girlfriends, wives, or sundry significant others into knives. Thus I suspect this is aiming to be a "friendly" pocketknife, and in addition to the cutesy aesthetic also offers simplified operation without any locks or latches and a much easier opening action than, say, your garden variety Swiss Army Knife.

It's quite diminutive. By my measure it's basically exactly 4-5/8" long open (117.5mm) and the blade is a mere 1-13/16" (46mm). Its footprint isn't that much bigger than the obligatory Swiss Classic and while it doesn't offer scissors or a nail file, it certainly does offer a lot more knife. The blade is only 0.098" thick or 2.5mm and is flat ground for much of its length. The edge just barely hangs down below the bottom of the handle so you can get all but the tiniest bit of it against a flat surface if you have to. The total weight is a mere yet suspiciously exact 1.5 ounces or 42.4 grams including the lanyard.

Two other things the Purr offers are real-deal scales with at least some modicum of grip texture and concession to ergonomics thanks to the scallops in the edges, and...

...An honest to goodness pocket clip, which is certainly a rarity with this kind of thing. It's even reversible, slotting into a pair of channels on either side of the scales in a very Spyderco-esque fashion with a single central screw.

CIVIVI certainly could have phoned this entire thing in and probably gotten away with it. But they didn't, somehow and this makes me highly suspicious. This kind of cutesy micro-knife is normally supposed to be a mere novelty, the kind of token stocking stuffer that doesn't have to be undertaken seriously because nobody is intended to take it seriously in the first place. There it will languish at the bottom of her stationery drawer for all eternity, except in the case of the Purr it probably shouldn't because it's actually remarkably competent.

It's even made of a real steel. Nitro-V is not too far away from 14C28N in the grand scheme of things and possesses far more toughness than this tiny little thing has any business needing. In any world where anybody more cynical than CIVIVI made this thing it'd surely be hewn out of some low-rent junk like 3cr or 420A or something. It's positively baffling, but I'm not complaining.

It's a slip joint folder. You won't find a back lock or a liner lock, because there isn't a lock at all. It does click positively into either of its positions with a pair of ball detents, though. Opening and closing it ought to be perfectly intuitive for just about anybody, and the lack of a liner lock removes the evergreen temptation to have your fingers between the blade and the handle while you struggle with closing it, neatly obviating that whole chestnut.

This also has the side effect of leaving the Purr with absolutely zero tactical appeal. I suggest that's the entire point, really.

The blade's got this vaguely triangular drop pointed profile with jimping all up and down the back of it. It's got a nice satiny finish and is deceptively sharp out of the box.

Opening it feels slick, and you can use either of the ears to do so. I prefer the rearward one, personally. The detents are pretty strong but once you overcome them the blade flies open with a satisfying click. The only complaint I really have is that given that the thing is completely outwardly symmetrical it's not exactly intuitive to figure out which side you ought to open it from. You can tell if you look at it hard but there's not much indicator if you're going by feel. Your best bet is to remember which way it goes relative to the clip.

The Purr also comes with a ludicrous array of feelies. You get a hugely superfluous fleece lined zipper pouch that's about nine times larger than it needs to be, several bits of promotional bumf, a microfiber cleaning cloth, and I was pleased to discover that the knife shaped card in there is actually a sticker.

I know there are a select two or three of you, and you know who you are, who have been perched on the edge of your computer chairs for the last five minutes wondering when I'm finally going to get around to revealing just how the Purr works mechanically. Because charming though they may be, it's obvious to anyone paying attention that those neither of those cat's-eye screws could possibly be where the pivot is.

And you're right, they aren't.

Popping the scales off requires nothing more than undoing those two plus the tail screw on whichever side, optionally dropping the clip off in the process as well. They're all T8 Torx heads. The actual pivot screw is concealed beneath, right in the center.

This reveals the detent action, which obviously isn't the traditional slip joint arrangement because the Purr hasn't got any kind of backspacer. You'll also notice that the detent balls are ceramic. Swanky.

What's also ceramic are the Purr's tiny ball bearings, which are a luxury that have absolutely no business being in here. And yet, here they are anyway. This goes some way towards explaining the pivot action. I'm down for it.

It turns out there's a detent in both sides of the liners. The endstop is provided by a captive pin which is hidden in a channel in the blade.

It is at this juncture I must regretfully advise you that the above spread of parts is minus the Purr's swanky machined tail spacer, into which the clip is screwed. This is because I completely forgot to transfer it from my parts tray to the photo booth.

By way of apology please accept this macro shot of the same, which I took upon discovery of my blunder when reassembling the knife. It is with a heavy heart that I tell you I could not, alas, be bothered to take it all apart again just to rearrange that photo.

Beets dubs, the inner faces of the scales also make a face at you. It's either very surprised, or possibly a Sniffit.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Among the Purr's pack-ins you also get what would normally be the perfunctory instructions leaflet that always comes with this sort of thing. Don't use this as a screwdriver, don't use it to pry the lid off of a coffin, don't bury it in your front yard or stick it in your dishwasher or drop it in the ocean. You know how it is.

Well, no. I submit to you that in fact CIVIVI know exactly how it is. I have never in all my years seen a mere piece of instructional literature hit the nail on the head so square.

This is threatening to launch me on my usual rant about knives and their role in society, one that I'm sure I've inflicted upon all of you in this very space many times in the past. I would do so while swirling the brandy around in my glass and gesticulating pointedly with my pipe now and again, if I had either a brandy glass or a pipe.

The rarely spoken out loud but pervasive notion that you must be kind of a nut if you carry a knife on a daily basis is stupid. And anyone who thinks that way is stupid, too. You can tell them I said so.

Everyone should have a knife. It doesn't have to be some kind of Tacticool Serrated Taliban Skewer XRZ-9000. It really doesn't — I think the Purr proves this perfectly. It's time we as a society were less down on mankind's second oldest tool. Cut the little knife a break. There is absolutely no need to freak out if someone shows up with a sub 2" cat shaped pocketknife at the office as if they'd just unlatched their briefcase over the conference room table and out thudded nine pounds of enriched plutonium.

Relax. It'll be okay, trust me.

In fact, in every social circle I've traveled in it's always amused me how the cycle so quickly and reliably progresses from, "I can't believe you carry that thing around with you, how could you possibly need that?" To, "Do you have your knife on you today?" And inevitably, "Hey, can I borrow your knife for a sec?"

The ideal end to that trail of conversation is, of course, "So, you're a knife guy. What first knife do you think I should buy?"

Right now at this exact second, it feels like this one might be the right answer.

And yes, I made this, and it works.

And depending on how long I let this drag on, it might even wind up becoming a Throwback Thursday in some time zones.

Here's the Dajo Survivor, the OG version, my example of which is certainly old enough to vote and is one of the quintessential sort of early hipster backpacker's knives, or at least one of the first ones I became aware of. I bought this from Eastern Mountain Sports back in the day, which ought to clue you in right there. They had like six knives in the entire store, two of which were Leathermen and three of which were Swiss Army models, and the last one was this.

Dajo are, surprisingly, apparently still around, hawking a moderate selection of what appear to largely be white label OEM sorts of outdoor goods. You just know you're bound to be in for a good time when you score a blade made from a company one of whom's major top level product categories is apparently just "hats." Their deliberately semi-ironic wiggly sun logo is still the same, and is as ever pushing very hard for the quirky-friendly-environmental Sedona gift shop vibe. It's all aimed squarely at the sort of folks who are never seen wearing anything but one of their "life is good" tee shirts.

