I don't know what it says about me or this knife that I keep meaning to post it here, but somehow forget that I have it. It's happened like six times already. Which is odd, because I bought it specifically for this feature.

So, here you go.

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This isn't a Reate Exo M, but it looks like one. And the genuine article costs damn near $300 and I'll be stuffed if I'm paying that for a fiddle toy I can't leave my house with, since gravity knives are illegal to carry where I live.

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And yes, it does indeed open with Nothing But Gravity, as the description is always ready to remind you. All those guys with the shaved heads and the really esoteric interest in flags with eagles on 'em got really excited when they saw that, I'll bet. Yeah, it's because chucklefucks like them why these things are illegal.

This is a knockoff of the Exo M, and I got it from the usual scumbags for about twenty bucks. It looks the business from arm's length, and it works pretty well too. The blemishes in the anodizing notwithstanding; they're really tough to spot in person but the ascetic lighting in my photo box makes them really visible. That part's kind of a drag.

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It works by way of this captive pivoting mechanism, which allows one half of the handle to swing out a couple of degrees.

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This clears the way for a pair of lugs on the blade carrier to slide down the track milled in the inner part.

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The blade is then free to drop to the end of its travel via gravity, just like we all paid our ticket prices to see. Yeah, baby.

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When the handles are brought together the lugs are held in place and the knife is locked in the open position.

If this all feels familiar to you, in a vague and dreamlike way, you're not wrong. It's the same mechanism all those fucking Carrot Knives use. Yes, this is what they ripped off. Well, joke's on them -- our rip-off is actually made of metal. So there.

The real deal is made of "ELMAX" steel. This one purports to be made of D2, and sports a lone marking on the blade to this effect. It does not bear any other markings or insignia. As usual the steel descriptor may or may not even be bogus, but it's not too tough to believe. D2 isn't that expensive these days.

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A deep carry pocket clip is provided which works okay, but is a little too tight for my liking. It is not reversible, but that might be immaterial since the knife is pretty ambidextrous otherwise.

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It does, however, have a sliding lock switch on the side opposite the clip that'll prevent the hinge from opening, fully locking the knife either open or closed:

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It's right in place for a right handed user to operate with a thumb, but a lefty could probably work it with the index finger without too much trouble. Without it, it is theoretically possible for this to get wormed open in your pocket and since the only carry position is tip down, you might otherwise find an inconvenient extra hole in your shorts.

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As the "compact" version of the Exo, this would be a comfortable EDC-able size if it weren't for the fact that a League of Nations goon squad would probably track you down and haul you up in front of Sir Geoffrey Lawrence if you actually tried to carry it anyplace. It's 4-1/2" closed, and 7-5/8" open, with a 3-1/8" straight-back blade that has a small false edge on the spine. The body is all aluminum and actually feels quite nice in the hand despite its squared-off looks, with some very positive crosshatching in the thumb area on the rear and positive jimping for your index finger on the front. The scale inlays are textured Micarta to give you something to push against when you're working the action. It's not too heavy, either: 92.6 grams or 3.27 ounces, probably due to mostly being made of aluminum.

The color, by the way, is not a camera trick or optical illusion. The aluminum parts are anodized in a rather pleasing gunmetal gray-blue. It'd be even more attractive without all those tiny blemishes in it, but which then again I suppose is why it was only $20.

The Inevitable Conclusion

A fidget spinner is probably less likely to get you arrested than having this about your person, but it's awfully difficult to use one one of those to open your mail. (Exceptions, of course, do exist.)

The problem with recommending these kinds of things is that there's no brand or model designation you can tell anyone to ask for. You might not know what you'll get, and you'll have to know what you're looking at. And if you know, you'll know. You know?

Well, guys. I said I was gonna.

I do'ed it.

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The Cold Steel AD-15 is a big fuck-off shiny knife that looks like it could skin a crocodile. It is available in a variety of guises, and I of course was contractually obligated to get the green one which looks like a crocodile, too.

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The "AD" is referring to this knife's designer, Andrew Demko. I am fairly certain, but not 100% positive, that the "AD-15" moniker is also a not-so-subtle reference to the AR-15. But I can't prove it. And every time I mention the AR-15 on lemmy this weird high-pitched screech starts up, so we'll say no more about it and move on.

The AD-15 is up my alley -- of course -- because it has a weird locking mechanism. It's Andrew Demko's "Scorpion Lock."

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It's not entirely dissimilar to a lockback mechanism, but it's exposed and and works by way of dropping a fat pin in the knife's backspacer into a big notch on the heel of the blade. It's visible above, and locks home like so:

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It's certainly novel. Cold Steel, meanwhile, have this to say about the AD-15:

>The AD-15 might be the most comfortable, user friendly, sub 4 inch tactical folder we've ever made! Modeled after Andrew Demko's patented original, it offers ambidextrous operation and opens and closes with one hand.

Uh. So, about that.

Let me start with the size, because I'm not entirely sure why anyone would call this knife "sub" anything. It's fuckin' massive. 8-1/2" long overall open, 5-1/8" closed, with a 3-5/8" drop pointed blade that's a frankly ridiculous 0.145" thick and made of S35VN steel. But that's only part of the story. It's a full and complete 1-1/2" in breadth when it's closed which I believe makes it the widest-when-closed folding knife I own or have ever owned. Or possibly ever will own.

It has a zooty aluminum backspacer/lock, of course, but it also has full steel liners and the entire knife weighs 182.2 grams or 6.43 ounces. It is a very, very beefy 0.652" thick not even including the clip.

So suffice to say it's big. Discreet urban EDC carry: Completely off the table.

I'm not sure where "comfortable" and "user friendly" come into it, either. This is possibly the most difficult to open folding knife I've ever encountered.

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That's not because it's tricky, mind you. The locking mechanism is deceptively simple and, dare I even suggest it, kind of elegant. But it necessitates the lock pin pressing against the heel of the blade with an absurd amount of spring force, all the time. Both the pin and the blade are polished smooth, but they still drag against each other throughout the entire opening process. And not only that, but you have to overcome the full sum total of the spring's tension whenever you try to open the knife as the cammed ramp on the back of the blade pushes the pin and thus the backspacer bar thingamabob up and away.

Here's the spring:

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The net result is that an incredible shove against the thumb studs is required to even get the blade to begin to budge from its closed position, let alone fully rotate it out and open. Yes, you "can" open it with one hand -- if you have hands like an orangutan, which luckily I do. If you don't, well, tough. Most people will probably be forced to open it with two hands.

And closing it with one hand is right out. For anybody.

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An ordinary lockback knife has either a hump on the spine or a cutout in the handles to provide you a spot to press, levering the other end of the lock bar out of its home and unlocking the blade. This doesn't. There's a knurled part of the backspacer/lock bar, but that spot absolutely is not for pressing. You're welcome to try, but good luck with that. You have to hold the textured G-10 scales with one hand and manually grab the lock bar with your other hand to lift it up. It's got grip ridges machined into it for this purpose.

You can almost kinda-sorta wedge the tips of your fingers in the gap between the scales and lock bar and try to finagle it out of its slot, but this is very fiddly and mildly painful, and both looks and feels ridiculous. So no, this knife essentially can't be closed with one hand.

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The AD-15's clip is fairly traditional, and is drilled to match the lanyard hole on the tail end. It's not deep carry, but that's probably academic anyway. It is reversible. As it is, the clip is fairly nice if a bit tight, but drawing this knife from your pocket is also made much more difficult than it might appear at first glance because the scales are so damn grippy.

Normally that's a good thing, right? When you're wrestling alligators in the mud in the bayou, or whatever it is you're supposed to be doing with this knife, you don't want it squirting out of your hand. But the grabby scale texture also rakes against your pocket hems and makes this knife singularly difficult to draw without giving yourself an atomic wedgie in the process. It just will not let the hell go from your trousers.

We've methodically debunked pretty much every claim in Cold Steel's blurb by now. So... What's it actually good for?

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Not self defense, that's for damn sure. If you plan to be accosted by ruffians, you'd better make an appointment with them first so you can spend the requisite half hour getting your knife out and opening it in advance. You could probably split coconuts with it if you wanted to, though. Or maybe cut down a tree. It is monstrously stout and I have no doubt the lock is fantastically strong. The S35VN steel is a very tough alloy and, combined with the absurd blade thickness, should be able to withstand careless use easily.

Overall I like the shape of the AD-15 and once it's actually open it feels great and very confidence inspiring in the hand. The blade is machined well and is a very neutral utilitarian shape that presents a wide belly for cutting tasks as well as a stout and close to centered point for stabbing. To assist in either of the above, your grip on the lock bar serves to clamp the blade even more firmly into the locked position so you can be pretty sure it's not ever going to fold up on you.

It has the aforementioned grippy scales, plus extremely chunky jimping on the back of the blade as well as the tail. You're probably not dropping it.

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The blade is just about mirror polished and looks quite nice, too. Well, it will until you actually start using it for abusive outdoor tasks, anyway. It picks up fingerprints like a sonofabitch and I suspect scuffs and scratches will also be highly visible. That may eventually harsh your vibe.

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Surprisingly for such a chunky and humongous knife, the AD-15 is actually only held together with two screws that are very easy to remove. It has one pivot screw in the front and another one just like it holding it together at the tail, around which the lock bar pivots. The two screws are also identical -- totally interchangeable.

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Inside is the aforementioned spring, and the hollow pin that serves as its endstop is also the lanyard hole. The design is simple, and just tarnished slightly by how godawful difficult it is to use.

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The size comparison speaks for itself, really. It's a big boy, no doubt about it.

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The Inevitable Conclusion

While fiddling with this knife I tried to think of various ways in which it could be improved in the action department. I did try my hand at polishing the ramp on the back of the blade and it improved matters slightly, enough to make the thing at least possible to use, but still not pleasant. I thought about other hypothetical mechanical changes like a lighter spring, or adding a hump to the backspacer, or relocating the pivot point, and ultimately I decided the hell with it: The best way to improve this knife would be to keep it shaped just like it is, but make it a fixed blade.

And really, that's what the AD-15 is. It's a fixed blade masquerading as a folder. It'd be better if it dropped the act.

That kind of thing has been tried many times before and honestly it never quite seems to work. You can tilt the scale one way or the other, and make no mistake that the AD-15 tilts it pretty damn far, but making a fixed blade fold or a folder as strong a fixed blade always seems to require making sacrifices that wind up defeating the purpose.

And that's a crying shame, because I really want to like the AD-15. In some senses, I do. It's just too bad it's impossible to bloody use.

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Maybe I'll just make a Kydex sheath for it and call it a day.

