Opinel No. 9 Carbone: A Knife of the Ancients

In the autumn of 2006, I had a lovely visit to the Avignon area in the south of France. One day, the group I was with went to the bustling, open-air, Friday market in Carpentras. There I came upon a man sitting alone in front of a little table. He was selling something I had […]
Harbor Freight Budget Knife Fight: Icon vs. Gordon

Budget knives. Purchased from hardware, auto parts and tools stores. They just gotta be friggin’ fantastic, right? These stores would never stoop to selling us utter crap knives, right? Riiiiiiiight. If you shop for your pocketknives at big box home, tools, and hardware stores like Home Despot, you’ll find a lot of low-cost options (mostly […]
Budget Blade Round-Up ’24: Mediocre & Junk Steels (Part 3 of 3)

What would you do if you had a new C-note, a genuine Benjamin burning a hole in your pocket and you wanted to buy a new budget pocketknife? Would you know which to pick? Do you know what blade steel to get? In Part 1 of the 2024 Budget Blade Round-Up series, I discussed the […]
Budget Blade Round-Up ’24: Decent Steels (Part 2 of 3)

What would you do if you had a new C-note, a genuine Benjamin burning a hole in your pocket, and you wanted to buy a new budget pocketknife? Would you know which to pick? Do you know what blade steel to get? In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the methodology I used to […]
Budget Pocketknife Blade Steel Round-Up 2024: What’s Out There & Performance Factors (Part 1 of 3)

What would you do if you had a new C-note, a genuine Benjamin burning a hole in your pocket and you wanted to buy a new budget pocketknife? Would you know which to pick? Do you know what blade steel to get? Yes, buying a new knife can be a lot more complicated than a […]
Civivi Vision FG: A Superior Knife with a Superlock

For a special occasion, I was recently offered a gift knife by a dear friend. They had heard me talk about the Civivi Vision FG in Ultem a few times, and they asked if that was what I’d like. For a micro-second, I considered mentioning the Kizer Militaw in S45VN with a mirror DLC finish […]
Mikov Kostka: New Take on an Old Knife Design

I saw Seth V of KnifeCenter do their New Knives of the Week video a few weeks ago and one of the knives he showed us was what he called a “Funny Folder” knife. I was not familiar with that term, but he showed us a beautiful, little Czech-made knife by Mikov s.r.o. called the […]
CMB Made Knives Revives the Legendary Fulcrum Knife

I somehow recently stumbled upon, totally by accident, one of the more interesting rarities of the pocketknife design world: an actual new fulcrum action folding knife. It’s the Equator, model CMB-01, from CMB Made Knives. Let me tell you about it. TL;DR The Equator is a very interesting knife. It employs a genuinely unique piece […]