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The Knife Junkie Podcast is the place for knife newbies and knife junkies to learn about knives and knife collecting. Twice per week Bob DeMarco talks knives. Call the Listener Line at 724-466-4487; Visit https://theknifejunkie.com.
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The Knife Junkie Podcast
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Transcript

[0:00] Coming up, a pocket check to beat the band, I get a knife right from my ancestral past, and we talk big cold steels. I'm Bob DeMarco, this is the Knife Junkie Podcast.

[0:14] Welcome to the Knife Junkie Podcast, your weekly dose of knife news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your host, Bob the Knife Junkie DeMarco. To the show i had a couple of favorite comments this past week the first one is from mr ed dc6mh and he says hey i'm telling y'all the agent 001 is my favorite teak hell blade yet thank you for doing this one with teak hell it was too easy the pleasure is mine uh that's a sidebar now the agent series are the industry disruptor i'll be hearing that uh the best fixed blade design ever god bless Bless you all. God bless America. Okay, I mean, okay. This is one of my favorite comments for so many reasons. Put all sorts of wind in my sails. I obviously love this knife. Tim Kell and T. Kell Knives were so great to collaborate with, and they did such a bang-up job on the execution of this knife. And then all of the subsequent models coming out, you've seen me show off the Agent 002, and we're seeing sneak peeks of the 3 and the 4. We also know that Tomas has one coming out, the 007. So lots of greatness coming out of that line. Mr. Ed, thank you so much for your kind words. Makes me feel really great and disruptor. That's cool.

[1:35] Next was from Pavel Petrovic, 68, 46i. And this one made me feel bad. He said, I live in Serbia, Belgrade, and from this country, Michael Janic came to the USA. say. By the way, this was on the Michael Janich interview video. And he says, and it's a big shame that he never did create a small Spyderco shop. I'm a big fan of Spyderco. And what a shame I cannot find all this beauty here in the country that Michael is from. What a sadness. And man, you have a you break my heart with that because I can feel that I there have been times where there There were plenty of things here that weren't legal, and I yearned for them just because, not for anything bad, I just wanted to have them. And if you're a big fan of Spyderco and you saw that Michael Janic episode, well, let's just hope that Serbia gets a, well...

[2:33] I don't know what the knife laws are like, but obviously Spydercos are hard to come by now. Let's hope that changes. And maybe I'll just drop Michael Janich a little note and see if they can get some Spydercos into your country. I don't know if that's... I don't know. I don't know, but I will mention it to him. Thank you so much, Pavel, for that comment, and thank you one and all for watching the videos over this past week and commenting. It was greatly appreciated. All that said, it's time for a pocket chat. What's in his pocket? Let's find out.

[3:08] Here's the knife junkie with his pocket check of knives. In my front right pocket today I had the Spartan Parsee folder. This one I carried because I spent this past weekend with some friends of my wives, not my wives, of my wife's and well they became friends of mine too. Great people We visited with the whole family And they were awesome And the man of the house Well let's just say he's like minded And I showed him a number of knives He showed me a number of cool things too But I showed him this knife And it really resonated with him, So I don't know I just felt like carrying it today And I love the Spartan Harzi You know how great this is Cut a bagel with it today And opened a box with it today That's about it So not hard duty, I could have done that With my keys, It would have been a struggle with the bagel but, It's still nice to use such a luxury item. Not just luxury, but super well-built item for everyday carry. So I love this thing. And, of course, you know it's got sentimental value with the Curtis Iovito.

[4:23] What do you call it? My logo in there, that Curtis Iovito. I did for me after I had him on the show. So greatly appreciated. My slip joint today in my front left pocket pretty much all day, right under the cell phone is the slip joint from American Blade Works. I think that's pretty much all they're still calling it. The American Blade Works slip joint.

[4:45] Very, very deeply ground, hollow ground, very thin behind the edge sheep's foot blade here. And how long is that? This is the perfect size for in-pocket carry without a slip because if it rides horizontally in the bottom of your pocket, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, It's still short enough that it doesn't really straighten out around the bend of my front thigh. So let's see. Overall, I know in the slip joint world, they like the overall measurement. About 5 3⁄4, but that blade there is about 2 3⁄4. Great size. What an awesome knife. It's a great companion to the Model No. 2 from American Blade Works. A one-man band just making magic with all of his machines down in North Carolina. And this, for his very first slip joint, has awesome walk and talk, just great action. And it's MagnaCut, so really excellent blade steel, hardened to 63, 64, I believe he has said in the past. So really happy to be carrying that. Another one I'm very happy to be carrying. I haven't carried this in a while because you know my fixed blade carry recently has been dominated by the Nova.

[6:04] And the Agent 001. So today I just carried something different. I had the Pocket Rocket on me from Auxiliary Manufacturing. This one I carry in appendix. Even in the summertime, it's small enough and fits. And oddly enough, that straight shape from the tip of the sheet to the pommel here just fits perfectly in my appendix on the right side. Kind of fits that fold when you sit down just perfectly and leaves you just enough sticking out, of the silhouette of your body to grab and use this is a great um double-edged three-inch dagger blade i love the blade it's incredibly done hand hand ground beautifully done by uh michael jarvis but i absolutely adore the handle of this look at this thing in cross-section any way you turn it it's faceted and scooped so you can pinch it and pull it pretty much any way sideways for a for a more uh ring dagger uh downward stab or um this way and pinch it the ordinary way for a for a regular uh picol reverse grip like this love this knife um you of course Horse could carry it in reverse, not reverse, at the 3 o'clock and then do that cavalry grab.

