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Knife Reviews$300 to $399BearingsCPM 20CVFolderFrame LockFree-Spinning PivotFront FlipperInmate

WE Knife Inmate: A Conviction in Knife Design Excellence

The Knife Karen January 20, 2026

BANG! Knife review “experts”. You see them all over YouTube, droning on and on, typically doing tabletop videos with disembodied hands, gleefully showing off their massive collections of knives that the rest of us will never be able to afford. There are other, self-proclaimed “experts” who hang out for hours and hours every day in online knife forums, spewing more opinionated BS, condescension, and vitriol than factual knowledge, bullying new people who ask basic questions, all the while quietly live in their mommies’ basements with the lights turned off. You know – keyboard warriors with no intellectual weapons. Of course, ...

Knife Reviews$400 to $499BearingsCaptive PivotFlipper TabFolderLanyardLiner LockM398

Poikilo Blade Orca: Gorgeous Wolf of the Pocketknife Sea

The Knife Karen December 19, 2025

Author’s note: The knife used in this review was purchased by me at full retail price. I only call this out because – Spoiler Alert! – I really like this knife and the review is positive. Now on with the show. Have you ever found The One? You know. The One! The One that, at very first glance, catches your attention, grabs your thoughts, piques your interest, draws you in, sparks your desire, fascinates your mind, tickles your curiosity, touches your soul, arouses your emotions, stimulates your brain, lives in your dreams, even tugs at your heart, and you know ...

Knife Reviews$300 to $399AluminumAmbi ClipAXIS LockBenchmadeBlack WashCaptive PivotClip Point

Benchmade Mini Crooked River: On the Hunt for Sadly Absent Value

The Knife Karen October 5, 2025

Imagine this. It’s a beautiful, crisp autumn afternoon and you are out in the wooded foothills of the western Cascade Mountains for a week-long, solo hunting/fishing/camping trip during which you plan to live off the land. You are out for the 1st hunt, excited to be carrying your new Browning X-Bolt 2 bolt-action hunting rifle chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. You hike down toward a shallow river, figuring there might be a good chance of finding a young deer. Courtesy of WideOpenSpaces.com As you hear the babbling river waters coming up before you, the notice the woods up ahead starts to ...

Knife Reviews<$10014C28NAmbi ClipBearingsBudgetCaptive PivotCompression LockDrop Point

Vosteed Porcupine: Cute, Little Budget Knife That Can Be a Little Bit Prickly

The Knife Karen September 8, 2025

There comes a time in many a pocketknife enthusiast’s life when, due to continuous exposure to higher and higher end products, one’s taste grows to enjoy those finer things in life. For example, let’s say you started your journey with a cheapo knife that uses a piece of a wooden broom handle and a thin strip of an ancient variety of crappy carbon steel as a blade, a knife so poorly designed that it’ll eventually rust out from the inside of the “pivot” joint (really just a lousy wood-on-metal – no washers! – “action”, pinned in place by an axle!). ...

Knife Reviews$600 to $699BearingsCaptive PivotCPM S110VDLCDrop PointFengHuaFolder

FengHua TC21 S110V: A Beautiful But Enigmatic Knife with a Steep Surprise

The Knife Karen July 28, 2025

The Chinese pocketknife brand, FengHua, is a new brand to me. There’s not much information about them online, however. Extremely little, in fact. From my understanding, FengHua appears to be the premium sub-brand of a group of brands. WIN+, another member brand I am also unfamiliar with, sells the budget-end knives of the group. Dreamtech, yet another unfamiliar member brand, looks to be their middle-tier. Oddly, it’s impossible to tell which of the 3 brands is the company’s primary brand. For example, their Our Story page (that URL is misspelled, BTW) and their “blog”, located deep at the bottom of ...

Knife Reviews$300 to $399Ambi ClipBearingsCaptive PivotCPM MagnaCutFactorFolderM-Lock

Winterblade Factor B4: A Powerful Magnetar in the Pocketknife Cosmos

The Knife Karen June 23, 2025

“Magnetar (mag·ne·tar). Noun – from the field of astronomy. A magnetar is a type of neutron star. A neutron star is created when an extremely large star, whose mass is 10 – 25 times that of our sun, enters a supernova event and is crushed into an object with a diameter of only ~20 kilometers / 12 miles. That supernova event caused the crushed star’s subatomic particles, its protons and electrons, to be converted into atomic neutrons, resulting in the neutron star’s hyper-extreme density. A magnetar is type of neutron star whose spin, temperature and strength of its original magnetic ...

Knife Reviews$400 to $499BearingsCaptive PivotDLCDrop PointExcaliburFolderFrame Lock

Kunwu Excalibur: Black Magic Wizardry from Metal Complex

The Knife Karen May 18, 2025

Greetings to thee, gentle reader mine. I bear tidings of a tale so wondrous and grand that it shall cast into doubt the very certainty of thy senses. Attend now as I unfold before thee an illustrious chronicle of the magnificent Excalibur, most peerless marvel of bladesmith’s cunning craft e’er witnessed in all the realms. Perchance thou dost inquire: is this that same Excalibur, bound in stone from ancient days of Arthur, noble knights, and damsels fair? Nay, I speak plainly—this is not the storied blade of eld. Rather, it is a new-forg’d wonder, wrought with unmatched skill by artisans ...

Knife Reviews$300 to $399Arcane DesignBearingsCaptive PivotClip PointCPM 20CVDrop PointFlipper Tab

Arcane Design Creature: A Mysteriously Impressive Knife

The Knife Karen April 5, 2025

I hate to admit this, but until just recently, I was totally unfamiliar with Arcane Design. I am glad that this has changed. The company is, as far as I can tell, a one-man shop run by the founder, a clever and talented young dude named Israel Bacchus. He specializes in crafting visually provocative knife designs, in which his deep interest in angular, geometric-based shapes consistently comes through in his work. In its relatively short history of 6 years, Arcane Design has released (at least) 12 knife (and knife-related) designs, all of which share its clear and consistent design language. ...

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