They also have a smattering of knives, of course. Some of which seem suspiciously reminiscent of articles we've looked at in the past. I can't prove any relationship between the two, but sure seems mighty coincidental.

How the hell I of all people wound up with the thing is handily explained by it being one of the many, many stepping stones on my years-long snipe hunt trying to find the perfect fixed blade camp knife. This was an odyssey that wound up with me fruitlessly chasing many unicorns until ultimately arriving at the inevitable and obvious conclusion, and we all know how that turned out. I'm sure we'll explore more of it in due course.

The Survivor, whose model designation is not marked on it anywhere, is one of those minimalist chic sort of things with a skeletonized handle and slotted blade, all vying to convince the type of person who walks around all day worrying about their weight budget that they could totally to afford to allocate some of it to this. Even so it's 107.8 grams or 3.8 ounces all by itself — not including the sheath, of which more in a moment — which is well within the ballpark of quite a number of folding knives. Except this, of course, doesn't fold.

It's folding knife sized, too, at 7-3/8" (187.3mm) long with a 3-5/8" (92.07mm) blade at 0.111" (2.81mm) thick, very nearly but not quite all of which is usable because it terminates in a tiny ricasso just forward of the handle. It hasn't got a choil. It could really use one, and would look a lot better with one, but it ain't there. And I'm not about to go grinding one into mine because it would obviously detract from the original collector's value. That, and I can't be bothered.

To make up for it, there's this notch in the spine which Dajo make a great deal of noise about being provided specifically for the purposes of striking your fire starting ferro rod with it.

What ferro rod? Well, I'm glad you asked.

You see, the Survivor is actually a kit^1^, and it's one of those things that seeks to sweeten you on its value proposition by including a bunch of extra trinkets. The original package included a ferro rod, a tiny whistle, and a couple of feet of paracord. It may surprise you to learn that I knew exactly where my Dajo's ferro rod was and I dutifully went and retrieved it for the purposes of this column. And it will likewise not at all surprise you that I haven't got the foggiest idea where the hell its whistle got off to.

That's not much of a loss. As I recall it didn't work very well, and out in the woods you're certain to already have any amount of dinky whistles about your person including the one on your backpack's chest strap, on your compass, on the back of your carbiner, built into your can opener, et cetera, et cetera. I'm furthermore convinced no one in all of human history has ever starved in the woods in any situation where their ability or lack thereof to make a pathetic "fweet" noise has made the slightest difference. Rather, the primary purpose of such articles seems to be to get the fathers of the world to threaten to turn this car right back around, mister and/or miss, if their progeny doesn't quit incessantly screeching the damn thing from the back seat.

I have a real whistle, a big plastic neon orange one strapped to my flotation vest that I use when I'm boating, with which it's highly advisable to stick your fingers in both ears before blowing it. It's probably audible from the moon. The one that came with this ain't it.

The ballistic nylon sheath of course contains two little dedicated pockets, one each for the ferro rod and the whistle. Since I haven't got the latter anymore I cast about for some other suitable survival article to put there, practically any of which you can think of would be more useful.

Ah, there we are. Some field rations will do.

The Survivor's sheath is actually rather ghastly. It's all Velcro panels and fold-overs, and while Dajo claim it can be worn either vertically or horizontally, you can only do the former if you really have an unrealistically thin belt. It really seems to be designed with horizontal scout carry in mind. Among its various shortcomings is the lack of a stiffening insert, instead just having a couple of panels of faux-leather stitched to the inside instead. That means that if you do scout carry it tends to develop a curvature when it's empty that makes reinserting the knife even more of a delicate affair than it already would be. That's because if you keep the knife even moderately sharp it'll be prone to start slicing through the throat of its own sheath, noodle quotient or not, since it's just bare fabric there. Retention is by way of a horrible Velcro strap that wraps around the handle and is forever in the way, as these things tend to go.

The Survivor's handle is highly skeletonized and is comprised of a pair of G-10 slabs riveted over the tang. Dajo claim that this makes it ideal for lashing to a stick with the included cord to produce a makeshift spear, which is an activity that no sane individual has ever done; If you're already holding a stout enough stick and a knife, the obvious and much less stupid answer is to just sharpen your stick into a point. You know, one which you won't care if you drive it full on into a rock because you've failed to account for water's refraction and therefore missed the fish you were aiming for by a full six inches.

The survivor comes from a time when nobody had heard of 7cr steel, really, and we thought all those letters and numbers in it must have made it exotic and therefore obviously good. Right? Little did we know until later that it's basically the Chinese equivalent to 440A, an alloy that was already not terribly exciting in 2006. It's a good fit for something like this, I suppose, being a reasonably tough and extremely corrosion resistant steel suitable for careless use and storage. You could probably jigger a way to keep a tiny sharpening stone in the Survivor's sheath somehow, and if you did it'd give you something to do every night in camp since its edge retention is thoroughly unexciting.

The knife's only other marking is the Dajo logo laser marked on the front.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Job number one for the Survivor is probably to press a Kydex sheath for it. Dajo seem to have come to this conclusion themselves, because that's exactly what they've done with the latest version of it. I'm sure that's very nice and all, but it lacks sufficient kitsch.

For its time this was probably a revelation as compared to what we were already used to with "survival" knives, which were those ubiquitous Rambo lookin' things with their hollow aluminum handles for storing your matches in but nothing resembling a tang. This Dajo, then, must have seemed like a whole new dawn. It's fresh, it's elegant, it's minimal. Svelte, even. And it's all one piece so it probably won't snap right off at the handle. Although, now that we're on the topic you probably shouldn't try too much batoning with it what with that big slot cut in the blade.

But then, absolutely everything interesting there is to say about the Survivor is already immediately apparent as soon as you look at it. It looks interesting, yes. That's all it's got. You hope owning it will make you seem interesting, too, when people see you playing around with it around the campfire.

But it won't. You'll have manage that part by yourself.

So hey, did I ever tell you about that time I bought this knife...?

^1^ I stole this image from Knifecenter, by the way. Apparently they managed not to lose their whistle prior to photography.

Status update:

I was going to do the photography for an actual knife post today. That will have to wait, because my memory card literally disintegrated inside my camera. This has caused me some difficulty.

In the meantime, here are some pictures I took earlier.

You remember how earlier I said I was not best pleased with the steel stock I sourced to make my latest Humboldts out of? Well, in retrospect I decided this did not quite sufficiently represent the brand and that honked me off so much that the other day I dismounted both of them and faced them off, despite not actually owning a surface grinder at the moment. Then I finished them off with a bout on my surface conditioning belts, leaving them with a nice satiny sheen all over.

This whole process what slightly more arduous than I predicted at the outset.

Nevertheless it is done, and I feel significantly better about releasing these into the wild now. It's still not perfect, but it'll do.

A side effect of this was grinding the markings off of these, so I redid them in my newer style while I was at it. The logos are engraved differently now, too (same methodology as my latest batch of Macaronis) and much shinier:

Those of you already following along today might also know that I took it upon myself to develop some custom tooling: Thick steel, ludicrous degree of sharpening, for the express purpose thereof.

Phowar.