[7:28] But this I like to keep up front. This is one of those ones where you lift the shirt, pull it out, and go for the phase. I love this little knife, and I have the Pocket Buoy by Michael Jarvis and Auxiliary Manufacturing. They do superlative work. I'd love to get more. All right, lastly, for emotional support, my emotional support knife, my ESK today was the awesome, the Bend from Jack Wolf Knives. This is, of course, the Benny's Clip in locking flipping mode. So it's a little bit about a quarter of an inch longer on the blade than the Benny's Clip.

[8:09] But the same overall shape just turned into a front flipper and a bolster lock. So very, very nice. This is such a great knife. I've always loved the Tony Bowes Landy's clip, which is what this is a riff on. And then Ben Belkin and Jack Wolf Knives came out with their Benny's clip, which is still one of my very favorite slip joint knives. I even dyed the Micarta Maroon. and then after putting out some other flippers and modern folders they came out with this and i love it i love it and it's one of the few jack wolf knives i have with the fancy bright colorful.

[8:51] Carbon fiber and i really like it for a chain you know i'm a big fan of the natural materials and the titanium and the micarta but every once in a while a nice carbon fiber like this comes along long and it just steals your heart that is uh called lava no not lava mars valley carbon fiber great name mars valley all right this is what i had on me what did you have on you drop it in the comments today uh down below and let me know it's always a pleasure finding out what you uh, what you people what you people what you all carry and uh i love it tell me let me know uh Here's a reminder, the Ultimate Steal is ending soon. The Ultimate Steal is the Knife Rights annual donation drive, but it's not like your ordinary donation drive. You can donate just a couple, you know, you can just do a straight donation and give them money and they will send you a knife as a thank you gift. Or you can do special bidding and bid on and donate to get very specific prizes. They have over $50,000 worth of prizes, including custom knives, including custom-made rifles. There's a Ruger Mini-14 in there I'd love to get.

[10:10] Lots of other really cool things. I'm not sure if they have travel this year, but in the past they've had hunting trips. All sorts of stuff you can win from supporting Knife Rights. Knife Rights is the organization that has changed the antiquated knife law in over 35, I think the number is 38 now, 38 states in the nation, In my opinion The work in Virginia is some of the chief Among all that There was a period of time where we couldn't Long period of time where we couldn't have switchblades Couldn't buy them, couldn't sell them Couldn't manufacture them, export them, import them Anything And now you can do all of that Even carry them concealed.

[10:49] Automatic knives concealed in the state of Virginia Thanks to Doug Ritter and Knife Rights So please go help support Knife Rights and do it through the ultimate steal. Do it now while it's still up. I think it's only up for two more weeks. And I'll tell you what, you're not going to have an opportunity like that, the rest of the year. They'll have another one next year, but if you want your own custom knife through this, or your own rifle, or whatever it is, go check out The Ultimate Steel.

[11:20] Also, just as a note, if you're watching this the day this drops, Doug Ritter will be on Thursday Night Knives tomorrow night to talk about The Ultimate Steel. If you're not watching it on the day this drops, disregard everything I just said. All right, lastly, before we get to knife-length news gotta talk about the nova 2 the one and only the beautiful nova 2 i'm gonna check the pre-order it is up now this is my collaboration knife my second collaboration knife with matt chase of hogtooth knives our first collaboration was was based off of his edc tanto which shares the handle contours of the knife you see before you on on the uh first nova the nova one we put a bowie blade of my design on his EDC Tanto frame. This is the second in that line, and we changed the blade to a Kiridashi blade. We also changed the exclusive scale set to Ivory G10. I know it looks like blown-out white for my lighting, but it's more of an Ivory G10, like a chiffon white or cream, and it's got red liners there, and then a beautifully, deeply hollow-ground.

[12:31] Steeply-pointed, hiradashi blade of 154 cm blade steel you got jimping on top you've got an amazing grip and this one is really excellent for concealed carry i like to carry this one appendix style it's very comfortable especially with the curve here that kind of matches the curve of my belly and i suspect yours too or uh a a very comfortable carry of this knife also is in the three o'clock position composition something i talk about a lot for in the waistband carry of fixed blade knives is a shortish handle with rounded features if if you're in any way carrying a spare tire that you're not fond of or whatever just a little extra around the midsection a handle like this is kinder so that's a 3.75 inch blade super super thin super sharp and just a beautiful workhorse and and a deadly self-defense knife, if needed. It comes in a great sheath. The only thing we're changing from this prototype here is the sheath is going to be charcoal gray, and we're going to have this larger DCC clip on it, larger than the last from the Nova one. Also, on this one, we're doing a special thing with the serial numbers.

