dual_sport_dork

Yet another from-the-saddle GoPro shot. I was quite surprised by the rainbow; it was only visible for about four minutes. By the time I got to work and was able to hop off and get out a bigger camera, it was gone.

With this knife it's tough for me to do that thing I do where I bury the lede in order to keep suspense for the first couple of paragraphs in order hook the reader before I reveal whatever its quirk is.

This is the WE Knife Double Helix, and it's easy to see what its deal is right away because it wears its underpants on the outside.

At its core the Double Helix is, more or less, an Axis lock style crossbar locking folder. However, rather than the typical pair of hair-thin "Omega" springs hidden inside the handles...

...Instead there's this trebble-clef external spring that runs almost the entire length of the knife. There are two, actually, with an identical but mirrored one on the other side. That's certainly a novel way to do it, and for this it was awarded "Most Innovative New Knife 2018" by Knife News. I'm sure WE will be trumpeting that at anyone who'll listen -- and anyone who won't -- until the sun burns out.

In my prior ramblings, I'm certain I've told you many times how the Axis lock is my favorite mechanism out of all the various non-balisong folders. You're probably sick of hearing it, along with the note that Benchmade's patent on it expired in 2018, enabling many other knifemakers to have a crack at the idea.

Part of why I like the Axis lock is its inherent capability, when properly designed and implemented anyway, to do the "Axis flick." That is, you can hold the crossbar back and just flick the knife open without any other manual intervention. The jury's out on whether or not this is actually an originally intended function of the mechanism.

Well, for its part the Double Helix doesn't leave much ambiguity about how its designers intended it to be opened. As you can see it is completely lacking in any kind of thumb stud, disk, hole, hook, or any other apparatus to aid you in getting it open with your thumb. And to further compound matters, unlike normal Axis lock folders its lock also resolutely holds the blade shut. You absolutely cannot open it without pulling the crossbar back.

The Double Helix is a fancy knife with ball bearing pivots, so with all of the above taken together we can only conclude that it's meant to be Axis-flicked open with a snap of the wrist. The only other way to do it is to use two hands, and what kind of self respecting individual is going to do that?

The flies in the ointment with the action are twofold, though. First is that the Double Helix is not one iota longer than it needs to be, which means that the tip of its 3-1/4" drop pointed blade passes extremely closely to the tail end of the knife. It's therefore not only possible but downright likely that some of the meat from the heel of your hand will at some point get squished into the gap between the handle halves and then the point will graze you as it goes by.

Second is that, visually striking though they may be, those two external springs are actually rather stout and it takes quite a bit of force to disengage the lock.

There is a pocket clip, which stands on long standoffs to ensure it clears the spring and is also for no particular reason not reversible. As usual there's no mechanical impetus as to why it couldn't be; there just aren't any holes for it on the other side even though both handle halves are total mirror images of each other. Apparently because WE decided they just couldn't be bothered. It's just as well, probably, because screws holding the end of the spring down have cylindrical heads that sit proud of the face of the spring by several millimeters and are incredibly snaggy. They wind up between the clip and your pants fabric, making the Double Helix nearly impossible to draw in a hurry without either tearing your pants fabric off or giving yourself an atomic wedgie. Both the clip and its standoffs are easily removable, although there is no lanyard hole either so if you do that you'll just have to leave the thing bouncing around your laptop bag like some kind of heathen, or something.

There is some thickness to the springs, and also to the handles -- arguably probably more than there needs to be just to get the mechanism to work -- which makes the Double Helix pretty chonkers. This is completely notwithstanding the fact that its groovy pivot screw with the machined-in "WE" logo is flush fitting.

It's 0.648" thick just across the handle slabs not including any of the other greebles; including the thickness of the two crossbar lock heads it's a whopping 0.770" and including the clip it's an even more ridiculous 0.807". And of course being made of zooty premium materials like titanium and aluminum, it's not as hefty as you'd expect: 99.8 grams or 3.52 ounces. Closed it's precisely 4-1/2" long, and open it's 7-13/16".

The blade is S35VN, surely mostly in order to maintain credibility among its intended purchasing demographic, and is 0.133" thick. It's fullered, and has a nicely rounded spine that's easily the least snaggy part of the entire knife. Reviewers who are more qualified than me have spent many words on its hollow grind and its excellent general purpose cutting ability, but I won't because this is a collector's knife and to the first couple of decimal places nobody is going to cut anything demanding with it anyway.

According to the stipulations of a very particular gypsy curse, I am incapable of giving an overview of any knife with a weird mechanism without taking it apart to see how it works. Although in the case of the Double Helix, pretty much everything interesting is visible from the outside.

I took it apart anyway.

Being firmly in the enthusiast knife category, the Double Helix was not at all difficult to take apart. It's all T8 and T6 Torx screws, as you'd expect. And also as an enthusiast knife, it breaks apart into a ridiculous number of individual parts, apparently to vainly attempt to justify its price tag.

This is most of the hardware. Each handle slab is actually two pieces, which is completely unnecessary from both a production and mechanical standpoint, but that's how it is anyway. I only took one of them apart for my disassembly photo, so the lineup above is short three additional screws. The trim collar around the male side of the pivot screw is also a separate piece, and it has two end stop pins. And also three washers per side of the pivot, for some reason. That all adds up to no less than 35 individual pieces of hardware required to assemble this, not including the blade itself, both pieces of both handle halves, the clip, and the springs.

Because the crossbar has to pass through holes in the ends of the springs externally, it is somewhat unusually a multi-piece design. It's right in the middle of the photo above, and it consists of a flanged center barrel while the nubbins on the outside that you interact with can be unscrewed. This is necessary because the usual method of installing an Axis crossbar through an offset pair of channels hidden under the handle scales obviously would not work in this case.

