What You Want in a Folding Knife

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No.

Ohhh so you only pretend to love Murica.






😁

[Chefdog]

Good pick. How much has cost gone up on those since your last purchase?

I haven’t looked at new ones since I bought this one, but I think I paid $170ish for it from bladehq. It was one of their house specials with the g10 handle and m4 steel.

[Spectre3]

My folders are tools with a distant consideration to defensive use. Out of all the knives I've ever owned, if I could only keep one it would be my CRK Umnumzaan. I've has a Sebenza and the only thing I preferred on it was the stronger tip.

What would I change to make it perfect to me? For starters, make the female side of the pivot captured or at least have a flat spot in the scale so I'm doing all my pivot adjustment on one side.

Second, I'd make the lockbar smoother to the touch. People complain about the thumb stud hurting their thumb because they push it the wrong way, but what's really aggravating is how the lock bar digs into my thumb. 2.5: remove the o-rings on the studs.

Third, I'd give it a stronger pocket clip. I've never broken a CRK clip, but I have bent them. It's easy to bend back, but I want it to not get bent out of shape in the first place.

Lastly, and again this isn't focused on defensive use but convenience for cutting tasks: something like the Emerson wave. Being able to take the knife out and open it in one motion would be great when I'm holding something that needs to be cut. It would also be useful for an extremely unlikely defensive scenario.

Other than that, it's slim and sits well in pockets, looks good, and stays put in my hand during use. S35vn (I think the new ones are 45) has good edge retention, durability, and is easily re-sharpened. This is made even better with the convex edge that CRK uses. I just strop it for a couple minutes and it's good. The hollow ground blade has great cutting geometry and easily goes through boxes and other things a folder cuts through.

I've had knives from CRKT, Kershaw/ZT, Spyderco, Benchmade, Emerson, Microtech (they never should've ditched tip up carry on the socom), Hinderer, Curtiss. The only ones I still use are the Umnumzaan and a ZT 0620 (the best knife ZT ever made). The 0620 is second choice in spite of the tanto. It really just needs to be lighter and have better edge geometry. The 0630 has the more useful blade shape except for that stupid upsweep.

Someone could make a knife with the same materials, and mentioned features for a much lower price. The ceramic ball would have to be replaced with a steel lockbar insert to simplify mass production and it would have to be made outside of the US to be priced competitively but if say, Reate were to make them and sell them for $300ish they'd sell really well...in my opinion of course.

[Clusterfrack]

...ZT 0620 (the best knife ZT ever made). The 0620 is second choice in spite of the tanto. It really just needs to be lighter and have better edge geometry...

Emphatically agree. I have two of those, and they are not only the best knife ZT or Kershaw has ever made, they are the best Emerson wave knives ever made. I like the tanto.

[javemtr]

Emphatically agree. I have two of those, and they are not only the best knife ZT or Kershaw has ever made, they are the best Emerson wave knives ever made. I like the tanto.

Kershaw/ZT should really do another run of the 0620. One of my biggest knife related mistakes was not buying one when they were available.