[13:51] We will have whatever our pre-order ends up being, if 20 people pre-order this knife, it will be whatever number out of 20. Some people are choosing numbers that are above 20 and I will do that for you because I love you. Alright, so that is the Nova 2. Be sure to go to store.knifejunkie.com and check it out. Store.knifejunkie.com will show you the Nova 2. It will show you also plenty of other things. There's a link through to T-Cal knives for the Agent 001. So.

[14:27] Go over there. It's super awesome. All right. Next up, we're going to do Life Knife News. But before we get there, let me just urge you that if you want to help support this show financially, a great way to do that is to go to Patreon. When you do that, you can be entered into monthly drawings for knives that we give away here on the third Thursdays of the month. But we have three different tiers of support, and you can check it out at thenifejunkie.com slash Patreon.

[14:58] And this month it will be on august 15th thank you jim uh the gentleman junkie knife giveaway of august that's not this month but next month will be on august 15th a mere two days before my birthday so we'll be doing that oh that's awesome that means my birthday is on a saturday this year excellent all right so do join us then uh but uh be sure to check out patreon if you're interested all right knife life news coming up the shockwave tactical torch is your ultimate Self-Defense Companion, featuring a powerful LED bulb that lasts 100,000 hours, a super-sharp, crenulated bezel, and a built-in stun gun delivering 4.5 million volts. Don't settle for ordinary. Choose the Shockwave Tactical Torch. TheKnifeJunkie.com slash Shockwave. You're listening to the Knife Junkie Podcast, and now here's the Knife Junkie with the Knife Life News. For the first time in a long time, Benchmade has something kind of cool coming out. I mean, And I saw this and I was like, oh, that's interesting. There's only one little gotcha detail that might grind in your gut when you hear about it. But we'll see. To me, it's not such a huge deal. But we're talking about the new Benchmade TSK.

[16:11] And PSK stands for Personal Survival Kit. And it's not a whole kit. It is one knife, but it will be a piece of kit for your kit. And what is it? It's a beautiful all-terrain heavy-duty folder. All-terrain must be their words, or at least Ben Schwartz's words.

[16:31] All-terrain folder. This is a 3.45-inch drop-point MagnaCut blade. I got to say, that is a pretty handsome MagnaCut blade there. Or I should say drop point blade. I like how the point is very central to what's right down the center line. And you can gauge that by looking at those little pockets milled in the blade that are resting on the center line. And this thing is pretty beefy. It's a 5.33-ounce knife, or if you get it in the carbon fiber handle, it's 5.22, so you save a tenth of an ounce there.

[17:12] But assisted open, that's the issue. It's an assisted axis open. So you just flip the thumb stud and it jets out. I'm not sure if you can pull the axis back and let it go out. I think that's how they do their axis autos. And then on the spine, it's got a spine-side safety. So you can flick that forward if you're having a problem, you know, or you're worried it's going to pop open. I got to say the pommel is perfectly designed. I love the shape of the pommel, especially for a hard-use folder that you might have to use it in a downward stabbing motion. You know, it's a perfect peak to cap with your thumb. I like the looks of it. I like the bolster, the G10 bolster, and then the G10 handle. Pretty much, I don't know, this is a pretty cool one, and I don't know, I'm digging it. For the first time in a long time from Benchmade. It looks like, incidentally, it looks like this one was someone's personal carry from Benchmade, because you can see the edges of the clip are scuffed a little bit. All right, that will be out at the beginning of August, so next week.

[18:25] Next is from Savivi. This is a beautiful one. This one really caught my eye. This is a classically styled field fixed blade, field knife, and it's called the Savivi Cloud Peak. Cloud Peak, interesting name. Look at that thing. That is beautiful. Takes its cues from traditional sort of loveless style hunters, and that's a 4.6-inch nitro-reed blade, full flat ground drop point, really nice drop point. Again, that's one of those things that I don't expect to say, but I've been seeing a lot of beauties recently.

[18:59] Full tang construction, which is basically par for the course these days, especially for fixed blades coming from Civivi. Black or green G10. I really like that smoothed out G10 as we see it there contoured nicely. Or you can get it in that wood, a Jurobusha or whatever. I don't know how you pronounce that. I've even looked it up and had the computer tell me how to pronounce it, but I still can't get it. Nickel silver quillions or guard, you know, with just the downward quillion on the edge side and just a very nice overall look going into a leather sheath. Of course, they put that somewhat goofy lanyard on that.

[19:39] I don't think it really goes with a knife, personally. I think something like this would, instead of that fob, would actually benefit from something that you could wrap around your wrist or your hand. Because presumably this is to be used in the field uh but overall love this thing and it's available now uh somewhat of a temptation maybe i'll check it out all right next up this one is called the boker juice i think that's how it's being pronounced the juice it's a collaboration with alexei panamara a custom knife maker and guy you might know from brutalica knives in russia show before there were issues with russians using instagram i used to follow a lot of rough russian knife accounts and brutallica was one of them seemed like a very cool dude had a brand in a shop and this is his latest design and sort of reminiscent of another design that dave of of OG Blade Reviews gave me, also designed by Brutallica. And that is a folding... That is a folding...