Note also the alarmingly tiny little spacer washers that go between the handle slabs and the springs, which are bound to disappear forever if you drop one on the carpet. So watch it.

Here you can see WE's weirdo crossbar lock track, including the dog-leg that locks it in place in the closed position. The general consensus online seems to be that this is supposed to be for "safe" pocket carry, as opposed to a weird design oversight, which I find highly dubious given that A) nobody in all of recorded history has ever had a problem with an Axis knife falling open in their pocket, and B) nobody is going to pocket carry this more than once anyway, see also the situation with the clip, above.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is one of those things built purely for knife collectors, and normal people probably need not apply. Knife mechanisms are sort of like the quantum multiverse theory -- for any given possible way to do it, it is not only likely but downright inevitable that someone will eventually try.

I like the Double Helix's core conceit. It's just all the details surrounding its execution that I take exception to.

In my opinion it would not take much of a redesign to allow the Double Helix to retain its groovy external spring, but also make it significantly less irritating to carry and use. Just not locking the blade shut would put us well on our way, in addition to sinking the spring into the handle a bit and giving all the mounting screws countersunk heads.

WE, if you need to take me on board as a design consultant to straighten all this out I'll happily do so, and you'll find my rates to be very reasonable.

Look, if I had a nickel for every knife I've got all covered in gears, I'd have two nickels.

So here's the other one. This is the "DevilFish T20315," and with a name like that you know it's got to be good.

I've actually had my eye on this -- well, not precisely this by name -- for a little while. I dug this hole for myself by apparently deciding I'm like the stupid cutlery equivalent of Civvie 11 now, or something, and this whole thing has gotten so out of hand lately that I damn near give myself whiplash every time I'm scrolling through the internet and I catch a glimpse of another whack-ass shitty Chinese knife. I just have to page back and stare at it, like the broke kid pressing his face against the shop window at the candy store. It's some kind of Pavlovian complex now.

I've been flicking through and honing my apparently encyclopedic knowledge of the Top Quest catalog, you know, as you do, and I've passed by this knife multiple times. You see, this is actually a Top Quest knife. The "DevilFish" moniker is just some more of that Amazon fuckery, you know, where everything has to be sold under some kind of registered trademark and it doesn't matter if it's nonsense because all Amazon cares about is being able to pretend everything on there is a "brand" and isn't just drop Chinese shipped garbage?

So that whole grift actually works out pretty great for me for once, because Top Quest won't sell you a single knife. They're a distributor who wants to sell a whole shitload of pieces to a reseller and if you're just small potatoes like me as far as they're concerned you can just fuck off. Their web site won't even tell you how much these things are supposed to cost.

But I figured out the other week that I could buy just one of these from Jeff Bezos' Fun Time Candyland and I probably overpaid for it. It was still only $15.

It's obviously the same knife. It's right there on page 38 of the catalog if you want to check it out.

So the T20315 has this whole... aesthetic... going on. And I know what you're thinking. Yeah, the gears on the back side where the clip is are fake and they're just cast into the handle.

Here's the money shot. I know it's what you kids came here to see.

The gears around the pivot aren't fake, and they turn when you open the blade.

Of course this doesn't serve any purpose. It's just there to look cool. The blade is just mounted on a splined shaft and it turns the big gear in the middle, which in turn drives the little one. There's a flipper heel on the back but it's kind of a red herring. The action is extremely draggy and flicking the knife open with the flipper is completely out of the question. There's a cutout in the blade in place of a thumb stud for you to open it the traditional way, and with a bit of practice it is indeed openable one handed via that avenue.

You can also flip it open if you give it an unwisely brisk snap of the wrist when you hit the flipper or, if you're feeling super frisky, you can open it easily by doing it backwards -- grab the spine of the blade, and flick the handle out. Don't come crying to me if you flub your DEX save when you try it, though.

The T20315 is a frame locker, and that as we all know tends to come with a hilarious centering job on a cheap novelty knife like this. At the very least the blade doesn't contact any part of the handle nor can you entice it to do so, which is nice. But it's still pretty out of whack. It's solid once you have it locked open, though.

This thing is all steel. No fancy titanium, aluminum, or even inlaid Chinese mystery wood. Thus despite its skeletonized design it's pretty dense: 107.3 grams or 3.78 ounces altogether. The blurb calls it "7.5" inches, but by my measure it's actually 7-5/8. So you get a whole extra 0.125" for your money. The blade is a drop pointed affair that's 3-3/16" long if you're measuring the usable part, and rather less if you measure from the forwardmost tip of the rather rakishly angled handle, or a touch more if you want to measure from the center of the pivot. The blade is precisely 0.110" thick at the spine which I think we've become quite accustomed to seeing by now.

The handles are probably some kind of sintered material casting. They're steel, and a magnet sticks to them, but there are telltale mold release marks on the back sides. I think they've been tumbled, though, or possibly bead blasted. The outer surfaces are very consistent and feel pretty nice.

Despite all of its design tomfoolery the T20315 manages not to be cartoonishly thick. It's only 0.496" including the thickness of the gears. It includes a nonreversible pocket clip that carries the knife tip down, and against all logic actually feels pretty good and draws cleanly. The clip is on the side opposite the gears so they won't snag on your pocket fabric, either.

I was going to take this apart, but, well. I can't. The screw head on the little gear arrived pre-stripped from the factory, and I can see just by looking at it that the blade is press fit onto its shaft so I can only imagine this will be an exercise in frustration. Any disassembly would thus surely be destructive. And...

