John Burridge

About John Burridge

John Burridge is a Los Angeles-based lover of knives and other dangerous toys. He spends his days trying to make the world a better place by slipping subversive humor into reality TV shows. And playing with cats. He can be found on Instagram as @bunrudge.

We Knife Co. Mini Buster Review

by John Burridge Leave a Comment

Snecx! If you haven’t heard of him yet, Snecx Tan is a Malaysian knife and tool maker who is, in my opinion, currently the most mechanically innovative knife designer in the world. His Instagram profile says “Just a hobbyist working on knives. Not a knifemaker.” That’s a bit of an understatement for someone who recently held an auction on Instagram for the one-of-a-kind prototype of his upcoming “Vision S” knife. It sold for $18,900.00 USD. That’s a pretty well-funded hobby.

Buy the Mini Buster at BladeHQ or GP Knives

There are a lot of knife enthusiasts like myself who have been eager to get our hands on a reasonably priced Snecx knife, and WE Knife Co. has delivered with the Mini Buster, which goes for $289. I’ve been using it every day for the last month, and here’s what I’ve learned: it’s a nearly perfect large-ish EDC knife with one major design flaw.

General Dimensions and Blade Details

The Mini Buster is 4.5” (115 mm) closed, 7.8” (198 mm) open, and has a 3.4” (86 mm) blade made of CPM-20CV steel. The blade stock is 4 mm thick at its widest point, and the handle is about half an inch thick (13 mm) not counting the clip, which adds another 4.5 mm. So it’s no slim little Brad Zinker disappear-in-your-pocket folder, but it’s also no Cold Steel supersized monster knife either.

The blade is a very slightly curved sheepsfoot style, which I consider to be the ideal do-everything EDC blade shape. Its tip is pointy enough to pierce tough materials, and the blade is wide enough to use as a butter knife. I prefer the ergonomics of a
sheepsfoot (or wharncliffe) blade over a traditional drop point blade because, when holding the knife with my index finger on the spine of the blade to open a box, the low tip of the sheepsfoot blade keeps my wrist and arm at a more comfortable angle than when using a drop point blade.

The picture above illustrates how the Mini Buster’s sheepsfoot blade tip can cut while nearly parallel to a surface, while the drop point blade on the RealSteel Rokot needs to be at a much higher angle to utilize the tip of the blade.

The WE Mini Buster’s blade stock is Crucible CPM-20CV steel, which is a premium American-made blade steel with extremely high hardness and above-average toughness. To avoid taking an unnecessarily deep dive into metallurgy, I will just say the Mini Buster’s blade has excellent edge retention, but is more likely to chip than bend.

CPM-20CV is nearly identical to the European-made Bohler M390 steel, and these powdered-metallurgy “super steels” are THE go-to blade steels for high-end knives lately. In fact, of the 14 folding knife reviews BladeReviews.com has published so far in 2020, 35% of them had CPM-20CV or M390 blades. They’re great knife steels, and I’ve noticed that I need to sharpen my D2, CPM-154, and RWL34 knives more often than my harder steel M390 or 20CV knives.

Over the past month, I’ve been hacking away at everything in my vicinity that can be hacked at, including thick plastic packing straps, cardboard, annoying clamshell packaging, stray tangerine tree branches, and, when trying to cut a piece of baklava in half, I sliced up a metal catering pan. Despite all that, I have yet to scratch the blade’s black DLC coating or the handle’s anodizing. That’s quite impressive considering that I normally scratch my DLC coated steel blades and anodized titanium handles almost immediately.

The blade’s primary grind angle is known as a “flat” grind, which looks like a narrow symmetrical “V”.

In the kitchen, the blade’s uninterrupted “V” shape had no contours or additional angles to disrupt its slicing path through a bunch of tomatoes and cucumbers. As with nearly every folding knife, the Buster’s blade/handle configuration doesn’t allow food dicing without rapping my knuckles on the cutting board with every downstroke. Snecx tested the durability of his original Buster knife by slashing the tops off of green coconuts- I think the Mini Buster could handle that task, but it would definitely be easier with a non-Mini Buster…

I’m a pretty frugal guy, but I’m impulsive when it comes to my steel and/or gunpowder-related hobbies. It also usually takes me making the same mistake two or three times before I learn my lesson. For example, I’ve watched myself compulsively click the “buy” button on some limited-edition knives that I thought looked cool: a Dervish Knives Alchemy midtech ($395) and a Prometheus Design Werx/Strider Knives SMF “Frogskin” ($635). But my biggest impulse buy of all was in 2018 when I bought a Snecx/Jake Hoback Knives collaboration Buster ($775), which is the most I have ever spent (or ever will spend) on a knife.

Like my first marriage, I always knew I was making a mistake but went ahead with it anyway. I immediately regretted my decision- I didn’t really like them, I wanted to sell them (the marriage analogy definitely no longer applies from this point on), and so I never carried or even enjoyed them. I managed to sell the Dervish and the Strider at a loss, and I’ve tried to sell the Snecx/Hoback Buster twice with no takers. In early 2020 I saw one in the BladeHQ closeout section for $499. Maddening! I’m done with buying expensive knives.

A brief history of the Snecx/Jake Hoback Knives Buster: Snecx is indeed a knifemaker (despite his claims to the contrary) but is not a knife manufacturer, so in 2018 he launched two collaboration projects. The first was the Custom Knife Factory Terra, and the second was the Hoback Buster. According to what I’ve read on Snecx’s Instagram and Hoback’s website, Snecx’s core visual design was minimally modified, but a lot of details were changed, most notably the addition of a honeycomb pattern in the handle.

I definitely appreciate innovation and unique aesthetics, but (sorry Mr. Hoback!) I think it ended up looking like a mashup of two contrasting, not complimentary, design styles. Plus it’s huge. I give zero fucks about what the general public considers an “office-friendly” or non-scary looking knife, but the Hoback Buster is so big and heavy that it’s unwieldy.

I was surprised to see that the Hoback Buster isn’t much bigger or heavier than my Chris Reeve Knives Large Sebenza 21 (an expensive knife that I’ve never regretted buying) but in the hand, the Hoback Buster is a big manly beast knife. OK- out of the shame spiral and back to the review.

Handle, Ergonomics, and Pocket Clip

The Mini Buster feels great in use, even though I can’t quite get a full four-finger grip with my medium-large hands. The handle is long enough overall, but the upswept end of the bottom of the handle (see arrow in picture above) removes some finger gripping space. The pad of my pinky finger ends up on the handle screw near the lanyard loop, and that’s enough for me to achieve a secure grip with all four fingers.

When held in a regular grip with my thumb on the spine, my thumb naturally rests in a little indentation where the backspacer ends above the pivot, but I can also comfortably shift my thumb forward onto a section of jimping on the blade spine if I want more precise control of the blade.

The jimping ends in a stylish little dip for the tip of my thumb, which is one of four places (see arrows in picture above) on the Mini Buster where Snecx used this dip-in-a-straight(ish)-line design cue.

The Mini Buster also has a number of subtle angular details, which are definitely accentuated by the artificial edge wear of the “antique bronze” finish version I bought. There are almost no straight lines on this knife. There’s an almost subliminal curve to every part of the Mini Buster, including the blade, which has a very slight belly. Another interesting design choice on the WE Mini Buster is how the angular front tip of the handle crosses the plunge line of the blade. This is a carryover from the original Snecx Buster design.

According to Snecx, he allowed Jake Hoback to “fix” the handle angle and plunge line so they’re parallel. You can see this difference between the two knives in the picture above. But when WE Knife Co. did the same “fix” to an early Mini Buster prototype, Snecx made them retain his original Buster handle/plunge line design.

Deployment and Lockup

The Mini Buster is a framelock with a unique Snecx twist: the H.D.P.S. system. That stands for Hybrid Detent Pin System, and my admittedly limited understanding of it boils down to this: the shiny round steel pin on the lockbar (see picture below) acts as both the stop pin, which keeps the blade locked into its open position, and as the detent ball, which keeps the blade in place in its closed position.

I can’t be sure if this is a function of the HDPS system, but the Mini Buster does a far better job than most other knives of easily opening while there’s pressure on the detent. I can squeeze the lockbar section of the handle (the part attached to the aforementioned shiny round steel pin) pretty hard without hampering my ability to flip open the knife. Snecx, however, isn’t the only recent innovator on this front. Zero Tolerance Knives recently released the 0707 framelock, featuring their new Tuned Detent System, which is designed to address the same problem, but using a different mechanical approach. I watched a video review of the 0707, and although it does an admirable job of opening irregardless of pressure on the lockbar, it does not smoothly swing shut like the Mini Buster.

I only have one criticism of this knife, and this is the major design flaw I alluded to at the beginning of this review: the little tiny nubby flipper tab becomes completely inoperable if your finger is even slightly wet or slippery.

Why? The face of the flipper tab is completely smooth, without any machined texturing like most flipper-actuated knives have. That in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but it’s also so small there’s barely any surface area for your fingertip, so a single drop of water will defeat any attempt to flip open this knife. In my wet and slippery kitchen and gardening adventures with this knife, I found that the only way to open the Mini Buster was to pinch the spine of the conveniently “V” shaped blade and manually pull it open.

Snecx is known to be an absolute perfectionist, so I don’t understand how there could be such an obvious problem like this. According to what I saw in Snecx’s Instagram posts about the WE Mini Buster, he seemed quite pleased with it, so my theory is this: the lack of flipper leverage (a conscious design choice) was deliberately compensated for by using a somewhat weak detent. The detent, which in this context is the wall of force that my index finger on the flipper tab must overcome to deploy the blade, isn’t quite strong enough to guarantee the knife completely opening every time. I suspect that the detent was made as strong as was possible given the limited leverage on the flipper tab. That’s not a huge deal, but it does require more concentration and effort to deploy the blade than is required for most knives in this price range. I’m probably overthinking all of this, but I have seen several other people mention their knives have a weak detent, so it’s possible I’m right.