This is for my trusty Ruixin RX-009 jig which I still have not worked up the wherewithal to thoroughly review in this space despite threatening to probably four or five times by now. Not least of which because it is not a particularly wieldy object to cleanly photograph. I am now pleased to inform you that not just my small knives shall be shipped to their new owners fantastically sharp, but now all the big ones will too.

More to follow. Dork, out.

If you are of the correct age that I've once again gotten that damn song stuck in your head, I apologize. But only a little bit.

This is an obligatory advertisement reminding you that I've finally gotten off my duff and completed a handful of Macaronis in both Mini and Maxi variants. These proved to be pretty popular last time around, and if you missed it now here's another chance.

Oh, and one more thing: These are now in CPM154 rather than D2. That's right: Stainless!

As is apparently becoming tradition, I posted these and one of them is sold instantly. But I have two Minis and two Maxis left, although I haven't completed the sheath for the second Maxi and thus I haven't bothered to do its photography yet. Its handle is blue. But, if you have a custom color preference please do let me know. I can print a handle in any old color, or at least any old color I happen to have material for: Black, green, blue, orange, red, white, pink, purple, yellow, and teal.

I also have one King-S left in D2, and both Humbolts. Actually, remember when last time I remarked I wasn't best pleased with the surface finish of that batch of steel? This actually honked me off so much that I dismounted both of them, ground them flat, re-polished, and re-engraved them. I haven't updated the photography on that yet, either. I'll get to it.

Anyway, git you one.

I did it by eye. I made it from the outer ring of a bearing (which is why my blade is 5 mm thick). I cut it in half, heated up one half, and forged it into a straight flat bar. Then I cut out the shape using an angle grinder (the teeth on the spine of the blade and fitted the shape for the handle) and sharpened the blade on a bench grinder. I made the holes in the blade using a drill press.

My Case Mini Trapper, that's who!

Afternoon snack while kayak camping on Snowbank lake, Boundary Waters, Minnesota, USA

Here we go. Surely, you say, I've finally lost the plot. When somebody says "pocketknife," hell, when you look up pocketknife in the dictionary, the image you get is pretty much exactly this. How, in the name of all of ye gods, could the highly memorably named Mil-Tec M2000 possibly be all that weird?

Obviously, this is the other knife I picked up at my foray to the military surplus store as I recounted to you last week. A second glance reveals that this is new "military styled" manufacture and not genuine surplus, but it was certainly cheap enough and its deceptively dark OD coloration (which is such that it looks black under poor light) was beckoning in my direction. So I added it to the pile.

As it happens an all black version is also available, but that variant also comes with black coated blades and hardware and we all know my opinion on that kind of thing. As the owner of a wide and ever-expanding array of exciting metalworking apparatuses, I am of course eminently capable of repolishing a bare steel blade should the need ever arise. Painted ones, however, are considerably more annoying.

But trying to identify just what I was holding simply by peering at it wasn't getting me anywhere. The "Mil-Tec(r)" marking on the heel of the main blade is the only one on it, and it notably lacks any type of issue number, serial, or item designation. And it's just laser marked rather than engraved so that pretty thoroughly rules out any type of authentic milspec manufacture.

The other thing, of course, is how it's rocking this prominent Bundeswehr logo which is kind of tough to ignore. Or miss, for that matter.

Once again I didn't have the box, so my only recourse was going home and stuffing myself down the Internet Knife Research Rabbit Hole, and only after I'd already swiped my credit card. Just figuring out what the heck the model designation was for this thing was an adventure enough. Once I did I discovered that these are readily available from the usual array of online punters just as you'd expect, and also that I'd overpaid for this by about $2. Oh well; It was worth it for the novelty alone.

The M2000 is a chimera. Yes, it's trying quite hard to look like the 2003 facelift of the "GAK" Bundeswehr pocketknife, in particular the latter "OH GAK" one handed opener although prominently missing the one handed component. All of the above is a derivative (or vise versa) of the Victorinox Trekker, and this completely copies the latter's tool set verbatim. But again it's minus the thumb opening hole, and also lacking the 2/3 "wavy" serrated edge. Thank goodness.

Whether or not its model designation is deliberately to evoke the KM2000 German combat knife in order to underhandedly inflate its implied military association is a mystery, but it's as sound a theory as any.

The history of knock-off Swiss Army (albeit in this case one degree removed) knives is, of course, if not exactly storied then certainly still very long. As that kind of thing goes this is actually a suspiciously competent one. Sure, we have no idea what kind of steel it's made out of and they didn't even have the good graces to mark on it that it's made in China, even though it most certainly is. And Mil-Tec themselves don't seem to have any kind of real web presence that isn't just a bunch of resellers and AI written blogspam affiliate stores, so there isn't much to research there. Do you know, I have a hunch they don't actually have anything to do with Sturm Mil-Tec of Germany. They might be fervently wishing you thought they did.

A lot of replica military-ish stuff seems to exist under the Mil-Tec brand regardless of whatever capacity in which the stuff is produced or by who. Thus, I also thought it was appropriate to find something military-ish to do with it. I hereby present to you this field report:

[I ate] ...An MRE

I must admit I might let my sense of nostalgia overtake me and that led me to buy an MRE. To be fair, this one claimed to be a slice of pizza, which is not a variety I've seen before in all my years and this intrigued me mightily. And now that I've said that a dozen people will pop up in the comments and tell me how it's now the most common kind and I'm just hopelessly out of the loop.

I concluded this would either be spectacular or just spectacularly awful, and either way it would be a good time that's well worth the $6. So I stuffed it in my panniers along with all my other loot and rode off with it to camp that evening.

For the three of you left on the planet who are unaware, MRE stands for "meal, ready to eat" and is the current standard-ish field ration of the US military. Since every single damn fool thing procured by the US military is at the end of the day manufactured by the private sector, these things inevitably also became available to the general public for all and sundry, e.g. the various survivalist prepper types and/or those who like to play soldier.

Each one is a little vacuum packed shelf-stable smorgasbord of various odds and ends consisting of much more than the main menu item listed on the front. If you've never had the unique pleasure of dealing with one of these, every single component is also individually packaged in a plastic pouch and the complete consumption of one produces a prodigious amount of trash you then have to figure out what to do with. My current theory as to why this is the case is because these are produced in America. This goes some way towards explaining why they're not as popular with the backpacking crowd as you'd think.

Most of these pouches have what appear to the uninitiated to be tear notches so you'd be able to open them without tools. This is false hope. They never bloody work, so you have to cut everything open with your knife or a pair of scissors anyway. Naturally this gave my little Mil-Tec knife plenty to do.

Actually, while we're on that topic, little is one thing that the M2000 isn't.

It's near enough the same size as the Victorinox Trekker (lately renamed to the Trailfinder) that serves as its template. As far as I can tell, anyway, what with not owning the genuine article. The Mil-Tec version is 4-1/4" long when closed (107.95mm) and about 7-1/2" (190.5mm) with its knife blade open. The blade is about 3-1/4" long (82.55mm). That puts it firmly in the full size class, especially compared to the titchy little Swiss Classics that are what most people think of when they think Swiss Army Knife, as pictured above. It's 4.83 ounces or 136.9 grams, and decidedly chunky at 0.787" (19.99mm) thick across its scales.

Said scales are injection moulded out of what I assume to be FRN but may turn out just to be ABS, and the sound you get from scratching on them reveals them to be hollow. That part is certainly authentic, at any rate. And sacrilegious as it may sound, I actually like how they feel better than most real Victorinox knives I've handled.

