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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, the new one from Jack Wolf Knives. I get a very special gift from my good buddy Doug and Exotic Blades titanium handles. I'm Bob DeMarco. This is the Knife Junkie Podcast. 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.
[0:27]Go welcome back to the show uh one of my favorite comments from this past week was from mr ed dc6, mh he said thanks for your collaboration the agent 001 with tim kell at t kell knives it is now my current favorite edc blade love it and uh i just had to show that of course uh it just puts wind in my sails to hear how much people love this knife um i love it too it is pretty much what i carry all the time that and my and uh my nova 2 uh but speaking of 2 the agent 002 is now on order you can get on the books for this one now at tkel knives i'm not sure when they're releasing them uh but same handle different blade there's going to be a whole series of these agent models so uh mr ed dc6 uh mh thank you so much for the comment and thank you so much for uh having bought this knife and carrying it and really actually EDCing it, I also love it. It's a great knife.
[1:27]Tim did an awesome job on it. Speaking of knives that Tim has done an awesome job on, my second favorite comment today is from Jared Neves, Neves Knives, and he did the FLN Karambit, which I love, with Tim Kell. But he's commenting here on a short I did about Steve Collari custom kitchen knives. He says, I love having a high-quality chef or kitchen knife. I will go out of my way to use them rather than use the crappy one now. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I know that Jared gets a lot of knives sent to him from various people, but I also happen to know that he has a Steve Collari custom knife. And, man, cutting with that knife is amazing.
[2:10]Steve, before he was ever making knives, was a chef. and a very outspoken knife commentator on YouTube and had a lot of opinions about geometry and heat treat. And boy, he put his money where his mouth is with his knife, with his knives. So thank you, Jared. Thank you, Mr. Ed. And thank you one and all for watching the videos this past week and making your comments. I seriously appreciate it. All right. That said, it's time for a pocket check. What's in his pocket? Let's find out.
[2:42]Here's the knife junkie with his pocket check of knives. In my front right pocket today was a knife I haven't carried in a coon's age, as the old saying goes. Though I'm not a coon hunter, but still. This knife I haven't carried in a long, long time. This is the Spyderco Ulyza, designed by Ulrich Hennicke, a former German police officer turned knife maker. And he made this knife, I would say this was early in, this was designed early in the 2000s, I think. Uh boy now i'm not remembering i i guess i would have to say like 2006 or something like that and um so the knife came out i was uh really shocked because it looked like many drawings i had been making at this point of uh filipino swords i'd love to see as folding knives so this just knocked my socks off this was the first knife i spent a lot of money on and at the time that equaled $174. I remember that.
[3:43]I had to have this knife. I'm so glad I still have it. This one has always been a bit of a lemon, I got to say. And the only reason I say that is I've had a lot of Taiwan made, or this is Seki City, I'm sorry.
[3:55]I've had a lot of Spyderco's, Spyderco lockbacks. This has always been the one that's the least smooth, I have to say. And, but, you know, Power through, it's a first world problem, no doubt. It's got no play, and it's just not, you know, it is never going to flick out the way my Endura does, let me put it that way. A beautiful VG-10 blade with a deep hollow, well, it's a hollow ground bevel, but also a deep recurve with that point center line because you've got a pistol grip here, so there's an overall curve to this. Just a great knife uh four um 4.1 inches and never ever spoken about you never hear anyone show or talk about the ulazo but what a great knife it was sort of unofficially a part of the people kind of unofficially aligned it with the police models it was never really a part of the police series but it's kind of the same size as the police series and uri henneke the designer as a cop or a police officer, Polizei in German. So, all right, next up in my, just jangling around at the bottom of my pocket, this one doesn't require a slip at all. This is the American Blade Works Slip Joint, very aptly named. I love this knife.
[5:17]So the duty this went through recently, well, yesterday, I've had this on me a couple of days. By the way, that's a MagnaCut blade. It's a little dirty because I was using it to cut rubber away from a knife handle.
[5:32]So first it was thick layers. This is something I had done, something I had wrapped. I did a show on handle wrap blades last week. I've been tweaking some of my handle wraps. And I did a bad one a long time ago that had, first it had rubber that was already on it from the manufacturer. Then it had paracord that I put on. And then over that, like a thousand layers of electrical tape. So this took care of all of that. The tip of this took care of all of that. Nice and thin hollow ground blade. Very comfortable to use. Nice and small. I mean, it was like the perfect size for doing what I was doing because what I was doing basically was stupid. It's the kind of thing that you might lay a finger open over and then later you're like, that was stupid. I didn't need to be doing this in the first place.
[6:20]I've done that so many times in my life. I can predict when I'm in that kind of situation and I can kind of alter my behavior a little bit. This knife is good for that because you have ultimate control. You get your finger all the way up to the end. And something actually somewhat reassuring in knowing that it could fold on your fingers if need be. No, I don't mean it like that. But when you're doing really delicate work and you don't want to stab into your other hand, it's nice knowing that the blade could fold into the user hand. So basically, you're being very careful. That's what I'm getting at. I know that sounded ridiculously stupid, but this knife is very thin behind the edge and super, super sharp. And it was closest at hand And most.