[20:51] What do you call it? Dagger. I'm sorry. So this is the Boker Chuse. The Boker Chuse is a really interesting knife because it's a dagger, a folding dagger. We don't see too many folding daggers. This one, of course, is not a double-edged dagger. And I say, of course, because there are not too many of these. And then when you look at the contours of the handle of this knife and the the broadness of the of the dagger symmetrical blade you see that there's not enough room in that handle to hide the blade to make it double edge but a beautiful um overall profile in any case it is a liner lock vg10 of course single edged dagger opens with a flipper that hides behind that uh that handle guard which i love i love that feature and you can wave that open Just like the other Brutalica single-edged dagger I've seen, you can wave it open with the quillian. And this has a deep carry stainless steel liner lock, 3.95 ounces, and available the day before my birthday. I keep dropping hints. Yeah, this will be available August 16th. I love the look of it, and I like how it's coming on the heels of some of the other more tactical Boker pluses that have been collaborations recently, like the one with Chuck Gidright is the name. I can't remember that.

[22:19] All right. Lastly, that handsome little wharncliffe that you saw a moment ago, the Beg Knives Microburst. This thing is cool because, A, it's from a storied brand, Beg Knives. But also it's from two great designers rod olson and jared von otterly we've had jaron von otterly on the show jvo designs really great guy he's he's done a lot of just stunning designs uh, lending his talents to a number of people in the industry makers and manufacturers this one here it takes the cake it's a great little tiny wharncliffe got a beautiful 2.25 inch swedged one-clip blade there. It kind of looks like a Kiridashi with the upsweep of that straight edge. It's got a very low-profile flipper that, when closed, looks like a little knurled section of that curved, forward section so it hides right in there you just pop it open and then of course it's got a, button i don't shouldn't say of course but it's a button lock so it is not only a fun to to use and beautiful to look at but uh but it'll be fidgety as all heck you see that pocket clip uh that is a bag touch with that with that ceramic ball bearing uh at the contact point and on standoffs 4.3 ounces for this little knife so i'm not sure if that handle is steel or titanium. It hasn't been listed yet.

[23:49] I haven't seen it listed. And there you go. That is the Beg Knives collaboration with Jared Von Otterloo and Ron Olson called the Microburst. I think it's a little beauty. A little, little beauty. Alright, we're going to go and check out the one new knife I got this past week. But before we do, be sure to like, comment, subscribe. You can hit that notification bell. You can download the podcast, your favorite podcast app is numb go listen while you wash dishes or mow the lawn don't forget to mow the lawn and don't forget tomorrow night's garbage night so well for me it's tonight but for you i think it's tomorrow night so uh be sure to get on top of that all right coming right up we'll get to the state of the collection adventure delivered your monthly subscription for hand-picked outdoor survival edc and other cool gear from our expert team of outdoor professionals the knife junkie.com slash battle box and now that we're caught up with knife life news let's hear more of the knife junkie podcast i got something i've been wanting for a long time and then i thought it was out of print i thought they weren't making this knife at all and then uh i checked in at chicago knife works and lo and behold look at what i found this is the knife of my people, the Cinquedia.

[25:10] Oh, I love this knife. I'm going to put this under the knife can so you can check it out. Pretty big, but let's try and fit it in there. I'll exchange the handle for the blade in a moment. So this is the Cinquedia. Cinquedia in Italian means five fingers. So that's referring to the width of the blade at the hilt. Now, similar to the Navaja, the folding Spanish, giant folding Spanish knife. There came a time in Italy, I guess this was in 15th and 16th centuries, where citizens could no longer carry swords. So they developed this big, double-edged, five-finger-wide dagger. They have beautiful hilts, too. frequently differently shaped like hourglass and other sort of shapes but.

[26:05] This was a civilian sidearm, so this was something frequently carried on the back, and it was something you went about town with, and it was a status symbol, it was a dueling weapon, it was, you know, a self-defense, and the higher your station, the more fancified your Cinque Dia was. Was and when i saw the cold steel made this a few years ago uh i i i flipped and i wanted to get it i don't i don't know i guess i didn't have the means at the time or whatever it was or got wind of it too late or something like that and i'd always admired the chinko diaz at the um the cleveland art museum has an amazing well it's an amazing museum but that is an awesome our our arms and um armor section and so you can see chinko diaz there and then in the um metropolitan museum Museum of Art in New York. They've got an amazing armor and arms room. You can see them there too. And I fell in love with them first time I saw them because they're so unique. And then, of course, they're Italian and there's a historical aspect to it.

[27:09] But let me show you this one because it's pretty outstanding. It's made by the Windlass Knife Company in India. Same people who make a number of knives you're going to see on this upcoming list, but some of the big cold steels that are, well, like this and not super, super expensive. Here, let me go to the main cam. This one is big. This is going to be a difficult show to shoot, actually. But look at that thing.

[27:38] So it's got 1055 blades, or I'm sorry, 1075 blade steel. It's got a beautiful, going back here, Here, beautiful hilt with sculpted wrought iron, or I'm not sure what that is, some sort of steel. And then a beautiful wood handle with all these little studs in it. And that is like a little hand massage. Not only does it give you incredible gription, but it feels good in hand with these little steel nubbins coming out. We've got an excellent weighted pommel that keeps the tip of this light and lively. Because it's a big, big blade. For a knife this is 13 and something i guess 13 and a half almost 14 inches uh she's a biggin but i have taken in the last couple of days to swinging this around doing my carenza my knife shadow boxing with this if you will and it is amazing feels really great and moves really well for such a big and broad and long blade and that's because of the handle and how the handle is balanced and weighted.