The M2000's blade is quite acceptably sharp from the factory, which is a good thing for me because I did not pack any sharpening equipment on my camping trip. And, believe it or not, I usually don't. It had no trouble shucking all of my MRE's contents.

Any MRE that contains an entree (using the term as loosely as possible) that's meant to be eaten warm will also include a flameless ration heater, which is a porous baggie — picture one of those instant glove warmer things — filled with iron and magnesium powder that when exposed to water gets piping hot. These can famously be put to other uses as well, as enlisted men anywhere who have a ringing in their ears and a cold dinner will happily tell you. Its efficacy for actually heating your food is highly variable, and I found that my pizza slice was so thick it was rather a hassle to fit into the included heater pouch without folding it up like a taco. Nevertheless I did so anyway and dutifully filled it up with some creek water right out of my filter, leaning it against a Rock Or Something to percolate for a while.

Swiss Army knives are notorious for having stiff actions that tend to require the user to either have stout fingernails or pack along a separate tool for opening your tool to get the blasted things to cooperate. Their knockoffs are no exception and the M2000 certainly isn't, either. Putting mine away after this I thought the main blade in particular was singularly difficult to close until the light bulb finally managed its feeble glow above my head and I realized part of what's odd about the M2000.

Unusual but not unique among these sorts of things, the main blade here is actually a liner locker. I realized belatedly that I should not be surprised, since the current versions of several of the larger Victorinox knives work exactly the same way. But sitting there in front of the fire in my camp chair and with no cell service to research things, I hadn't twigged to this being so near a clone to one of those just yet.

Curiously the liner also pushes to the right to unlock, which is opposite the usual way. This makes the M2000 and indeed the various Victorinox models from which its lineage tenuously derives inherently lefty friendly, which is pretty uncommon. Especially in a liner locker, at least aside from the various special order left handed versions of Spyderco knives and so forth. So there's a piece of trivia that'll make you a real hit at parties.

I was initially worried about what cramming my slice of pizza into that heater pouch would do to it. It turns out my concern was unfounded, as the slice in question appears to be made out of a dishwashing sponge; the texture and consistency is about the same, and the cheese on top has apparently been affixed with some manner of industrial welding process. The dining experience is exactly that of a Totino's or Ellio's frozen brick pizza that somebody's microwaved far too long and then left out in the rain.

My MRE heater also didn't do a very good job of warming it up. I ate it anyway. I've had worse.

The rest of the package included a quartet of Saltine style crackers which are pre-shattered for the user's convenience, a ketchup packet that is actually full of peanut butter (presumably intended to be used on the same, but good luck with that), a single serving tube of I Can't Believe It's Not Gatorade, a truly microscopic packet of crushed red peppers for the pizza, a squeeze pouch of apple sauce which actually wasn't too bad, a pouch of jalepeno dusted cashews which was entirely too small, and a "chocolate flavor" "nutritious" energy bar with a suspicious but somehow strangely enjoyable texture. I did not receive the customary tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce with this one, alas. The accessories baggie contains the usual largely useless napkin, one sugar and one Splenda packet — brand name, no less — a hand wipe, a single serving of instant coffee, a packet of not enough non-dairy creamer to put in said coffee, and two tiny squares of chewing gum. And a spoon.

And A Spoon

The M2000 does not, in fact, contain a spoon. Contrary to most of these types of things it also doesn't have a corkscrew. I was all set to be miffed about this, until I experienced the moment of clarity that enlightened me thus: I have never, ever needed to open a bottle of wine in the woods and I never will. And even if somehow the need arose, I'm sure I don't need to tell you there are about sixty three ways to uncork a wine bottle without a proper corkscrew and any garden variety pocketknife will contain at least one of them.

It seems that no matter what set of tools show up on any pocketknife, some portion of the world's population will unerringly show up demanding something else. For what it's worth the M2000 has the usual knife blade, both a hooked can opener and a separate bottle opener (both of which terminate in screwdriver tips and the latter of which also has a wire stripping notch), and a saw which is very definitely not a fish scaler but is likely to be used as such.

On the rear there's one stubby Philips screwdriver and one pokey reamer/awl thingy which curiosuly does not include the customary hole, and nevertheless has never been used by anyone for any specific purpose, whatever its intended purpose may be.

It doesn't have a toothpick or tweezers. You're on your own for those. That, or pony up seventy bucks for a Victorinox. It hasn't got a keyring attachment point, either.

The liner lock mechanism also extends to the bottle opener and serves to lock that open, too. I personally might have preferred that the can opener be the other locking tool, but the larger of the two slotted screwdriver tips is on that end so that was probably the rationale.

All in all that's a pretty versatile set of tools that could be put to a decent array of uses you might find in the field. Especially so if you were willing to abuse several of the built in tools to do things that they probably shouldn't, but nevertheless soldiers inevitably will.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I like the M2000 in a twisted yet not entirely ironic way. I've handled a lot of Swiss Army knockoffs in my life and broken almost as many of them. This one seems pretty well built and even manages to feel nice in the hand.

I consider it a much better investment than that MRE was. And the best part is, it didn't even cost me that much more. Unlike its inspiration, it was significantly less than $70. We could all use a spare knife to throw in the tank bag or the glove box or the rucksack. Why not this one? It handily solves the #1 problem with a Swiss Army knife, namely the snapping shut on your fingers bit. And it's green, and it's got a cool eagle on it.

So, sure. What the hell.

You know, we've been on the topic of knife abuse lately. Well, when I was looking at things in the process of my usual jumping-on-the-bandwagon I noticed this and mentioned it at the time. I guess in my household this is what counts as "abuse."

I'm the only person who uses this particular knife, so my default I suppose I'm guilty of this, however it happened. I honestly have no idea. I don't recall using it to whack anything particularly unwise.

Anyhoo, this is a cheap Cuisinart branded santoku I bought from Big Lots ages ago. It's objectively not a very nice knife, but I still kind of like it and it's been my main kitchen knife forever. I'm positive at the time I bought it for the obvious Space Balls gag. Lately I was experimenting at keeping it at 10° or 12° per side or something, I don't remember which, and that was obviously rather naively optimistic for whatever mystery steel this thing is made out of. That may have contributed to how easily that bite that got taken out of the edge, there.

Well, we can't let that stand so I finally got around to cleaning it up yesterday. I was putting it off because unpacking my Ruixin jig from its little travel case and putting it together probably took longer than the process of actually sharpening it, including the time spent lashing the chip out with my coarsest 80 grit stone.

Other than the chiped part the old edge, which I suppose is now the backbevel, was still pretty clean.

That's because I chickened out and reprofiled this back to 15° per side. And I could only be bothered to go down to my 1500 grit stone and didn't obsessively mirror polish it all the way down to the point of using my finest 20,000 grit stone on it because A) I honestly cannot be arsed, and B) that's surely putting pearls before swine anyhow.

I did give it a quick rub on the strop, though, just to feel fancy. (The texture in the background there is that of a piece of plain white printer paper. That edge is probably more than fine enough for cooking duty, and possesses sufficient sharpness at least in the near term that the only thing preventing me from using it to e.g. chop a bus in half like some kind of anime samurai is the lack of blade length. That, and the fact that I'd inevitably have to sharpen it again afterwards.)

With any luck that'll render it durable enough to last another year or so in the kitchen, or at least until I can be bothered to look at it again.