[7:04]Um most suited for the job so uh there you go i'm not always saying i do the smartest things with knives probably should have been using a locking knife there all right next up on me on my waist today for a change and i mean that because i've been carrying this summer so much knives of my own design i carried this which i wish i designed it's so beautiful so nicely done, Aaron Bieber Knives, AB Knives, 302. Is it a clip point? Yes. Is it a wharncliffe? Yes. Is that an amazingly wrapped Tsukamaki handle? It is indeed. He does incredible work. Incidentally, I like this coincidence here. Aaron and I both went to the same art school, just different years apart, or several years apart in Philadelphia, but when we met, we kind of hashed through things and we discovered that and.
[7:59]Not only had I already been following him on Instagram for about a year and loving his knives, when I met him in person and discovered that connection, I was like oh, I'm going to be buying knives from this guy the rest of my life. Now, I've only gotten one of them, but he's working on a folder right now that is so cool. I think he's done like four or five of them. Really beautiful frame lock folders. He also has some, several other fixed blade knives I'd love to possess. Alright, and lastly, for emotional support today, I had the Sevillana from Joker, and it's my first kind of legit Spanish Navaja, and I love it. And something I've discovered about looking at this, it's a visual trick having to do with the.
[8:42]Horn shaped curved extremely tapered handle is it looks like the blade to handle ratio, favors the blade of course it doesn't you need a little bit more handle to accommodate the folded blade oftentimes it's about an inch and in this case well i don't know what it is in this case because of that curve a lot of the large folders that i have incorporate including like the voyager series incorporate that curve in the handle to accommodate the long blade it feels really good in hand because when you look at it from the top it really bulges out towards the center here even though it gets very thin towards the pommel it gives you a lot to grip onto up here around where this stag is and then up here something you don't see up here on the front of the forward word bolster something you don't see when you're just looking at it in profile like this is that the bolster flares out and gives you a bit of a hand guard in case you're thrusting with this knife um but that the bulge here and then the curve uh towards the back really make this very comfortable in hand for for slashing at the air anyway and with that spanish clip point with the hollow grind. Spanish clip point meaning a long, kind of shallow clip that extends over at least half of that blade. This is going to be a great thrusting knife.
[10:10]Navajas, just to recap, were sort of invented and perfected when Spaniards were no longer allowed to carry swords in the street to settle their beefs, so they started making these giant folders. This is just a four-inch, but they get very large. And this lock here is just a notch, a little tab that fits into that notch on the back of the handle. But a lot of the older historical or custom versions have sort of a ratchet with five, six, seven teeth in the tang.
[10:49]Clicks in the lock as you open it, making a menacing sound and also locking that blade open and giving it a number of stops on the way in case that first initial lockup fails. All right, this is what I had on my person today. Kind of an unusual carry for me, and it was welcome. I had the Spartaco Ulaza, the American Blade Works Slip Joint, the AB Knives 302, and the sevillana by joker blades tell me what you had on you drop it in the comments below always like that inspiration finding out what people have on them and you know sometimes it's nice just to see a comment that's just knives i'm like why is he just saying all right next up uh speaking of knives that are great to carry uh here is the hogtooth and knife junkie nova 2 this This is our second in the Nova series.
[11:45]And this is a Kiridashi made of 154CM. That's a 3.75-inch blade, super hollow ground, super meaning very thinly hollow ground. It comes to that very acute point, and if you look at it like this with the spine flat, you will see that upward rising edge, and that point is middle line, so you get a lot of the benefits of a straight edge. And a kiridashi style blade but you also get that point in the center line for thrusting and such so a special edition knife this is ivory g10 right now it kind of looks like just straight white but it's somewhat uh off white and bone colored so ivory g10 you get red liners the black hardware this is the look for the nova 2 uh each nova series knife we're going to come Come out with them roughly once a year. First one was the Nova 1. It was a recurve buoy. And that had maroon colored handles with forest green liners.
[12:51]This special edition, of course, is ivory and red with that dark stone wash, kind of evoking the Japanese feel of the Kiridashi. I've been carrying this a lot this summer because this short, curved, gently polished handle is very kind on my love handles because this goes in the waistband usually at 3 o'clock. In the wintertime, I'll start wearing this appendix. It's just my own style of carry. But over here in the summer, it's very nice. On the part of me, I thought I was going to lose by summer. That's kind of soft.
[13:30]But anyway, very, very comfortable four-finger grip here, whether it's in the forward grip with the finger on that sharp jimping or the reverse grip like this. So the preorder is open for this. It is store.thenifejunkie.com. it is not an inexpensive knife it is worth saving up for we're going to leave this pre-order open till the end of august then we're going to put our put our money into the mr matt chase up there in massachusetts and he's going to start making them by hand and that is why uh you know it's funny i was i was thinking it's kind of an expensive knife and then i was looking at there's so many things out there made in factories that cost more that i gotta stop with that this is a handmade beautiful handmade knife, and a collaboration. So enjoy it if you wish. If not, it'll be on the channel for you to look at in the future. All right, lastly, in this opening section, I want to talk about the Gentleman Junkie Knife Giveaway Knife for August. This month it's coming a week later than usual. Usually it's the third week, but we have a sudden onset vacation in the offing, so we're going to do that for a couple of days, and that will preclude Thursday Night Knives tomorrow night.