The Inevitable Conclusion

...Despite the T20315's shortcomings -- not least of which being, once again, a complete lack of a memorable name -- I actually kind of like it. So I think I'll leave it right where it is, i.e. un-destroyed.

The gears of mediocrity may grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.

And.

My.

Axe.

That's it. That's the joke.

The Inevitable Conclusion

 

 

 

...

^What?^ ^Okay,^ ^fine.^

...

This is the "Snake Eye Tactical" CE-5079BL. Like many of its ilk, its name doesn't exactly ring melodious.

And yes, that is "Snake Eye," singular. Not "Snake Eyes," like throwing a pair of ones.

I have no idea why. Whoever-it-is is very consistent with this nomenclature, at least, regardless of the fact that your brain's been trained to get it wrong every single time.

The CE-5079BL is, without a doubt...

...Yeah, that wasn't much of a stretch.

What this is, is, a frame locking spring assist folder with a very funky blade shape. The way it's designed is as if a 14 year old D&D nerd just drew what they thought a fancy dwarven bearded battle axe ought to look like, from the top down. And that metaphor is more apt than you'd think.

That's because there's very little else axelike about the CE-5079BL. Its blade has none of the wedge-profiled thickness of an axe, for instance. It's just a regular old 0.110" thick slab of "440" series stainless steel, the exact species of which is unspecified. The bevel is hollow ground, not convex as you'd expect an axe to be.

And then of course it's dinky. It's 7-7/8" long open and 4-1/2" long closed.

I've blocked out a half an hour on the schedule here for the argument about how the blade length ought to be measured. The whole thing from the forward end of the handle to the tip is 3-3/8", but the actual sharp part is only 1-7/8" and the rest of it is largely empty air. Neither of these figures match the manufacturer's stated blade length of "2.75 inches."

The CE-5079BL's got one other measurement going for it, as well. It is extra, extra broad. Easily 1-7/8" across when it's closed thanks to the wide handle and upswept horn on the peak of the blade.

Here it is with a selection of other wide bois picked at random from my collection. If you absolutely need to pick a superlative, I think the CE-5079BL has the highest breadth-to-cost ratio out of anything I've ever owned since it was only $15. I did not dig into this in extreme detail, but it may just take the crown for the broadest folding knife I now own, period.

The CE-5079BL's looks are also very funky. The handles are steel of some description with this groovy machined finish -- both figuratively and literally -- that winds up a striated surface that really catches the light. I like this blue incarnation best out of the available options, and the accent color is very shiny and almost appears... anodized? I wasn't aware you could color anodize steel like that. Maybe it's something else. In any event, the blade is finished the same way.

It does sport clip that is even deep carry, if you feel like being perverse and actually bringing this with you anywhere. Although the clip is not reversible, lacking screw holes in the opposite handle slab. Which is weird, come to think of it. I mean, just look at the thing. It's obviously not like anybody was afraid to drill any holes in it.

I'm going to keep showing off pictures of the shiny handle slabs for no other reason than I think they're so damn neat.

Anyway, this is a spring assisted opener and can be set off either via the ambidextrous thumb studs or the flipper on the back. But that said I found the spring action on mine to be... what's the word... iffy. Often it would not lock open unless I rotated the blade out all the way manually.

I figured out why pretty quickly.

Ever wondered why you haven't received anything coated in Cosmoline recently? That's because the world's entire supply has been used up by packing it into this thing.

I think this was so liberally gooped by the factory with the expectation that this would be a lubricant, but I'll be damned if the stuff doesn't look and smell just like Cosmoline, so it probably is. Which, I should point out to anyone blessedly unaware, solidifies over time.

Needless to say I cleaned the bugger very thoroughly on both sides of all of its surfaces before taking this picture.

I will also mention that this zigzaggy spring for the assist action is certainly a novel way to do it, and not one that I've seen before. Maybe I just haven't taken apart enough spring assisted knives.

The CE-5079BL is a weird hybrid design with two handle scales, both steel, but only one liner. It is a frame or body locking knife, with the bent lock portion being on the side that hasn't got the separate liner. I think the liner serves no other purpose than to keep the spring in place, and provide a pocket for it to wiggle around in and do its thing.

Here's the hardware. The shiny blue accents around the pivot are clearly just ordinary flat washers that have had the same bluification process as the other parts applied to them, whatever it is. There's nothing else clever in there whatsoever. The pivot screw is completely round, with no anti-rotation flat. The pivot rides on the customary grubby Nylon washers. And the halves are separated with two shiny but otherwise very basic round threaded spacers. All the screws are the same save the two spacer screws that must pass through both a scale and a liner, and are thus longer.

Oh, and while the pivot screws are probably meant to be T8 Torx head, the male screw on my example actually fit a T9 driver much better. The female side solidly fit a T8. Search me on that one.

Whatever these are dipped in to make them blue, the process was clearly applied to the entirety of every part. The accent work is then accomplished by machining the rest of the part which exposes the shiny metal underneath. I now know this, because the pocket beneath the pivot screw washer also has this finish in it, albeit unevenly, and despite the fact that it'll never be seen. If I had to guess I would say the handle scales are probably cast, then dipped, then machined afterwards. I can think of no explanation for the weird slope present in that pocket.

This may go some way towards explaining why the entire assembly is somewhat canted. Not just the blade in the channel, but the entire knife. If you rest it on a flat surface, it just always sits off kilter.

The Summation Or Whatever, Again

There's no getting around it that the CE-5079BL is probably precisely suited to the type of purchaser where it is likely to be sold, vis-a-vis the bong shop.