Knifemen, knifewomen, downvoters, upvoters, it's time to update you on the salvation of this kitchen knife. Mr. McKay, based knife sharpener, did the best he could do to restore the edge to something like symmetry. I expected a salty comment or two on the topic when I picked it up, however, he did not offer any, only a pitying silence as he gave me a meticulously handwritten receipt. Yet, his silence was full of kindness. Cost: $4.00 USD Many have asked, how did I achieve the ragged edge seen in my previous post? I wish I had a better answer for you, except that I used a shitty Coghlan's sharpener that was probably full of metal filings and dirt. That one is going in the trash. Any suggestions for buying a beginner's sharpener for $30.00 or $40.00 ? I don't know how to use a file or a stone.

Get in, losers. We're going shopping.

My worlds get to collide here for once. Herewith I am presented with a golden opportunity to drag you along on my travels and subject you to looking at all of my vacation pictures in what up until three seconds ago you thought was a knife column. And the best part is you can't stop me. It's no good calling the forum cops on me, either, because around here I am the cops. How about that?

What I Did On My Summer Holidays

Hey, get back in that seat. You're not going anywhere.

The plan was to take a leisurely ride down the MABDR. Down through Michaux and Hancock, Green Ridge, Cacapon, Baker, Moorefield, then Petersburg and off into the woods. Not the whole way, for sure. Just to get the hell out of the city for a couple of days and set up my hammock. See some stars. Read a book. Anything but put any more effort into this column, which hasn't seen an update for three weeks. You know how it is.

My wanderings chanced to take me by the "National Soldier Factory" military surplus store just outside of Gettysburg. Yes indeed, that is worth a U-turn for me.

Truth be told I've ridden right by this place multiple times before, but it's either been closed on the day I happened by or I was under the gun to make it to camp somewhere far off before sundown, so I never bothered to stop. Today, though, I had nothing but time.

I also espied this sweet Ténéré parked outside. That helped.

Anyway.

This place is a surprisingly enormous and meandering building full of lofts and alcoves. Hidden stairwells lead to yet more little cozy corners all paneled in pine and absolutely chock-a-block full of a mixture of genuine surplus hardware as well as the usual low rent knockoff tactical stuff and camping gear. Given the sheer enormity of the square footage plus the rather lethargic pace of business, at least so far as I observed while I was in there, I honestly have to wonder just how the hell they manage to make enough to keep the lights on in here. And they even have a second location right in the middle of downtown Gettysburg, a frontage which surely can't be cheap.

All of this, of course, is deeply fascinating to the right type of highly specific dweeb.

They even have an OG looking Jeep, parked inside, in one of the basements. That must have taken some doing.

Guess what's in the other basement.

That's right, kids. A genuine, honest to goodness, authentic knife hell. We're talking multiple tables worth of the absolute finest in gas station/flea market nonsense, all laid out right there for you to fiddle with. Not a single glass case in sight. There isn't even anybody down there to supervise. I must be having one of those dreams again. Pinch me.

Plus!

Multiple tables full of crap swords. In there are not one, not two, not even three, but four of those QVC swords. Four genuine examples! Still extant in the wild! Which QVC sword? You know exactly which sword. I tell you folks, it was all I could do to resist taking one home with me except as you know I was on my motorcycle and I did the math, ultimately concluding that I didn't want that son of a bitch anywhere near me if I crashed. (And in truth, when I was young and stupid I actually owned one of those selfsame swords. So I've already had the experience, and bringing home another one would require violating my subsequent "no wallhangers" household rule on swords.)

And a table full of fantasy swords. Also temping, but ultimately the same deal.

But those tables full of knives. It's like I stepped in a time warp and went right back to those golden teenage years. This could have put me right back in my trenchcoat and combat boots, aviators, fingerless gloves, the works. No, really. I probably could have bought all of that right there and it may only have been because my panniers were full already that I did not walk out of there looking exactly like the baddest motherfucker from 1999.

You want skulls? You want wolves? You want eagles? You want marijuana leaves? It's all here.

And rather than the $25 or $30 the usual rip-off brigade would be straight-facedly trying to pawn these off for, any of the above for a mere five bucks a piece.

Alright. You guys know the score.

The Score

I can't walk away from a table like this without buying something.

I had to stare the spread for a while, but ultimately this thing is what spoke to me. Here is the Snake Eye 300514BL. Snake Eye is a pseudo-brand that's crossed our path before, and this here is ultimately a chip off of much the same block. And as ever it is "Snake Eye," singular, not "Snake Eyes," plural, which I'm telling you right now has and will forever continue to trip me up every time I try to type it. Why are they insistent on rendering it this way? Chalk that up as another of the many things in this world I sure as hell don't know.

As your resident balisong nerd, of course I zeroed right in on the only Balisong Shaped Object in that pile.

Except of course it isn't. That descriptor is even more apt than usual because this is one of those thrice-damned things that's shaped to look like balisong but is instead a regular side folder, like unto the Cold Steel Paradox and its ilk but, I suspect, a lot worse.

Look, sometimes you just have no choice but to do things purely for the love of the game.

The 300514BL is a spring assisted opener like apparently everything that Snake Eye "makes," or is at least sold under that brand. It's now also apparently discontinued. The proprietor of the establishment here said that the table full of knives down in the pit was a result of a buy-out from some other vendor which also included a bunch of other stuff. These were apparently not, in fact, in the category of products they actually found desirable but they were part of the lot so they wound up with them anyway. Speaking as proud purchaser of another cheap knife store's entire closeout inventory myself, once in a bygone era many years ago, I kind of know the feeling. (It took me ages to get rid of them all. They filled a large suitcase.) This explains the fire sale prices. So if you actually want one of these for some twisted reason you'll probably just have to journey to Gettysburg yourself. The possibilities, therefore, of my example becoming a rare and much coveted collector's item are tantalizing, but alas probably still moot.

And let me tell you about the odyssey it was tracking down that model number. That right there was a hard earned set of eight digits, so you're damn skippy I'm going to go through the trouble of working them into this column every chance I can.

No amount of byzantine search queries including "Snake Eye" and any combination of attachments would come up with a match for this thing. This is despite Snake Eyes' own website taunting the reader with their current model not-balisong side folder as its headline image in all of its cheapola rainbow anodized glory. No, that one is the readily found model number AA-BBBB-C949, and I swear to you I am not making that up. The online store on their site is outright broken at the moment as well, so that's no help. My other usual go-to for tracking down absurd Yum Cha cutlery, the Top Quest catalogs, also returned nothing in any of them. And it's no use sticking a picture of it in a reverse image search, either, because our AI overlords consistently think this thing is a Benchmade Model 32. Which it very definitely isn't. Trust me on that one, I'd know.

The one place it might tell you would be on the sticker on the end of the box, which I didn't get with mine because the vast majority of these were just loose without their packaging. But, I remind you, five bucks. You can't ask for too much.

I wasted an entire afternoon on this. Think of the sheer entertainment value, dollar-for-dollar.

But I persevered, and among the pages of highly inaccurate results I found an unbranded rendition of the thing here as well as an eBay listing for an identical looking item. Paydirt. For suitably small quantities of pay, anyway, and rather more dirt.