[14:47]So next week, we will be giving away this really cool knife. This reminds me of a shark. This totally looks like a great white shark to me. I just got the gills here. A little more, fewer, more gills than a shark has, but that's for super aspiration.
[15:04]That recurve tanto is just insane. It is a very tall blade. It's almost two inches in height. It's gently hollow ground and very, very thin. Of course, that front is like a chisel with an extra relief edge on it. This thing is really, really, really sharp and very comfortable in hand, that big, broad blade. But the handle is more slender and feels really excellent in the hand. This is by RS Bladeworks, and so I think they have one called the RS Chaos. This is the Mini Paragon, and look at this. I like this very nice Tan canvas micarta The, Crowned, what do you call this thing Backspacer is also of that micarta And it stands a little bit proud And it's really nice Lots of jimping Lots of contouring And just a really super cool knife This one comes courtesy of Dave OG Blade Reviews Thank you so much Dave, we appreciate this And cannot wait to pass this along To one lucky gentleman junkie next Thursday.
[16:17]August 22nd, 2024. All right. Well, still to come on the Knife Tent podcast, we're going to look at some new knives coming out from some of our favorite companies. But before we do, be sure you like, comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell. That sends you a notification every time the show uploads. But also, you can download the show to your favorite podcast app. If you don't get to finish it while you're sneaking a minute on YouTube at work, you can listen to it on the way home in the car. Just download it to one of these podcast apps. All right. Still to come. Knife Life News. Adventure delivered. Your monthly subscription for hand-picked outdoor, survival, EDC, and other cool gear from our expert team of outdoor professionals. TheKnifeJunkie.com slash BattleBox. You're listening to the Knife Junkie Podcast. And now here's the Knife Junkie with the Knife Life News.
[17:11]New from one of my favorite high-value brands, Sencut, and one of my favorite Polish knife designers, and there are a lot of them, Ostap Hell, is the new neck knife called the texo this is the sen cut texo uh this is a pretty cool little knife it reminds me of something a a modern day space viking might have around his necklace right next to his thor hammer uh it's a 1.97 inch 9cr18 mov uh sort of angular wharncliffe with that helical handle like the handle looks like uh maybe maybe this space viking is carrying around human DNA to spread because some calamity has happened on Nuevo Earth. So he's like out there. He's got the DNA strand of humanity saved in that helical hand. All right. Very cool neck knife. You know I like neck knives a lot. And this one seems like without the goofy, I'm sorry, Senkat and Savivi, it's very generous that you put these lanyards on all your fixed blades. I can't wait to take them off when I get them. But some people dig them. So without that, this all day long, maybe even with a little bit of jute wrap on it. But anyway, 1.97 inches, 9CR18MOB.
[18:30]It is 6, I'm sorry, 0.68 ounces, so super light. That's even with the lanyard and the sheath. And it's the only fixie now in the Sen Cut lineup. The Waxahachie? No, the, what was it called? Not the Waxahachie. I think the Chattahoochee, whatever it was called. I have it. Very nice clip point. They have discontinued that, and that's unfortunate. It sort of had the cogent blade in a fixed manner with a nice neutral handle. So now the Sencut Texo, only fixed blade in the Sencut lineup, but it's a looker, and it looks like it'll be pretty useful with that 2-inch blade and that super, super light blade. All right, next up. Speaking of very useful, Rosecraft Blades has just been pumping them out, and I love it. Rosecraft now has the Tenasi Lake, Jack. The Tenasi Lake is a teardrop-shaped handle knife with a single blade drop point. Nice, broad D2 2.8-inch drop point with a swedge, and it is a honey. I mean, that is beautiful. Those bone covers, they're calling that Bora Bora Blue bone covers. So Bora Bora, is that the South Pacific?
[19:50]I guess we would presume that's what the water looks like there, though I've been to Fiji, oddly enough, in the South Pacific, and the water did not look like that. It was rough and not the kind of place I wanted to necessarily swim, but that Bora Bora blue bone cover there looks like someplace I'd want to swim, that beautiful blue color. I've seen this on a number of different channels already, and man, it looks cool. You know, with me, drop points, I'm not as crazy about, but I like this thing, and it reminds me a little bit of the Jack Wolf with the teardrop shape. I mean, similar. That one has almost a cartoonishly broad blade, and I mean that in a good way. It has a super belly. Double fluted bolsters here, and as I mentioned, BT blade. This is available now, Rosecraft, with all of their new traditionals. Remember they dropped a whole bunch of modern blades, I think three, and then they came out with like four or five new traditionals. And that's what I like Rosecraft for personally, though I know, especially through watching Scab's videos, that whether it's the traditional or the modern D2 folders.
[21:09]I'm sorry, whether it's the traditional or the modern models of folders coming out from Rosecraft, Their D2 steel is super well heat treated. They've just been used and used and used on really hard tasks day after day for more than a month without being strapped. So that's a pretty good indication of a good heat treat.