[28:46] So a really, really nicely made knife. I got this at, like I said, not Chicago Cutlery, Chicago Knife Works. And this is the sheath. It's pleather. I think it's leather. I guess it's real leather, kind of shrink-wrapped around something. It's got a nice shape and a throat here with all that sculpting and a cool thing so you can slip it in your belt with a stud. And there it is that is the chinkwadilla it came it's a little bent like that so i'm trying to get the trying to train the sheath to be straight because that's the sort of thing that could really grind my just just get it get under my skin so the cold steel chinkwadilla is the first it is the state of the collection knife and seamless transition the first knife in the big Big cold steel section. So you don't need me to tell you any more about this. But look for videos because I'm going to do some cut test videos with this. I think this thing is going to do incredibly. Look at all the fullers, by the way. Look at the fuller work in this blade. I mean, that's impressive, especially for a sub $200 knife.

[30:02] Oh, my God. I just stabbed my pinky receiving this because I heard my phone, and it should be silenced, and it distracted me.

[30:12] And maybe the tiniest, tiniest bit of blood. So I own it. I'll never get rid of it. All right, so that's the first in the big cold steel line. Another one that's an impressive historical ethnic knife that I've always had a thing for is this. And it took me a while to get it, but I finally got the Chieftain Sacks. I've shown this off quite a bit, I guess, over the past year. Let me just get some of that oil off the blade. The Chieftain Sacks. There are a couple of sacks that Cold Steel makes, three to be, so a few, I guess, few sacks. They make this one, the Chieftain. They make one that is really expensive, which is a Scrama Sacks. It's so a little larger, and then they make one called the Woodman's Sack, which is, I don't care for it too much, but it looks like a great all-around outdoors knife. This one, to me, looks the most like what you would expect to see on an Anglo-Saxon Warrior or maybe on a Viking.

[31:19] It's got kind of a clip-point blade, right, but the edge is almost completely straight. So that's something that I love about the Brokeback Sacks. It's like, it kind of boggles my mind. I can't tell whether it's a Bowie or a Wharncliffe or what, but I love the shape. It's kind of a mysterious shape here.

[31:43] This has a really nice rosewood handle, and again, you've got a weighted pommel like every sword should have, or a large knife should have, to keep it lively in hand. I'm going to go to the main camera to show you what I mean. What I mean is, something this large with a 13-inch blade could be very difficult to control and front-heavy. But you put a big pommel on this like they do on a sword and weight it here that means the tip can move around easily you're not it's not dragging around because it's so heavy because most of the weight resides in the handle so a really great balance and weighting of this knife again this is a great knife for doing um forenza doing to for practicing angles and all that And I would imagine it would make an absolutely wicked all-around knife.

[32:41] What I mean by all-around is like a live-work-play knife, shall we say. It does have a rat tail or a thin, what am I trying to say, a hidden tang. So I haven't taken the handle off, but presumably it's about half the size of the handle. But still, I imagine with that springy 1075 steel, it's going to be pretty good to go. Very, very sharp, and I love this thing, the sax. It's about the same length as that Cinque d'Or also.

[33:18] All right, next up, we're going to head into the Bowie realm here and take a look at the 1917 Frontier Bowie. Now, I have a whole bunch of big knives right over here on the table, and they're all just barely hanging onto the edge. So if they fall, you know what's going on. So this is the 1917. It is awesome. Frontier Bowie, this is another one made by Windless Cutlery. The first two were, and this one and the next one were. And it has an excellent sheath. Let's start there before I take it off with the blued shape and throat here. And then it's got a removable frog. The one problem with this frog here is that this is attached to the frog. I wish that were attached to the sheath and then the frog attached to it with this kind of opening here. And the reason I say that is because I would love to just have it like this with that stud sticking out and be able to just slip it in the belt. I'm not so big on these kind of dangle carries, and I do like slipping a Bowie knife in the belt. All that said, do I slip this in my belt? Do I slip big Bowies this big in my belt? Generally not. If I'm checking the house because I think miscreants may have entered, maybe I would.

[34:37] The handle here, like a lot of the windlass cutlery knives, came a little bit tacky, kind of overloaded with finish. So I took all the finish off that I could with isopropyl alcohol, and that took care of the handle.

[34:56] Beautiful blued handle here, or blade here. I love this knife. The blade is outstanding. standing it doesn't have a full tang but it's got a channel tang so it's a tang that comes through here pretty thick anyway comes all the way to the end and you can see how far it comes up here they just cut a channel in the handle and drop it on there so super super strong i consider it a full tang and uh you've got that awesome s dramatic s card s shaped guard there it fits it fits almost Now, you say, why not the Trailmaster Bowie? Why have you not shown that? And I would. However, that's under 10 inches. And this is all about knives over 10 inches or over. And I have a katana I could have shown. I have other things I could have shown. But I'm not going into the machete sword realm. These are just big knives from Cold Steel. God, I love this knife.