Sigh.

I already made the René Magritte joke previously, so I can't very well use it again. So, I've been staring at the blinking cursor for the better part of five minutes now trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to write a hook to put in front of this friggin' thing.

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This is, very emphatically, not a Benchmade Model 87. Yes, yes, I know what it looks like. But it's fake, mon. No question about it.

It is, in fact, made by prolific balisong cloners TheOne. On this I am a bit of two minds, as usual, because on the one hand it's a total Chinese ripoff of Benchmade's design and on a certain fundamental level that's not cool. But on the other hand, the manufacturer casts no illusions whatsoever over what it is. It is marketed directly and up front as a clone -- not, meaningfully, a counterfeit. You'll notice it doesn't sport the Benchmade logo on it at all. It arrived in a plain white box without any stolen trademarks on it.

The thing is, see, that it exists for the express purpose of acting as a consolation prize for all those people who will never in a thousand years actually have the opportunity to own a genuine Model 87. I include myself in that group. I'll leave this here for an illustration why; even when the damn thing was available it was $550, and Benchmade produced a grand total of about seventeen of them before discontinuing it. Now they won't sell you one for any price no matter how much you want one. So if they're worried about losing a sale, maybe they could actually manufacture some damn product for a change.

Oh, but then the first run buyers will all howl that their resale value is being diluted by increasing the supply. Cry me a fucking river.

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Sharp eyed readers will note a couple of minor differences between this and the Benchmade original, notwithstanding the missing markings. The Model 87 has a Torx headed screw in latch head pin, whereas this has a plain press fit one. And the genuine article's blade is CPM S30V, and this is D2. And the Benchmade has ball bearing pivots while this has bushings and phosphor bronze washers.

All of the rest of it, though, is spot on. I'll cut to the chase right here and say that the build quality and bill of materials here is actually astonishingly good.

The balisong knife market is, of course, famously insane. But now we're standing on both sides of the bell curve simultaneously, and I get the feeling history is starting to repeat itself in ridiculous ways.

In the beginning we start with the various big name knife manufacturers like Benchmade and whoever else, who produce high quality knives and get popular, and then they get expensive. So the clone manufacturers have risen up to compete with them -- typically by ripping off and reproducing their designs, of course -- but now the clone manufacturers are getting super popular, too. This is turning into big business, and enthusiasts are flocking to these knockoff knives which are improving by leaps and bounds. Now, we've got knockoff manufacturers that have a reputation for quality, with a real name for themselves and actual dedicated fans. So their prices are starting to creep up, too. There are clone knives that cost upwards of $300 nowadays.

This isn't one of them, though. This knife costs around $100. For what you get, considering the price of enthusiast balisongs in general, that's still an outstanding deal. But it's still not exactly what I'd call cheap. So what's next? Will another cheaper clone maker step up and clone the clones?

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What you get for your hundred bucks is a 1:1 scale model of the Benchmade Model 87. The same dimensions, all around. So it's a big knife, very chunky overall with a wide squared off aesthetic. It's 5-7/8" long closed, fully 9-15/16" long open, with a 4-1/4" blade that's got a trendy reverse tanto point. The blade is 0.121" thick with a nicely rounded spine. And while it has a machined finish left on both its flat and its bevel, it's very fine and reminiscent of that on a Spyderco knife. It's not unattractive at all. The grind is also completely flat, which I did not at all expect.

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The hardware all faithfully reproduces the decorative machined glaive style screw heads of the Benchmade. Yes, the handles are genuine titanium and are unitary channel-milled slabs exactly like the original. That leaves the entire knife weighing in at a not insubstantial, but deceptively light 156.8 grams or 5.53 ounces.

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The latch is this non-protruding style that drops out the bottom. It is indeed spring loaded, and pops out the bottom when you give the handles a moderate squeeze.

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From a usage standpoint there isn't a single fly in the ointment. The genuine article is probably better, no doubt, largely owing to its ball bearing pivots. But TheOne's knives are designed for use and in this "BM87" it shows. Doing flip tricks are precisely what these are for. The machined handles feel excellent in the hand. The knife pivots freely precisely as you would expect, the rebound action is great, and the spring latch is immensely satisfying. The latch will spring out from either the latched shut or latched open positions, and the torsion spring hidden inside keeps it standing out and well away from both the handles and blade so you can't strike either one with it while you're manipulating the knife.

In addition to a baggie containing a complete replacement set of pivot hardware, mine came with a card in the box proclaiming it was pre-tuned at the factory.

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This threadlocker on the pivot screws is as it was delivered. I broke it loose when I took the knife apart for my disassembly photos. It seems like someone went ham more on one screw than the other, but the action was fine when I received it and it wasn't difficult to take apart at all.

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The wiggle test reveals what we already knew, of course. While it won't match the uncanny squareness of a bearing knife, it's still pretty good for a bushing pivot model that has such long handles. The presence of the bushings means you can fully tighten the pivot screws and the handles will not lock solid. Here, as pictured, is with the screws as tight as they'll reasonably get.

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This is of course a "live blade" model and it comes with an edge already on it, although my example is not actually very sharp from the factory. This may be by design, or it may just be where the penny was pinched. The edge grind is dead true, though. If you plan to use this for real cutting tasks and not just showing off you will probably want to give it a sharpening once over but the good news is that this won't be difficult at all. It is sharp enough to draw blood if you really fuck up and do so with gusto, but it's such that you at least have a chance of not breaking the skin if you make a minor mistake and graze yourself on the bite side without too much force.

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Here are the guts. As a channel milled knife, the bill of materials is not very long but it's still impressive. The handles are as stated solid titanium through-and-through. The washers are indeed phosphor bronze, and each pivot has a precision bushing going through its respective hole in the blade.

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I can't fault the machining work in the handles. I'm staggered; I just can't shut up about it. You get that much solid titanium for the price? This is not how Chinese knockoff knives are meant to be.

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What you get in each pivot is this stack. Two bronze washers, the bushing, and a Chicago screw. The assembly goes together like this:

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The latch reproduces Benchmade's novel design and uses a torsion spring for its mechanism.

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Despite how it looks, it's actually very easy to take apart and put back together. There is a hole in the shank of the latch, and an index notch in the handle beneath the screw head. You can just drop the spring in place and it'll work -- you don't have to mess around with keeping it under tension or anything before you can cap the screw off.

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The latch components.

Obviously I haven't got a genuine Benchmade Model 87 to compare to. But with this thing being such a full size knife, I think the nearest equivalent I have to act as a stand-in is the Kershaw Lucha.

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The BM87 is thicker than the Lucha, at 0.433". There is no clip to subtract from the measurement, because it hasn't got one. It is tapered, and very wide at the flared end: 1.491". It's noticeably wider than the Lucha as well, all the way down its length.

The Inevitable Conclusion

As a clone knife, this TheOne is always going to have a bit of a stink following it around. All the forum oldheads will turn their noses up at it and it'll never actually be worth anything or appreciate in value like a Benchmade would. But that's not the point.

I fell down the rabbit hole of researching clone balisongs as much as I dared before I bought it and I'm still mystified at the following these things have. People get into clone knives -- big time. Now I can see why.

Even just as an objet d'art this is fantastic, but it also has the benefit of being designed to be used. If one day you send it windmilling off onto the pavement you're bound to be a lot less broken up about it, for instance. And if you totally bin it, you can just buy another one. That's not a luxury you'll have with a limited run collector's item.

I've always maintained that a knife is best when it's able to be used. Sure, I have a couple of drawer queens in my collection slowly gathering dust and appreciating value. But as a whole I try not to.

If you've been eyeing one of these but you're sitting on the fence because you're afraid it might be crap, here's your verdict: It isn't. Be shocked, or be appalled, or be disgusted. But there it is.

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Dissection of the Kershaw/Emerson CQC series, the continuation thereof.

This is part four out of however many of these. Obviously, I like the idea of the "Wave Shaped Feature(r)" opening gimmick, which is why I've got so many knives that have it. And so far, all of the knives of this ilk we've looked at have ostensibly been fighters of some description or another. But what if, like most of us, you don't have a case for using your Wave opener for spearing Daesh insurgents or whoever the hell? What if you have slightly more civilian outdoorsy aims in mind?

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This is the Kershaw/Emerson CQC-11K in D2, model 6031D2. Kershaw explicitly bill this as a hunting knife, and its highly upswept tip has a definite dressy-gutty-skinny vibe. It's much less for stabbing and much more for slicing.

And if you're thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. This knife looks exactly like the Emerson Rendezvous," well, you're definitely not wrong. In fact, in their blurb Kershaw goes on to explicitly mention that it's based on the Rendezvous. But there's a critical inescapable difference here, namely that the Rendezvous is $267 and the CQC-11K isn't. Sure, Kershaw claims the 11K is "discontinued" but apparently they manufactured about a million of these and they're still thick on the ground. You can easily score one right now at the time of writing for only $35.

What you lose out on in exchange for the $232 price difference is that the Rendezvous is made of 154CM steel and the CQC-11K is made of cheaper D2. And... uh, that's it. There is no second thing.

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The Kershaw version even has the Emerson Knife Designs logo right there on it, just like all the other CQC's.

The remainder of the design elements are singing the same old familiar tune.

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We will now recite the hymn of the Emerson CQC knife. It has, yea and verily, the Emerson Wave Shaped Feature(r) pocket-grabbing hook, which snaps the knife open automatically when you draw it. It is assembled, doth and truly, entirely with slotted and Phillips screws. Bear witness, for it has a knurled disk rather than studs for manual thumb opening. The textured G-10 scale, indubitably, is only on one side leaving a smooth steel surface on the other for an easy draw.

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There's one other difference, though:

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Instead of the injection molded backspacer, the handle halves are instead spaced with threaded diabolo barrels. This doesn't impact functionality any, though. It's just how it is.

Oh, and because thou shalt use this for hunting and not tactical purposes, it is not black. It is brown. Brown makes it outdoorsy, don't you see?

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The CQC-11K is also very, very stout. It's much more broad than the other knives in the series we've inspected so far. It's not fat -- it's just big boned.

It's a full 1-3/4" across when closed, and the blade is 1-1/8" tall at the horn at the top of the spine. The entire knife is about 8-1/2" long and the blade is 3-9/16" long from the forwardmost point of the handle to the tip. (Kershaw calls it "3.5.") The blade is 0.120" thick at the spine and the entire thing sports a satin tumbled finish. The bevel is hollow ground as well. Minus the pocket clip it is 0.418" thick not including the heads on the pivot screws, or 0.499" with them. It is 163.1 grams in overall weight or 5.76 ounces -- Neither svelte nor light.

