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Knife Reviews$300 to $399Ambi ClipBackspacerBearingsCaptured PivotCarbon FiberChamfered HandleCPM S90V

NUMB Knifeworks N7 The Cantilever: A Beautiful Knife Underpinned by a Modernist Lock

The Knife Karen August 13, 2026

If you have followed my content here in SharperApex.com, you know that I am a knife nerd. Heck, I’ve repeatedly said as much in my posts! I’m interested in the steel metallurgy properties of the blades, the various materials used in modern knife handles (as opposed to the broken off pieces of wooden broomsticks used on Opinels), and, of course, the blade locking technologies used (watch for big news coming on this later this year). I was introduced to the very special NUMB Knives brand (technically its N.U.M.B. Knifeworks, but NUMB Knives is their domain name, not to mention quicker ...

Knife Reviews$300 to $399Ambi ClipBackspacerBearingsBöhler M390Captured PivotChamfered HandleEDC

Winterblade Fusion: A Knife Reactor That Generates Endless Positive Power

The Knife Karen April 28, 2026

Bryan Winters, whom I, with tremendous respect and admiration, affectionately call Dr. Magnet, has done it again. The acclaimed founder of Winterblade, whose innovative knife designs have become fan favorites across the pocketknife community, has been on a hot streak over the past year (last several years, to be accurate). Over the past year or so, he’s released such bangers as the Severn, the Factor B4, the Darkfire, the X Folder, and now, coming in May 2026, the Fusion. Bryan sent me a prototype version of the Fusion, not the final release version, so I could do a pre-drop review. ...

Knife Reviews$500 to $599BackspacerBearingsBöhler M398Captured PivotChamfered HandleContouringDLC

Poikilo Blade Tuna: A Mighty Albacore in the Ocean of Pocketknives

The Knife Karen March 16, 2026

Back when I was a young kid, we had knives around, but things were much more basic. I remember we used hammerstones and elk antler billets for flintknapping chunks of obsidian into sharp flakes. They were glassy smooth and insanely sharp, but they had no toughness at all. Those blades would chip almost immediately if you weren’t cutting soft stuff like Smilodon steaks. At least the corrosion resistance was outstanding! Those early blades didn’t even have a handle. You just gripped the blade and hoped for the best (and boy, were we eager for Band-Aids to be invented!). Eventually some ...

Knife Reviews$300 to $399BearingsCPM 20CVEDCFolderFrame LockFree-Spinning PivotFront Flipper

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 $499BearingsBöhler M398Captured PivotFlipper TabFolderLanyardLiner Lock

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 ClipBenchmadeBlack WashCaptured PivotClip PointCPM MagnaCut

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 ClipBearingsBudgetCaptured 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 $699BearingsCaptured 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 ...

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