Otherwise, the blade shape really begs the question of what the heck anyone is supposed to use this for or how. With the tail of it ending in a wicked point aimed right back at the user, this is probably one of those deals where it's just as dangerous for whoever's holding it as anyone else.

It looks cool as all hell, though.

Wouldn't you know it, I've been messing with the current release candidate for FreeCAD lately. Just now, I used it to make this.

I got annoyed at having to search through all these multipacks of files to find a Gridfinity bin in the size I want. So I decided the hell with it, and made a parametric configurable FreeCAD model that creates bins or you, in any size (within reason) and also with a configurable number of fixed dividers in the bargain.

My main intent was, of course, to use these to organize oodles and oodles of pocketknives. You'll never be able to guess why. But if you have a use for it, knock yourself out.

Ring-da-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding...

..bom-bom-baaaaaaoo.

Usually when I show you guys this kind of malarkey I have to sheepishly admit to you that I have absolutely no idea who made it or where it comes from. This time, though, that's not the case. This knife was made by none other than "Heng Hui Hardware Industrial Co., Ltd."

I know this because they were kind enough to stamp it into the blade.

I've probably owned this knife for going on 16 years at this point so in light of that you may be surprised to learn that Heng Hui apparently somehow still exist, and they're still cranking out chintzy knives, among other things. Nothing quite like this, though. Here is clearly their high water mark.

Our little tradition is not completely abolished, though. While I know with certainty who made this, I can at the very least tell you I don't know what its designation is. There's nothing else marked on it. I can't find this knife for sale anywhere anymore except here, which is in Czech, and it's labeled "Z3594." This may or may not be the manufacturer's designation or it might just be the SKU it's sold under on this particular site and therefore means nothing. On this point the internet remains silent, and the trail runs cold. But given that the URL calls it item "1660" instead I think the former is as good a theory as any. So I'm sticking with it. (And while we're at it, just get a load of those product photos. Phowar.)

Regardless of what who is calling it where, the Z3594 is obviously a balisong knife. It's got one thing going for it, which is the rather hard to miss ring on the heel of the blade. Obviously I bought it for no other reason than this.

And I know what you're thinking.

Yes, you absolutely can.

The ring is 0.890" in diameter 22.62mm, and it's easily big enough to get a thumb through. This is no dinky decorative drilling, barely suitable for sticking a lanyard through. No, it's large, ostentatious, and ready for you to grab this knife confidently by the scruff of the neck and ninja forth with it right the fuck into the night.

To assist in this, there actually is a pocket clip on the other side which is a surprising inclusion. As usual it's on the wrong side of the handle, but I can excuse it this time because it keeps the ring positioned away from your pocket seam, which realistically is the only way you're going to get this thing in your pants anyhow. And all that said, the clip works well and feels pretty good. I can't even come up with something incisive and sarcastic to say about it. It's fine.

You might think at first blush that the ring would get in the way when you're flipping this thing around, but it really doesn't. The Z3594 is actually competently designed in that respect, which is a thing that sounded much less absurd before I saw it written down just now. You'll note that the ring is actually positioned such that at rest it's on the bite side handle, which is not the one you're normally manipulating. The extreme curve throughout the whole knife allows the pivots to be very offset and that also keeps the ring out of your way during normal operation. Once you get the knife fully open, though, it's right there in the perfect position to get your index finger through.

Update: All of the above is surely because this knife appears to be a clone -- albeit not a perfect one -- of Terry Guinn's "Ring Fighter," which was a short production run semicustom (20 or 39 units, depending who you ask). Thus any design competency present is certainly borrowed.

And, competently designed is not to say that the Z3594 is competently made.

Because it isn't.

For instance, these casting flaws are really rather laughable. My granny could do a better job casting the metal in a pot on her stove.

I have no idea what that pattern is supposed to be, either. A row of bunny ears? Deer tracks? Kamina's sunglasses? Beats me.

This is definitely a throw back to those good old/bad old days when every piece of Chinese cutlery you were able to lay your hands on could be counted on to be a source of never ending hilarity. The handle slabs are clearly cast, so it's a puzzle how they also managed to utterly fail to manage to be flat at least on one side. The tips of both handles where the pivot screws go through exhibit this pronounced flare, which can't be improved with any amount of dicking with the screw tension, no matter how hard you try.

Thus, then, as you would expect the pivot action is very, er, free. And it is, because the entire thing rattles like a pair of castanets. It's a red letter day indeed when I can say that a balisong fails so hard at the wiggle test...

...That it's not only possible but downright trivial to cause the latch to miss the opposite handle entirely.

But never mind the quality. Feel the price. I don't know how much I paid for this back in the day, but it was surely less than $10. You couldn't pry my wallet open for anything more even if you had a crowbar ninety feet long.

Of course anywhere there is machine work it is visibly crude. There are no sharp edges on the metalwork other than the cutting one, the one that's supposed to be there, but as an example the inner surface of the ring is more than a bit rough and I'm convinced its shape is actually stamped rather than milled. It works well enough, but feels distinctly unrefined and could probably benefit from with a pass with a Dremel -- a job which I've been putting off for all these years. And plan to continue to do so.

Since I have a reputation to uphold around here I think I am obliged to provide you the above, so I did. For archival purposes, I left all of the components exactly as filthy as they were when delivered.

The Z3594 actually wasn't too tough to take apart at least to the point you see here. This despite its best efforts, up to and including all of its screw heads being not Torx like we've become accustomed to, but rather Allen heads which manage to not quite properly fit any size bit I own -- neither metric nor fractional inch.