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Inside we see few surprises. The construction is very similar to the aforementioned CQC-4K, with the pivot riding on nylon washers. The one major detail is those diabolo spacers:

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These are screwed into with stubby little short screws, rather than the hella long ones that pass all the way through the scale and backspacer on the other CQC knives.

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Because of this the spacers stay securely attached to one side of the liner or the other, depending on which side you start taking the knife apart from.

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The comparison with the CQC-6K says it all, really. If you want a big meaty knife, this one's for you.

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It looks like someone took the 6K and stretched it out vertically to make the 11K.

Handling the 11K works about as you'd expect, but there is the notable quirk of the position of the pocket clip, which is pretty far down on the knife and leaves a lot of it sticking up out of your pocket. For the purposes of ease of access that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially out in the woods, but this is about the furthest from a discreet carry you can get without just strutting around in public holding the thing in your teeth.

As before, the clip can be swapped to the other side but it will be much grabbier on your pocket there because it'll interface with the textured G-10 scale rather than the smooth 410 stainless back side of the knife. For what it's worth, Emerson themselves do make a couple of left handed variants of their knives (for big bucks, of course) where the smooth and textured sides are swapped. But Kershaw doesn't make a left handed version of this one.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Since its damage type is slashing rather than piercing, this ought to work better on Unes and Venus Weeds and -- wait, what were we talking about again?

Oh yeah. The CQC-11K. It does what it says on the tin -- It's a CQC knife, but remixed for utility cutting tasks that align neatly with sportsmen's needs. Gutting fish. Dressing game. That sort of thing. In those contexts, I'm not entirely certain the presence of the Wave(r) opening feature is likely to be a make-or-break purchasing decision unless you employ the Jimbo and Ned "he's coming right for us!" hunting strategy. Or, if you absolutely must have something about your person to attach an (r) to at all times. Still and all, it's always nice to have and it transforms what would otherwise be an ordinary frame locking folder into a knife that's a bit special.

The major headline here is that if you were for whatever reason eyeballing something along the lines of the Emerson Rendezvous, it's a no-brainer decision to buy this instead. Lately I've been bringing up the point of undercutting the exorbitant prices of various big brand knife models by exploring their clones, but this is a weird one -- it's a case where a manufacturer has pretty much gone and cloned themselves, undercutting their own product with... their own product. That's pretty strange, and makes this knife well worth a look.

In addition to being a 1 for 1 substitute for the Rendezvous, the CQC-11K is probably a good stand-in for any of Emerson's other upswept tip knives that may have been on your shopping list like the Commander, Skinner, or Horseman.

I don't know about you, but I like saving a dime. That means I can spend that dime on more knives later.

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"You need to buy this special heater pad to break the screen adhesive!"

No, I think you will find that in fact I don't.

Not to be all clickbaity or anything, but I honestly don't know what to call this knife because it has no name or model descriptor that I can find anywhere. So we have no choice but to fall back on the venerable old chestnut of, You Won't Believe "This" Crazy Thing.

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The manufacturer (if they even are the actual manufacturer) describes it as: "HUAAO Manual Folding Knife D2 Blade T6 Aluminum Handle Edc Self Defense Hunting Knives Camping Survival Multifunction Knife Portable Folding Flipper Knife."

So, yeah. It's one of those. I've also seen it billed as an "Atropos Knife Trapper" sporadically, which is something it categorically isn't. We've looked at the Trapper before, so we know what it looks like. I.e.: not this, funky though it may be. They sure do have a similar aesthetic vibe to each other, though.

We have, of course, also inspected another "HUAAO" knife recently. Based on that, and given that every single other thing on their web site appears to be a counterfeit of some other brand's knife, I have to conclude that this is a knockoff of something, too. But I'll be damned if I know what. (And yes, they run the domain knifesfactory-dot-com. Not "knives." Much classy. Wow. Very legit.)

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Anyway, what you get is this rectangular aluminum clad object that looks like it might be a minimalist-punk Scandinavian cigarette lighter or something. It has no markings and presents no visible latch, button, catch, or even a fingernail nick, nor any other controls. I'll bet you won't guess how it opens. Go on, give it a try.

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If you get a grip on the grey part and give it a considerable nudge to overcome the friction, it will swing away.

And then...

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Oh.

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No, no, no, no, nope. That's not how knives work. That's not how any of this is supposed to work.

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We've seen our fair share of knives with two pivots, and one with three, and even a couple that have transverse pivots that go the wrong way. But with one limited exception all the pivots on all the knives are at least on the same axis.

But not on this one. It's a combination of all of the above. Perpendicular is in, baby. Two dimensional knives are so last season.

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Once you fiddle the whole thing into position what you wind up with is a roughly 7-1/2" long knife with a 3-1/4" long blade with a very straight spine on it. The blade is fully flat ground, and is 0.173" thick at the spine.

It is alleged to be made of D2 steel which may or may not be bullshit, and is unverifiable at the lengths I'm willing to go to find out. It does, however, have a rather nice tumbled stonewash finish on it.

It's about 4-3/8" long closed, and 1-5/16" across including its little finger guard stub. The whole thing weighs 119.3 grams or 4.21 ounces, the vast majority of which is the blade and its surrounding tray. The handle really doesn't weigh much at all.

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For once, HUAAO actually put their own name on this knife and haven't ripped off another maker's mark, nor left it brandless. There still isn't any model designation anywhere on it, though, and the only other marking is a lonely "D2" on the opposite side of the blade.

It actually doesn't feel too bad in the hand despite being so square. The matte finish on the handle is pretty nice and all the edges are chamfered at 45 degree angles. The lockup is actually surprisingly solid, but then you'd expect it to be given how much all the parts rub against each other when you slot them home. The visible parts of the machinework are excellent, but mine is already showing noticeable rub marks where the surfaces slide across each other.

You may think you've heard of a friction folder before, but friction isn't enough to describe this thing's action. Deploying it is an incredible faff, and thoroughly impossible to do with one hand. (This may actually be of some perverse benefit if you live in a locale where one-handed opening knives are illegal.)

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There are no protuberances whatsoever except for that very tiny and perfunctory nub at the heel of the blade that's probably meant to serve as a finger guard. Otherwise there is no clip, and in fact no provision for carrying at all. Not even a lanyard hole or someplace to put a keyring. Eschew all material and functional aspirations -- When we say minimalist, we're not fucking around. It didn't even come with a sheath.

The knife is ruler straight and actually rather thin in cross section, only 0.380" thick across the handle. It's held together with only two pieces of hardware: A large screw in the tail that comprises one pivot (T8 Torx) and what appears to be a cross pin through the heel of the blade that comprises the other. I tried briefly to get either to budge and quickly gave up. The tail screw in particular is either torqued to hell and back or glued. Or possibly both, since my example came pre-stripped from the factory. No user serviceable parts inside.

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Despite this, it's not overly large and if you applied sufficient hipster dedication you could carry this knife in a pocket easily. Too bad it's probably a bit too long to go in the Zippo pocket in your skinny jeans.

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What's more questionable is how it would stand up to the rigors of actual daily use. Would the pivots wear to the point of becoming irrevocably flaccid? Would it be a bad thing even if they did?

As far as I can tell there is no real detent in the mechanism. The only thing keeping it from flopping open is sheer friction, which probably won't last forever because the steel blade is much harder than the aluminum handle. The design is such that the blade is held captive and none of the edge is exposed until its little tray is swung out fully, but you still wouldn't want it clacking around loose in your pocket if it came down to it.

I also wonder how well it would stand up to twisting force, and just how much it would take to permanently spread that aluminum handle. The heel of the blade can act directly against it using its own pivot as a fulcrum.

Also, if you don't put it away very carefully the tip of the blade tends to hit the inner edge of the handle which will A) probably slowly round it off, and B) permanently mar the chic, understated finish and allow a tiny sliver of bare aluminum to show through. Which will annoy you forever.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is another one of those knives that's long on style but short on practicality. There are a lot of things that could potentially be done to improve the design, and anyone suitably motivated could probably play woulda-coulda-shoulda with the details all day. But me, I'd leave it as it is. My wish list for this knife actually only has two entries on it: I wish I knew what to call it, and I wish I knew where the hell the design was ripped off from.

We are all quite well acquainted by now, I hope, with the Kershaw/Emerson CQC-6K. You are even if you don't know it, because it's the comparison knife I include alongside whatever it is I'm whiffling on about this week. Although it's not quite my single most favorite knife in the world, it's definitely a solid contender. Top five, for sure. Mine is the knife I carry the most, it's been with me to the most places, and it's done the most things. When I'm not feeling any specific breed of perversity that prompts me to carry of the others in my ridiculous and perpetually widening collection, it's my default choice. I know it'll perform and that I can trust it. There's no reason not to.

But what if you're Sergei Rachmaninoff and the 6K just isn't big enough to do it for you?

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Enter this. It's the Kershaw/Emerson CQC-4KXL. Or model 6055D2 to its friends. The last part of the first part along with the last part of the second part tell you most of what you need to know. This is a big knife, and it's made of D2.

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The CQC-4KXL is every bit of 8-7/8" long open, 5" closed, and it sports a 3-7/8" long drop pointed D2 blade. The blade is quite stout at 0.133" thick and the bevel is hollow ground. Similar to the CQC-6K, the blade has a long grained machined surface on the flat but the bevel has a satin tumbled finish. The whole shebang comes in at a hefty 176.7 grams or 6.23 ounces.

As a Kershaw/Emerson collaboration, this knife has quite a few distinctive design elements and a clear set of DNA that draws a through line connecting it to the CQC-6K and then the rest of Emerson's CQC series.

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The Emerson half of it includes a predilection to assembling the knife with slotted and Phillips head hardware rather than Allen or Torx, a knurled disk on the spine in place of the more usual pair of thumb studs, and the "Wave Shaped Feature," which just like all the other CQC knives is this one's major defining trait.

Draw this knife from your pocket at the right angle and with just a modicum of skill, and the hook on the back of the blade will catch the seam on your pocket and snap the knife open for you. It's not a switchblade and it's not even spring assisted. It doesn't need to be -- After just a couple of practice runs you'll be a veritable magician and this thing'll just leap into your hand deployed and ready to rock. This makes the 4KXL and its CQC siblings excellent self defense knives if you're into that kind of thing. Plus, it's hard for the law to find any way to frown on it because mechanically and at its core, it's just an ordinary pocket knife.