[21:30]All right. Next up, Tactile Knife Company. Now, we've had Michael Miller on the show a number of times, and most recently, he told us about this project, so it's really great to see it come to fruition. This is a passion project, for sure, by Michael Miller himself of Tactile Knife Company. Be he got a chersuola in 1998 or was it 87 i think 1987 bob chersuola mariner blade and he wanted to always wanted to make his own version of it and that's what they've done with the mariner to bringing back this classic we all we all know the atcf the super aggressive looking folder that bob chersuola is most known for but this little known uh maritime sort of sailing knife was a big favorite of Michael Miller so he brought it back out 2.98 inches of magna cut it's a little bit smaller it's a titanium liner lock they replaced the standard screw setup stamped Emerson style clip for a sculpted clip with Terzu Ura's dragon logo on it and a hidden lanyard hole that's up there in the back spacer. Very, very nice-looking knife.
[22:50]I'm really happy to see that this project has finally come out. People are buying it. Actually, here's a comparison to the original, which is the left and the new one on the right. It's already sold out, but they're going to do another run of it. Pretty exciting for them and for Bob Terzuola, no doubt. All right, last up, I just wanted to let you know I've been showing this one off a lot. I love this work.
[23:19]I haven't been showing it off that much, but I've been using it a lot. This is the WorkSharp Field Sharpener. You've got two different grits of diamond stone, and then you have a strop, and then you have a serration ceramic, and then you have a rotating ceramic here that has fine course and fish hook, and then you have a strop. Really great, small, all-in-one little field sharpener. Well, WorkSharp has come out with something even more handy. It's an EDC sharpener. Folds in the middle. It's got a pocket clip, so you can just pop it in the pocket. It opens up like this, and then on one side, it's got a 400-grit diamond plate, which is this right here. And then on the other side, it has a ceramic plate there. Now, it gives you angle guides, and what I mean by that is if you look here on this work sharp, you'll see that the approach to the stone here is at a 20 degree angle so if you hold the blade like that and drag it across like that it's going to give you basically a 20 degree angle, on this folding field sharpener here this new one they give you a 20 degree angle with the diamond plate but a 25 with the ceramic and i guess that's to knock off any burr you might create, but i thought that was interesting because i'm not sure if they they do that on this one here.
[24:42]Pocket clip, 4.6 ounces And available now So not the lightest little thing But I guess that ceramic is probably A bit weighty Alright, that's it for Knife Life News this week Lots of cool stuff coming out Always cool stuff coming out I think that's great, especially with companies like Sencut, Sabivi, Rosecraft They're not that seasonal Of course they have big seasonal releases At the shows, but they kind of keep, Dropping them as the year goes And I like that.
[25:11]All right, coming up, we're going to do the state of the collection and check out some of the new knives coming through here. But before we do, I want to urge you, if you're interested, to go on over to Patreon, thenifejunkie.com, slash Patreon, and become a patron. You could win a knife just like this or this very knife. Every month we do a knife giveaway for the Gentleman Junkies on the Patreon.
[25:37]And it's always fun. and we spin the wheel of destiny and that's a random number generator basically that chooses who wins and i send it to you and then we turn it over and next month that's another knife and oftentimes many many times these are knives donated by dave i appreciate dave og blade reviews other times they're knives given to us by other makers and such so be sure to go check out theknifejunkie.com slash patreon or scan the QR code. Again, that's theknifejunkie.com slash patreon. 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. And now that we're caught up with Knife Life news, let's hear more of the Knife Junkie podcast. So new from Jack Wolf Knives for August 2024 is the second iteration of the Venom Jack. Venom Jack, I say this with every one of their knives, so just bear with me. But it's one of my favorites because you have an amazing and very, very, very comfortable trapper style handle with a broad, beautiful wharncliffe blade.
[27:00]But all that said, this one just takes the cake for me. Now, I'm very lucky because Ben sends me these when they release. And sometimes he asks me which one I'd like. And this time I said, oh, I want the titanium. The titanium one has a really cool setup. No bolsters, no faux bolsters. Just sort of a random napped pattern. And I'm into flint napping right now. I think it's very interesting. I like watching people do it on YouTube. So I thought that would be cool to have. He was all out of that. And so he sent me this. and man alive i'm so glad he did because this is a this is a new look for jack wolf knives you got a very dark acid stonewashed blade again deeply hollow ground full height hollow grind so.
[27:43]Convex on both sides all the way up to the spine so super sharp and super slicey also has a very large and generous uh sharpening choil there so you can sharpen this thing for a long time and still get a lot of life out of that blade. But it's got a downward canted edge, so that puts the tip down a little bit lower, which makes it perfect for pull cuts and those kind of detailed utility cuts. And that downward angle of that straight edge also accelerates cutting, much like a recurve does. Okay, all of that is built into this design. We saw it on the last one, and I loved the last one with its machine ground satin blade and cheerful sort of blue carbon fiber that I had on mine. But this one looks like an antique to me, instant antique, that dark acid stonewash on the bolsters and on the blade. And then this stormy tempestuous dark matter red carbon fiber. This is just beautiful. And the thing is, is it wouldn't have been my first choice, but I'm glad I'm glad it worked out this way because This knife is like Instantly compelling to me It feels like it already has soul You know a knife after a while It.