The screws came prefastened from the factory with one of only two torque values: Finger-tight, or irrevocably cranked. Luckily for us, enough of them were the former that I was able to get all four handle slabs apart and extract the blade. The knife is spaced out by two Chicago screws forming the pivots, and one simple threaded barrel on each handle, down towards the tail. Among the screws that would not come out were one of each of the spacer screws, and one but not the other of the screws holding down the clip -- which helpfully arrived pre-stripped from the factory.

Here's a lineup of... most... of the hardware. No fancy features are evident whatsoever. No anti-rotation flats on the pivot screws, no fancy decorative screw heads, no springs, not even any pins.

The blade rides on what are easily the grimiest plastic washers I have ever seen in my life. At first glance I thought whatever is all over them might be graphite, if we could be so lucky, but I think in reality it's just dirt. Some of it could be cleaned off. Most of it couldn't.

The blade works thusly, and when it's dismounted you can see how offset the pivot points are from each other to accommodate the high Banana Quotient present in the assembled knife. Strangely, the press job on the kicker pins is actually pretty good -- among the better examples I've seen on flea market grade cutlery, actually. Weird.

Above: You, versus the guy she tells you not to worry about.

The Z3594 probably wishes it were a Benchmade Model 42. It's probably got pinups of it all over its room, and spends all afternoon listening to Depeche Mode and Morrissey while wistfully gazing into a mirror at itself and halfheartedly doing curls using weighs made of balsa wood and leaded Chinese paint, dreaming one day it might grow up to be half as good.

Proportionally, it looks as if somebody took a Model 4x, clamped it in a vise, and whacked it with a hammer until it bent. From the tip of the tail to its forwardmost kicker pin, it's almost exactly the same length as from the tail of a the Model 42 to its tang pin. That can't be a coincidence.

All in, the Z3594 is precisely 6" long. Open it's 9-1/8", and the taking of both measurements is confounded in no small part by the radical curvature in it when it's both open and closed. The blade is 3-15/16" long measured from the tip of its scimitar-like profile to the forwardmost point on the nearest handle, with the one near the edge winding up noticeably closer to the front than the other one by the time it's open. The blade is 0.098" thick or 2.51mm, and is made of an unspecified alloy which is presumably stainless. Being entirely of low-tech materials, it weighs a not inconsiderable 197.8 grams or 6.98 ounces.

The taper is hollow ground -- the cheapest kind of grind, of course -- and exhibits those ratty old machine marks we all know and love by now. I can't say anything about the edge because mine is not original. Perhaps unwisely, I elected to sharpen mine some years ago. I didn't put a lot off effort into it but alas, what was once the crude and sawtoothy original factory edge is now lost to time forever. However shall we cope.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There is a Venn diagram. On the one side, the Illustrious Pantheon of Knives with Cool Rings In Them. On the other, objects purporting to solve problems that most likely don't actually exist. Somewhere in the middle rests this knife. I couldn't tell you exactly where.

"Hey kid, do you find your balisong knife too hard to hold onto? Of course you do, nerd, that's the point!"

So maybe it's not built very well. But despite everything stacked up against it, the little Heng Hui actually manages to do something kind of special: In the world of balisong knives, it brings something genuinely new to the table. The ring might be silly but so are balisong knives in general, really, when you step back a bit and look at it. I won't go so far as to say that there are "myriad" ways you can use the ring to add to your repertoire of spinning tricks but there are certainly at least few, and thus there are things you can do with this that you can't do with most other balisongs. That's got to count for something.

It's just a shame that it's... you know.

Crap.

Here's a short one today, regarding a pen I have not picked up in a very long time. I assure you this pen is not from a problematic origin, and in light of recent discussions I've queried it quite thoroughly for its political leanings and thus far received absolutely no response. I'm starting to form the conclusion that this may be, in fact, because it can't talk. I'm not entirely sure.

This is the Ohto F-Lapa, which comes in -- or came in -- a variety of interesting finishes. Burgundy, brown, blue, that sort of thing. Those colorways are for people who didn't make the proactive decision to obtain a goddamn disco-ball mirror polished pen that'd present the maximum amount of difficulty in taking detailed photos of it while yammering about it on the internet, a decade after they bought it.

Not that I'd know, or anything.

This silver variant of the F-Lapa might just be the shiniest pen in the universe. Its body is actually quite striking in person. If I had to guess, I'd it's probably chrome plated. Handle it under bright lights at your own peril.

Despite this, the F-Lapa is and always was a budget pen, but it's one of the few I can think of off the top of my head that isn't made out of plastic and is also refreshingly slim. The widest part of its grip section, which is slightly tapered, is only 9.09mm in diameter. That makes it slimmer than most of its peers I can name off the top of my head. I don't know, really only the Pilot Cavalier leaps to mind as comparable, but even that's triple the cost.

I'm pretty sure the F-Lapa's body is aluminum. It's really light. Only 14.6 grams -- just a hair over half an ounce -- and that's fully filled with a typical International Short ink cartridge installed. Thus it's perfect for the use case I had for it at the time, which was to serve as a cheap daily carry replacement for my aging and continually appreciating in value Sheaffer Targa, while contriving not to look cheap and being compact, light, and easy to carry without making my shirt sag. It also has a clutch fit cap that just pulls off, and isn't a damn screw-on. These are all plusses in my book for practical daily use. (This was obviously before I developed my current fascination with retractable fountain pens.) But if that's what you want, too, the F-Lapa has you covered right down to the ground.