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To assist in this, there's a G-10 scale only on one side of the knife. The other side is smooth bead blasted steel with all rounded over edges, so it'll draw cleanly and without snagging or, perhaps more important for everyday use, without destroying the hem on your pockets. The clip can be swapped to the other side but the scale can't. So it rather defeats the purpose to do that, but at least left handed users won't be left completely out of luck.

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The Kershaw side of its lineage means that the CQC-4KXL has a normal grind and isn't a goddamn chisel edge, and also that it'll only set you back about $35. That's significantly more palatable than the knives sold under Emerson's own label. The "China" inscription tucked away down on the heel there may have something to do with that.

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Everything in the CQC series is a liner lock or in the case of this one a frame locking folder. It'd rock face if Kershaw finally got around to designing an Axis -- er, sorry, "DuraLock" -- knife with the Emerson Wave on it. But so far, no dice. If they do, I'll probably buy ten. (Are you listening, guys?)

Thus the pivot action on this (and all the other CQC knives I own or have handled) is the fly in the ointment and it's definitely where the penny was saved. The CQC-6K actually rides on phosphor bronze washers, but this one doesn't. The 4KXL has plain nylon ones instead. The action's not bad, per se, but it is a little draggy. The lock on these knives is always very stiff and thus very positive, but it also induces a lot of friction you have to overcome opening and closing it. There's a plain steel detent ball on the inner face of the lock which rides across a surface on the blade heel that's not polished, so friction it creates is evident and makes opening it far from silent.

That's opening it manually, though. Why anyone would do that on a regular basis is beyond me, because the whole point of this knife is that it'll go from 0 to 100% in an instant by itself when you draw it. When you do it the intended way, snapping it open off the hook, you don't feel the pivot and nothing about it matters.

You also get a monumental clack from the blade hitting its endstop and the lock dropping home. You can hear it and feel it. That's probably on purpose, though, because you want positive feedback that you drew the knife correctly and it locked open before you try sticking anything with it. Even so, that makes the CQC-4KXL and by extension the rest of its family less pleasant to use as fiddle toys than some other options. These are knives designed to work, not for playing with.

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The CQC-4KXL comes apart just like you'd expect. Just like the other Kershaw CQC knives, in point of fact. I've never been super sold on the Phillips and slotted hardware on an ideological level. I get why this was done; presumably so Operators in the field could take these apart with just readily available tools or what's on their Swiss Army knives, or whatever. But modern knives are put together with Torx screws for a reason... It's to prevent accidents and having it all end in tears. Phillips is easy to strip and slotted heads are the most likely fastener on Earth to result in your driver slipping out and gouging something. Still, the fact remains that I've never actually had any difficulty actually disassembling any of these knives, and the 4KXL is no exception. So I guess I can't complain.

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As we've become accustomed to seeing on most Kershaw knives, the pivot screw has an anti-rotation flat on it. The head on that side is just a rounded button head with no driver slot in it.

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The lockup is very traditional, and it is my plausible but unproven theory that these are hand-tuned at the factory for lock engagement, based on the evidence of the grinder mark that's been left on it. My CQC-6K was the same way.

Otherwise, the fit and finish is up to Kershaw's typically impeccable standard. I've never gotten a dud Kershaw, ever, not even one of their cheap models. The lockup is solid, blade wiggle is negligible, and everything about it fits together very well. I can tell you from experience that Kershaw CQC knives will stand up to heavy and long term use without complaint and I see no reason why this one should be any different.

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The CQC-6K (right) is already a pretty big knife. But the CQC-4KXL (left) just towers over it.

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Open it's the same story. The 6K is already a competent fighter, but 4KXL has even more combat oriented design elements. The point on the blade is much less upswept, and it is near as makes no difference perfectly aligned with the centerline of the knife. There is a horn on the forward end of the handle the makes an even more pronounced finger guard as well. All this adds up to a knife that ought to be very effective at delivering a ne'er-do-well a rather inconvenient poke if necessary.

(No the finish on my CQC-6K is not from the factory. One day I'll get around to writing about that and showing it off up close, preferably after I grind out that damn nick in the edge.)

The Inevitable Conclusion

I maintain that the Kershaw/Emerson knives as a whole remain one of the best options available for a budget friendly folding knife. There's no need to gamble on an unknown brand or a knockoff when these are so cheap, high quality, and readily available. And I turned my back for one second and the next time I looked it turned out suddenly there's a whole galaxy of CQC's, now: Little ones, medium ones, big ones. The works.

In this case if you want a big knife that's got a trick deployment mechanism that's not a gimmick, not stupid, and actually works then the CQC-4KXL is a fantastic value for the money.

And I know we don't talk about using knives for self-defense in front of the normals these days. We just allude to it, a nod's as good as a wink, say no more say no more. That's because if any dingbat in the capital finds time in his busy schedule to find out about it in between snorting blow off of the backs of interns and embezzling highway funds to finance his swimming pool and cabana, he'll surely try to take them all away from us. But if you are in a position to need such a thing for any combination of reasons, I think the CQC-4KXL is going to be not only a good choice for its price, but hands down one of the best choices in the world.

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Room service just sent this up. To cut the limes.

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It's a Ganzo D727M, and if you saw it and smelled a rat you were right. That's because Ganzo is as usual, oh, let's call it offering "alternative" buying options to knives from other manufacturers. In this case it's the near spitting image of the Ontario Knife Company's RAT.

In a previous writing, we looked at the Ganzo G729 and I ended it with a long bout of introspection on the price of a knife, and its true worth. Undercutting your own countrymen, I decided, can be worth it when the asking price is already too damn high. The case the D727M presents is less clear cut, though. The RAT it apes is not an unattainable dream to the working man -- it only runs about $50. But the D727M, by contrast, is only $21 at the time of writing.

In the Ganzo tradition, there are also some changes.

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Ganzo has seen fit to equip it with their "G-Lock" Axis style lock, as opposed to the liner lock the RAT comes with. Which if you ask me is a lot nicer than the original.

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And rather than the AUS-8 that much of the RAT series comes in, the D727M's flat ground, satin stonewashed blade is made of D2 tool steel.

And it's a big knife. Near as makes no difference to 8-1/4" long open, 4-5/8" closed, and its drop pointed blade is 3-1/2" long and a stout 0.133" thick. The knife is 0.506" thick across its G-10 scales, not including the clip. It's 1.345" across in breadth at its widest point when closed, and at 115.8 grams (4.08 ounces) all of that makes it a big knife for big hands, and big jobs.

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The clip is a traditional design with Ganzo's now familiar three screw mount, reversible, but with tip-up positions only. It's not deep carry, and it's nothing special. It's sprung with a nice balance of grip force and release, though, providing a nice draw. The whole knife's construction is very familiar, really. G-10 scales on top of steel liners which, if you peer in the gap, have big holes cut in them to make them lighter. Shiny Torx hardware. Stairstep daibolo spacers. A spine that's as square and straight as a priest's collar.

But at $21, is it any good? And even then, is $21 worth what it is and all that it entails?

In that foul year of our lord, 1972, Richard Nixon went to China. Only he, we are told, could have done it. Nixon opened the gates in the Great Wall and it turned out that the CCP liked their little taste of capitalism. They liked it a lot. Most of all, they must have liked the smell of money. Spurred by Western investment, goods started to leave China for the rest of the world. First a trickle, then a torrent, now a flood. The Party can call themselves "Communist" all they want but they run the whole damn country as one giant export business now, for profit -- the world's factory. And we gave it to them.

Oh, how we decry the Sinoist takeover of the manufactured goods sector these days. Why don't we make anything here anymore? I hate to break it to you, but it's not some yellow Communist plot. It's because we've been ratfucked by our own; the fatback grosseros on our shores carved it all up and hired China to make it cheaper so they could sell it back to us with a higher margin. "Profits this quarter," is the refrain. "Fuck the future and the consequences." We gave China the plans for our products and told them to make it all for us. So they did.

And in the bargain, the Chinese knockoff was born.

Apple, a company as American as, well, Apple pie. They hired China to make the iPhone for them. Gave them the equipment, the bill of materials, and all the plans and blueprints. So Foxconn, and China, know how to make an iPhone. Now, knockoff iPhones are being cranked out by the containerload. And knockoff everything else, too. It's the same story. We put up the lightning rod and threw the switch; nobody should be surprised about winding up with the monster.

So far the American knife industry has nearly, but not completely, escaped the siren call of cheap overseas labor. There are been a few casualties: Schrade, now owned by Taylor Cutlery which is Chinese. Gerber, completely made in China now. But by and large, the American knifemakers have remained resolutely American... Mostly. Almost. Some cheaper models are outsourced to China or Taiwan. Hell, the Ontario RAT is one of them. It's made in Taiwan. So just like the iPhone, even its original is technically Chinese. So is almost everything from Cold Steel, and a few Kershaw models including my beloved CQC-6K.

So we've seen that if you give them the plans, the Chinese can make it for you and they can make it well. It's when they give it a go on their own that things tend to unwind.

We're very familiar with the Chinese knockoff here in the knife hobby. It's a well worn joke. It's always the same story: Make it fast, make it cheap. Make it now, sell it now, never mind about tomorrow. Cheat. Corners are there to be cut. Rattly and nasty. Horrible and strange. The purview only of provincial rednecks and desperate teenagers who don't know any better. Fear and loathing in the glass case at the flea market. And up until just about the day before yesterday there was nothing of value to find there. These are the same factories and drop-shippers grinning while selling you a "12 million lumen" flashlight that runs off of two AA's, or $12 "Rolexes" made out of plastic and lead paint.

But suddenly they're getting better.

In 2019, Tim Leatherman, the founder of the Leatherman Tool and Knife Company, said this: "There’s a lot of knockoffs coming from China. The price is about one-tenth of ours, but the quality is about one-twentieth. Nevertheless, the day is going to come when the price is 50 percent of ours but the quality is 80 percent."

That day is now. I'm holding the proof in my hand, and it says Ganzo on it.

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The fit and finish of the D727M are phenomenal. Mechanically, there isn't a single thing about it not to recommend. Flick the thumb studs and it leaps open like a frog from a dynamite pond. Hold back the lock and give it a swing and it'll snap shut like a mouse -- or rather rat -- trap. The lockup has all the precision of a Swiss watch. The blade doesn't wiggle in the slightest. Not the merest scuff nor rough machine mark nor shortcutted, unfinished surface is visible anywhere on it. The blade grind is even, precise, fully true, and sharp out of the box.

And it's only $21.

What terrible progress the Chinese could make overnight if only they could figure out how to apply all this know-how, all this skill, this mastery of mass production to an original design. We're at slack water now. Once the baggage of the copy is cast off and we're presented with a bespoke product not shoddily run off for a low-effort buck but made to the same standards and for the same price, the tide will finally have turned. And we will be fucked.