[29:02]It gathers what we loosely call soul. Of course, it's not an actual soul, but it wears in, and it's like a nice old pair of jeans or something, except a pair of jeans that you don't have to throw out in a couple of years because it's going to fall apart. This, of course, gets handed down to the grandchildren. It just keeps going. But the way it looks, it's like an instant heirloom. I'm totally smitten with this colorway, And you know it because I hate the term colorway But I'll use it for this Triple fluted bolster up front Double fluted bolster in the back And super super comfort They all look cool The green The green one with the black blade And the black bolsters That looks very cool, Again that random nap pattern Titanium is gorgeous And there's another carbon fiber This one, look at this one I highly recommend you check this one out S90V blade steel Really excellent walk and talk As usual, super crisp At all stations And a very.
[30:08]7.5, 8 pull Nice stout pull You can pinch it And Works great man, this is A really, really beautiful Slip joint knife If that is your thing, and of course It always ships with a beautiful And I guess the word is sumptuous leather slip all right next up this one is cool this is a gift from doug bowl doug thank you so much i was talking about uh patreon patrons and such doug is uh comes to thursday night knives and he's also a patron and i really appreciate him and he sent me this to keep and it It is so cool. This is a SOG SOG winder 2. This, I believe, may have been a part of his beauty belt at one time. Super sharp. This is an old school SOG, as you can tell. Comes in a pouch. No pocket clip. Comes in a pouch. You got those steel, polished steel bolsters. Very nice.
[31:13]Pronounced knurling on this rubbery creton uh thick and hafted back lock here man it's also smooth and beautiful kind of put together a little bit more like a traditional knife because it's pretty old i would imagine this is turn of the century or or mid mid 90s actually what am i talking about this is probably mid to early 90s because this one i got in 1991 and i believe this This one, they only ran for one year, and I don't remember what this one's called. But this is kind of what SOG folders looked like in the early 90s. I guess late 80s, early 90s. Now the rubber on both of these is starting to get a little bit, you know, you kind of feel it a little bit residue-y, but these are not everyday carries for me. This one was in 1991. But So I'm not worried about them You know disintegrating or anything like that But what a cool Cool knife thank you so much Doug That is Razor Sharp AUS-6 made in Seki City Japan and You know I imagine AUS-6 Back in the early 90s was some pretty high tech steel, SOG was a pretty big Not big company But a pretty.
[32:34]People spent a lot of money for their knives They were knives for people in the know If you will So very very happy to have that Doug thank you Thank you from the bottom of my heart sir Your generosity is greatly appreciated And definitely add something to my collection Alright next up From my Now this is being added to my Dirk Pinkerton collection.
[33:00]And I just got sent these from Artisan Cutlery and Dirk, and they're so sweet. Okay, so you've seen this. I've shown this knife off a lot because I love it, and I had the prototype here, but this is now the production version. This is the Banjara made by Artisan Cutlery and designed by Dirk Pinkerton, a Middle East-inspired sort of clip point. You say Middle Eastern clip point. I say it because from the thumb ramp down, it seems like a clip, But he does a lot of that sort of cultural mashup with his knife designs. I have another knife, the Razorback, that was made by him in his own shop. And it is a mix-up of a Bowie knife, a fighting Bowie, like Hell's Bells style Bowie, and a Persian style, like Kanjar. So he does a lot of that. So yeah, nice Persian blade here, Persian clip point blade. That's S90V, S90V blade steel. Now, if you saw me showing off the prototype, you know this looks a little bit different. Here we have a nice satin on that S90V. The other one, I believe, was stonewashed or blasted. And then here the titanium is a brighter...
[34:14]I don't want to say polished, but it's got sort of a semi-polish on it. What's the word I'm looking for? Sort of a satin polish. Not satin like you see on the Blade Shiny, but satin like you get out of house paint or titanium. Fits the hand beautifully and really excellent, excellent action. Action that's set up for all. That that d10 is set up for great middle finger flicking for slow rolling with the thumb for flicking it with the flipper uh just a great great all-around knife and a luxury this is definitely a luxury addition to the collection i'm really psyched to have it and the funny thing is is uh i sent back the prototype and i was kind of like and he and he said oh you could have kept the prototype as long as you want you know just to check it out. No rush to send it back. But you'll be getting the production one and it came like two days later.
[35:14]Lucky me. Lucky me. I am a lucky man. Alright, so that's the Artisan Banjara. This one also came in the box and this has stolen my heart, guys. This is the also designed by Dirk Pinkerton, also made by Artisan Cutlery. This is the Kami.
[35:33]Not Kami like Kami bastard but kami like kami the knife maker from india kamis are the is the name of the people who make uh kukris so this is uh a sort of a tip of the hat to that with that deep recurve the downward uh pointed blade you do still have a center line point there though which is excellent for thrusting but look at that extreme belly and that really nice recurve i mean he went out of his way to re-recurve that. And I think it's gorgeous. I carried it all day yesterday, which is when I got it. And it's nice and light. It's thin, nice and slender. So you have on one side this heavily chamfered titanium frame lock with the really nice micro-milling in it. Can you see the micro-milling? There you go. The micro-milling is only on the chamfers. It's like a pin striping. And then you have a nice sculpted clip lip, a sort of gear pattern backspacer, and then a nice and thin micarta-only show side. So it's nice and light, nice and thin, feels great in hand. The ergonomics of this are crazy. By the way, the ergonomics, maybe I mentioned on this, are also really, really nice.