Nonetheless, once the blade gets going, the ceramic ball bearings surrounding the pivot give it a smooth and easy action. It locks open with a confidence-inspiring snap, and in use it feels as solid as a fixed blade knife.

We Knife Co. Mini Buster Review – Final Thoughts

Even with it’s flipper design issues, I stand by my initial claim that this is a nearly perfect large-ish EDC knife. According to Snecx, it’s also his final framelock design. He’s moved on to his “Vision” knife, for which he has invented two new technologies: the Superlock locking system, and the Zero Flex Pivot. It became very obvious to me that Snecx was onto something special when heavy-hitter designers like Ostap Hel, Rotten Design, and Tashi Bharucha all publicly commented on the same Instagram post about Snecx’s Zero Flex Pivot. Tashi B’s comment just said “Perfection”. The Vision looks amazing, but that doesn’t matter to me at all, because as I said, I’m absolutely done with buying expensive knives.

UPDATE: I bought a $160 titanium COVID tool.

It’s a very limited edition (only 15 pieces) handmade by one of my favorite knife designers, Tashi Bharucha, in partnership with his frequent collaborator Thierry Savidan. It’s part of a series called “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. I bought “The Good” (pictured above), but did not get “The Bad”, which is the same design but with three knuckle spikes. Both versions came with a little COVID-19 shaped lanyard bead engraved with the words “THE UGLY”.

Like my Hoback Buster, it’s huge and expensive, especially compared to my $17 Civivi copper COVID tool also pictured. Unlike my Hoback Buster, however, I have NO regrets about buying this thing- it’s awesome and I smile every time I whip it out to open a door or punch in my PIN number.

Finally, the Hoback Buster that I’ve been whining about for the entire review is still for sale! Hit me up in the comments or on Instagram if you want to make this “As seen on BladeReviews.com” Hoback Buster all yours…

Thank you to Sara O’Neil for the use of her painting.

We Knives Mini Buster – From $272.00
From: BladeHQ

Editor: I recommend purchasing the We Knives Mini Buster at BladeHQ or GP Knives. Thank you very much.

Bestech Marukka Review

by John Burridge Leave a Comment

Kombou is on fire lately! In the last few years, Bestech Knives has released 8 knives that he’s designed, including the Marukka reviewed here. I bought the Marukka the day it was released, and as I write this review 60 days later, two more Bestech/Kombou knives are starting to hit stores: the Wibra and the Irida.

Buy the Bestech Marukka at BladeHQ
Buy on Amazon

Kombou is the nom de couteau of Grzegorz Grabarski of Siedlce, Poland. I’m the kind of guy that notices and appreciates the evolution of an artist’s work, and I’ve been keeping an eye on Kombou for a couple of years now. I reviewed his Bestech Knives Fanga knife (see pic below) here on Blade Reviews in August 2019, and I found it be be a great knife and a good value for the money.

I’ve been stalking the Marukka on Instagram since I first saw it teased by Kombou in June of 2019. When it was finally released in April 2020, it easily passed all my stringent knife buying requirements:

Is it made of quality materials? Yes, titanium and M390 steel.
Is it reasonably priced for what it is? Yes, $272.
Is it like a big bio-mechanical stabbing machine? Yes!

I’ve been carrying the Bestech Marukka for the last 60 days. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

General Dimensions and Blade Details

The handle is 5” (127 mm), and when opened, the blade adds another 3.75” (95 mm) for an impressive overall length of 8.75” (203 mm). It’s tough to tell from the pictures, but this is a pretty big knife.

The blade steel is Bohler M390, which is an excellent powder metallurgy “super steel” with above average toughness (basically the ability to bend instead of breaking) and extremely high hardness (basically the ability to hold an edge.) M390’s bias of hardness over toughness is great for people like me who don’t sharpen their knives regularly. M390 steel or its contemporaries (like Crucible 20CV, Carpenter 204P, or Uddeholm Elmax) are generally expected in a premium production knife like the Marukka, and I’ve yet to be disappointed with the edge-holding performance any of those steels.

The blade has a substantial spine, starting out at 3.85 mm thick, but tapering to a quite thin .45 mm near the blade’s tip. The design of the Marukka’s blade appears to be simple, but there are a lot of subtle details I really like. It’s a Persian style blade, and the spine has a slight downward recurve before rising to the tip.

There’s a decorative fuller that looks straight but actually shares the slight recurve of the spine. The ricasso (the unsharpened portion of the blade between the handle and the primary sharpening bevel) is stonewashed, but the rest of the blade has a shinier satin finish, which is a cool touch in my opinion. It’s also quite difficult to show in a photograph, since it’s mainly just a difference in reflectivity.

The titanium pocket clip, pivot collar, and backspacer are anodized a brass-y/champagne-y color, and they were also hard for me to due justice to in pictures because the color is pretty subtle. There are currently two other color variants of the Marukka available, both with black stonewashed blades, but they don’t have the dual-finish blade treatment.

I’m kookoo for stabby-looking knives, but I’m also well aware of their limited usefulness in my life. My favorite knife of all time is my Microtech Ultratech signature version with a copper handle.

I don’t know what specific use the Ultratech was originally designed for, but I’m guessing it was murder. Mine even happens to be serial number 187, which is police code for… murder! I mainly use mine to murder boxes and loose threads on my clothes. The Ultatech’s blade is so thin and pointy that I can’t use it to scrape or pry anything for fear of snapping off the tip. I’m sure If I ever tried to clean under my fingernails with it, I’d be typing this with only nine fingers. Furthermore, its copper handle is so heavy that grabbing the tip of the blade between thumb and fingers to do detail work is like trying to tap in a nail with the handle of a hammer- the heavy head is at the far end, throwing off your balance. So I obviously don’t care about logic (or California switchblade knife laws), and love my impractical, stabby Ultratech.

The Marukka is far more practical and well-balanced. Its thin blade slices fruit and vegetables really well for a folding knife, and the combination of the blade’s low belly and the handle’s high arch let me dice onions without rapping my knuckles on the cutting board with every chop. It’s no kitchen knife, but it’ll do nicely in a pinch. Speaking of alternate knife uses, I always open my mail with the unsharpened spine of whatever knife is in my pocket- unless it’s the Marukka. The tip of this thing is so thin and sharp that I just know I’m going to end up slicing open my hand along with my electric bill. For me it’s usually “Oh shit, did I cut myself? There’s no blood- oh there it comes, so much blood!!!”

Placing my irrational fear aside for a moment, I think if I were to use this knife as hard as I’ve used my DPX Gear HEST/F or my Chris Reeve Knives Sebenza, then I would be a little worried about snapping off the Marukka’s tip.

The HEST/F knife (above, left) has a tip that’s protected against snapping off due to its absurdly thick blade stock, and the Sebenza’s tip is thin but is protected by geometry. My Sebenza (above, right) has the Insingo blade option, which is a sheepsfoot style blade. One of the reasons I like sheepsfoot blades is that their spines abruptly plummet down to the tip, resulting in a little more thick steel near the tip compared to the Marukka’s Persian style blade.

Handle, Ergonomics, and Pocket Clip

To test my weak tip assumption, I attacked a huge stack of industrial-sized extra thick cardboard boxes held together with large copper staples. After ten minutes of hacking them into recycling bin size (and running the blade right over the staples) I can say that the handle is comfortable and I didn’t worry once about breaking the Marukka’s tip. The balance point of this surprisingly light knife (4.02 oz / 114.4 g) is just behind the index finger groove in the handle, and it was easy to manipulate with and without gloves. The milled pocket clip added to my grip retention.

I’ve found that pocket clips often create hot spots and interfere with either a standard or overhanded grip. In fact, the DPX HEST/F (the green handled knife from a couple of pictures ago) has perhaps my least ergonomically-friendly clip of anything I own. But the Marukka’s clip is rounded and contoured, and pushed my ring and pinky fingers into an ideal grip when flipping it open. It’s obvious to me that Kombou didn’t just put the clip on as an afterthought, but thoroughly integrated it into the design.

In my months of everyday carry, the Marukka never accidentally slipped out of my pocket, but it would ride up to the tip of the clip if I’d been lying down with it clipped to my pocket. That also happens with almost every other single knife I own except my precious Microtech Ultratech, which has a “double dip” clip that keeps it snug in the bottom of my pocket.

The handle of the Marukka has 4” (102 mm) of usable gripping space, which allows me a full four finger grip with room to spare. Visually, it’s a mixture of organic curves and machine-like lines and angles. It’s like a dagger made from the Terminator’s wrist bone. The word that leaps out at me is bio-mechanical, probably because I just finished reading all five books in the “Murderbot Diaries” series of science fiction novels by Martha Wells. The main character (who calls itself Murderbot) is a human/robot hybrid, and I imagine Murderbot would appreciate the Marukka’s design aesthetic, even though it wouldn’t admit that to a human. The books are super fun, have great action interspersed with dry humor, and have won just about every sci-fi award available, including the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Awards. Sorry- I know this is a knife review, not a book review, so back to the knife.

There are several mechanical-style details on the Marukka’s handle. The pivot screw, for example, has the look of a spinning turbine, and the machined line that travels from the pivot screw to the end of the handle looks to me like either a gear or a circuit board. The cut on the lock side that forms the framelock follows that crenelated line to some extent. That’s pretty unique, since the framelock cut is more or less a straight line on about 90% of framelock knives ever since Chris Reeve invented the framelock in the late 1980’s.

The “bio” part of the bio-mechanical theme is most evident in the shape and angles of the handle, particularly on the top of the spine.

There’s a little flat-ish area where the handle meets the blade, which is obviously designed as a comfortable thumb shelf when holding the knife in a regular grip. Behind that is another swoopy indentation, which, along with the thin milled stripes behind it, is purely decorative as far as I can tell. In matters of design, I’m a huge fan of unexpected lines and angles, and Kombou could have just kept the spine going in one long curving line like he did in the Bestech Fanga (2nd picture from the top of the article) but instead he gave us an organic, multi-angled flourish. It’s clear to me that his design style is evolving, and I enjoy noticing the steps he takes along the way.