Past that point there will be no stopping it. There probably already isn't. As much as we are addicted to buying whatever it is, China is addicted to its manufacture. China is a rich country now because it owns US debt. We're locked together in this grim waltz now, neither ever able to stop because the moment we do the entire teetering edifice would collapse on the spot.

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The Inevitable Conclusion

The relentless march of globalization has taught us just how small the world actually turns out to be. But now, should it be normal for something as mundane as the purchase of a pocket knife have ethical considerations stapled to it?

It's easy to say China this, China that, as if it were a single monolithic entity. China is ripping us off and siphoning our jobs. China is selling us back our own American dream, 99 cents at a time. China is repression personified, and China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Well, the Chinese government is. And fuck the Chinese government with a cheese grater on a pole. But the Chinese government is no more the Chinese people than the American government is you and me. Chinese jobs are manned by Chinese people -- Running the machine shops that are making this knife, for instance. Chinese people who are, hopefully, becoming part of China's finally burgeoning middle class. And if so, good for them.

The fact of the matter is, the D727M is a fine knife. Everything Ganzo makes is, as far as I can tell. Once either is in your hand, there's nothing between an Ontario RAT and this Ganzo. Pick the one you like. The rest is goddamn politics.

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...when he will find himself standing in a hardware store confronted with a wall of bird feeding accessories. This is, I'm told, some kind of twisted coming of age thing. Up until now you've thought about two, maybe three birds in your entire life. Tops. But then, bang: Suddenly the topic of a bird feeder is vitally important. It's serious business.

There's a snag, though.

"What about this?" She'll ask. "It's so cute, like a little tiny house. And it's only $14.97!" It's not even sold yet and you can see it's already falling apart. The wood's split, and clearly nobody taught the children in that sweatshop how a square works. Or a clamp. There's a gold sticker on the bottom, half peeling off. It says 'Made In China.'

"Come on, I could make that in about 10 minutes with crap I have lying around my workshop."

"Yes, dear," your wife will say, while patting your arm.

This is what 300,000 years of evolution has brought us. Countless generations worth of genetic fine-tuning, passed down through mitochondrial DNA, veritably ensured the delivery of that precise response. The woman has watched you rebuild transmissions, heft Labrador sized rocks over your head, and replaster the entire house. But this, this thing consisting of no more than five ratty planks of wood, elicits a sarcastic "yes, dear."

This is it, isn't it? Men, Mars. Women, Venus. Every single one of those dumbass 1950's stand-up routines, distilled. It turns out it was all true. Well, part of it, anyway.

But some things are a matter of principle.

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This is a bird feed suet cake holder I literally made out of offcuts and random crap I had lying around on my workbench, in ten minutes. Using nothing -- nothing, I say -- other than my compound miter saw and cordless drill. And a spot of wood filler, because there was a gnarly knot hole on the plank I wound up using on the top. It's held together with Spax screws and you could probably also use it as a jack stand for a bus.

Parameters drafted: Zero. Measurements made: Zero. Components purchased: Zero. And spending $14.97 on a ramshackle piece of shit? Studiously avoided.

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Your regularly scheduled program of exasperatingly verbose portable cutlery dissertations will now resume. I've been busy lately. (Knives taken on that expedition: My Cold Steel Finn Wolf, the Dinkum D2 Encumberance, a Leatherman Surge.)

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This is the Kershaw Launch 9, model 7250OLSW. It is green. Like the avocado on your toast.

It's also a side opening automatic.

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It's part of Kershaw's dizzying array of "launch" knives, which in a very un-Kershaw-like way manage not to have any memorable names. They're just numbered. Launch 4, Launch 9, Launch 11, and so forth. After a while it starts to make your head spin, and you'll wonder if we're talking about knives or if we're supposed to be flying fighter planes.

All of Kershaw's Launch knives share one set of attributes, in that they're all competently American built side opening automatics with aluminum handles. Before it was discontinued, number 9 here MSRP'ed for $175 and was eventually available for around $100. So as usual for brand name automatics, this as well as its brethren are rather pricey toys destined to either be bought and rarely carried by enthusiasts with deep pockets, or put on your precinct's expense account.

But the Launch 9 in particular has one additional attribute with which to recommend it. I'll start by doing this:

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It's tiny. 5" long overall, 3-3/16" closed, with a drop pointed, CPM154 blade that is precisely 2" long measured from the point to the base of the cutting edge. Or if you're being even more charitable, 1-7/8" from the forwardmost end of the handle.

And what that means is that this is a California legal switchblade.

No, would have never previously guessed in a million years that such a thing were a possibility, either.

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The Launch 9 is, then, a little EDC switchblade that's actually designed to be used. What a novel concept! It's got a nice deep carry pocket clip with a smooth draw and a pleasant feel, reversible, plus a lanyard loop in the tail. The blade has Kershaw's "working finish" stonewashed surface, which is etched slightly and tumbled in such a way to produce a finish that's supposed to hide scratches and wear. It doesn't weigh much, either: only 42.5 grams or 1.5 ounces. That's thanks to the all aluminum handle construction, which is 0.439" thick and is enough to inspire some confidence in the hand.

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The Launch 9 has a drop pointed blade that overall has one of those "all belly" sort of geometries. It has a flat grind, as well you'd hope for a knife that costs so much. There's a fuller machined into it just below the spine for some reason. Aesthetics, most likely, since I can't foresee the blade having enough length or surface area to get stuck into anything or anybody, even if you did wind up using for self defense.

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Deployment is very easy and trouble free. The Launch 9 is ridiculously spring loaded and snicks open with authority every time you press the button. There's no safety to get in the way and the button sits noticeably proud of the handle surface. Pressing it doesn't take an undue amount of effort and it's always trouble free, thanks to the mechanism letting go well before the face of the button is flush with the surface of the handle.

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There's no finger notch or guard, but the spine of the blade is jimped nicely for grip.

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I think the green color is very nice, too. You can (could, at least) get it in black, as well. But I prefer a green knife.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I really do like the Launch 9. In a world where automatics are inevitably marketed as if they're to be used exclusively on Taliban insurgents or Tony Montana, this one is instead designed for normal sane people, who could actually use it for more peaceful, utilitarian tasks. It's the little switchblade that could, one you can have on you on the street, and possibly without a calling on the carpet by the HR department, either.

That's right, "Velcro" is a verb now.

I was on a three day adventure ride this week. These fuckers kept wanting to come undone, but firmly stick themselves to the lining on the inside of my sleeves instead. This is deeply irritating.

The skyline rising over trees

Skyline swaying in the breeze

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The skyline set this city alight

Radiate into the night

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Thin, light, easy to carry. We've been talking about that a lot lately, vis-a-vis Benchmade's current crop of wafer-thin and expensive plastic handled EDC knives. So here's a different runup at that idea, which has the first thing but not the last two.

At the time, I said we could do nearly as well for less. How? Well, this is the Kershaw Skyline, a now sadly discontinued budget EDC knife that probably does just about everything most people shopping in this category would want. Made in the USA? Check. Good build quality? Check. Light weight? Check. Svelte dimensions? Check. Blade made of 14C28N, arguably the king of non-crucible stainless steels? Check that, too. Just one thing, though: The Skyline is/was only $30. Used examples can be had pretty readily for not a lot more.

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Kershaw accomplished this by not packing anything zany into the Skyline, which probably went a long way towards keeping the cost down. It is one ISO standard unit of pocketknife with no surprises. In fact, it makes an excellent comparison point for any given cheap and/or knockoff knife you may be looking at. If you ever need a demonstration that there's no excuse for a $30-ish knife to be crap, just look at the Skyline. Is the thing in your hand as well built? No? Well, then it's probably not a great value for money.

The Skyline is a regular liner locking folder, with dual ambidextrous thumb studs and a flipper heel on the back. Despite the flipper on it, it's not spring assisted. The drop point blade is precisely 3" long, with the entire knife measuring out to 7-3/8" long open, and 4-3/16" closed. With that blade length and without any spring loading it thus ought to be widely legal to carry making it the perfect knife for the everyman. It only weighs 71.8 grams (2.53 ounces) which is more than a Benchmade Bugout, but noticeably less than other similarly constructed knives in its length class.

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That's because it's only 0.410" thick across its G-10 scales (not including the clip) which is again a little more than a Bugout but really not by a lot. This is thanks to a somewhat unique design that includes a full length steel liner -- but only one of them. The other side is a G-10 scale with nothing underneath. This cuts both weight and thickness, and as we all know that's the name of the game here.

The blade is 0.89" thick at the spine, precisely the same as the Bugout. It's hollow ground, and comes down to a very thin edge which both makes it feel very sharp, and provides a high degree of cutting performance versus the types of materials a light duty EDC knife is likely to face: Cardboard, plastic packaging, envelopes, small diameter cordage, and maybe the occasional apple or sandwich.

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The clip is not a deep carry design, probably because the Skyline's initial release slightly predated that trend. It is not reversible owing to the fact that it screws into the liner, and there's only a liner on one side. It can be relocated to the other end, though, for either tip-up or tip-down carry. So it can cater to either camp, regardless of whether or not you are a gallant and upstanding individual, or a depraved philistine.

The Skyline is, if the point hasn't been driven into the ground yet, thin. How thin?

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Here it is compared to the Bugout, as well as the standard CQC-6K. It is thicker than the Bugout on paper but doesn't really feel like it in the hand. Mathematically the difference is negligible. It is noticeably thinner and lighter than the CQC, though. It's noticeably thinner and lighter than most similar knives, in fact.

The Skyline does have one thing going for it in that it is massively more rigid than the Bugout. Part of this is down to the single full length steel liner, but the G-10 scales are also a much less flexible material, noticeable even on the side that's not supported by anything. You can make the Skyline flex only a little, and only if you specifically try by squishing its handles together while it's open. It has a very generous cutout for your index finger as well, with both attributes combining to provide a much more confident feel in my opinion.

I predict this is part of what annoyed some people so much about the Bugout, myself included. Not in how it is designed per se, but rather that there's already this dinky little thing from Kershaw that manages to feel more premium, despite being purchasable with the type of chump change your typical Benchmade owner loses down the back of their couch without noticing.

I have heard whining on the internet in the past, possibly due to the presence of the thumb studs as well, to the effect that the Skyline's flipper apparently "doesn't work."

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Um. Yes it does?