[36:52]I tend to go off about Dirk's cool blade designs, but I don't mean to skip over the fact that they're so comfortable in hand. And this one here, the Kami, is extremely comfortable. The thumb ramp feels great. The jimping is aggressive, and it really does catch your hand or your thumb. And uh it's sort of standard jimping unlike oftentimes you'll see a dirk pinkerton will do scoop jimping coming in from either side which is also very cool it's kind of evocative of traditional file work but this is sort of straightforward and on this one it works really well look at that blade god that's beautiful but also look at the handle with this bird's beak back here such excellent ergonomics in reverse grip great place to put your thumb right there.
[37:41]I'm a big fan of that, having a place to put your thumb, but also when you're in standard grip, it really holds the pinky for resisting centrifugal force and the other kind of forces you engage when you're slashing with a knife like this. So just a beautiful knife. I mean, a great all-arounder. That's like a 3.6-inch blade, and you could just use this as your EDC, But true to Dirk Pinkerton's sort of design philosophy, all EDCs are weapons and all weapons should be EDCs. Now, he never, I don't know if he said it just like that, but we've talked about it quite a bit. And he's always thinking of the defensive purposes built into EDC. And that, man, that is gorgeous. The Artisan Cutlery Kami by Dirk Pinkerton. Thank you, Artisan Cutlery and Dirk, for sending those to me.
[38:38]They will be cherished additions to both my Artisan, my Exotic Blade, and my Dirk Pinkerton collections.
[38:46]All right. Speaking of exotic blades, let's get to this. Now, what am I talking about? Exotic blades, titanium handles. I was kind of looking at my collection and noting just that, how I have a lot of titanium handled knives that have unique and interesting blades. And it was difficult to actually weed a knife like this out, for instance. You look at Cold Steel, they have a crisp. I do not have a crisp blade with the titanium handle. I know that there's one that I know of out there designed by Tiguas, which I'd love to get, but I haven't gotten that. So it was hard to resist putting, say, this, which is my most exotic folding knife blade in there. But this is more based on my luxury knives, my titanium handled knives with the fancy steel and exotic blades. So each one of these kind of has two. So each one of these blade styles, I have two different representations for. First is Tonto. And here is probably the most beautiful American Tonto in my collection, American style Tonto. This is the K2 from Riat Knives, deeply hollow ground, straight there with that flat chisel front. But that flat chisel front has a beautiful curve there. So overall, it looks kind of half Japanese, half American.
[40:08]Nice long swedge on top. And of course, the whole look of the handle, it looks like a dragon. This was my second choice handle, but I really fell for it once I got it and became grateful I'm grateful that this is the one that I ended up with. When they first came out, they had three style handles. Two of them were just two different color combos of a sort of katana-looking handle, and then this one looks like a dragon.
[40:34]So Tantov A, or number one, is the Riat K2, and number two is the— I'm going to use my right hand. Sorry. Okay. Is this one here. This is the Chris Reeve Knives Umnumzan Tanto. This has a lot going on for a tanto. So you have the hollow ground main, but that main has a gentle belly to it, gentle curve to it to aid in shearing type action. But the tip is different in that it is just a chisel tip. The whole tip is bevel. The whole tip is the edge. And so it's a zero ground tip, very different from this. And I love them both. If I had to choose one, I would say I can't. It's Sophie's choice here.
[41:24]I like them both a lot. This to me is very, very robust. You can get quite detailed with that chisel point. You know exactly where that edge is all the time. This also has It has sort of a double peak setup and a thumb swale that I like a lot because it allows you to really horse down on whatever material you're digging into. This, of course, you would do with carving. You wouldn't have your fingers like this going through cardboard or anything that you're actually going all the way through. But it just gives you a great platform to plow your blade in with. Also, the handle here, this one I bought from, what was his name? Gentleman used to show up to Thursday Night Knives. So it came worn in, beautiful snail trails on this nice titanium handle. I love the handle on this. Interesting lock setup. Doesn't look like it should be comfortable. Like look at that lock standing proud there with a little scoop out, making it even kind of sharper on the edge. But it's actually super comfortable in hand. This knife is kind of a mystery in that sense. Also, I love the cross hatching. So two beautiful exotic bladed handles. Exotic meaning they're not just standard drop points.
[42:42]Their ethnographic riffs or ethnographic mashups all right next up coming from poland is a something called the ishtar so this is the herman knives ishtar herman knives is a super high-end manufacturer in um um poland i shouldn't say manufacturer i mean it's like a custom knife company um they i guess to me that kind of remind me of olamic they make all sorts of custom knives not that you're calling them necessarily and saying make me this custom knife or that custom knife but they do all sorts of variations on their designs uh this one is the ishtar and named so because of that uh dramatic tapering uh persian style blade there very thin thin, full flat ground blade, very thin. This is a great food knife, oddly enough. I've used this to prep salads, and not because I had to, but because it was in my pocket and I wanted to try it out. Yeah, and that blade is excellent for that.