[36:01] This one I highly recommend also. 1075 steel. You're not going to break the bank buying it, but as I've said many, many times, every house needs a Bowie. So why not get that one? You're not going to break the bank, and you're going to have it for the rest of the year.

[36:19] Next up is the Cold Steel Western Bowie. And this one, here's the leather sheath on this, just pretty generic. Nice leather sheath, don't get me wrong. I'm glad it's in leather. I wish they were all leather. You're going to see a couple of Kydex coming up. Not a big fan of Kydex on big, beautiful knives like this, especially if they have a traditional feel. And this one indeed has a traditional feel. It's got that V44-shaped Bowie-style blade. It's got the S-Guard that we know from, say, the Western-style W49, the famous Bowie. And it's got the hooked pommel here so just a classic western bowie shape you can see a similar shape in many many other knives like i said the western w49 a little smaller than this but the same same overall contours baron son makes a number of versions like this um and uh of course the uh there's the ontario knife and tool sp what is that 10 has the same blade shape so just a very very uh common beautiful heavy duty uh blade.

[37:34] Bowie blade shape that's again 1075 steel and rosewood i believe it's a rosewood handle again overly stained this was much darker about as dark as this on the uh frontier bowie but it It was so sticky, it's like they way overdid the coating on the handle. So I really did have to take a bit of that finish off to make it comfortable on hand. And also, if you sweat with this in your hand, you would get that red coming off. So take care of that. Hollow ground bevels here. You can see that it's got a pretty generalized finish. Not the greatest finish ever, but for a rough and rugged full-tang 1075 American Western Bowie, it'll do.

[38:24] And I absolutely love it. Super, super sharp. It goes without saying, all these cold steels are incredibly tough and incredibly sharp. I say tough, I'm speaking specifically. I'm not just saying it generically. They are excellent at heat treating all of their steels, whether it was taking the cheapest Chinese steel like 8CR, not the cheapest, but taking a cheap steel like 8CR13MOV from China, they maximize the heat treatment at the most out of it possible. And that's the same all the way up through up to their three hoops so take comfort all right next up is we're going from that sort of uh utility bowie utility all-arounder that we saw in the western uh bowie and the 1917 these are these are weapons these are tools these are for camp chores these are for killing these are for skinning uh all sorts of stuff these next two are for fighting These are fighting bowies. This is, I love this thing. This is a huge favorite of mine. This is the Laredo Bowie, and it's got this incredible leather sheath. I wish I had gotten more cold steels back in the day with these leather sheaths. The Natchez, the next one I show, had a similar one. I just love it. Now it's all in Kydex, and it's fine. It looks great, but it doesn't look as cool, especially with a knife with a wooden handle, I guess, or faux Coca-Cola.

[39:51] But this is some sort of, I don't even remember what the steel is on this one.

[39:57] Got it about 20 years ago, roughly, maybe a little less than when I lived in New York.

[40:05] And when they would ship stuff to this, and they didn't really check their laws. But this is a great, great design because it's long and slender. It does not widen out at all from the ricasso here or i guess not from the ricasso but it doesn't widen out from the base of the blade it only uh stays parallel to the spine and then grows more slender and comes to a point with this zero ground swedge giving you a diamond shape or sort of dagger right up front so incredible penetration and thrusting capabilities with this uh on the bowie A bowie knife, known for this back cut. So if you're fighting someone and you have a bowie knife and they're coming at you with a knife or something, you do this flick where you twist your wrist, you drop that swedge. Whether sharpened or not, you can do a lot of damage into the incoming arm. And you're cutting, gouging. It's more like gouging, splitting, and gashing with this zero-ground swedge. And when I say zero ground, I just mean it doesn't come to a flat top like most swedges. It comes to a kind of a scanty edge, if you will.

[41:19] I put the patina on this blade because this sheath, though I was just singing its praises, scratched the ever-living hell out of the blade when I first got it. You can see echoes of that here and here. At the time, I wrapped it in paper towels and doused it in white vinegar and got a nice patina going. I didn't know much then, but I knew I could get a patina on that. And I think it looks beautiful. It also makes it look old school. Coffin-shaped handle is really, really great because it comes to a pinch point down here at the guard and widens out so you can do a lot of slashing and chopping motions with this without centrifugal force pulling it from your hand. And by the way, look at that sharpening twirl.

[42:12] Yeah, very, very... You sharpen this into a fillet knife. Very, very cool knife. Alright, next up is probably my runner up for coolest fighting Bowie. And as I said before in a spoiler, it is the Natchez. I love the Natchez Bowie. I just wish I had gotten it earlier and got it with that beautiful black leather sheath with the silver stud. But.

[42:38] Can't have it all. So the Natchez Bowie is supposedly the Bowie shape that Jim Bowie had on him. I know, Bowie Bowie, I'll switch back and forth. I'm not comfortable with either now. People have given me a complex about the name Jim Bowie Bowie Bowie. But so anyway, this is purported to be the style of knife he had during the famous Natchez Sandbar fight. It's a Musso-style bowie, and what a Musso-style is, you can identify it from the shape of the blade. It has an overall upward curve. See, that spine has a slight curve. It has kind of a continuous belly and a very, very sharp point for stabbing and thrusting. This, again, like the Laredo Bowie, comes to a zero-ground edge here, so you could just deliver, in the words of Lynn Thompson, and devastating back cuts while dueling with your Bowie knife. Now, luckily, most of us don't have to duel with Bowie knives.