If what you want is a flexy, expressive, valuable, or glassy smooth nib, though, this isn't it. The F-Lapa has a pretty typical steel nib that, frilly decorative scrollwork on it aside, provides completely ordinary performance. It comes with an apparently monomolecular gold coating which on my example wore away pretty quickly with cleaning and so forth, although this didn't impact the performance any. So even if it's ugly, it works. This is a "fine" point which runs maybe a touch wider than a typical Asian "fine" pen. I have not been able to verify if this was ever available in any other nib width, but I suspect it was not. It has no flex whatsoever but writes predictably with no trouble. It's not exceptionally smooth, which I guess is what folks these days call "high feedback" in the same way that back in the 80's cheap cameras were marketed as "focus free." I find it nicely controllable and basically zero pressure is required on it to write, which combined with the light weight makes it pleasantly non-fatiguing to use.

Before writing this I hadn't touched this pen for years and even so, I just jammed a random cartridge in it of unknown brand or origin and it picked right back up writing again as if I'd never put it down. So that's pretty cool.

The nib purports to have an iridium tip, and is also marked "Germany," and I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of either claim. That's kind of weird for a Japanese pen, but maybe it's true and that's why it writes broader than you'd think. I couldn't tell you.

There are no surprises inside, but that said I've always been amused by the ridiculously fine pitch of the threads on its section. It's the little things in life.

By the way, this is one of those pens where you can carry a spare cartridge behind the one you've got installed, tail-to-tail, although only if having it rattle around inside won't annoy you.

The only other point of note I have about the F-Lapa is that when Ohto refers to it by it's full title, they consistently call it an "Auto Fountain Pen." Well, I for one can't for the life of me figure out what's supposed to be automatic about it.

This one's a real reach. Mo' obsure, mo' better.

I got annoyed by my BRS Replicant (clone) showing up with very swanky channel milled handles, but no latch. Yes, it came with a little ballistic nylon belt pouch and no, even I of all people am not a big enough nerd to actually wear it that way.

So I made this, which is a little friction fit dingus you can print out of TPU that fits quite snugly over the bite handle and holds the knife shut, but you can slip it over the end of the safe handle with your pinky easily.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the CIVIVI Typhoeus.

(Gesundheit.)

No, the Typhoeus is actually named as far as anyone can tell after the monster from Greek mythology. You know the one -- so tall his head brushed the stars, controlled the wind and breathed fire, had snakes for a butt.

What?

No, really.

Anyway, this incarnation of Typhoeus is not, in fact, so large it brushes the stars. It's actually pretty compact for what it is, which is a 6-1/4" long fixed blade knife shown here in stylin' purple, with a very modern looking upswept drop point blade that's 2-3/8" long. It weighs 81.1 grams or 2.86 ounces, making it quite light compared to many other fixed blade knives.

Actually, no. A fixed blade isn't quite what the Typhoeus is. But it's not a folder, either. In fact, it's kind of hard to describe just what it is, which I guess is exactly why it's here.

You see, it has a trick.

Thanks to its articulated handle, it transforms before your very eyes...

Into a punch dagger. (Yes, another one.)

Well, "dagger" is the wrong word, too. It's only single edged. But still. Can your zooty Zero-Tolerance-Benchmade-Emerson-5.11-Strider-Chris-Reeve even do that? I submit to you that it cannot.

CIVIVI themselves call this an "adjustable fixed blade knife," which I guess is one way to describe it.

Mind you, that's because the one thing it doesn't do is fold. Well, okay, it self-evidently does because you just watched it do so. But it doesn't, like, fold fold. Not in such a way that the blade can be packed up within the handle.

Therefore it comes with this leather sheath, which despite being decently made is unfortunately is rather horrid in how it's designed. That's a shame, really, because the Typhoeus itself is actually pretty well built. The sheath holds the knife only in its punch-dagger configuration, and you can either pull it as such or give it a little twist when you draw to convert it into its traditional mode in the process.

But the sheath is one of those ghastly fold-over retention flap jobbies with a chunky crude button snap on it, which makes it impossible to draw quickly and just plain old annoying to draw at all, what with the damn flap getting in the way and the snap scraping you and knocking against everything. Undoubtedly it would be better served by an injection molded or Kydex sheath with some kind of passive retention. But it hasn't got one of those, at least not from the factory, and not until I can be bothered pressing my own. So despite superficial appearances this is not in any way a self-defense knife. On the bright side, storing the knife in its punch configuration shortens the overall length considerably to just 4-1/2" (albeit now at 3" wide) which means it won't stick up as far to poke you in the ribs while you're carrying it. If only CIVIVI marketed this as a selling point. Instead, they don't seem to mention it at all.

The Typhoeus' blade is, depending on how you look at it, either a design sans ricasso, or is one of those hip and trendy "all choil" dealybobbers. When you're holding it in what's for lack of a better word normal knife mode, your index finger goes in that space naturally. There is no jimping anywhere on it but the G-10 handle slabs are both milled and textured, so keeping a hold on it isn't too tough and its design lends itself to easy controlability. The upswept edge has a cutting profile that presents the entire length as a functional belly, making it quite usable.

In punch dagger mode, a narrow tang is revealed behind the bulk of the blade which goes in between your fingers like so. The ensemble is not symmetrical and the blade is noticeably offset in the handle. While you can hold it either way 'round you'll probably find it more comfortable to have the shorter end of the handle towards your thumb, which is how it will naturally fall if you switch it from the traditional grip to punch dagger configuration anyway.

The lack of a ricasso does present a bit of a problem here, though, because it's easy to nick yourself with the corner of the blade at its base. Even moreso if you're trying to get a grip on it in a hurry, which is probably a further ding against it for self-defense duty. I probably wouldn't want to use it as such, anyway -- there are much better options available.