[43:49]Yeah, you're prepping salads with your high-end bullish tactical flipper. But I mean, what else am I going to do with it? I'm not going out and getting tactical. This, however, is wood. I'm waiting for the next time I have to wear a suit, This will be it. My lifestyle does not require me to wear a suit often. But next time I do, hopefully it's not a funeral, and I will carry this because it's nice and light. It's beautiful. It's classy. It's got this gorgeous, unique look with that gravel road texture pattern. Very highly lightened on the inside is that titanium, and it has a great sound. I'm going to open this in front of the mic to see if you can hear it resonate.
[44:34]It's like a c c sharp just kidding i don't know what it is but uh so beautiful handle almost on this one uh it's almost like the handle is more exotic than the blade but you have a really nice upswept blade here as shown before just now here's another one so there's an another exotic blade this is something we can count on from uh dirk pinkerton is interesting exotic blades oftentimes times, as I mentioned, ethnographically inspired.
[45:03]So this Persian, of course, is a pretty broad one. It has a somewhat high height, more of a saber ground flat. So more robust, say, than this Herman knife because of that blade geometry. S90V, here you have M390. What do you think of Persian blades? I know they get a lot of shade because of the point placement, um but i don't really actually in practice find it difficult even with an upswept blade like this to use that tip now maybe if i were using it all day long and opening up boxes all day long maybe i would fatigue or or tire of that and want a wharncliffe but uh so far hasn't been an issue and i do like the looks of most persian blades all right next up also one i just showed you but this is the dramatic recurve or kukri section. Here is the Dirk Pinkerton and Artisan Cutlery Kami.
[46:07]So you can see, well, from the name Kami, it's inspired by kukri makers and such and the kukri shape of the blade with the downward tip. However, that tip is centerline when you look at it, as I just mentioned, deep belly and then recurve evoking kukri, and then you have the super ergonomics here. This doesn't remind me so much of a Kukri. This is where he departs from the Kukri design as far as I'm concerned. But that's cool.
[46:38]That's what I like about these kind of ethnographic mashups. Now here's a Kukri shape that's a little more true to traditional form. This is the Jason Knight designed elements, distributed, Fox-produced.
[46:54]Mk ultra this is from the second run a number of years back now but this one is, probably my favorite uh if you're looking at folders that are supposed to be kukris this is my favorite for looking like a kukri i have the uh the raja you know series i have a couple other knives this one to me looks the most like a kukri and then that pommel as i was discussing the pommel here being so great for reverse grip because you have that thumb placement there that bird's beak also great for the pinky on a slash but here you have the more traditional style kukri handle that flares out so also excellent because but where this accelerates is not so much for the bird's beak which is good that that holds you in but it's this swell up that allows you see that on a lot of choppers the swell up on the top back of the pommel allows for the blade to kind of bounce back when you're exerting force downward and it hits here it's not going to continue that motion and slip out of your hand because that handle curves back up and arrests the motion it's also good for pulling stuff out if you had this gem between ribs of something or someone and you were pulling it out, this here would be a really great way to do so because you have palm engagement and pinky engagement.
[48:23]This, like the Kami, and like a lot of them in this, are half and half. So half titanium, half micarta. I love that. Love that. And I love recurves. No problem with recurves. If you have a problem resharpening recurve, just find something. Just get a stone or a diamond sharpener with a rounded surface. There are plenty of them out there. Like a steel from your kitchen knives, but with ceramic or diamond. And you can sharpen these all day long and have no issue look at those they're beautiful just to look to get look at together the uh the mk ultra and the common all right next up i could have called this hawkbill i could have called this whatever but i'm i'm just gonna call it picol but we have some super unique shapes here here is the shielding knives uh xl site and this is designed by DC Blades. DC Blades tier one gear reviews and his design partner.
[49:26]Man, they make some cool, cool knives. Old Squirrel Knives, I think, is a part of that design team. I believe he is the other half of it. This is, because he made the original custom sides, fixed blade versions of this. This is an extremely comfortable and extremely nasty, but also just beautiful to look at. Picol style knife. What's a Picol style knife, you say? That is a knife that is intended to be used with the tip down and the edge in, in a defensive manner. Kind of like a cat's claw. Punctures and pulls. Puncture, pull. That's the theory behind this knife and this style knife.
[50:09]Yeah, this is a hawkbill. This is a Pakal-style knife. This is a fruit knife, extreme, whatever you want to call it, but it has that Pakal use. The other one is also a Dirk. This is a heavily Dirk Pinkerton list here because of his love of exotic knives. This is his version of the Folding Pakal in the Inversion. The Inversion first saw light of day with Kaiser knives, and it didn't have the ring, and it had a much more of a reversed Americanized tanto shape, less gradual wharncliffe here. So this hawkbill is more like a wharncliffe hawkbill, but also in the picol setup.