Deployment and Lockup

The Marukka is a flipper-opening framelock, and the action is light and snappy. The blade pivots on ceramic ball bearings, and the titanium framelock has a steel insert where it meets the blade.

This theoretically replaceable insert prevents titanium on steel friction, which can sometimes result in the knife getting stuck open. This used to happen with my previously mentioned DPX Gear HEST/F, which did not have a steel lockbar insert. I realize that I’ve used it as a bad example twice now, but the HEST/F was quite technologically advanced in 2012 when I bought it- which goes to show how rapidly the knife world has advanced in the last decade.

The detent of a flipper knife controls how much force must be applied to the flipper tab to snap the blade out of its closed position. A weak detent may result in the blade not fully opening, and a detent that’s too strong just kinda sucks. The Marukka’s detent is perfect, as is the detent on the two other Bestech Knives I own. The lockup is solid and there’s no blade play either opened or closed. Actually, I can’t even think of a single modern framelock knife I’ve handled that has any blade play… well, except for my HEST/F (oh no- not again! Sorry DPX Gear!) but its blade wiggle is the direct result of it being my favorite beater knife for almost a decade.

Bestech Marukka Review – Final Thoughts

I pay a lot of attention to details, and I had to dig deep into the details to find anything negative to say about the Marukka. This is all I could come up with: the steel lockbar insert is pretty sharp, and can scratch my thumb if I hold it too far forward when closing the blade. That’s it- I have no other complaints. It’s not cheap, but neither is the the unique and precise machining that went into this big, futuristic-looking, bio-mechanical stabbing machine. Like Martha Wells’ Murderbot, the Marukka is fascinating and dangerous, but smooth around the edges. I recommend it.

Thank you to Sara O’Neil for the use of her painting.

Bestech Marukka – From $272.00
From: BladeHQ

Marukka Framelock Gray BTKT2002A

Editor: I recommend purchasing the Bestech Marukka at BladeHQ and Amazon. Thank you very much.

WE Knife Co. Scoppio Review

by John Burridge 2 Comments

I’m writing this review at my work-at-home desk during the 2020 COVID lockdown, and ironically the first translation Google gives me for “scoppio” is “outbreak.” The second translation (from Italian) is explosion, which is more likely what WE Scoppio designer Toni N. Tietzel had in mind. The German designer’s logo is his initials on a little stick of dynamite. The star of this show is the blade’s unique (explosive?) compound grind. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to buy this knife.

Buy the Scoppio at BladeHQ or GP Knives

Back in the olden times when I actually physically worked in a building that wasn’t my house, I showed the Scoppio to my two knife-lovin’ co-workers, and I noticed something interesting: several non-knife people wanted to touch it. It’s generally been my experience that most… how do I say this nicely? Most… indoor-oriented people act like if they pick up a folding knife it’s going to bite them like a rattlesnake.

But the Scoppio, which is not small or meek looking, elicited an unprecedented amount of interest. They were drawn to its unusual-looking handle design, its unexpectedly heavy weight in the hand, and definitely by its rich, sparkly blue stonewashed color. My appreciation of this knife goes significantly deeper than that, and it starts with the basic specs:

General Dimensions and Blade Details

The Scoppio has a 3.6” (92 mm) long drop point blade that’s .16” (4 mm) thick, and has a deep stonewash finish. Mine has blue titanium handle scales and a gray blade, but there are black, bronze, and gray handled versions available, some with black stonewashed blades. The open length is 8.18” (208 mm) and my medium-large hands can get a comfortable four-finger grip on the Scoppio when open. All versions run around $259.00 online.

The blade is CPM-20CV stainless steel, which is the sort of premium knife steel that’s expected in this price range. According to smart people who understand steel, CPM-20CV is virtually identical to the more well-known Bohler M390 steel. The main difference is M390 is made in Austria, and CPM-20CV is made in America.

So the Scoppio was designed by a German, the name is Italian, the blade steel is American, and the whole thing is assembled in Yangjiang, China. If I may digress for a moment, the city of Yangjiang is home to a remarkable number of knife companies. Higher-end makers include Reate, Kizer, Bestech, Rike, and Artisan Cutlery, in addition to WE and it’s less fancy sister company, Civivi. It’s like a Chinese version of European knife-producing cities like Solingen, Germany or Maniago, Italy, but undoubtedly a thousand times larger. End of digression.

CPM-20CV has a Rockwell Hardness (HRC) rating between 59 and 61, which is excellent in terms of edge retention, AKA hardness. The tradeoff of a high hardness rating is usually a lower “toughness” rating, meaning that if you whack the cutting edge of the blade with a hammer, the blade is more likely to chip than dent. That’s a tradeoff I’m happy to live with, since I would rather take the risk of a chipped blade over having to sharpen it more often, like I would have to with a less hard steel with a higher toughness rating. CPM-20CV’s 59-61 HRC is nothing compared to Sandrin Knives tungsten carbide blades which reach 71 HRC, but again, the tradeoff of that much hardness means a brittle blade.

The Scoppio’s blade has a lot going on design-wise, starting with it’s overall shape.

It’s a drop point with an unusually big belly that dips a little lower in the middle than at its base. The Scoppio’s belly is one of the many small, unconventional touches that make this knife so fascinating to me. The spine of the blade, for example, is neither a straight line nor a gentle, unbroken curve like on most knives. From tail to tip, it constantly changes angles and thicknesses. And the grind on the flat of the blade is bonkers. The multi-angled grind reminds me of the work of knife design genius Geoff Blauvelt of TuffKnives. He often does interesting 3-D grinds, and Strider Knives has what they call the “Nightmare Grind”, but both strike me as kind of aggressive-looking and seem designed to draw my eye towards the blade tip. The Scoppio’s grind just looks weird. Good weird for sure, but weird.

The unique grind doesn’t seem to impede cutting, but it is a thick blade. Slicing through a crisp apple, the thick top of the blade stock eventually ends up splitting the apple open like a wedge. The Scoppio was my only food prep tool at the 2020 SHOT Show, and I used it daily as a bread slicer, vegetable chopper, and Vegan-aise spreader. By the way, I can tell you from personal experience that it’s virtually impossible to find vegan food at the Shooting Hunting Outdoors Trade show. The Scoppio performed hotel room kitchen duties a little better than a typical flipper-opening knife due to the blade’s belly, but the flipper tab extends well below the blade, so dicing and chopping required a rocking motion, which is less than ideal. Next year I’m bringing a real kitchen knife and a cutting board.

Handle, Ergonomics, and Pocket Clip

The show side of the handle, like the blade, has a standout feature: no visible screws. The “WE” logo hides the knife’s pivot, and it’s flush with the handle scales so the knife has zero wobble when laid flat- a nice touch.

At first glance, it looks rather plain, but upon closer inspection it’s full of subtle curves and unexpected angles. My favorite example of this on the Scoppio are the side-by-side vertices (basically the corners) at the butt end of the handle.

The rearmost vertex (1) follows a logical, normal path by having its corner centered at the apex of the curve. It’s symmetrical and looks “correct” to the eye. The vertex right next to it, however, (2) goes off at a weird angle.

The eye expects vertex 2 to go in the direction the orange arrow is pointing, but instead of being normal looking, its corner angle veers off to the right. I think the design principle this violates is called isometric angle symmetry, but I don’t know anyone who can answer obscure geometry questions. The robust, milled pocket clip’s shape is a (hopefully) easier to grasp example of the strangeness of the Scoppio’s design.

The clip, starting near the tip, is a uniform width. It goes along a predictable curve, as illustrated by the orange lines. Then it gets to the screws, where it looks like it got bent and sliced off with a razor blade. The eye expected it to finish its nice curve, but designer Toni M. Tietzel said no! to that expectation. The entire knife has interesting curvy lines and strange angles, and I absolutely love how unique it is.

I mentioned at the top of the review that non-knife people showed a lot of interest in this knife, and I think one of the factors was that it feels much heavier than you’d expect for something this size. Everyone immediately tossed it up and down in their hand and remarked on the weight. The Scoppio’s bladestock and titanium handle scales are each 4 mm thick on the sides, and where the two pieces meet on the top to form a closed-back design, it’s a total of 13 mm across. The heft of this knife made me aware that titanium isn’t nearly as light as I thought it was. I have other knives that weigh more than the Scoppio’s 4.6 oz (131 gm) but this knife just feels heavier than it looks.

I think the Scoppio’s ergonomics are good- the clip is comfortable against my hand in any grip, the edges of its smooth handle scales are all nicely chamfered so there are no noticeable hot spots, and it’s long and wide enough for me be able to wrap my fingers around it, resulting in a solid grip. It gets slippery when my hands are wet, but I find most folding knives to be hard to hang onto with wet hands.

I’ve noticed that, when dry, smooth titanium feels grippier than smooth aluminum, and that textured G10 and micarta are grippy by nature. I assumed good wet knife retention to be a function of the handle material or how much traction is milled into the handles. I take the thoroughness of my reviews somewhat seriously, so I brought 10 of my folding knives over to the kitchen sink and opened, closed, and manipulated them all with wet hands. I had handles made of machined carbon fiber, machined G10, textured G10, aluminum, copper, smooth titanium, and heavily machined titanium. Surprisingly, the slippery-hands knife retention winner was my GiantMouse Knives GM1.

The GM1 (center of picture) is the smoothest, flattest titanium knife I own, but it also has the most pronounced index finger groove. It turns out that finger grooves work really well with wet hands. The finger groove kept my hand from sliding back and forth, and slipperiness barely affected my grip. The Scoppio’s flipper tab kept my index finger from sliding forward onto the blade, but there’s not much in the handle shape to keep the knife from slipping out of my hand in the other direction should I ever have to hack open an old-fashioned gallon can of olive oil.