I was going to take the Typhoeus all apart but I decided at the last moment I couldn't be arsed. The pivots do ride on bronze washers, though, which you can see peeking through the gaps. In total it has four pivot points, with two linkages between both handle halves.

The pivots don't present any perceptible wiggle at all, and the mechanism moves quite freely, to the point that you can just flick it back and forth between modes. This is sure to amuse anyone to no end.

Well, it'll amuse you to no end, and annoy all bystanders in the process. That sounds like a win/win to me.

The Typhoeus' action does not lock in either position. What keeps it there is your grip on the handles, which cam themselves together as you squeeze. Notably, pressing on the spine of the blade with your thumb does make it want to start folding up, and there's probably no jimping there specifically to discourage you from doing that. Keep your fingers instead on the handle itself around the scales and it's not going anywhere.

The made is made of 14C28N steel which CIVIVI take great pains to point out as Swedish. Despite this it is still very much made in China. The blade is 0.119" thick, and I am very pleased to report that it's flat ground. It has an attractive satin finish on it, and bears no markings other than...

...This nearly microscopic steel descriptor laser engraved into it. It bears no other inscriptions or maker's mark, although it does have CIVIVI's "C" logo as an emblem on the head of the center pivot screw:

The Typhoeus is quite compact for a "fixed" knife, as evidenced by how much smaller it is even than a bog standard CQC-6K.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Typhoeus is a fidget toy par excellence, but at anywhere from $65 to around $100 depending on which color variant you want, it's kind of tough to justify on that merit alone. Luckily, it's also competently manufactured and pleasantly functional in the bargain. If I were you, I'd look at it as a "fixed blade" style knife that's easier to carry than most by magically making itself shorter when you put it away.

It's a shame about the sheath. You'll probably have to add $10 worth of Kydex and rivets to your bill of materials.

Hello my friends, the day is once more / Just wait to see what we have in store / A silly knife no doubt, and one that is furthermore...

...Naughty.

I have on multiple occasions mentioned owning several knives with various aspects that the law finds it within itself to frown upon. And probably just as often, expressed my own personal conclusion that regulations outlawing this feature or that particular mechanism or the other shape or whatever are ultimately all very silly when viewed from the perspective of anyone familiar with, you know, reality. Byzantine knife laws make the least sense out of pretty much anything because at the end of the day blade is a blade, and there is self-evidently no such thing, for example, as a "high capacity assault knife." You could cut someone just as well with a 4" paring knife from the Dollar General as you could with the latest tactical spring loaded all black half serrated tanto point karambit switchblade from 5.11 or Emerson. Or a chunk of obsidian you've knapped on a rock, for that matter. One sharpened chunk of metal is much the same as any other from the standpoint of someone wanting to perform mischief with it -- or one having mischief performed upon them with it.

(And that's notwithstanding the racist motivations that underpin specifically the US federal switchblade ban, balisong bans, and "dirk and dagger" laws.)

But this. This is easily the single most likely thing I've got liable to keep a harebrained legislator up at nights worrying.

I've probably had it for about 20 years, and I'm pretty sure I bought it from BudK back in the day, when I was in one of my "get it before it's banned" moods.

Yes, this is a punch or push dagger. It is an early example of a brandless OEM Chinese special, so it never to my knowledge had any name or formal model designation, and while I can't find its exact ilk for sale anymore you can still find things online rather like it. If you prefer a brand name option, the Cold Steel FGX Push Blade leaps to mind. It has very little utilitarian purpose. This blade, it is made for stabbin'.

It's also made entirely of G-10, and is therefore completely nonmetallic.

In last week's column I gave an overview of a ceramic bladed folding knife, which doesn't have a metallic blade. But it still had a metallic liner, clip, and screws and therefore would not pass through a metal detector. This doesn't, and it absolutely would.

But even still, don't try it.

This "knife" is a 5" long, 0.175" thick, single flat piece of textured G-10, which has a cord wrapped T handle and a flat ground "blade" profile milled into it. For its part, G-10 is extremely strong for its weight (in total here only 17.4 grams or 0.62 ounces) and also surprisingly rigid. But considering that the thing and the whole of the thing is just fiberglass suspended in an epoxy resin, it doesn't actually hold an edge worth a damn. Like, at all.

So while there is an edge bevel on it, it's not even sharp enough to make a reliable letter opener. Even if you carefully sharpened it, it's unlikely it would last for more than one cut. The material is just too soft and prone to abrasion.

But that's not the point. The point is the point, and this knife is probably quite stout enough to Render Unto Caesar that what is Caesar's. Maybe not all 23 times, but certainly at least once. As a last-ditch holdout, it would seriously inconvenience anyone you punched with it although I imagine given how soft the material is it would utterly fail to penetrate leather or even the cheapest soft body armor.

Even so, I would not want to have this coming at me unexpectedly in the dark.

I present this to you bare, because although it did arrive with a belt sheath -- which ironically contained a large steel button snap on it, completely defeating its implied purpose -- this was made of fake leather so abysmal that it literally disintegrated into fish flakes while in storage in my knife cabinet. So I threw it away. Maybe some day I'll 3D print a replacement one, or something.

Whatevs. I'm obviously not carrying this thing with me anywhere, so I can't think of a single thing that's a lower priority.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's probably because of things like this that all of our airports have switched over from plain metal detectors to those backscatter X-ray machines now.

It's all theater, though. Both that and this. Despite what the hysterical shriekers would have you believe if they could, to the nearest couple of decimal points no one is actually smuggling these anywhere, nor are they the crux of any kind of secret terrorist plot, and while we're at it nor is anyone realistically going to successfully use it as a last-ditch self defense tool when so many other ones are both better and just as readily available.