[50:55]Titanium, this has that nice orange peel texture. It comes with two different clips, this sculpted titanium or the bent spring clip, and you can remove the ring if the ring isn't your thing and also the wave you can remove the wave and put on a different thumb disc that this shipped with this was a custom i don't want to say custom it was a pre-order thing and oh crown's fine and uh so if you were on the order you got it if not not um hopefully he comes back out with this i know a lot of people uh loved this and wanted to get their their hands on it by the way perfect ring placement you don't have to do anything with your fist to alter it. You don't have to alter your grip at all with your fist to make that work. Some rings are jankily placed. That one is not.
[51:45]All right. Next up are clip points. Clip points. You're like, what's exotic about a clip point? Well, I'm going to start with this one. This is the Hinderer Knives XM24 Bowie. To me, this is a pretty exotic looking bowie. You have a long clip that evokes the Spanish clip, and we'll get to that in a minute. But you also have that double peak with the thumb swale, which uh looks to me a lot like the mac v sog from the vietnam era so this i i think that hinderer's bowie shape is one of the most uh fetching in the business whether it's this on the on the xm24 the four inch now i find the three and a half inch to look a little stubby so we're talking the four inch or the or the ranch bowie the big the fixed blade one um i think that they look unique i think that they look exotic i think they look they're like um the same but different they look like knives you've seen before uh but to me that is an exotic looking.
[52:46]Um or um what do you call it bowie clip point style blade and i think maybe we take it for granted we've seen this design a lot especially in the xm18 three and a half inch version but when you look at it in the four inch version you really see the full expression of that blade kind of get the light on all the facets and and here's a more extreme version to me uh this again dirk pinkerton this is the last one you're gonna see uh this is his night horse his modern take on the navaja the navaja i showed earlier um with this spanish.
[53:22]You can see the you can see the echoes here so this has that spanish clip point with that long long somewhat flat clip it's more curved here but it still has a long flat portion here here on the night horse dirk takes the the hallmarks of a spanish clip point the long flat clip and oftentimes they have this downward reaching edge with a with a full belly and then and a flat front. He does all that to an extreme on this knife. And well, he's designed one of my favorite clip point blade ever in this knife. But also it's a it's an exotic take and a change of the clip point blade that is exciting to me. I look at this and it's it is exotic to me. So love this love the horn shaped handle, the full titanium handle. It's nice and I don't want to say heavy, but it's robust. This one here is a prototype that I bought from Dirk when he was selling some prototypes off, and man, I love this thing. This is a great knife. I'm not sure if Asymmetrical is still making this one.
[54:37]It was an exclusive at Smoky Mountain Knife Works. They also have, this was like 150 whatever, titanium S35BN. They also have a $30 version of this knife. That is so well worth the money and I gave mine away They might still have one But if you like this design And you want to spend only $30 They make a killer Version of this for a song A literal song Actually it's not literal.
[55:04]So those are my exotic clip points. Last up, I want to talk about the humble drop point. Drop point, Bob. I thought you said that was the whole point of this. There are no drop points here. These are exotic blade shapes. Well, these two you might get with me on. You might agree with me on. This first one is the Crystal Aurora. Crystal Knives Aurora from Russia. This is designed by, or actually Belarus, I believe. This is designed by Ivan Braganets, and that blade shape, yeah, it is a super acute spear point style blade, but look at that giant fuller on both sides. This is evocative of an exotic blade called the Yakut, a traditional Russian blade called the Yakut. So you look at this thing, it is so modern. It's so space-age. You have the titanium, you have the S35VN.
[56:01]The jimping kind of all over, all the micro-milling, and the cool kind of angular yet organic shape. Feels great in the hand and all that. And then when you pop it open, you have this traditional historic blade. I think it's really cool. so exotic spear point in in in that sense and then the last one here is exotic because you never see this except in maybe three or four other folders and that is straight up dagger like a real legit dagger like uh symmetrical spear point with both edges sharp as a dagger should be um beautiful titanium handle on this one of course it has to be wide enough to accommodate that full blade with that secondary edge because if you close it up, you obviously can't have it sitting proud of the handle like you can here because you would have a sharp edge. So it takes a lot of design work. Also, they're exotic because they're illegal in many, many places. They're not the most perfectly legal knives out there because of their double-edgedness. This one happens to have a really cool kind of large Tesla coil on the clip.
[57:17]And a sort of beautiful space-age coffin-shaped handle. So that's it. That is my list of exotic blades with titanium handles. Like I said, I want to get a couple of these Tiguas designs. He's a very interesting designer. I've been following him a while, but haven't gotten any of his knives yet.
[57:37]He has a Chris, and it has a titanium handle, so I'm going to have to jump on that. Speaking of jumping on things, Be sure not to jump on the Thursday Night Knives live stream if you're hearing this the day it's dropping. We will not have a show on August 15, 2024. We will resume broadcast on the 22nd, and we will do so with the Gentleman Junkie Knife Giveaway. Oh, look at that. Pretty cool. All right. Thanks for joining me on the Knife Junkie Podcast. For Jim, working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying, 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. Check out some great knife photos on TheKnifeJunkie.com. slash Instagram and join our Facebook group at the knife junkie.com slash Facebook. And if you have a question or comment, email them to Bob at the knife junkie.com or call our 24 seven listener line at 724-466-4487. And you may hear your comment or question answered on an upcoming episode of the knife junkie podcast.
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