Deployment and Lockup

The Scoppio didn’t win the wet knife handle contest, but it definitely wins the best lock engagement sound award. It’s a superbly satisfying steel-on-steel clack, and I’ve never heard its equal in the flipper knife world. I don’t know if it was by accident or design, but WE Knife Co. got the harmonics just right with the Scoppio. It may be connected to the fact that the designer ignored the modern trend of milling weight-reducing pockets into the inside of the thick titanium handles. But whatever the cause, the overall result is a meaty snap when the Scoppio is flipped open on its ceramic bearings.

I have a huge, stainless steel 44 Magnum revolver that weighs 3-1/2 pounds, and the sound of quickly thumb-cocking it is the closest parallel I can think of to snapping open the Scoppio.

The flipping action is smooth and very well-balanced, and the small flipper tab has a little jimping on the front to give my index finger some traction. Lockup on mine is at 30%, which I would usually think of as inadequate, but there’s no arguing with the clack- it’s locked open tight. One contributing factor to the tight lockup may be the blade-mounted stop pin pictured below.

A stop pin (as I understand it) is a typically cylindrical piece of steel inside a folding knife’s handle that the butt end of the blade rests on when it’s open. Its function is basically to keep the blade from opening too far, and to keep the blade in the exact right place when it’s open. On most of my knives, the stop pin is mounted inside the knife between the handles. On the Scoppio, the stop pin is attached to the blade, and it rides in little grooves machined into the handles. I read online that blade-mounted stop pins like this can help reduce side-to-side blade wiggle. I don’t know if that’s true, or if one kind of stop pin system is superior, but frankly it’s too boring for me to investigate further.

WE Knife Co. Scoppio Review – Final Thoughts

This has been a thoroughly positive review up to this point, but according to the sacred code of the reviewer, I have to find something negative to say…OK, I wish the pocket clip screwed into the handle from the inside so the screws wouldn’t be visible, giving the Scoppio an even cleaner look.

And speaking of clean looks, the Scoppio has quite a noticeable seam where the two sides meet. I’m not saying that the Scoppio isn’t well made, but look at where the two halves of the handle meet on the Reate Knives Starboy pictured above- now that’s a seamless seam.

That’s all the negativity I can muster. I love this knife. Its lines and angles are strange and unpredictable, yet it’s not some unusable art piece. The three knives pictured below are by three different designers, but what they all have in common is weird contours and shapes that I find fascinating.

The bottom knife is the Microtech Cypher, designed by Deryk “D.C.” Munroe. It’s like a piece of petrified wood with a huge knife blade that shoots out the front. Everything about it is a little wrong, and I find it endlessly fascinating. On top is the Bestech Marukka, designed by Grzegorz “Kombou” Grabarski. There are so many neat bio-mechanical twists and turns on this brand-new knife that I had to bump it to the top of my BladeReviews review queue. The WE Scoppio, along with the other knives in the picture, are functional art. At the risk of sounding sappy, these three have inspired me to take a stab at designing knives. It’s finally time to turn the sketches and notes I’ve been collecting for years into something in SolidWorks. The Scoppio is both inspired and inspiring, and I highly recommend it.

We Knives Scoppio – $259.25
From: BladeHQ

I recommend purchasing the We Knives 605J at BladeHQ and GP Knives. Purchasing anything through any of the links on this site helps support BladeReviews, and keep this review train running. As always, any and all support is greatly appreciated.

Most Interesting Knives of SHOT Show 2020 – Part Two: Medford to We Knife Co.

by John Burridge Leave a Comment

I went to the SHOT (Shooting Hunting Outdoors Trade) Show 2020 and the Las Vegas Custom Knife Show 2020 and saw literally thousands of knives. Because of the internet in general (and Instagram in particular) most of them looked familiar, but I had never seen 99% of them in person. I buy pretty much everything except fresh vegetables online, so I never really know how big knives are or how they feel until they arrive in my mailbox, so it was really neat to be able to see everything in person and ask questions.

If you missed it, here is a link to part one of our SHOT Show 2020 Coverage. My mission with these two SHOT articles is to not only give my fellow knife nerds a heads up on what’s in store for us in 2020, but since I actually got my hands on them, I’ll do my best to describe how they feel. I apologize for my bad photography- I’m going to do a much better job next year!

MEDFORD KNIFE & TOOL

Nosferatu OTS Auto and Flipper

Pretty much every Medford Knife is in permanent beast mode, and the Nosferatu series of knives are no exception. When I slid off the safety and pressed the lock/go! button, a long, asymmetrical dagger with a false top edge swung out with a nice thwack sound. The flipper version with its sheepsfoot blade was nice and all, but it’s docile looking in comparison to the auto. Both knives use a round plunge lock button near the pivot to unlock and manually close the blade. The flipper’s blade swings freely when the lock button is depressed, so if you want to wrist flick a $650 knife, you can. The auto is $25 more at an MSRP of $675, and both are due out in April 2020.

On paper, their specs sound fairly normal: 3.5” S35VN blade, overall length of 8.4”, and .19” blade and handle thickness. Did the thickness number sound a little high? To put it in perspective, I have an old DPX Gear HEST-F, which has a comically thick blade- it’s .19” like the Nosferatu. Every knife person in the world (other than me) seems to have a heavy duty Spyderco Paramilitary 2 or 3, and their blade thickness is only .15”. Even the legendarily beefy old ZT 0300 series (commonly remembered as the NCIS Jethro Gibbs knife) maxed out at .16”.

My point is these things are THICK. And heavy. I really dug the simple linear design, the coffin-shaped pocket clips (Nosferatu means vampire in Romanian folklore) and the sharp-looking but round-feeling chamfering of the handles. I had never held a Medford knife before visiting their booth, and after putting down the Nosferatu and trying out some other Medford knives, it became very clear to me that the Nosferatu knives are the only ones with corners that are chamfered for your pleasure. The signature Medford style is big square-edged chunks of titanium and steel, and my soft, city-boy hands much preferred the slightly rounded feel of the Nosferatu.

Praetorian Slim Folder

Another new for 2020 knife, the Praetorian slim’s 3.25” blade is made from shockingly thin .125” blade stock but still has that square, slightly uncomfortable Medford feel. Two unique features of the Praetorian Slim are its thin, straight, kind of un-Medford-ey pocket clip (not pictured) and its glassbreaker (detail picture above). The full-size Praetorian knives have a hardened D2 steel glass breaker pommel, but the Slim has a little glassbreaker pyramid machined into the base of the blade. The MSRP is $525.

MICROTECH

Dirac OTF auto

Microtech had a table at the Las Vegas Custom Knife Show, and that’s where I found my newest purchase, the Dirac, soon to be reviewed on this website. My Microtech Dirac has a 2.875” blade of M390 steel and a 4” handle, not counting the length of the glassbreaker.

The Dirac and its larger version, the Dirac Delta, are different from any previous Microtech switchblades in that the sliding switch is on the flat side of the handle, not the spine. The switch placement gives the Dirac a couple of advantages. First, it allows the knife to be vertically symmetrical, which looks good. Second, it allows the switch to be noticeably wider and less tall top-to-bottom than spine-mounted Microtech switches. This gives my thumb much more surface area to apply pressure on the spring loaded switch, which feels good.

Iconic Karambit OTS auto

Here is a Link to the Iconic Karambit so you can check it out. I was so busy trying to figure out the little tiny safety switch on the spine of this new for 2020 auto karambit that I didn’t get a picture. I would ordinarily ask Microtech for a picture for this write-up, but I’m kinda talking smack about this one so I’m not going to ask.

At Microtech’s Las Vegas Custom Knife Show booth, I watched three people besides myself unsuccessfully try to close the Iconic, and just put it back on the table with the blade out for the Microtech reps to close. I’m sure it’s just a matter of practice, but for the first time ever I found a Microtech I don’t like.

PRO-TECH

Malibu Flipper

Pro-Tech’s newest knife is the Malibu, and although its smooth aluminum handles and hardware components have a standard Pro-Tech out-the-side auto look about them, Pro-Tech has swerved a little out of its lane with the Malibu. As far as I know, the Malibu is only the second flipper that they’ve made, and it’s their first knife with this blade shape. Pro-Tech calls it a reverse tanto blade. The Malibu will also be available with Pro-Tech’s first sheepsfoot blade (not pictured.) According to Pro-Tech’s Instagram page, the Malibu is going to further depart from the Pro-Tech norm by having CPM 20CV blade steel instead of their usual 154CM.

The Malibu’s 3.25” blade was on ball bearings and flipped open smoothly. To close the knife, I pressed the appropriately-recessed button lock, which had what I feel to be an appropriate amount of spring pressure to keep the button from being unintentionally pressed during appropriate use. I would characterize this knife as a light-to-medium duty tool. The blade is .11” thick and the shape is designed for utility rather than stabbing. I personally do very little stabbing in my day-to-day knife usage, and I prefer blade shapes like these that don’t require much wrist-bending to get the tip of the blade onto the packing tape of a box. I didn’t find the looks of this knife particularly exciting- its kind of average in length, width, and pocket clip, but Pro-Tech’s big thing is making lots of interesting cosmetic variations of their knives, and I expect the Malibu to be no exception.

REATE

T3000 and T3500 Flippers

The final two knives in designer Tashi Bharucha’s four knife “T” series are on their way to a 2020 release. BladeReviews has already reviewed the first two releases- Dan did the T2500 review in April of 2019, and I reviewed the T4000 in October. Their names are based on blade length, and the 3” T3000 ($330 MSRP) and the 3.5” T3500 ($360 for the micarta handle inlay version (pictured) and $370 for carbon fiber) should be released between April and June 2020. All four knives have titanium handles and M390 blades, and the T3000 and T3500 samples I handled had the excellent fit and finish I’ve come to take for granted from Reate. Their flipper action was on ball bearings and the big blades locked firmly into place. None of the knives in the series are particularly thick, but the tall handles filled my hand enough to get a solid grip.