[43:45] For me, it doesn't happen that often. But when it does, I'm glad to have a sharpened swedge and a handsome notches Bowie like this. By the way, I love the size of the guard here. And this here where the guard meets the sharpening choil and the ricasso here almost acts as a Spanish notch. And a Spanish notch was something you'll see in some Bowie knives. A decorative flourish down here near the ricasso. That was theoretically meant to trap blades, but this one really could if you were doing some sort of fighting and you actually were close and blades were going against blades or whatever, which seems highly unlikely in a... You know, you could still trap a blade right in that little section there. So I've always thought that was cool. I like the equal-sized quillions on the guard. Nice big guard and a beautiful flared coffin-shaped handle here. This I opted not to go for the expensive 3V, but for the relatively inexpensive, what is it, 4034 stainless steel.

[44:56] A much cheaper stainless steel. But look at the slab. I mean, this is 5 16ths of an inch. It's a thick slab of steel. I'm not worried about it not being 3V. Because to me, 3V, I would get that in 3V if I were an outdoorsman and I was planning on using this fighting knife as a chopping tool in the outdoors. I don't see why else you would need this knife in 3V. I mean, it's got a cable tang. It's not set up for that kind of stuff. It's set up for fighting and fighting only. them in. So, you know, 4034 steel will do me just fine. Love this knife. Next up, I'm going to take a break from these fixed blades and talk about the one folder in this group, and you know what that is. That is the ever-awesome Espada XL. Story behind this is it's a modern interpretation with modern engineering and materials of the, one of my favorite knives from history, the Spanish folder, the navaja. Navaja was a large folder with a ratchet lock, so that meant the back of the tang of the blade, which is rounded, had little ratchets, so little serrations, little saw teeth cut out in it, and then there was a.

[46:17] Tab here with a cutout and each little tooth fit into the cutout and the cutout was springy here so you could open it and would click click click click click click until it was open and then it was locked open and then you would lift the tab up and release the blade well in this case that tab as you know is a thumb stud it's for opening the knife whether you're using your thumb or you're or waving it or camming it off the seam of your pants. So this works very well to open automatically off the seam of your pants. But you have to have, you know, 7 to 8-inch deep pockets because this is a big sucker. That blade is 7 1⁄2 inches long. This has an overall length of, I don't even know, overall length of a lot. No, let's see.

[47:06] About 16 inches, 15 1⁄2 inches. my very unscientific measuring but in other words it's a very large knife so when you hold it back here in the handle it's about as big as the laredo maybe even larger yeah you get you get even greater reach than the laredo i mean we'll say similar um so this is a folder and it's not as never ever going to be as robust as a fixed blade, but it's got the industry's strongest lock in the triad there. Of course, people will refute that and argue it, but it really is. We all know it. And so this thing acts very much like a fixed blade and you could pack this or the lighter version that's just G10 and not all the fancy polished aluminum bolsters and G10. It's It's just flat and very light. You could pack one of those in your pack and have a machete at the ready that only takes up the space of nine inches or so. You know me, I love my large cold steel knives, and this one is the largest of them all, and, in my opinion, the most beautiful and coveted.

[48:22] So, there you have it. Three more here. This next one was a gift from my brother. You know my brother, always giving me awesome-laden gifts. He usually focuses on genuine historic knives. This one is a reproduction of a historic knife. This is the Cold Steel Rondell Dagger.

[48:43] And the first thing you might see is it has that similar sort of medieval studded handle, as we saw on the Cinque Dia. This is from, I guess it would be a little bit earlier, from, well, actually, I'm not sure, I shouldn't say, but this was the kind of dagger that old school, and that's about as technical as I can get, old school knights in shining armor would carry. I have to do more research into this, but I follow a really great YouTube channel that recreates battles between knights in armor, and they really go at it. And it's not LARPing. They're not LARPing. They're in these beautiful locations in Eastern Europe, and they really act out these battles. And it'll be a broadsword versus a warhammer, or a poleaxe versus mace, or whatever it is. And the guys fight, and what it always comes down to is grappling. They always lose their large weapons, and they always go to these, rondelle daggers, and find places, chinks in the armor, or spaces in the armor where they can jam these in to stab the guy inside the armor suit. We'll start with the handle It's called a rondelle dagger Because look at the pommel and look at the guard A perfect...

[50:09] You know how we talk about symmetry in knives? We talk about it when we're looking at it in profile. But if you look at this in cross-section, it's pretty symmetrical. Even though it's got a triangular cross-section on the blade, I'm talking about the handle, you could grab it any which way. It doesn't matter how it's oriented. And it will do the same job it's going to do. Because this is a thrusting weapon. You could also use, I'm imagining, you could also use this to menace other small weapons. That are bladed with this triangular-shaped blade. I'm not sure about that, you know, like a sword breaker kind of. But in any case, we do know that it accelerates at thrusting and stabbing. So with that triangular point, you have sharpened edges, but they're only sharp enough that if you struck someone's, say, forearm with it, it would split the skin. It would split it. It wouldn't cut it, but it would do lots of damage. But that's not what it's for. This is really for, like I said, it's got that reinforced triangular point to just find a soft spot in the armor or in the chainmail and be pushed in.