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Beneath its clip, the Skyline has this rather Zero Tolerance-esque hex nut head on the back side of the pivot screw. I can't prove if this is the first time Kershaw ever used this design -- it probably wasn't -- but it was the first time I ever recall seeing it. This caused me a bit of a challenge for this photo shoot, though, because 2014 me got this knife tuned to pivoting perfection and then slathered it in entirely too much Loctite and never touched the screw again.

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I had to... ah... modify the screw a bit to get it back out just now. Otherwise it was just spinning in its socket despite the flats, and there's no other way to grab it. Muh resale value: Ruined. Oh well. The pocket clip conceals it anyway.

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What you get inside is this. The Skyline's pivot rides on phosphor bronze washers which is quite nice for the price. I imagine a lot of other manufacturers would have been tempted to use plastic ones at this price point.

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The backspacer is held down by these very loooooong screws, which go all the way through and...

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...engage with a pair of nuts in the scale on the other side.

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The pivot screw is completely round, with no anti-rotation flat on it. That's supposed to be accomplished by the hex head on the back of the screw. And it probably is, if you don't glue the thing together like a dummy.

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I think the lockup is very clever, despite being a regular liner lock mechanism. There's no end stop pin, nor does it need one. Instead, a protrusion on the back of the blade heel prevents it from pivoting past the open position no matter how hard you try. Even if you deliberately hold the lock down you can't over-rotate the blade because the thumb studs will eventually hit the handles. I can't imagine this added any more machine work worth mentioning, but what it did do was allow Kershaw to omit not only the end stop pin from the bill of materials, but also not have to figure out a way to anchor it without a steel liner on both sides. I like it.

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The Skyline is actually narrower, that is across the scales and in total width, than the Bugout. So there. It's a damn sight smaller than the CQC-6K, which is what I personally consider to be on the larger end of what most normal people would want to carry on a daily basis.

The steel question is, I think, answered thusly: 14C28N is a very tough alloy and also more corrosion resistant than the S30V the Bugout is made out of, which is a better idea for the types of non-enthusiast people who are likely to wind up with one of these. It should tolerate abuse, misuse, careless storage, and lack of cleaning much better than an awful lot of high alloy steels, including the current popular supersteels. And it'll be both tougher and more corrosion resistant than the 440C or 8Cr13MoV that such knives are likely to be made out of while having similar edge retention characteristics. Now, there are steels that will hold an edge better versus abrasion than 14C28N, but I think the same hypothetical person who might be intended to buy this knife would appreciate it not being a battle to resharpen. Those to aspects are of course mutually exclusive. And the thin hollow ground geometry means that this knife should cut very well even if it's been inexpertly sharpened.

Then, of course, there is the notion that the minutiae of different modern knife alloys doesn't really matter that much for the types of non-critical use that the vast majority of pocketknives are used for by normal people, if they are even used heavily at all. Remember that even current cheap steels are loads better than good steel was at the turn of the century, and this continent was conquered by men carrying knives made from metal that wouldn't be a patch on even middling knives from today. That's my position on the matter, and if you want to fight me on it you'd better consider yourself on notice that I've got a lot of knives to fend you off with.

It's a shame the Skyline is gone, but there's hope. There is a Mini variant which is still in stock at the time of writing. It also had a revival a couple of years ago with a re-release made in 20CV steel, too. These are now hard to find, but not impossible.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Light is seen from outer space

UFOs crush human race

Alien rebuild city anew

Alien knife nerds have Skylines, too

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Ceci n'est pas une Benchmade.

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No, really. It's not.

With all this talk of Bugouts and Minis and Bailouts lately, obviously I've been building up to something. So here it is.

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This pisses me off.

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No, not because it's an obvious copy of the Benchmade 535 Bugout. This is in fact the "HUAAO 7.4 Inch Manual Open Bugout 535 Folding Knife," the titanium version. I don't know who the hell HUAAO are, other than one of those bare minimum five-letter Amazon nonbrands, although their name has crossed my desk before. The gods alone know who actually make this thing.

It's yours for $47.49 from Amazon, available here. No, that's not an affiliate link -- I won't gain anything if you click. More the fool me, perhaps, for that being the case.

This pisses me off because of the state of the world. Because it's exactly what it says on the tin, and it's less than $50, and it fixes so much that annoys me about the genuine Benchmade Bugout, which costs four times more.

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I like this knife better than the Bugout. That's... really just digging my hole deeper, isn't it?

I could go over the specs of the HUAAO but that's not too tough to do. Copy and paste what I said about the Bugout; this is the same. In fact, I will: It's 7-3/8" long open, 4-1/4" closed, with a 3-1/8" blade. The blade's the same 0.089" thick. It is a copy down to submillimetric precision.

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It has an Axis lock, and it even makes a respectable presentation of reproducing the tumbled stonewash satin finish of the original on the blade. Note, however, that it doesn't even pretend to have a Benchmade logo on it. In fact, it bears no markings whatsoever. No brand, no maker's mark, no model number, no serial, no steel descriptor. It doesn't even say "made in China," even though it obviously is.

This weighs 93.3 grams or 3.29 ounces. It's still pretty light, but that's 42.2 grams more than the Bugout -- for one very simple reason. Just like it says, the handles are machined out of titanium. And insofar as I'm able to determine they genuinely are. The scales weigh 25.9 grams each.

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Of course you have to have a grain or two of salt handy to deal with the Country That Fakes Literally Everything. But a magnet doesn't stick to them, they're clearly denser in the hand than a roughly equivalently sized block of aluminum, but they're far too light to be zinc or any other potmetal. I have a pair of titanium tweezers that I use for arranging all the fiddly little screws and pins and bits for my photo shoots and comparing those to these, they definitely feel like the business. I don't have any other really nondestructive ways to test them.

Titanium is simply not an option on the Bugout. The Bailout comes with an aluminum handle for a massive upcharge, and the Bugout itself can be had in the 535-3 variant with carbon fiber handles for a similarly ludicrous markup. But there is no metal handle option at all. Flexy bendy plastic is your only lot.

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The easy to carry svelteness of the Bugout is its headline feature, and the HUAAO knife has that. It's 0.405" thick in total, as usual not including the clip. That's damn close to the thickness of the Bugout, and who knows how accurate my original measurement of the Benchmade was. The OG Bugout has a diamond grip pattern embossed into it and the HUAAO hasn't, so maybe my calipers fell into a valley in those. Or maybe the handles flexed. I couldn't tell you for sure. Either way, that's only a 0.016" difference.

The handles on the HUAAO do not flex. At all. This thing is solid as a rock, exhibiting no perceptible bow whatsoever even if you give it your mightiest squeeze. The surface is subtly rounded and has a satin bead blasted finish that provides a decent amount of purchase, although without any machined or molded texture it's not as grippy as the diamonds molded into the Bugout. It feels much more refined and gentlemanly, though, which in comparing the two is surely heresy of the highest order. The spine is squared with a slight fillet, whereas the Bugout has a slight but definite chevron angle along the rear edge which is barely perceptible but makes it deceptively difficult to stand the thing up on edge. This has no bearing whatsoever on anything in the real world unless you're trying to stand it up to take photos of the thing, in which case it's maddening. No so with the HUAAO; it'll stand up resolutely on a flat surface.

Anyway, as you can see above the clip is ever so slightly taller than the Bugout's and it has a different radius to the semicircular part. It works pretty much the same way and just like the Bugout's it is too tightly sprung. But the surface of the HUAAO is smoother, and that makes for a nicer draw from the pocket in my opinion. So it scores better there as well, dagnabbit.

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Instead of the diabolo spacers Benchmade uses this unitary machined and anodized back spacer. It accepts a pair of screws in the same positions, though. It has grip ridges machined into it, and forms a lanyard hole where the handle scales are cut out for it. I feel this gives a much more confident lanyard attachment point and yes, the inner edges of it are even chamfered slightly so it doesn't slice through whatever cordage you use.

Already we're up to three things I like better about this knife than the OG Bugout. What about the action, though? This is a knockoff knife, so surely that's crap, right?

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It's not.

The HUAAO opens with satin smoothness. This is with no tuning at all, straight out of the box. Pull the Axis lock back and the blade just falls open, as if it were a gravity knife. The lockup is exactly as solid and precise as the original, and it has zero blade wiggle.

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That's because the HUAAO has ball bearing pivots. The Benchmade Bugout and its ilk, needless to say, don't.

"Glide" isn't even the right term to describe how it feels manipulating this knife. While the Bugout is serviceable, possibly even bordering on pleasant if you've taken the time to tune yours correctly, the HUAAO is instead impeccable. I hate it because I love it so much.

Here's what you get inside:

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That is indeed a better than complete mechanical copy of the Benchmade. The blade heel is different because it's got a pocket milled into it for the bearings. Otherwise, many of the parts are even interchangeable. Even if you're a snob and you absolutely cannot countenance not having that butterfly etched onto your blade, you could steal the handle scales and backspacer off of this and swap them over.

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Here is one of my HUAAO's scales on my Bugout. As you can see, everything lines right up. You'll also want to bring some of the screws over, though...

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Because unlike the Bugout, some of the screws are different. On the OG, all of the screws are the same except the one that goes in the middle of the handle, into the tail of the liner plate. On the HUAAO, that screw and the one that goes into the endstop pin are a smaller diameter. The middle one is also shorter, and don't mix them up or else you'll scratch your blade with the excess screw length sticking out into the channel. The two that go into the backspacer on each side are the same as each other, and also interchangeable with the Benchmade's screws.

There are other construction quirks, as well. For instance:

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The pivot screw is D shaped, with an anti-rotation flat on it just like the Benchmade's. But the liner plates and scales don't have matching cutouts. Their holes are just round. (There's also a gouge in the inner surface of this plate from the factory, but this doesn't seem to affect anything.) So presumably to compensate for this the pivot screw in my example was glued -- yes glued, I believe with superglue -- into place.

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Some of that also escaped onto the plates. This didn't impact functionality, but it annoyed me and I had to dissolve it with acetone. Here's what that looked like on the workbench.

For what it's worth the liner plates are totally interchangeable between a real Bugout and this. So if you really gave a shit you could swap those over, too, and have matching holes to go with your D flats.

Okay, so, some cost cutting measures have clearly been taken. That's to be expected for the price. Certainly no one is going to machine something to Benchmade specifications for a non-Benchmade price. And the blade, right, it's obviously crap. Right???

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Well, the grind is dead true. How about that.

Sharpness is a tough attribute to convey in text, or indeed even in a video. And beyond exceptionally bad instances it's kind of immaterial, since sooner or later you'll be bound to be resharpening the thing yourself anyhow. But my example came out of the box quite serviceably sharp. It has no problems cleanly lopping the corner off of a Post-It.