I’m a huge fan of Tashi Bharucha’s work. I’ve got a Tashi Bharucha Heatseeker flipper (made by Reate, sold exclusively by drop.com) in my pocket right now. The Heatseeker, like the entire T series, is an elegant, aggressive knife that prioritizes style over user comfort. All that means in practice is that the T3000 and T3500 had a couple of hotspots in the form of somewhat sharp flipper tabs and pokey pocket clips. These are not manufacturing mistakes, they’re design choices, and I didn’t mind at all because the knives are so cool looking.

SOG

Ultra XR Folder

First of all, I learned that SOG is an acronym for Studies and Observations Group, which makes no sense to me as the name of a knife company (I think spotting scopes or notepads or ghillie suits would be more sensible products from the Studies and Observations Group) but SOG is owning it by engraving “STUDIES AND OBSERVATIONS GROUP” on every new knife blade I saw. Nonetheless, they had some interesting new knives at SHOT, starting with the Ultra XR. It was absolutely remarkable how thin and light this knife was. The clip is thicker than the blade and handles combined. The specs: 2.8” blade, S35VN steel colored gold with a titanium nitride finish, carbon fiber handles, titanium pocket clip, and an XR (slidey-button) lock. The Ultra XR weighs 1.2 oz., which is less than half the weight of a Spyderco Delica, which also has a 2.8” blade.

My hands-on studies and observations of the Ultra XR revealed that opening the blade with the long oval thumb hole was pretty much effortless. The SOG rep thought that it was running on bearings instead of washers, and it certainly felt like it, although it’s so thin I don’t know how they fit bearings in there. Regarding its sturdiness, I didn’t try to crush it in my hand or spine whack it with the 4.6 oz WE Knife Co. Scoppio I had in my pocket, but the Ultra XR felt relatively sturdy for something so thin and light. MSRP is $139, and its release should be before fall 2020.

Aegis AT Folder

The Aegis isn’t new- Dan reviewed the SOG Aegis for BladeReviews in 2011. I bought an Aegis Mini in 2012, and we both have nothing but praise for them. 2020 brings a few updates, some of which I like. I like the upgrade to D2 blade steel, I like that the pocket clip no longer has the “SOG” acronym stamped into it (the full company name is on the blade like all the other 2020 SOG’s), and I like the jaunty new color combos. My dislikes can be summed up with this quote from The Graduate: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.” The new lanyard loop is plastic. The new spine-mounted safety lock is plastic. The AT-XR (slidey-button) lock button is now plastic- the part you must apply pressure to every time you close the knife is plastic, instead of aluminum like on the older version.

I opened and closed the Aegis maybe ten times and its assisted-opening 3.7” blade snapped open very quickly and locked open just fine. However the spine mounted safety felt somewhat vague and flimsy, and the plastic lock button didn’t feel like it would immediately break or deform, but my brief studies and observations of the SOG Aegis left me with the impression that it’s a great looking knife that I wouldn’t trust without a lot of hands-on testing.

SPYDERCO

Bombshell Folder – Flash Batch

Spyderco let me handle the not-yet released Bombshell folder, but wouldn’t let me photograph it. Instead they gave me a web catalog jpeg of it with no background, so I layered it over a picture of my kitten, Buttercup. Knife/cat size is not to scale.

The Spyderco Bombshell is the production version of designer Michael Burch’s custom Bombshell. It felt heavier than your average Spyderco, and very well made. The thick G10 handles had far more of a 3-D rounded feel than most Spyderco knives, and despite its short (4.04”) handle length, it filled my hand nicely. Its tall 2.98” CPM 20CV blade reminds me of designer Jens Anso’s work, and the pocket clip looks similar to the clip on Michael Burch’s now-discontinued Spyderco Chubby. It’s a Spyderco “Flash Batch” limited limited to 1,200 pieces. I don’t have a release date, but I do know the street price should be $280.

2020 Spyderco Sprint Run Knives

I also got a look at some of the 2020 Spyderco Sprint run knives, which all have CPM REX45 steel blades and burnt orange colored handles. Pictured from top to bottom are the Native Chef (without the upcoming orange scales), the Manix 2, and the Shaman, which were the only three of eight upcoming Sprint Run knives Spyderco had on hand at SHOT Show. Collectors love the Sprint Run because by definition it’s a one-time limited run in a non-standard steel/color combo. I don’t go bananas for Spyderco like many, many people do, but they all seemed very nice.

STRIDER KNIVES

DB-L Fixed Blade

The Strider Knives DB-L isn’t new- it’s at least 10 years old, but it was new to me when I got to check one out at the Las Vegas Custom Knife Show. The DB-L has a 3.9” blade of PSF 27 steel (similar to D2 steel) with a thickness of .19, just like the manly Medford blades mentioned earlier in this article. The handle length is just over 4”, which would ordinarily be long enough for most people to get all their fingers around the grip, but there’s a pretty big finger choil and the G10 grips don’t go far enough forward to allow a four finger grip.

The reason I’m mentioning this in an article focused on new knives is that ever since I handled the CRKT Minimalist Cleaver on the first day of SHOT Show (see the Most Interesting Knives of SHOT Show 2020 Part One). I’ve been fascinated with how knife designers can give the user a solid grip with a handle only long enough for a three finger grip. CRKT’s solution was to make the handle so thin and contoured that it squeezed into the space between the bottom of my fingers and my palm.

When I picked up the Strider DB-L, I understood Strider used a different strategy: a rather thick handle. The shape and diameter of the DB-L’s handle permitted a three finger death grip on the knife in both a normal and reverse grip. The extremely aggressive texture of the G10 “Gunner Grip” handles made by VZ Grips also helped. After relaxing my three-finger death grip, my hands retained the pressed-in Gunner grip texture for a minute or so. As an owner of some VZ handgun grips, I can tell you from personal experience that the grips would rather take some skin with them than slip out of your hand.

After taking a look at VZgrips.com just now, I’m filled with regret that I didn’t think to visit the VZ Grips booth at the SHOT Show- in addition to making grips for Strider Knives, VZ makes a line of absolutely insane G10 daggers. And not just non-metallic (non-metal detector triggering) daggers- they make sharpened cylindrical G10 stabbers disguised as No. 2 pencils and something called the Punch Ripper that’s too horrible to describe. I’m going to kick my COVID stay-at-home blues by getting one of those stabbin’ pencils!

VIPER KNIVES

Katla Folder

The Katla is a thumbstud-opening folder designed by Jesper Voxnaes. The blade is 3.23” of Bohler M390 steel and it will come in several handle and blade finish variations- pictured above are the carbon fiber version and the micarta version, which will have MSRP’s of $208 and $174. There are also some versions (not pictured) that have an interesting organic melty looking machined texture near the pivot and lanyard hole.

The action on the two prototypes I was able to handle was very smooth, and the lockup was solid. I was unable to determine if the knives were pivoting on washers or bearings. The Viper rep made a point of telling me that the pivot collars and backspacers were bronze, but to me they looked very copper-y. Later I did a little research and discovered that the bronze looked like copper because bronze is mostly copper- who knew? Blacksmiths since 3500 BC knew, and now we all do.

WE KNIFE CO.

Gava Flipper

The WE Knife Co. Gava is a scaled-down production version of the custom Gava framelock by BRR Knives of Legnica, Poland. The WE Gava has a 3.25” CPM 20CV blade (1/2 inch shorter than the custom version), titanium handles, and a bearing-driven flipper action.

In the hand, the Gava was typical WE Knife Co quality, which is high. It felt light and tight and flipped briskly. Judging by photos I’ve found online, the WE Gava I handled at SHOT appears to be a pretty faithful rendition of the custom Gava. For me, the major enjoyment of this knife would be in the long contemplation of its thousand neat little machined details. A BRR custom Gava (if you can find one) costs no less than $1,000 USD. I often find it difficult to understand the reason for the high prices of many custom knives, but I’ve done a bit of research on this one, and have definitely figured out the reason for the high price of custom BRR Knives: supply and demand.

People in BRR Knives home town of Legnica, Poland, have been panic buying edged weapons ever since the Mongol invasion of Legnica in 1241 AD. It’s obviously panic buying in case the descendants of Genghis Khan try it again. The WE Knife Gava has a very reasonable MSRP of $275.

Mini Buster Flipper

I had a nerd-gasm when I saw the Mini Buster on the WE Knife table. I’m a huge fan of the Mini Buster’s creator Snecx Tan. I find his design language to be simple and elegant, and the Mini Buster is my most anticipated knife release of 2020. Until now, Snecx has only personally made a handful of knives in his small workshop in Indonesia, and only released two of his designs to be produced by other companies: the Terra folder, produced by Custom Knife Factory, and the (full size) Buster, produced by Jake Hoback Knives. The WE Mini Buster is a framelock design with a 3.43” blade of CPM-20CV steel (vs the 4” M390-bladed JHK Buster), and titanium handles in either a light or dark stonewashed finish. The WE Mini Buster is less overbuilt than the Hoback version and is visually way more Snecx-y.

Handling the Mini Buster, my prevailing thought was that there are a lot of titanium framelock flipper knives out there, but the weight, balance, flipping action, and overall vibe of the Mini Buster have taken it to the top of the framelock flipper genre. Snecx said on his Instagram page that his goal is to make a folding knife as timeless as the Chris Reeve Knives Sebenza. The Mini Buster is not quite that, but it’s clearly a step in the process. He documents that process pretty thoroughly on Instagram, where I’ve been watching the evolution of Snecx’s next knife, the Vision. Snecx has invented an entirely new locking mechanism for the Vision, and that knife definitely has the potential to stand toe to toe with the Sebenza. The release date of the Vision is unknown, but the WE Mini Buster (MSRP of $340) is slated for an April 2020 release. I’m going to buy a Mini Buster tout suite and review it here on BladeReviews.com.

And as an extra treat, here’s a picture of the legendary Arsenal RS-1 knife/gun.