This just goes to show the usual problem in this area, namely that "Snake Eye," whoever they may be, absolutely are not the outfit who actually manufacture this thing. The gods alone only know who actually does that, or where — other than somewhere in China. Somebody's just come along and lasered their logo right through the black paint on the blade. Otherwise this is surely some manner of OEM product.

Nothing on the knife itself will help you there, either. The reverse has one of the hardest to read laser engravings in the world which simply says "China" and "440 Stainless." Exactly what variant of 440 stainless history does not relate.

But never mind all that. Just get a load of this thing.

The 300514BL is all plastic scaled, weighing in at 113.1 grams / 3.99 ounces. It's just under 5" long closed — 4-15/16", or possibly more accurately 125mm on the button. It's 8-7/8" or 225mm long when open and the clip point-ish blade is 3-15/16" long or 100mm. Not all of that is usable because the root ends in a rather prominent ricasso, and even then the faux-balisong ears sticking out the sides like a hilt would prevent you from bringing the back half of the edge down onto flat surface anyway. One of those is also a flipper to kick the thing open and there's no thumb stud. The two ears are different shapes from each other, too, for no apparent mechanical reason.

That, and a noticeable portion of the spine of the blade is left sticking out of the handles when it's closed. If you look carefully you can see that this is because the pivot is not quite centered between the two faux handle pairs as it's designed. It seems to be it would have been pretty trivial to make that the case, but what do I know? Me, I hardly manufacture anything.

The back side lacks the blue embellishments but makes up for it by including an honest to goodness deep carry pocket clip that's actually quite nice despite the nicks and chips in its paint. It's not reversible and you get tip down carry only, but it does provide a suspiciously smooth and easy draw for a knife that's objectively crap.

The clip is also ridiculously tall.

So much so that even through the knife won't balance on its spine because of those stupid ears, you can balance it on a flat surface at a rakish angle by using the clip. This allows me to produce frivolous bullshit like this:

Which I submit to you is now the most thorough photographic depiction of this stupid knife that has ever appeared on the Internet, and at the rate things are going ever will be, from now until the day the Earth falls into the sun. This is exactly as it is, and I didn't even airbrush out the blemishes. You're welcome.

Quite a bit — in fact, possibly the sum entirety — of what I respect about the 300514BL is its cheerfully nonchalant treatment of its shtick. I'm particularly appreciative of the kayfabe on display with these fake Torx heads moulded into the plastic where a real balisong would have body screws but this doesn't.

A true Philistine, mind you, would be compelled to try to paint these silver somehow. Badly, I'm sure. I like that these have been left black instead, which shows true cheek rather than trying and inevitably failing to hold up the charade.

It's still not a balisong. Here it is next to a knife that is:

The one thing that would really make it which it inexplicably lacks is a fake latch. That would have been rad.

I also don't know what it says about the world that the Benchmade Model 42's iconography is apparently the default when some turkey needs a design language to rip off wholesale, but that's clearly what the 300514BL is going for with its pattern of holes and eyelets on its handles, there. Whenever something needs to broadcast to the world, "this is butterfly knife," apparently the public's monkey neurons are most reliably activated by the 42's pattern. It's like the world's most nerdy type of Batesian mimicry.

Of course it's just a regular old cheap liner locker underneath. How cheap? Well, let's find out.

Finding Out

I put on my mystic swami hat and made several predictions about the 300514BL before even getting out my screwdrivers. Inside I expect to find a knockoff of the SpeedSafe spring assist mechanism with its highly recognizable zig-zag spring, a pair of cheap plastic pivot washers, and some metalwork that looks as if whoever made it gnawed it out of the stock using their own teeth. While wearing a blindfold.

So not only does the 300514BL use the same type of spring a the one we found in that axe thing from back when, but I'm pretty sure it's even the same part.

The scales are a single piece design despite the gap in the middle. Strangely, all of the screws including the pivot are T7 Torx heads and not the more common T6 or T8. On my example they were all just finger tight as well, so it was dead easy to take the thing to bits despite the pivot having no anti-rotation flat and all the body screws going into round threaded barrels that aren't otherwise held in place by anything. There was no threadlocker in evidence anywhere. I put some on the main pivot when I put it all back together and probably increased the bill of materials cost by fifteen percent.

The pivot washers are indeed plastic, and the main pivot screw is a simple round Chicago jobber. Yes, that rather alarming burr on the heel of the blade is exactly as mine was produced by the factory. One could probably improve the lockup considerably by giving this a couple of strokes with a file, if one could be bothered, but one cannot.

Here's a surprise. The liners are solid; no speed holes whatsoever. They're very thin, though, which is what keeps this from weighing a ton.

The 300514BL's edginess is decent enough for five bucks. I'd be much more miffed about it for thirty. There are no evident chips or major blemishes, although my example is sharp only up to about 3/8" from the root.

The tip. S'okay? S'alright. It'll do. Some of the blade's cheap black finish has been worn off past the edge as part of the sharpening process, but it really takes both magnification and probably an unhealthy amount of particularity to work yourself up to caring about that too much.

Holding this straight was a challenge because, as mentioned, the 300514BL won't stand up on its spine. But never mind my own crookedness, here. The edge isn't true either. That's no big surprise.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Believe it or not there was a time in my life when every knife I owned was like this. Probably for a lot of people out there every pocketknife they've ever owned has been like this, and they've never been exposed to anything much different. Although certainly not any of the regulars around here, of course, who I assume are all significantly more cultured. Well, probably.

Maybe.

Everything about this is emblematic of its price and its position. It's outright clown shoes; pure Boffo. Even its very premise is fake, but without that it'd just be another crappy knife nobody would even care about as much as we're doing right now. Failing that, maybe it's still worth it every once in a while to stand where we are now and look back.

At the end of the day the 300514BL is not a knife that anyone should intentionally set out to buy. But sometimes we still just can't resist.

UPDATE: Mr. McKay will accept the knife and see about restoring the edge, I think he's busy teaching his grandkids how to swing a machete in a tunnel. In any case, here is SOP for offering him a knife: 1.) Do not text his advertised business mobile number, it annoys him. 2.) Do not call. See Rule #1 3.) Place the knives in a tote on the McKay porch. Tag the knives with your name and number, using the tags provided. 4.) Do not call about pickup. 5.) Bring exact change in cash. Venmo is for commies.

Does anyone else have a Mr. McKay to save their knives? I feel very lucky.

5" santoku of "German steel". Daily driver for 8 years. I spammed u/dualsportdork with it and now I'm spamming you. What happens when the edge reaches the little indentations? The Singularity?

And here they are a-lying in a bunch.

In case you've been wondering what I've been doing rather than shitposting about knives lately. The answer is, making knives to subsequently shitpost about. And also camping.

My store is semi kinda-sorta restocked. I say this because I updated my Emperor listing the other day with the example I just made and I swear I did not have the son of a bitch up for four whole minutes before somebody bought it. I've updated the design with a new radial grind, fancier handle scale options, and now even thicker steel.

I suppose I kind of let slip with this knowledge when I posted this photo elsewhere.

Here's another one:

I used some new steel from a new supplier for these, and I can't say that I'm 100% happy with it. The surface finish isn't the greatest and there are some pock marks and gouges in the stock that are too deep for me to realistically sand out, or at least until I accrue enough to afford a surface grinder. But on the bright side it's even thicker than before, at 7.47mm or 0.295", even greater than a quarter inch. These things are a slab.