[51:22] And generally sewing machined in. That's what it looks like a lot. This handle here is wood And the sheath is also Really really nice Leather here and Again a wrought iron shape And throat here.

[51:40] Next up here, and second to last, we have the Jimmy Slash Chopper. This one just made it in. It's 10 inches long, and man, the blade is 10 inches long. I love this thing. Jimmy was Josh Belay. Jimmy was very, very generous and gave me this. This is number 11 of the first run of competition choppers.

[52:05] It's made of 5 16ths inch thick 3V. It's uh it had it lives up to all of the competition chopper uh specs so blade sports and competition chopping knives have specific specs they have to live up to that to be 10 inches long convex ground and then there are a lot of other things that you want to do you want to have that swedge for balance you want to have the blade angle off the handle to accelerate the cutting much like a recurve would and uh and and so on and so forth here you have a um lanyard hole forward and backward on the handle and super contoured beautiful handle man that grippy grivery very very nice so jimmy was approached by cold steel well jimmy works for cold steel uh he does a lot.

[53:00] Of their marketing uh or works in their marketing um efforts i guess i should say and they came to him for a for a chopper design because he does blade sports to me slash if you're not familiar with him he's a great dude so nice i love seeing him every year at blade show at the cold steel booth and i've had him on the show a few times just great dude um but he is the cold steel man he has everything and in numbers and people fits so very cool for him to get this design made to them I wish I didn't take this and abuse it I took it and chopped I can't remember what it was now but it had paint on it and it's really hard to get that paint off so okay.

[53:44] A little bummed about that, but I love this knife. And it comes in this really nice sheath. It's not for wearing. It's just for, you know, for covering this incredibly stout and sturdy blade.

[53:59] All right, last up. Last up here in my big, cold steel knife lineup is the ridiculous yet practical Chaos Kukri. That has a cool sound when you pull it out this is, from the Chaos line and what is the Chaos line you ask it is the cold steel line of knives that feature this cast aluminum knuckle duster in that double finger, configuration so two fingers go in one side two fingers go in the other it's very comfortable in hand and you can really lay into stuff with this because if it's my medium-sized hand, I know it fits big hands pretty well, and you really have a hell of a striking surface here with all the ridges, and you know what? This would be a pretty incredible weapon, but if you were just to use this out in the field, D-guards and handguards like this really do make a lot of sense for non-weapon large knives, too, because if you're swinging around bushwhacking or chopping, you know, chopping it, what do you call them?

[55:16] Little trees, what are they called, saplings, and you're chopping stuff down like that, this hand protection is a welcome feature. You can find it on a lot of Ontario and other machetes that come with D-guards, just to protect the knuckles while you're swinging it around. But of course, in combat, you want this to protect your knuckles, but also to smash with as an impact weapon. Of course, you've got this really beautiful kukri style blade on it with that intense dramatic recurve and then the widening out you get a lot of mass up here for incredible shearing power it's a pretty thin blade it's it's less than a quarter inch so i don't know three three sixteenths maybe um and it's got a very very nice flat grind i mean it gets really pretty thin behind the edge it's sturdy don't Don't get me wrong, sturdy and tough, but you can do a lot of heavy-duty slicing, slashing, shearing, chopping, and cutting with this knife. And not for nothing, here, I'm going to go to the big screen for a second.

[56:21] You can use these great for stabbing. Just because it's a kukri and it's shaped like it has that odd downward shape, you can still thrust wonderfully with these. You can see Lynn Thompson do a whole bunch of demos with that. But if you can imagine, you don't have to twerk your wrist to get the point where it needs to be. It's a very, very actually easily achieved and easily aimed thrust with a Kukri, something a lot of people don't know. So that is it. Hopefully not it. I will get more and more and more. I love Cold Steel. I know you know that. But I also love the historical representations, the way the living history through their knives. So as they come out with more cool ones I mean I've got a list I need those Chris's I need that Filipino Um.

[57:13] The Filipino bolo that he made for Danny Nosanto Guru Dan, and plenty of others. But this is what I've got now. So thanks for joining me, and be sure to join us tomorrow night for Thursday Night Knives. And if you're listening to this on the day it drops, we will be talking to Doug Ritter tomorrow. Looking forward to that. Also, be sure to join us on Sunday for a great interview, as always. For Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying until next time. Don't take dull for an answer. Thanks for listening to the Knife Junkie Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review at ReviewThePodcast.com. For show notes for today's episode, additional resources, and to listen to past episodes, visit our website, TheKnifeJunkie.com. You can also watch our latest videos on YouTube at TheKnifeJunkie.com slash YouTube. Check out some great knife photos on TheKnifeJunkie.com slash Instagram, and join our Facebook group at TheKnifeJunkie.com slash Facebook. book. And if you have a question or comment, email them to bob at thenifejunkie.com or call our 24-7 listener line at 724-466-4487. And you may hear your comment or question answered on an upcoming episode of the Knife Junkie Podcast.

[58:28] Music.