It’s a Rambo knife attached to a six shot revolver chambered in the not-at-all-powerful caliber 22 Short. It’s made by Arsenal Firearms of Russia, it’s $2,500 USD, its target demographic is Russian mob bosses, and it wins Most Interesting Knife of SHOT Show 2020. Thank you for reading!

Most Interesting Knives of SHOT Show 2020 – Part One: Arcane Design to Magpul

by John Burridge 7 Comments

I went to the SHOT Show (Shooting Hunting Outdoors Trade) 2020 and the Las Vegas Custom Knife Show 2020 and saw literally thousands of knives. Because of the internet in general (and Instagram in particular) most of them looked familiar, but I had never seen 99% of them in person. I buy pretty much everything except fresh vegetables online, so I never really know how big knives are or how they feel until they arrive in my mailbox, so it was really neat to be able to see everything in person and ask questions. My mission with these two SHOT articles is to not only give my fellow knife nerds a heads up on what’s in store for us in 2020, but since I actually got my hands on them, I’ll do my best to describe how they feel.

There were way too many new knives for me to cover them all, so I’m just reporting on the ones that I found most interesting. A well known gun writer, Col. Townsend Whelen, said “only accurate rifles are interesting.” I don’t want to come off as a snob, but I generally agree with the concept. I don’t find knives made with cheap blade steel like AUS8 or 8Cr13MoV particularly interesting, even if they’re superb designs like TJ Schwarz’s Overland or Thero knives, both produced by CRKT. I love that there are so many unique, well made, low-cost folding knife options out there that we knife lovers can take a chance on without breaking the bank, but I personally gravitate towards higher-end stuff. Here we go, and I apologize in advance for my bad photography, I’ll do better next year!

ARCANE DESIGN

Necronaut flipper

This is a prototype of Arcane Design’s first folder, the Necronaut. It’s Kickstarter campaign launches February 10, 2020. It’s a framelock flipper with a 3.5” M390 blade, a titanium handle with red aluminum pivot collars, and it’s going to cost $350-$375, depending on blade and handle finishes. It’s going to be manufactured by Reate, and based on my past experiences with Reate-made knives, the quality of the production knives is likely to be top notch.

The Necronaut felt substantial and aggressive, and the flipping action was brisk with a solid lockup. It’s got a 4 mm thick blade and raised red pivot collars that give it more style and heft. The handle shape is surprisingly comfortable for being so angular, and I didn’t notice the pocket clip when I gave it a few test flips, so it seems to be doing a good job of not creating any hotspots in my very limited time with this mean-looking knife.

ARTISAN CUTLERY

Archaeo non-locking flipper

The locking version of the Archaeo flipper has been Artisan’s top seller lately, with large (3.86” blade) and small (3” blade) versions ranging in price from $57 to $250, depending on materials. Artisan has decided to ride the 2019/2020 industry-wide wave of non-locking knives by producing an Archaeo non-locking flipper. Price, size, and materials are all being decided at the moment. The expected release is sometime in March or April 2020.

The Archaeo felt very thin and light. The flipper action was snappy and the handle materials (G10 in this case) felt grippy and reasonably well-finished. Whether locking or non-locking, the Archaeo variants on display didn’t feel substantial enough for heavy-duty cutting, but that’s obviously not what they’re made for.

Unnamed Prototype Top Lock Folder

This is a prototype of a new locking system that Artisan has been working on for a few years. To open or close the knife, you place your thumb on top of, or on the side of, the spring-tensioned lock mechanism (circled) on the top front of the handle and slide it towards the rear. Artisan doesn’t have a name, release date, or even a final design yet- I think they’re just showing it to people to get feedback.

This felt unlike any other lock I’ve ever used. It’s an interesting design that doesn’t require you to put your thumb in the path of the blade to close it, but you can also close the blade on your fingers if you’re holding it too far back for the flipper tab to bump into your index finger as it swings closed. It’s a prototype, so the edges were somewhat sharp and the spring tension in the lock mechanism was a bit light from a safety standpoint, but it felt pretty neat, and I look forward to handling a finished product someday.

BENCHMADE

Autocrat OTF

Apparently the only new-for-2020 feature of the Benchmade Autocrat is a black DLC coated blade, but I mention it in this article partly because I was pleasantly surprised by it, and partly because BladeReviews.com’s Editor In-Chief Dan recently did a review of the Benchmade Infidel, and I had a very serious question for the Benchmade rep who was showing me around Benchmade’s display.

Dan mentioned in his review that the end of the fuller running down the center of the Infidel’s blade looked like a set of dog testicles (you really should look at the first image in Dan’s review linked above) and I politely inquired about the purpose of that particular shape at the aft end of the Infidel’s fuller. “It’s a blood groove.” said the rep. I then remarked about how fullers are usually for structural rigidity and aesthetics and not for actual blood channeling, and that it looks like a pair of balls. He didn’t like that at all and told me the Infidel is a serious knife for military personnel and first responders, so “It’s literally a blood groove.” Mystery solved, I guess. The Autocrat OTF, pictured above is smaller, lighter, and less hardcore than the Infidel, and therefore does not require the special blood groove shape.

Both sides of the Autocrat’s handle are made of textured G10, and they felt grippy but not abrasive. The knife is also surprisingly light for it’s size. The blade is 3.7” of S30V steel, which is a bit longer than the 3.46” blade of the Autocrat’s main competition, the Microtech Ultratech, but the Autocrat felt much lighter to me than an aluminum bodied Ultratech, and the spine-mounted switch was easier to activate. The pocket clip has a tasteful little Benchmade butterfly logo on it, as opposed to the blood groove havin’ Benchmade Infidel’s clip which says “THE INFIDEL” in large white letters. All in all, I quite like the Autocrat.

Tengu flipper

The Tengu is a classy little (2.77” blade) liner lock named after a Japanese demon. I find it interesting mainly because it’s design blends the look of an old-timey lockback with 21st century features such as flipper opening, a liner lock, an attractive striped G10 backspacer and handles, modern CPM-20CV steel, and overall cool lines. Designer Jared Oeser’s shield logo and smooth-faced handle screws on the show side make this a real standout for Benchmade. It’s slated for release in February, at a MSRP of $220.

This knife felt solid, heavy, and well made. Since there’s no pocket clip, it comes with a nice little soft leather pouch. I’ve handled a couple of William Henry knives, which are the pinnacle of modern + old-timey blended knives, and they’re handmade gems that radiate quality craftsmanship. The Tengu ain’t that, but it’s quite nice.

BESTECH

Kamoza flipper

The Kamoza, by prolific Bestech knife designer Kombou, is a medium-large (3.62” blade) flipper with a futuristic JRR Tolkein elf kind of vibe. The handle is titanium and the blade is M390 steel. As of February 2020, the Kamoza comes in three handle color/blade finish options, and is starting to appear in stores with a street price of around $255.

It felt light and tight with a snappy flipping action. The back end of the handle on the Kamoza has a curved cutout that fits the shape of the tanto blade, and felt quite good in my hand. This knife has a ton of fascinating design details, including a band of fine lines across the handle, which looks like it’s becoming a design motif for Kombou, as his next knife, the Kasta (below) has them too.

Kasta Flipper

This is another new model designed by Kombou, featuring stripes of finely milled lines on the handle and pivot screw. I was told that the Kasta blade shape was inspired by a historical Chinese infantry weapon, the Pudao, which was essentially a short sword on a pole. I was also told it would become available shortly after Chinese New Year and is slated to be the most expensive Bestech to date, with an MSRP of $400. It’s got a blade made of M390 steel, a titanium and carbon fiber handle, and other color/material combos will be forthcoming.

The Kasta felt big and meaty- the tall, heavy blade thwacked open with authority, and the handle allowed me a solid four finger grip. The belly of the blade is slightly lower than the flipper tab, so it could have some kitchen utility if that’s your thing. I would characterize this knife as “not office friendly.”

Tulip front flipper

Permission to use this pic was given to me by the photographer, Grzegorz Grabarski (Kombou)

The Tulip is a little angular front flipping piece of art by designer Ostap Hel. It has a 1.34” blade of M390 steel, and fit easily into the little coin pocket of my jeans. It was a December 2019 release.

The Tulip is cute but felt waaaay too small to do any serious cutting. It was so small I had a hard time opening it using the front flipper, but I’m sure I’d get the hang of it with practice. I get the appeal of such tiny knives, but I also got to handle the Bestech Imp (not pictured), which is about 50% bigger, and in my opinion the Imp is far more usable due to it’s index finger-sized blade choil.

BOKER PLUS

Aphex Flipper

The Boker representative I spoke with described the Aphex as a limited edition “Boker 2020 collector knife.” Designed by Lucas Burnley, it’s got all the right ingredients for a 2020-style tactical knife: M390 steel, titanium frame with carbon fiber inlays, and a super-manly vibe. It’s slated to become available in February or March of 2020 with an MSRP of $549.

The Aphex has a 4” blade, and felt like a serious tool. It’s big, heavy, and aggressive. Holding the Aphex made me want to use it to use it to whittle a boar-hunting spear out of a tree trunk.

CULTROTECH

Comrade flipper

Permission to use this pic was given to me by Cultrotech via Instagram

The Comrade is limited to 100 remarkably detailed pieces from Cultrotech Knives in Russia. It’s blade is 3.77” of Elmax steel in a titanium framelock handle. I met the designer at the Las Vegas Custom Knife show, but since I don’t speak Russian I wasn’t able to get many details, other than it will cost 48,000 Rubles ($740 USD.)

It felt crazy lightweight, and had a crazy smooth action. I’ve handled a couple of Shirogorov knives, which are known to be among the most well-crafted production folders in the world, and the Comrade was their equal in smoothness and build quality.

CRKT

Minimalist Cleaver

Other than the CRKT Provoke folding karambit, which to me is unquestionably super-cool, the only CRKT knife I want to single out from their huge catalog is the Minimalist Cleaver, along with it’s bowie, drop point, wharncliffe, and tanto variants. They all have blades around 2 inches long, made from not-so-good 5Cr15MoV or 8Cr13MoV blade steel, and come with cute little rigid nylon sheaths. They range in price from $17 to $25.

