smokey
2A TEACHER
- Jan 31, 2008
- 31,494
Basspro started carrying these things. I played around with one last time I worked and instantly liked the handle and blade geometry. At around $30, I figured I'd pick one up as a beat-around knife.
I'm pretty impressed after carrying and using it for the past couple days. It came with a great grind on the edge that was very uniform and actually pretty sharp. Once I blunted the factory edge a little making dinner and cutting up old boxes that needed to be thrown away, I put a nice 20 degree shaving edge on it. It's aus8, soooo not really a super-steel...but it takes a great edge quickly and holds it relatively well. The thing that really helps this thing is the full flat grind, it slices great with little resistance. It has no problem pushing through cheese, summer-sausage and other food-stuff. In contrast, my contego has a pretty thick blade with a relatively steep grind that doesn't pass through media well.
The action is smooth and helped along by bronze bushings that make the action both smooth and solid. There's not really any noticeable side-to-side play in the blade at any point in its travel. The liner lock is timed correctly and when the blade is locked, there is no movement in any direction. The liners inside the handle give the knife some weight, but give it a solid feel.
The pocked clip was originally in a tip-down configuration that I'm not wild about, but you can put it in any of 4 locations, so I opted to make it a right-hand tip-up knife like all my others. From there, it's easy to draw and use the thumb stud to flick it open in a hurry.
The handle is not very grippy. It has texture, but the texture is too shallow and small to really enhance the grip. It's no big thing though because the handle is shaped really well. There's a little choil area for your index finger to comfortably fall in to and some good jimping on the back of the blade for your thumb to find. Even when my hands were slimy with chicken goo in the kitchen, I never felt that I'd lose control of the handle.
Overall, the knife kicks ass for $30 and is a good value. It would be cool if it was made out of s30v or something with a wave on the blade. As it is, I'm happy with the purchase and will definately use this as a good cheap knife when I don't feel like using my other ones.
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