I only made one because I used that chunk of steel to produce two of a new design:

Meet the Humbolt, a pattern that takes the absurd choppiness of my stock all the way to its logical conclusion with a straight profiled basher that'll be equally at home splitting your firewood at camp as it would be felling the tree it came from in the first place.

I've also been fooling with transparent ABS as part of my handle scales. Well, translucent by the time all is said and done, really. I'm particularly fond of this "Ectoplasm" colorway which incorporates alternating layers of translucent and bright green, and lets sunlight shine through it. It doesn't glow in the dark, alas, but it almost looks like it ought to.

I have a smattering of S variant Kings in stock as well in various colorways. Some of 'ems nicer lookin' than others. These are thin enough to fit in my Ruixin jig, by the way, so I make these in particular stupid sharp before I ship them out.

Also!

Check it out. Badass wind chimes. (Actually, these are dangling while my rust preventative coating dries.)

Nerd alert!

I spotted Gamers Nexus' very own Steve Burke using what appears to be a Gerber Paralite in their latest totally not an unboxing video, which also happens to be on a set of topics very near and dear to all our hearts around here (probably, or at least certainly mine) including but not limited to giving Sony the middle finger twice on camera, reveling in physical media ownership, spending tons of money on niche production equipment, and hawking silly homebrew products online in 3D printed packaging.

Now there's an endeavor I can respect.

Maybe if we all chip in we can help our man afford a nicer knife.

It is categorically impossible to buy an Exo-K.

That's not because it's particularly rare or anything, or even very expensive in the grand scheme of things. It's actually because inside its swanky magnet latched box...

...You automatically get two of them.

That's in addition to this impressive spread of pack-in feelies, which includes a microfiber cleaning cloth, a baggie of spare screws and a replacement button spring, a sticker and a tactical Velcro patch, and little certificate of authenticity that doesn't just look like a credit card but is even actually made out of the same kind of plastic.

Therefore it is clearly automatically an excellent deal, even for $167. You can tell this to your spouse and/or domestic partner of choice with absolute confidence. No, it'd actually be silly not to buy a pair. Don't you see?

The Exo-K is Reate's latest and greatest foray into the exciting world of highly mechanically overwrought pocketknives. And given how their previous Exo-M variant got so thoroughly ripped off by the Chinese knockoff brigade, it's also such a ludicrous level of bonkers that it seems to be offering an outright challenge to the world. Like, oh yeah? Let's see you figure out how to clone this one, punks.

It also doesn't even include a trainer blade in the package. It includes a whole 'nother trainer knife, complete, and mechanically identical to its live bladed counterpart with many interchangeable parts. So, she's taken you home and it turns out she brought her friend, and she really really really hopes you don't mind. You don't, do you?

Both knives are identical in function and construction but not materials. The live blade one is aluminum bodied and in this case in a fetching deep green, whereas the trainer one is injection moulded fiber reinforced polymer of some description — probably Nylon. It comes in brown and it's got speed holes in the blade.

Thus while their dimensions are the same the weights are not: The live one is 127.1 grams / 4.49 ounces and the trainer is a slightly lighter 110.6 grams / 3.9 ounces. Both are 6-5/8" (168.28mm) long if you measure from stem to stern in a straight line, but I'll be damned what the measurement is if you could somehow account for the curvature. The blades are exactly 3" (76.2mm) by the same metric, with nearly the entire thing being usable on the live version and precisely zero inches of it being usable on the trainer one.

The blurb deals with all this by not dealing with it at all. Inevitably, all of the specs for this thing mention only half of the knives you get in the box, describing the pattern in the aluminum handles on the live knife as a "frag grenade" texture in case it perhaps could go off in your hand, the blade as stonewash finished Bohler N690 steel at 60 HRC, and not saying anything about the trainer at all.

As such just what the trainer's blade is made out of remains a mystery. Something cheap, I'm guessing, and certainly not another slab of N690 because if it were the Internet would be full of knife nerds crowing about how they'd gone and hewn an edge into it too, and got two knives for the price of one. Oh em gee, life hack! But because they haven't we can safely assume it's some kind of cheap low-rent alloy instead. If you were sufficiently motivated at least you could probably swap the blades between both bodies, and also the shiny and black finished hardware as well.

But never mind all of that. The Exo-K is clearly the grand master 8th dan final boss of internet knife hipster's knives, because it provides the full bevy of enticements: It's moderately exclusive, it's got a mechanism that renders it illegal in many jurisdictions, it's got a zany action which inherently makes it difficult to use, and if wielded incorrectly it also has an innate ability to injure its user. I don't know if somebody's been reading my entire wish list or what, but all right.

On his seminal work on the topic of Japan, Dave Barry once noted that the ideal gift for a Japanese person would be a melon crossbred somehow with a venomous spider, such that not only would it be fantastically expensive but also if it were handled incorrectly it would bite its recipient, and everyone would know it. The Exo-K is exactly this. It's a plate of fugu, dressed up like a knife. It's just as well that it has that frag grenade texture, because the pin's already been pulled. If you know, you know. And if you don't, you'll probably find out in a couple of seconds.

Reate attempt to bill the Exo-K as a gravity knife, which is why the law tends to frown upon it. It really isn't, but this is surely to tie it thematically to the aforementioned Exo-M. Or, possibly, to help ride on the coattails of the latter's popularity. Not that it needs much help, given that this model is already the current darling of the Internet short form video you-won't-believe-this-knife brigade. It's a button locker, and if you simply press the button and hold it upside down part of the action will indeed fall out freely. But you can't actually open it fully simply under the power of gravity alone. There's a detent in its double-jointed armature, and a flick of the wrist is required to snap the blade out into its fully ready to deploy state.

Failure to do so with adequate gusto, of course, instead puts the blade in a position to pass back through the opposite handle and bite you.

The Exo-K therefore requires sufficient commitment to use it. Presumably you're meant to figure this out with the trainer first, rather than the fun way. Unless you're a wimp.

You can also cause the tip of the blade to crash into the anodized surface on the front face of the ring, leaving a helpfully identifying idiot mark. If you look carefully you'll notice that in all of these these pictures that I have managed not to do this to mine, which is because I am awesome.

Closing it is necessarily slower and not quite as slick, but still requires a sufficient understanding of the mechanics. Again, the recompense for failure is payable in blood.

Nobody watching you use this thing will be able to figure out how the hell it works. This is absolutely not a knife you can lend to anyone. On the bright side, this will also prevent people from asking to borrow it. Probably after the first time, anyway.

And the best part is, it's subtle about it. If you had, for purest sake of example, a balisong knife nobody who isn't properly initiated would even dare touch the thing. But this presents just enough of an impression of accessibility that it may tempt the neophyte to try it. And then they'll find out if they're worthy.

The Exo-K is obviously a karambit, which come to think of it is probably where the -K part comes from. It's yet another swing at the folding karambit idea, but unlike all of the others it doesn't confine itself to the bounds of practicality in any way whatsoever. You can make up any justification for it you like, but it's also not a fighting knife. Anyone who were going to try to fight with the thing would surely just pack a fixed bladed one instead and make their life a whole lot simpler. And the deeply curved hawkbill profile is not going to make it the best choice for general utility use even after taking into account that you'll wind up holding it backwards every time you bust it out.

It's got a very shiny set of hardware including a traditionally constructed pocket clip that is completely reversible, as is the release button if you're brave enough to break its threadlocker with a pair of T8 bits and unscrew it. It's not ambidextrous in any way whatsoever but it can be fully converted for left handed use.