Even so, it's sometimes nice to know that just by owning something like this you're pissing off the right people, even if only passively.

SCH404: Weirdness Not Found

"What the hell is this?" I hear you ask. "This looks like the ordinariest ordinary thing that ever ordinaried."

Here's a hint, by way of a magnet.

The Schrade SCH404 is indeed one of those from the burgeoning, but still uncommon, sector of ceramic bladed knives. But unlike the cheapie translucent ones that Amazon perpetually refuses to ship to your location, this one has a zirconia ceramic blade with this attractive obsidian finish.

The SCH404 is very old and thus very discontinued. So much so that it's actually pretty tough to find any info on it online. It's also one of those things that perfectly illustrate how us spacemen are already living in the future, but we're so numb to everything nowadays that the mere presence the advanced wondermaterials it's made out of -- things unfathomable to an observer from, say, fifty years ago -- now just feel like they're old hat.

And this was an inexpensive entry level knife in its day, not even remotely premium.

But despite its age, the SCH404 still has quite a few modern aspects about it. Like like the deep carry pocket clip, highly textured G10 scales, and slick single sided liner design. These are all highly desirable hallmarks of current EDC knives. Just in this case also including a blade made of a weird nonmetallic material.

For a start, this is a very light and compact knife. It's only 48.7 grams or 1.72 ounces -- that's actually 2.4 grams lighter than a Benchmade Bugout. It's just 3-3/4" long closed, 6-1/2" open, and sports a 2-3/4" long blade made of that groovy glassine ceramic. I think the only way to go lighter per displacement would be to pay a lot more and pony up for the likes of, say, a Böker Anti Grav.

The SCH404 is pretty thin overall as well. It's 0.346" thick not including the clip, with its lack of bulk in both dimensions and weight combining to make it very easy to carry. The ceramic blade is 0.80" thick.

Actually, let's talk about that blade.

Ceramic blades like this one are typically billed as "forever sharp." The zirconia ceramic material is incredibly hard, falling somewhere between 8.5 and 9 on the Moh's scale and thus much harder than steel. It resists abrasion to an incredible degree, and is essentially completely immune to the inherent abrasiveness of cardboard, sisal rope, leather, and even wood.

The glossy obsidian surface is a veritable beacon for fingerprints but not, it must be said, scratches. There is very little that can truly scratch the surface of the SCH404's blade. Basically only sapphire, diamond, and tungsten carbides -- all things you're unlikely to be trying to slice with your pocketknife on a daily basis.

But the material is also very brittle, and the thinner it is the more brittle it gets. Thus a ceramic knife like this chips near-microscopically rather than dulling via abrasion or the edge getting rounded down like a typical steel knife. It's also not a good idea to put any torsion on it at all, because the material would be prone to just snap.

And I know what you're thinking. No, this knife will not sail through a metal detector. The liner, clip, and screws are all made of plain old steel. So forget it. Only the blade and scales are nonmetallic.

It's a very good thing these come preground, because they are functionally impossible for a hobbyist to properly sharpen. Yes, you can theoretically do the job with resin bonded diamond stones but the process is arduous and difficult, and the penalty for failure is high. My example is very lightly used, so I can only imagine these tiny imperfections in the edge came from the factory. The SCH404 is not quite shaving sharp although it glides through paper and cardboard quite easily still. That's just as well, because if it were truly dull I probably wouldn't be too keen to do anything about it.

I dig the subtle refractive rainbow effect of the light playing off of the texture in the edge like a starling's wing. The SCH404's blade really is stunningly beautiful. The flat of the blade is literally mirror polished, to the point that it casts reflections. The machine marks, meanwhile, sparkle in the light. It's like waving a black diamond around.

The edge is also fortunately exactly mathematically true. As it bloody well ought to be, given all of the above. If it weren't, good luck trying to correct it.

So, I mentioned the Böker Anti Grav earlier, and I did that on purpose. That's because I suspect, but cannot prove, that this knife was actually OEM'ed by Böker using much of the same equipment, material, and template.

What clues me in is this highly distinctive five-holed spanner nut on the pivot, which is suspiciously reminiscent of the one on the Anti Grav and its sibling, the Anti MC. If so, that's huge -- that makes this an incredible poor man's version of that knife, especially considering that the former retails for about $195 nowadays. The main thing you're lacking is the zooty carbon fiber or titanium scales, but for the end-of-life retail cost of around $15 on this thing I'll sure take the $180 discount. So if that's true, there's the other half of the oddity surrounding this knife. We'll probably never know for sure.

I bothered to take a macro photo of the SCH404's model number etching, so I'm going to show it to you and nobody's going to stop me. Here it is.

Size wise, the SCH404 falls firmly into the compact category. It's basically the size of a Mini Bugout. Compared to the usual CQC-6K, there, it'll ride thoroughly unnoticed in your pocket.

The Inevitable Conclusion

You can't buy the SCH404 anymore, so there wasn't much point in me yammering on about it. But it's the only folding ceramic knife I own these days so it's the one you got.

Ceramic knives like these -- in their pocket knife incarnations, anyway, and not as the fairly ubiquitous cheap white kitchen knives -- shine for basically one and only one purpose. If your workflow involves cutting a lot of cardboard in a day, something like this absolutely will save you from endless resharpenings or having to go through box cutter blades like popcorn.

Like many things in my collection, both those I've shown you and ones I haven't gotten around to yet, the SCH404 is a bit of a relic. It's a peculiar combination of materials, construction, and price point we're not liable to see the likes of again. At least, not for what it cost when it was available.