I thought the entire CRKT Minimalist series with these distinctive handles were kind of dumb gimmicks until I felt one, and then I was totally sold on the concept of these tiny fixed blade knives. They feel great in the hand because of the finger grooves, which provide a surprisingly solid grip despite the fact that the handle is quite thin. The cleaver style (pictured above) would probably work very well as a boxcutter or utility knife. I would actually buy this knife if I didn’t live in California, a state that says no! to fixed blade knives if they’re carried concealed. The only way to stay legal would be to openly carry it in a sheath, but people already think I’m weird enough without wearing a fixed blade on my belt like a mountain man.

FOX KNIVES

Radius folder

I don’t know what to call the opening mechanism, but here’s how it works: press the thumbstud (which is also a button) in to unlock the 2.95” blade, then walk it around it’s little round track with your thumb until it’s open, at which point the spring detent in the button pops it back up to lock the blade open. Reverse the process to close it. There are several blade steel, blade coating, and handle material variations coming out sometime in early 2020, with street prices starting at around $412.

The feel of the Radius was unique, and I liked it. I tend to have some small metal object in my hand (usually a knife or flashlight) when watching TV, but idly playing with flipper or assisted opening knives (and I barely saw any assisted opening knives at SHOT Show 2020 except for CRKT and SOG knives) makes noise and annoys my wife. But the Radius’ one handed opening is silent and addictive. I couldn’t stop opening and closing it the entire time I was speaking with the Fox Knives rep. It’s not a very long knife, with a blade under 3”, perhaps to make it legal in more places in America, and the thumb pivot mechanism takes up quite a bit of space in the handle. Because of that, there was no space on the handle for my pinky finger, which is really the only thing I didn’t like about this knife. The carbon fiber handle scales are unusually thick, which felt great in the hand but bulky in the pocket. I can’t remember if the titanium versions were as thick as the carbon fiber ones, and I also didn’t remember to ask if they’re making a left handed or ambidextrous version for the 10% of the world that’s not right handed.

599 Folding Karambit

The Fox 599 Folding Karambit isn’t particularly new, but I found this knife interesting because of it’s deployment method. It has the Emerson Wave feature, which is the hook on the back of the blade. On any normal Emerson Wave or DPX Gear Emerson-ish opening hook, you pull the knife towards the back of your pocket while drawing it upward, and the hook catches the fabric at the back of your pocket, making the blade snap open. But because karambit knives are designed to be used in a reverse grip with the index finger in the ring and the blade facing out, instead of facing in like a traditional knife, the Wave hook is reversed as well. The 599’s Wave hook works by grabbing the fabric on the front (forward facing) side of your pocket, not the back.

I tried to make this backwards opening feature work several times, and I finally got it but it felt very awkward. I would ordinarily recommend a lot of practice to anyone carrying this knife, but if you’re the kind of person who carries a karambit, you’re already going to practice that move until you destroy 10 pairs of pants.

GERBER

Doubledown Folding Machete

Do you love machetes but are always losing those pesky scabbards? Do you love butterfly knives but wish it was so big you could cut down a tree with it? I’m envisioning the “Has this ever happened to you?” part of the infomercial where it turns black & white and freeze frames on the actor looking into the camera in frustrated horror… Even the Gerber rep at the SHOT Show had a hard time being serious about this butterfly knife machete. It’s got a 6.75” blade, and is 15” open. The Gerber Doubledown is due to be released in August with a MSRP of $130.

I just had to play with this and was disappointed that it didn’t flip all the way open like a butterfly knife, but has a half-stop with safety release buttons (the thin silver bars near the pivot on each handle) that are only there to keep that big heavy blade from chopping your hand off when you try to open this awkward contraption. It’s due to be released in August 2020, which seemed strange to me since spring is gardening season, but perhaps they wanted their big, dangerous, folding machete release date to steer way clear of April, which is National Limb Loss Awareness Month.

KIZER CUTLERY

Clutch flipper

There were lots of thin, light, smallish, elegant new knives at SHOT 2020, and Kizer’s booth had a metric F-ton of them. The Clutch has a 3.39” S35VN blade and it’s titanium frame lock handle comes with either carbon fiber or micarta (pictured) inlays. The thing that made this particular knife interesting to me was it’s micarta inlays.

The extremely grippy inlays looked and felt like rigid corduroy (if you’re under 40 years old, ask your parents what corduroy is) and it’s obvious from the two different textures on the lock side that Kizer machined that line texture into the micarta, which is something I’ve never seen before. The Clutch should be available in May 2020.

Apus Front Flipper

The Apus is another thin, light, smallish, new Kizer knife, and is very 2020-style with it’s small size, front flipper, and different color variations. It’s 3” blade is S35VN steel with titanium, titanium/carbon fiber, or titanium/copper handles. It’s expected to be in stores around May.

I know it’s a subjective thing, but when I had this gorgeous little knife in my hand, I wished it would either be a little bigger or a little smaller, since I was able to get a 3 1/2 finger grip on it with my medium/large hands. I feel like it’s an in-between size at 6.9” overall, but that’s my only complaint. I find this knife’s open profile to be very aesthetically pleasing, especially with the copper handle scale.

Noble Flipper

This lightweight new flipper is designed by Sebastian Irawan from Indonesia, and is one of three of his Kizer-produced knives coming out in 2020. It’s got a 3.5” S35VN blade with a titanium framelock handle. Available in June 2020.

When I picked up the Noble and flipped open the blade (good, quick action by the way) I was immediately aware of how much the handle’s holes and off-center football-shaped scallops reduce the weight of the knife. The Noble’s handle is not particularly thin, but it’s got a lot of material removed from the inside of the handle as well, so it’s pretty much hollow without feeling fragile. The handle’s machining also provides a lot of grip, and the lock side of the knife has even more neat machining on the handle and pocket clip. This is one of those knives that feels better than it looks like it would, if that makes sense.

KERSHAW

Launch 11 OTS auto

Kershaw’s Launch series of Out The Side auto knives just got a little classier with the Launch 11. I think it’s much better looking than any of the previous ten Launch models. It has a 2.75” sheepsfoot blade made of CPM 154 steel in an aluminum handle.

It felt small and light- a gentleman’s switchblade. I felt the opening button was recessed enough to avoid accidental firing, which is important in a switchblade with no manual safety. The spring strength and blade weight felt well balanced, meaning that the spring pushing the blade open didn’t try to throw the knife out of my hand like most OTS automatic knives do.

LIONSTEEL

I think they had some new knives, but their SHOT booth was manned by two guys speaking to each other in Italian who never once acknowledged my presence, so I have nothing to report.

MAGPUL

Rigger flipper prototype

If you’ve read this SHOT Show 2020 article all the way down to this point, you’ll know that I’m not an actual journalist, but I faked it very convincingly at the Magpul booth. The third person I asked about this knife got a fourth person to go into the back and find the prototype pictured above, and they told me a lot of inside info on the story of the Magpul Rigger.

I’d seen pictures of the Rigger from last year’s show, and really liked it’s purposeful, clean aesthetic. In the hand, it’s big, tall and heavy, and the 3.4” S35VN blade flips open with a satisfying snap. The secondary locking mechanism (the switch that’s securing the framelock, pointing at the pocket clip in the second picture) was designed to feel like a 1911 pistol’s thumb safety. I have a 1911 and while this doesn’t look like a 1911’s safety, it does indeed have that crisp metal-on-metal snap when it locks into place.

Magpul released a serialized 200 piece mid-tech version of the Rigger with a black blade and handle in 2019, and it sold out immediately. I asked why the much-anticipated production run of the knife hadn’t happened yet, and was told that they were still trying to figure out how to make them at their Cheyenne, Wyoming factory in a cost-effective manner. Each pocket clip, for example, currently takes 4 hours of machining time due to it’s 2 degree angle. Magpul makes all their products in house, in America, and they’re going to figure out the puzzle of how to make the Rigger by themselves.

According to one of the Magpul reps I spoke with, they’re planning on releasing another limited run of 200 pieces, this time with the brown canvas micarta handle (pictured above) sometime in 2020, priced at around $425. I told him that I’m definitely going to buy one from their website when they drop, and then he told me about the other problem with getting the Rigger out there: the moment the first batch became available at magpul.com, demand was so high that the website immediately crashed. Hopefully they get that fixed soon so I can snag one for BladeReviews.

Part II…

Coming up in part two of the Most Interesting Knives of SHOT Show 2020: Medford, Microtech, Protech, Reate, Rike Knife, SOG, Spyderco, Strider, Viper, and WE Knife, featuring my most anticipated knife of 2020, the Snecx-designed WE Mini Buster.

Reate T4000 Review

by John Burridge 3 Comments

Whenever there’s the thinnest excuse to use a pocket knife, I do so. Over the last month of carrying the Reate T4000 nearly every day, I’ve noticed that when I open it up in public to do any of the small innocuous things I use a knife for, I’ve seen people’s eyes light up with…not terror, but a distinct “What the hell is that?” look mixed with a tingle of atavistic fear.

Buy the Reate T4000 at BladeHQ or GPKnives

It looks like a large double edged dagger- which, to the subconscious mind of most people, looks like what the ruling classes have been using to kill people with for the last four thousand years, and/or what everybody gets stabbed with in Game Of Thrones. I have two friends who are into knives on almost the same nerdy level that I am, and even their first responses were “Whoa!”

The instant I saw the T4000, I knew I wanted it simply for the fear/thrill reaction it gave me. But when writing a knife review, I always try to determine the knife’s intended purpose. In this case, it’s easy: when Reate Knives began teasing the T4000 in July 2018, BladeReviews.com’s own Ben Schwartz wrote an article about it for KnifeNews.com. Here’s what the designer of the knife, Tashi Bharucha, had to say about it:

[It] does not pretend to be anything other than a stabbing pocket sword.

It’s intended purpose is to be a stabbing pocket sword? Sign me the fuck up!