HUAAO allege it to be made of 440C and given what we've seen to be readily available from other Chinese makers like Ganzo I don't think it's a stretch to trust them on that. So it's not a supersteel, but for a sub-$50 knife with bearing pivots and titanium handles I don't think that's a major knock against it. 440C is a perfectly cromulent alloy, if you ask me. It's got decent edge retention characteristics and while its toughness is not on par with some of the current high end supersteels, you're hardly going to be prying nails and beheading zombies with this little thing anyway.

The real Bugout's steel is better. That's just how it is. But I'm okay with 440C, and just for sake of argument I'd snap up a D2 version of this in a heartbeat. Conversely, I'd pay half the price for a Bugout if Benchmade would just make it out of, say, 154CM and be happy with it.

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If you're looking to identify one of these in the wild, you won't get any help from the box. This knife came in the most nondescript packaging in the history of the universe. You get this black lift-off cardboard box with no identifying information on it. It's nice in its way, sturdy with a nice woven texture in it. But it says nothing. Literally nothing. No brand, no model number, nothing's printed on it at all.

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Inside rests your prize. Mine came in two plastic baggies nested inside each other. But likewise to the box, there is no manual, no tag or label, no instructions leaflet. Nothing else comes in the box but the knife itself, and a piece of foam glued to the bottom.

On the bright side, this isn't really pretending to be a Benchmade. I could see some charlatan slathering it up with fake logos, and I respect the manufacturer a little more -- whoever they actually are -- for not trying that.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons to shell out for a Benchmade. A warranty, for one. The HUAAO certainly hasn't got one of those, at least beyond what you can wring out of its reseller.

But underneath it all, as an object this is a better Bugout than the Bugout. That's infuriating. Not because of what this knife is, or who makes it, but because Benchmade didn't. This goes beyond getting cloned -- this is an improvement over the original in several respects and for significantly less in the bargain. This is the knife Benchmade should have made all along, for the exorbitant amount they already charge.

Sure, you can buy aftermarket titanium scales for a Bugout and it won't flex anymore. Now your $180 knife is $276. You could probably pay a machinist to mill out your blade to take thrust bearings, too. There goes your warranty, while you're at it. Would you? I wouldn't.

This puts us at a crossroads. It does for me, anyway. I like the HUAAO a lot. Sure, I would like it more if it weren't a replica of someone else's design. Say if they took all the same features and materials, made it the same size, but in a different shape. Would anyone be howling about it being a "Benchmade ripoff" then? It'd just be a hidden gem of a little off brand knife. We've seen those before and even talked about them here. Is there such a thing as an ethical reworking of the very shape of something else? I don't know. At the end of the day, it's just a pocketknife.

But I'll be carrying this instead of my Bugout. It feels better. It opens better. It looks better. And if I destroy it, I'll be a lot less sad about it than my Benchmade. And that right there is where the rubber meets the road. Regardless of how well it's made or what kind of fancy steel it uses, is a knife you won't use "better" in a real world sense than one you will?

I submit to you that it is not.

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Bugout too small for you? You're covered. Try the Benchmade Bailout, which is -- Wait, didn't we just do this?

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Here it is, standing tall. The Bailout is the biggest brother in the Benchmade 53x series, sporting a very similar design philosophy to the Bugout and Mini Bugout vis-a-vis being very thin and lightweight. Benchmade say it's "2 ounces," but by my scale it's actually 59.3 grams or 2.09 ounces, so they must be doing the old backpacking gear trick and omitting the clip from the weight measurement.

The Bailout also has tactical aspirations. Benchmade sell this as one of their "black box" knives, whereas the Bugout and Mini Bugout are "blue box" ones. If you believe the marketing, the black box models are supposed to be designed for professionals and the rigors of use as employed by police, firefighters, military men, etc. That says maybe in this case, given that the Bailout is designed exactly like the svelte little Bugouts which seem to be marketed towards backpackers, urban carry, and lighter duty everyday use.

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This incarnation of the Bailout is the OG polymer handled version. One of the complaints I shall make herewith, as if we haven't heard the same old song and dance enough already, are solved by the M4 variant which has aluminum handles instead. That one also has a fancier CPM M4 blade rather than the base model's CPM 3V. But it's also the thick end of $300, whereas the normal model is an already princely $200.

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The Bailout, see, has pretty much exactly the same construction as the Bugout and Mini Bugout. But it's bigger: 8-1/16" long overall, 4-5/8" closed, with a 3-3/8" blade that's tanto pointed this time around to appeal to all those whackers professional operators. The blade is also coated with a finely textured epoxy finish.

But. It has the same number of handle spacers (two) and nearly the same thickness of handle slabs (0.414" in total, not including the clip) made of the same material, so it has the same problem as the Bugout but moreso. With a yet greater distance between its handle spacers it's even more flexible than the normal Bugout. In fact, so much so that just taking up the knife and imparting a not-too-out-of-the-ordinary grip causes it to noticeably bow inwards. On the Bugout at least you had to try to do it on purpose.

There are a couple of other changes as well. All of the hardware is painted satin black, rather than shiny anodized. This extends to the clip, also, which is matte as opposed to the Bugout's glossy one. The Bailout is trying very hard to be sneaky.

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The other addition is this aluminum lanyard slot, which is its own block that's separate from the plastic handles. The Bugout's lanyard hole is just a triangle molded into the plastic, but this one should be tougher. The fancier aluminum handled variant also adds a glass breaker to this, but on this OG model the back end is just square.

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The Bailout's blade has got enough meat on it to be able to freely Axis flick open and closed, at least. The finish is attractive and Benchmade seem to think it will hide scratches from use, but I'll bet you it won't. In my experience, coated blades start looking like crap with their first scuff and only ever get worse; you can never get them looking the same as new ever again, and brushing or re-polishing the blade is out of the question unless you're fanatically dedicated. And suddenly okay with it not being coated anymore.

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I'm not generally a fan of tanto points, either. I was when I was younger, believing as we all did that an angular point was absolutely necessary for sufficient ninja cred, and of course everyone knew that a tanto point was better at penetrating soft body armor which I have to say in my four decades or so on this planet is not something I have ever had occasion to actually do. To Benchmade's credit, at least the longer primary edge is not a ruler-straight line as they so often are. There is a subtle belly to it which might at least contribute some modicum of practicality. Even so, I prefer a normal drop point which when executed correctly is just as capable of the stabby-stabby, but is also considerably less annoying to sharpen.

Further contributing to the Bailout's tacticality is a handle profile that differs slightly from the Bugout. It has a rise just forward of the pivot, providing a thumb stop and very minor crossguard-eque shape. I have to say I like the feel of this.

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What I like a bit less is the overall lack of thickness. Yes, I get and I keep harping on how the thinness is the point of this entire series of knives. The Bailout is supposed to disappear into your pocket until you need it which is fine as far as it goes. But if this is supposed to be a fighting knife used in a situation where, just as an example, you might have gloves on I think that's really the opposite of what you'd want.

Other police-fire-rescue models, even Benchmade's own, are all considerably chunkier and often spring assist as well, for good reason. With its tiny low profile thumb studs, barely-there handles, and tightly sprung little pocket clip I think the Bailout would be difficult to impossible to use in a high stress situation or with gloves.

So, you say, don't use it for that. Fine. But then don't market it like that, either.

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The size comparison between all three knives in this family reveals that the Bailout is about as much bigger as the Mini Bugout is smaller, as compared to the original Bugout.

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Inside is the same story. The mini-plates in the Bailout are black rather than shiny, but it still doesn't have full length liners.

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Here's how the tailpiece works. It is retained by one of the handle spacers as well as an additional dedicated pin.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Bailout has the same drawbacks as the full size Bugout, only moreso. Everything you read about it takes great pains to mention the "Benchmade quality," and how well its made, and how sturdy it totally must be, while stopping short of actually proving it.

Well, I'm sure the Bailout is just fine for what it is. Nobody's sponsoring me and this isn't a press knife, so I'm not about to go torture testing it. But all in all, I think the "tactical" direction of this is silly. I would much prefer this knife if it were just a Maxi-Bugout, with the drop point profile and just bigger. As it is, its combat pretensions and black box presentation are patently absurd, just like the price.

I'm sure the 3V steel will hold up well to stabbing and twisting and whatever else, being a very high toughess alloy. But it trades edge retention for that toughness. For the use case this knife is certainly more likely to actually see, which is certainly not combat, I think a little harder steel with better edge retention instead might have been a better idea.

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The Bailout is undoubtedly a very nice knife. But I don't think it's $200 worth of knife in reality. With that, though, the trifecta is complete.

_{Mini me...}

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Bugout too big for you? You're covered. Try the Mini Bugout, which is exactly what it says.

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After I just got done mildly eviscerating its regular sized counterpart yesterday, all the Benchmade fans will surely put away their torches and pitchforks when I say I like the Mini variant better.

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And that's not because it's cheaper, although it is. And not by much, though: $170, or $10 less at current prices. Provided you stay away from the mega fancy S90V-and-carbon-fiber 533-3 variant which MSRP's for a monumentally ridiculous $320.

No, it's because the Mini Bugout actually fills a niche that otherwise remains unserved except by Benchmade themselves, at least as far as I can tell, and that's for a truly compact knife with an Axis lock. Sure, everyone and their grandmother makes an Axis clone knife now, but all of the offerings from other brands seem to be full or plus sized. If you want a little one your choices are much more limited.

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The Mini Bugout, meanwhile, measures 6-7/16" open and 3-9/16" closed. Its S30V drop point blade is 2-3/4" long, below the magic 3" number that makes it widely legal to carry. The blade is exactly the same 0.089" thickness as on the full sized model.

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Thin is what the Mini Bugout has got. At 0.393" not including the clip, it carries over exactly the same raison d'etre as its larger counterpart. Thin and light, able to ride unobtrusively in your pocket. It's only 40.8 grams by my scale or 1.44 ounces. Significantly less than other knives comparable in size.

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Every single construction detail is identical between the Mini and full sized Bugouts. Benchmade just stuck the original in the copy machine, pressed 80%, and here it is.

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It has the same deep carry pocket clip that grips a little too hard, the same pair of anodized diabolo spacers, the same thumb studs, the same shape to the handles, and the same nearly-all-plastic design with only minimal steel liners in place for the Axis lock. Hell, even the screws are interchangeable between the two differently sized models. All seen here in this blue variant, which is of course no longer available. Today's options are black, white, grey, purple, and sage green. Tomorrow they'll be different.