There's even an offside filler for the pocket where the clip would go on the other side, which as you all know is the sort of thing that excites me a lot.

If you'd prefer yours not be a karambit you can even remove the ring if you like. It's restrained by the same long Chicago screws as the clip, and if you'd like your Exo-K to be more discreet but considerably harder to operate you can just omit it. Here I've also shown the removal of one of the armature covers, because I was just taking things apart all willy-nilly and didn't consider the narrative implications until it was too late.

The underside of the main pivot contains the strangest bronze washer I've ever seen in my life, which has a cutout in it to accommodate the detent spring and its ceramic ball, which is what serves to keep the blade from just knocking around loose when you have the knife half open. The pivot screw has an anti-rotation flat and the washer is broached for the same on this side, so it's impossible to install it incorrectly.

The major pivots have bushings in addition to the bronze washers, by the way.

Here's the whole spread:

The release button unscrews into two halves, a washer, and a spring. A replacement spring is provided in the care package included in the box, presumably for when yours goes "ping!" upon first removal and is never seen again. The button halves are threadlockered together, but if you manage to muster the grunt and dexterity to bust them loose you can swap the button over to the other side by half opening the knife and simply reassembling this the other way around.

The serial number and date of production are etched into the armature, there. Now if I come over all supercilious and mention that I've had just this lying around for ages in my knife drawer before getting around to it, don't you know, someone might actually believe me. I haven't, but at least it'll sound plausible. I also suspect the different colorways have separate serial number ranges, because otherwise my serial seems suspiciously low and I can't imagine there are so few people in the world who've owned one of these ahead of me. I could be wrong; Maybe I really am ranked the 49th coolest motherfucker on Earth.

And the back of the blade sports what is quite possibly the single most appropriate maker's mark in all of human history.

The Inevitable Conclusion

If you're ever feeling like life's got you down, allow me to point out that one half the Reate Exo-K looks like a tiny dinosaur.

Or perhaps an aluminum peacock that's very satisfied with itself. It even comes with a friend. Therefore I submit to you that you absolutely cannot go wrong with this, no matter what else it is you do.

Since I've been absent here a while but I've been slowly going through my backlog of old camping photos in order to pretend to generate content to justify an upcoming announcement, here's a high quality cutlery related shitpost courtesy of yours truly.

I took this photo in 2014 at a campsite in the Allegheny National Forest. I was camping with my nephew and one of our friends. Said friend asked us, after watching one or the other of us produce yet another piece of unlikely cutlery from about our persons somewhere, "Just how many blades do you guys have on you, anyway?"

This was the result of said throw-down.

From left to right is my nephew's Ontario Blackbird, a Ganzo G704, his newer Leatherman Surge, my old bush sword (I still have it, but I have a better one now) which is some ghastly Chinese thing from the BudK catalog, my Kershaw Junkyard dog, my rather older Leatherman Surge, his Ontario machete, my Boker PSK.

And. My. Axe. (It's a SOG FastHawk.)

I have in the past had wide-eyed city slickers ask me what we do if we encounter a bear, mountain lion, or crazed ruffian in the woods.

Roll for initiative, obviously.

Sometimes I wonder if I ought to rename this gig "The CRKT Show." Certainly it seems that a pattern emerges regarding a surprising number of their lineup. I couldn't begin to guess why this is, but I'm down for it.

Here is the Gravitic Flip, which is in fact not a B list direct to video '90s superhero movie based on some obscure Dark Horse Comics property, but is rather yet another point on the universal curve of probability. That is to say, if any given mechanism exists then its appearance behind the action of some manner of folding knife is a mere matter of time.

From the outside, the Gravitic Flip doesn't reveal much. Of course, from the name you can take a pretty good guess at how it works. Yes, it's a gravity knife. A double edged one, too, so your local legislative body is probably already angry about it twice over. And it's black.

This is a Ted Valerio design, and one wonders just what ray of inspiration may have struck him to produce this because nothing else on offer in his product lineup is quite as bonkers. Said lineup these days largely seems to consist of wave opening adapters and 3D printed whatsamajigs including one that goes on the venerable Kershaw CQC to turn it into a karambit. Now there's something I can get behind.

Anyway it seems ol' Ted got CRKT to make his knife for him, like so many others, and so here we are.

For your money, precisely $38 of it, you get this 4-3/16" long rectangle. It's made of some manner of injection moulded polymer, and if I had to guess I'd say it's FRN — fiber reinforced nylon. Glass fiber, if I'm any judge. The black paracord lanyard is included in the box, but it's also curiously short. Even if you move the knot all the way down to the end the resulting loop is a shade too small to get your hand through. But that's not the weird part.

Here's how it works.

Grab the inset bar and, yes, flip it up.

The blade slides along its track and pops out the front. This is a non-switchblade OTF, then, which theoretically ought to help with its legality. Except it's also explicitly a gravity knife so you're right out of the frying pan and back into the fire.

Hup, hup.

A pair of neodymium button magnets sunk into the handle hold all the works in place, and a pair of ears on the flipper bar or whatever you want to call it drop into matching slots in the handle to keep the blade locked either in or out. And of course when brought anywhere within the same postcode as the types of metal shavings production that I engage in these days said magnets immediately and inescapably attract a bit of ferrous fuzz.

Since the blade has to be loose enough to drop out under the power of gravity and its track is only made out of fancy plastic in any case, this obviously engenders a bit of wiggle in it. In the stowed position the magnets do a passable but not quite complete job of keeping the blade from rattling around audibly inside.

Despite my artful avoidance of depicting it so far, the Gravitic Flip does include a clip. It's short, stout, and incredibly tightly sprung. If anything, the lanyard is probably there to aid you in managing to rip the thing off of your pants. The clip isn't reversible, not only because the notch it sits in is presented only on one side, but it'd also block the mechanism if you flipped it. Other than the lanyard hole the entire thing is thoroughly symmetrical anyhow, so all a left handed user would have to do is trouser it in the other pocket and it'll be precisely equally difficult to open with either hand.

That's because the Gravitic Flip's mechanism, while certainly very clever, doesn't provide you much to grab. You have to get a fingertip under either of the ears without dropping the thing in the process, and they're rather small with not much of a cutout beneath them. If you flub it, the magnets are maddeningly prone to snapping the bar back into its locked position and are capable of doing so from a remarkable distance away. Getting it open reliably requires practice, and I would not recommend trying it under duress. Doing so with gloves on is likewise probably not a winning proposition.

Its little double edged blade is only 0.108" or 2.74mm thick and 0.591" / 15.03mm across, and it has no type of forward guard, grip aids, or finger rests whatsoever. It's about 3-1/16" long with the entire ensemble adding up to nearly 7-1/2" precisely when it's open.

The Inevitable Conclusion

At least neither CRKT nor Ted Valerio bother to make any implication that the Gravitic Flip is supposed to be any kind of fighting knife. Instead, they admit right in the blurb that it's an EDC fidget toy, which is a job at which it excels much more handily.

Thanks to the bodaciousness of its inbuilt magnets and overall light weight (1.41 ounces or 40.05 grams including the lanyard, with mine) you can also stick it directly to a ferrous object and it'll stay there. That, I think, puts it in a class of very few. For whatever that's worth.

At least 38 bucks, one would hope.