Pros: Weight, Pocket Clip, Blade Material, Blade Sharpness
Cons: Lock Ease of Use
Good but beware of a few things…
So first impressions…the box is sealed so I’m assuming this wasn’t a returned knife. Right off the bat, the bearings were gritty and the flipper action was sluggish and was a coin toss on whether it would flip open, spidey flicking was fine and thumb flicking was fine when you figure out where to place your hands as with most frame locks. The blade had a little play, some pivot horizontal play when the lock is disengaged. For a $100+ (bought at a discount) exclusive you’d expect more and here’s why. Firstly, pivot was super over-lubed imo, lubricant was seeping out all over the blade after the first few flips. I don’t think the pivot area should ever be lubed on a knife running on bearings because over time it can attract dust and grime into the bearings and most likely resulted in the gritty, terrible action I had. Secondly, the CF golf-ball pattern looks cool and I really like the texturing but the edges on the scales show a few imperfections, but only really noticeable when you go out of your way to look for them. Thirdly, and possibly a none-issue, this knife is listed as black stonewash, honestly this more just straight up a black coating, you can catch the stonewash look in certain lighting but it’s mostly not visible so it looks like a normal PVD coating, if you don’t mind that then you’re good. Some positives, out of the box it was super sharp, shaving sharp, which is awesome! Secondly, the ergos on this little guy is great! For a smaller knife the forward choil really makes this a hand-filling knife, and as a guy who prefers smaller knives, I can really appreciate that! The wire clip is one of my more preferred clips and it works great no complaints aside from you can feel it when you really choke up, but you kinda sacrifice that when you go for smaller knives with limited clip placement. Finally, the minimal hardware really makes this easy to take apart and clean, which leads me into my final bit of the review. After being disappointed by the OOB action I immediately took it apart and cleaned out the whole knife, the bearings, as expected were super dirty due to the lube attracting grit and grime, so I removed all of the lubricant. I applied a TINY drop of tuf-glide to the detent track NOT the pivot, closed it back up, played with the centering and it flips and feelings great, still some negligible play in the pivot when disengaged but definitely a major improvement. Took about 10 minutes to fix. Overall, 3 stars, 1 reduced for gritty and trash action out of box, and half a star for blade play/pivot play when disengaged, half star for minor scale imperfections, the very light stonewash is kinda disappointing but it’s still technically stonewashed and it still hides wear and tear well. Overall 3/5 from me!
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