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Inside, of course, is more of the same. Nothing is changed with the mechanical formula.

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The Mini's blade rides on the same brass washers. One difference in the feel department other than the size is that the blade is literally too light to Axis flick. Unless you loosen your pivot screw to an unwise degree, at least, you'll have to open this knife like a normal person.

The other difference is, owing to the handle slabs that are the same thickness but reduced in length, it's actually tougher to pinch the sides together than on the full size model and the Mini Bugout actually feels noticeably more rigid.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Mini Bugout is a serviceable tool for its intended purpose, which is an ultra light, ultra slim, ultra unobtrusive EDC knife designed for light duty tasks.

The elephant, however, is still in the room. It doesn't matter that he's got a doily thrown over him and is wearing a lampshade. We can all see him, standing right there. The Pachyderm of Price cannot be ignored.

The asking price for this knife is criminal. $170? It would be on my short list of recommendations if it were maybe half of that. The Mini Bugout is a fine example of design and craftsmanship. Its larger counterpart is, too. Take of leave the flexy handles and the thin blade; these are design choices for its chosen use case. But I can't in good faith tell anybody who isn't a knife collector that there is $170 worth of knife in there.

Notwithstanding that I own one. And the bigger one. Us collectors aren't normal people. We all must be whacked in the head.

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It is not possible to type the letters E, D, and C in close proximity to each other on the internet without that one guy reflexively parroting, "Just get a Bugout!" Or often, an entire chorus of them. It seems this is one of those laws of nature. Sun comes up in the east, spring follows winter, punters on the internet all have the same opinion.

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(Watch out -- Rugged in-the-rain photo!)

So, Benchmade's model 535 Bugout has been what "everyone knows" is the best EDC knife. The default choice. The starting point. It's svelte, lightweight, easy to use and carry, and has that trusted Benchmade quality. So everyone says, at least, sounding suspiciously like the brochure for the damn thing.

It is time, therefore, for the slaying of a sacred cow. The Bugout is just an alright knife. I actually don't like it very much.

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The Bugout is part of Benchmade's "500" family and certainly the most ubiquitous of the bunch. Its siblings include the 532 Mini Bugout and the 537 Bailout, which we'll get to in due time. All three of these knives share very similar construction methodologies. So does the current incarnation of the Griptilian series, sort of. The major difference between all of them is size.

The Bugout is the medium sized one: 7-3/8" long open, 4-1/4" closed, with a 3-1/8" blade made of fancy S30V steel. The blade is flat ground with a drop point profile, and is actually rather thin at 0.089" at the spine.

The entire knife is very thin, which is really its entire deal. All in, not including the clip, it's only 0.389" thick. It's very light, too, just 51.1 grams or 1.8 ounces. Hence, the "easy to carry" bullet point all the sales-brochure-memorizers are always so keen to bring up.

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The Bugout's got the now popular, bordering on mandatory deep carry pocket clip. It's reversible and for tip up carry only. The handle halves are spaced out by a pair of machined aluminum diabolo style spacers, brightly anodized in whatever color you choose.

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Mine is desert tan, with gold spacers and thumb studs. The available colorways on offer seem to change constantly with the moon and tides; Benchmade's sole contribution to proceedings lately seems to be fidgeting around with those offerings incessantly. I'm surprised they don't list "Bold New Graphics!" as a bullet point on the spec sheet, like Kawasaki does.

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It is, of course, an Axis lock knife. That part of it is very nice. Of course it is; Benchmade invented the Axis lock as I'm keen on harping on about all the time, and I'd be surprised if they of all people didn't get it right. The pivot rides on brass washers, it opens nicely, closes nicely, and you can flick it either way with the lock held back with no problem.

The handles are made of Grivory, a fiber reinforced injection molded Nylon. That is to say, not the handle scales. The handles themselves.

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The Bugout exhibits Benchmade's current fascination with making pretty much the entire damn knife out of plastic. It does not have steel liners like most knives. Instead, there are just a pair of short steel plates to support the lock crossbar and endstop pin.

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Here's what that looks like.

Benchmade bill this as, "Designed for the modern outdoor adventurer, incorporating the lightest, best performing materials in an extremely slim yet ergonomic package." And, yes, ditching the liners does indeed make the knife very light.

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But it also compromises the rigidity significantly. The Bugout is a wet noodle in the hand. Fiber reinforced though the material may be, stiffening waffle pattern it may have, but it still doesn't take much of a pinch at all to bow the handles in like this. The flex is also highly noticeable when the knife's in use as well. And regardless of what the math might say about the mechanical properties of the plastic, the feeling still doesn't inspire confidence.

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You can ask any backpacker and they'll tell you that to achieve lightness some sacrifices have to be made. That's fine as far as it goes. And it would be if the Bugout were a $40, $60, or even $80 knife.

But it isn't. It presently costs $180.

That makes the Bugout a fantastically awful value for the money. And we're supposed to be suggesting this thing to first time knife buyers, non-knife people, like it's some kind of gold standard? That's really starting off on the wrong foot.

The other slap in the face is Benchmade's recent price hikes on this and indeed all of their knives. The ones left that aren't currently inexplicably discontinued with no replacement, I might add. I touched on this before, but in 2019 the Bugout was $105 which was already not a great deal. But even adjusting for our recent hyperinflation, that should only be about $130 in today's money. So don't ask me where they pulled $180 from.

Yes, it's made of S30V which appears to be the current supersteel darling of the knife world. Fine, but does a plastic handled mini-EDC designed for light duty occasional use actually need to be? The majority of people will probably use this for nothing more than opening their mail, Amazon boxes, and slicing the tops off of their backpacker's meals. Would they endure any detriment if it were made of D2 or 14CN or 440C, but for half the price?

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By way of usual comparison, here's the CQC-6K. A little larger, easier to deploy, with full steel liners and a quarter of the price. You won't be afraid to use the CQC lest you scuff your resale value, and no one will get mad at you for throwing away the box.

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Compared in terms of thickness, though, you can see just how thin the Bugout is. If that's what you want, the Bugout's got it. Expensive, thin, and light: The iPhone of knives.

I'll also point out at this juncture that I don't like the Bugout's clip. I like it in theory: It's nicely proportioned and a deep carry design. But it's too tightly sprung, and it plus the combination of the diamond texture on the handles which isn't interrupted underneath the clip's contact area makes the thing cling to your pocket like grim death. It's entirely too difficult to draw, and to make matters worse the exposed square corner at the heel of the blade tends to snag on the fabric as well. This knife is a seam-ripper, and while Benchmade will sharpen it for free if you mail it back to them I don't think that offer extends to also mending your pants.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Bugout is an expensive but middling knife. Its humongous price tag isn't backed up by much if you ask me. We ought to stop suggesting it to everyone left, right, and center all the time. We can do better for less.

Oh boy. It's time for that knife.

You know, that knife. The one that's in all those TikToks and Shorts or wherever the sponsored influencers are waving gadgets around these days: You Won't Believe This Crazy Knife, Can Your EDC Do This???

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This is the Paragon Warlock and it is definitely a chart topper for all those online lists of weird knives. Perfect then, for an appearance here.

It comes in a dizzying array of handle styles, blade profiles, and colors. This is the "Satin Sorcerer" variant and it is of course inevitable that, given the opportunity, I would choose the green one.

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This is a side opening folder with a rather bodacious crenelated texture machined into the blade surfaces. The pictures don't quite get across how humongous it is: 5-3/8" long closed, 9-1/4" open with a 3-3/4" S30V blade...

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...That's double edged, presenting this wicked dagger point.

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It's really thick, too. 0.857" in total not including the clip. The handles are machined anodized aluminum and all together it weighs in at 181.2 grams or 6.93 ounces.

Of course, how it opens is the wild part.

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You grab the two textured buttons at the business end and pinch them together.

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Through some manner of mechanical wizardry inside, this causes both halves of the handle to split apart not just at the end where you pinched, but evenly down the entire length.

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The blade is then able to swing out freely.

This is a gravity knife, so once unrestrained the blade pivots easily under its own weight. It's not under any kind of spring loading, nor is any required.

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Only the merest wrist action is required and you can easily flick the blade in and out. When you let go of the buttons the handles snap back together, locking the blade open or closed. That is, provided you time it right and don't just sandwich it partially between them.

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The Warlock does include a clip and it's even a reversible one, but it's mounted very far down from the tail of the knife and leaves a lot of it sticking out of your pocket. It's unlikely you'll be carrying this much anyway, though. As not only over 4" in blade length but also as a gravity knife and a dagger it's virtually guaranteed that the law will find some aspect of it to frown upon. Possibly more than one, depending where you live.

Actually deploying it also takes a bit of practice and skill. The blade will, of course, only swing out one way. You can't make it do a complete windmill which is probably good news for blood retention but also means it's perfectly possible, if you're not paying attention, to utterly fail to deploy the blade because you're holding the knife the wrong way around. This will leave you looking like a chump. Remembering which side is the "out" side relative to the pocket clip is probably the best play.

And then, you do have to ensure the blade is completely and precisely swung out to the end of its arc before you let go of the buttons, and you didn't jump the gun and let go too early. If you do you'll wind up with the blade either not locked out, or only mostly closed with a little bit of the edge still exposed. You can generally tell by the sound when this happens, though. The Warlock makes a very distinct -- and satisfying -- sound when the handles snap shut correctly.

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The Inevitable Conclusion

Of course the Warlock has to be made of fancy S30V steel and come with a full flat double sided grind and all the rest of it, because otherwise it would be inauthentic and wouldn't have enough street cred for knife nerds to want to buy it. But the specs really aren't the point -- It could be made of aluminum foil for all the difference it would make. This is a knife for showing off, and for fidgeting with, but at $250 no one in their right mind would actually use this as a working knife for any purpose.

It is one of the quintessential entries in the category of wonky knife designs, though, and therefore has a well deserved place in any collector's assortment of weird knives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right. The Papillon. Is it any good?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Which is weird.

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Because the Papillon totally does have ball bearing pivots.

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

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

Here's the whole thing in bits:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Inevitable Conclusion

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

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

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

In keeping with my usual tradition of harping on about the dumb shit I design and slap up on Printables:

https://www.printables.com/model/862518-cat-shelf-bracket-for-smartykat-paw-perch-or-build

These brackets solve a specific, but major, usability issue with the aforementioned brand and model of cat accessory widely sold at Walmart, Amazon, Chewy, Pet Smart, etc.

Conversely, there's nothing stopping you from screwing your own piece of wood to the top of a pair of these and arriving at roughly the same result without shelling out 30 of your hard earned Washingtons.

Cat tax paid:

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