General Dimensions and Blade Details

The Reate Knives T4000 is part of a four-knife series, all designed by French knife auteur Tashi Bharucha. At the time of writing, only the smallest of the four, the T2500 and the T4000 have been released. The naming convention reflects the length of the blades in inches- the T2500 is 2.5” long, the T4000 is 4”, etc. The T3000 and T3500 have yet to be released.

I find it curious that a French designer and a Chinese knife manufacturer are using the antiquated Imperial measurement system for the names of these knives- I’m going to assume their target market is ‘Merica. I don’t know if the pricing scheme is also related to the blade length, but the T4000 cost me $400 USD. I suppose that’s a bargain compared to Tashi Bharucha’s custom, handmade knives, which cost at least $1,000. Even though I’m a big fan of his work, I’m not going to spend over a thousand bucks on something I can’t drive, ride, or shoot.

It comes with a bunch of nice, unnecessary stuff like a Reate Knives Zipper pouch, a cleaning cloth, a microfiber knife bag, a velcro embroidered “Reate” patch, and extra handle screws, which are actually a really nice touch.

There are three handle choices: Titanium with inlaid carbon fiber, inlaid brown canvas Micarta, or inlaid green canvas Micarta, which is what I bought. It’s an unusually large and heavy folder, even bigger in every respect than my collection’s previous champion of unnecessary size and weight, the Microtech Sigil MK6.

The T4000 weighs 5.3 oz (150 g), is 8.86” (225 mm) long when open, 4.92” long (125 mm) closed, and 1.75” (44 mm) tall when open or closed. Some knives disappear into your pocket- this definitely doesn’t. It’s not particularly thick though, at .68” (17.2 mm) at it’s widest point, pocket clip included.

The blade steel is Bohler M390, which is considered a “super steel” due to it’s extreme hardness and corrosion resistance. I’ve been reading up on blade steel, and want to give a shout out to knifesteelnerds.com for a lot of in-depth articles that a non-scientist like myself can understand. What I’ve learned about M390 is that it’s high hardness resists edge deformation, which keeps it sharp. The trade-off for high hardness is a reduction in toughness, which is basically resistance to chipping. A lot of these hardness/toughness qualities seem to be imparted into the blade during the manufacturing process known as heat treating. My limited understanding of heat treating boils down to this: you heat up the unfinished steel blade to get the individual molecules to bond together in a very specific way, then remove the blade from the heat to lock in the molecular structure.

Most knife manufacturers guard their heat treating methods as proprietary secrets, but Reate Knives has made this little nugget known: after the heat treating is complete, they use a technique called “freeze edging skill.” This process cools the blade while the cutting edge is being ground, so that the friction-induced heat of grinding doesn’t undo the specific molecular structure from it’s heat treating. It may just be marketing hype, but it makes sense to me.

I was recently talking to a guy who is several orders of magnitude higher than me on the Blade Steel Nerdiness spectrum, and he gave me an earful about how modern super steels like M390 are too brittle, and he prefers softer, “tougher” steel like VG10 or 154CM which are easier to sharpen. I totally get it because he’s way into sharpness- he sharpens his daily carry Sebenza with a leather strop every day whether he’s used it or not. Personally, I have a bunch of nice pocket knives that I carry and use, and I wait until they’re good and dull before I sharpen them. I would rather have a knife with a crazy hard edge that I can use longer between sharpenings. In a month of light duty cutting, I’ve barely dulled the edge of my T4000, so Reate’s M390 is working great for me.

The blade is surprisingly slim for such a big knife. It has a thin hollow grind with a decorative fuller, which briefly flares the blade’s maximum width to 3.8 mm in the center. I looked up a ton of information about blade fullers for this review, but it’s far too boring to include here.

Suffice it to say that fullers are basically for structural reinforcement on long blades and are not “blood grooves.” The T4000’s standout feature is it’s aggressive symmetrical dagger shape, but the top of the blade, which is exposed when the knife is closed, has a 1.1 mm thick unsharpened edge.

This knife has excelled at my usual mundane tasks of box and bag opening and loose thread cutting, but I like trying new things, and I’ve never used a dagger for food prep before. I stabbed and slashed and hacked my way through tomatoes, onions, artichokes, sausages, etc. My experience using the T4000 in the kitchen was pretty much like with every other pocket knife I’ve used in this capacity- I couldn’t dice anything like with a chef’s knife because my knuckles would hit the cutting board before the blade would. It’s thin blade slices well, and the fuller seemed to keep food from sticking to the side of the blade. The false edge on the top of the blade is wide enough to push down on for some extra leverage.

Other uses for the T4000’s false edge are:

Opening mail- the false edge opens envelopes perfectly without dulling the sharpened side.
Removing staples- slip the tip of the blade under the staple and twist towards the unsharpened side.
Pretending to slash my wrist- I’ve absolutely horrified several people.

Handle, Ergonomics, and Pocket Clip

On the T4000, designer Tashi Bharucha used a variation of his signature handle shape. From an aesthetic standpoint I love it, but I find it’s ergonomics often make the knife difficult to use. The problem, in my opinion, is how far back my hand is from the blade’s tip. There’s no place on the handle to choke up and gain the mechanical advantage of having my hand closer to the tip of the blade.

That being said, I don’t really care, because I don’t buy his knives for the ergonomics. I would never classify myself as a “fanboy” because first of all I’m not a boy, I’m a goddamn man, but Tashi’s design style really speaks to me, and I now own five of his production knives.

The handle ergonomics on three of the others are similar to the T4000, with the exception being the Massdrop-produced Prism (far left in photo), which cleverly exchanges some sharpened blade length for the ability to choke up on the handle. The Tashi B./Reate Knives Baby Machine (not pictured) knife has a similar ergonomically friendly shape.

The T4000’s handle is made of two pieces of titanium and one piece of green canvas Micarta. This is my first knife utilizing Micarta, and I was dismayed that after a month of sweat and cooking oil and dirty hands, the Micarta’s color has permanently changed from light green to a darker olive drab. It’s somewhat grippy texture is unchanged. The mating of the Micarta into the handle is so precise I can see where the inlaid Micarta meets the titanium, but I can’t feel the seam.

Reate’s fit and finish on this knife are superb. Every angle machined into the handle looks sharp but feels smooth. The T4000’s shape is just so weirdly aggressive that I can’t stop looking at it- it’s the knife equivalent of an Italian sports car. Specifically, the Lamborghini Urus: a 641 horsepower all wheel drive SUV that, to my eye, shares many design cues with the T4000. Please forgive my crude Photoshop skills:

Both the car and the knife are fascinating combinations of severe lines and curves, and both come off as being large, lumpy and aggressive. I periodically see one of these big stealth tank-looking SUV’s rolling by, and my response is always “Whoa!” By the way, for an excellent review of the Lamborghini Urus, I suggest checking out the Amazon Prime TV show “The Grand Tour” season 3, episode 5 “An Itchy Urus.” Anyway, back to the knife…

The forward tip of the pocket clip is very sharp. Not cut yourself sharp, but certainly scratch the paint off your car door sharp.

Nonetheless, the clip looks great, and I think it’s pointy design is entirely appropriate for a stabbing pocket sword. The T4000’s titanium clip is milled into Bharucha’s signature stylish shape, and the clip’s shape and position mirror the titanium inlay inside the Micarta inlay on the show side. The amount of flex is great, it’s amount of offset from the body of the knife is great for thick denim jeans pockets, and it’s shape melts into the fold of my hand when I’m using it.

When carrying the T4000 while wearing reasonably tight pants (as I often do), the knife, though heavy, stays put due to it’s robust clip. But when wearing loose shorts, I feel that big hunk of titanium and steel rhythmically slapping my thigh as I walk.

Deployment and Lockup

The blade is heavy and the flipper detent is strong, so it takes a bit of finger muscle to open it. It swings smoothly on ceramic bearings, and has a nice strong magnet-like feel that snaps the blade closed when it’s open less than 6 mm. It’s a framelock, and locks up securely with about half of it’s 3 mm steel lock face in contact with the blade. It’s not a hard use knife like my DPX HEST F1, which has a 75% lockup on it’s 4 mm wide lockbar, but the T4000’s lock doesn’t seem to be likely to fail under reasonable use.

There is one weird thing about it though- it’s sound. When flipping it open, instead of the normal, satisfying “click” that I’ve come to expect from titanium knives, there’s a two-part sound like a metal soap bubble popping, followed by an unusually high-pitched snap. One of the nice things about having a lot pocket knives is that I have them on hand to compare and contrast with each other. At the moment, I have 16 reasonably good folding knives, and I sat down in a quiet room and flicked or thumbed open every single one. Through this highly scientific investigation I have determined that the sound the Reate T4000 makes when opening is utterly unique. The sound has nothing to do with it’s functionality at all, but it’s odd enough that I feel compelled to mention it.

Two last things: first, the T4000 has a party trick- it can stand on it’s head. Second, I was driving on US Interstate 5 on the East side of Los Angeles and noticed a 125 foot (38 meter) tall Tashi Bharucha pocket clip rising above the LA River. It’s the central spire of the North Atwater Bridge which is due to be completed in 2020. Say what you will about the evils of social media, but thanks to Facebook I was able to send the picture below to T4000 designer Tashi Bharucha. He responded that he hadn’t seen it before and, no, he did not design the bridge.

Reate T4000 Review – Final Thoughts

The T4000 is definitely a niche item. It’s not for everyone, it’s not perfect, and it’s relatively expensive at $400. But I dig the Reate T4000 stabbing pocket sword on a deep, visceral level – I don’t know if it’s an ancient, hardwired feeling of security or a Roman-Legionnaire-in-a-past-life kind of thing, but I sure do like it.

Reate T2500 – From $419.95
From: BladeHQ

I recommend purchasing the Reate T4000 at BladeHQ or GPKnives. Please consider that buying anything through any of the links on this website (including Amazon) helps support BladeReviews.com, and keeps the site going. Thank you very much.