There’s currently a race to the top when it comes to knife blade steels.
Just a few years ago, S30V was considered the best steel around. Today, S30V is sometimes considered an ancient steel while newer steels like S110V are praised for being even better. (To be clear, S30V is just as great as ever as shown by these S30V steel knives.)
The marketing associated with each new steel that comes out makes it hard not to get jaded.
Many knife patterns have come out over the years, but only one seems to have stood the test of time as one of the most popular knife patterns ever made. Yes, we’re talking about the trapper.
Our latest Badass Knife of the Week puts a modern twist on the traditional knife pattern in the always reliable Urban Trapper from Boker Plus.
Here’s an overview of the cocobolo version from Black Owl Outdoors:
The trapper design has been around for more than a hundred years, originally featuring a blade optimized for trapping and skinning. While the need for trapping and skinning has dwindled the past century, the need for a versatile and functional pocket knife has not.
Similar to the carbon steel versus stainless steel debate (which is actually way more complicated), knife owners are divided over whether a knife should or should not have a lanyard.
The thing about the lanyard debate is that people aren’t usually lukewarm about the topic. It gets people riled up more than the sit versus stand debate during the National Anthem.
But is there ever a time and purpose for lanyards on pocket knives? Yes, there is.
Before the wolves come out to correct me, let me clarify something: Lanyards and fobs are different.
Although used interchangeably, lanyards and fobs look and function differently. A lanyard is a longer piece of twine like paracord that ties to the end of a knife and wraps around the wrist for more security when wielding the knife.
A fob, on the other hand, is typically a shorter piece of twine that’s tied at the end so there is no opening to fit your hand in. A fob is there to keep your knife from falling in your pocket and other things (as you’ll soon learn).
There’s also a thong, which is essentially a leather string, that serves a similar function as the fob.
Now onto the reasons to add one of these to your folder.
I won’t go into the history and origins of the lanyard, but I believe the original purpose of a lanyard was to keep an item securely tethered to yourself. For example, some in the French military even carried a pistol tethered to their arm so they wouldn’t lose it. You can see Eli Wallach from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” attached to a pistol with a lanyard below.
Since then, people have adopted the lanyard on knives.
The lanyard is especially useful on larger knives that may fall out of your hands during use — though keeping a knife stuck to your wrist when your grip fails you may not always be the wisest idea.
It’s not as necessary on smaller pocket knives unless you’re using it in or around water, but the sentiment and reasoning still stands if you use your folders for hard-core tasks.
Knife people don’t care too much about looks… OK, so maybe a few of us do and lanyards/fobs add an extra item to accessorize your knives. This is the manly equivalent of bejeweling your smartphone case or matching your nail polish to your socks. And there’s nothing wrong with it.
Jesse Jarosz designed his very first knife in December 2009, a process he described as not knowing what he was doing. By 2012, he won “Best New Maker” at the USN Gathering. More than five years later, Jarosz has become one of the top knifemakers around.
And our latest Badass Knife of the Week is the perfect representation of his work.
KA-BAR teamed up with Jarosz to bring the quality and design of his custom Model M75 Tetrad to the masses in the production model simply called the KA-BAR Jarosz Folder.
Here is a quick video overview from Everyday Commentary:
This moderate-sized folder features a 3.5-inch blade made from AUS-8 stainless steel, which can rival some of the best steels when treated right. This version comes with the versatile but always dependable drop point blade profile, but it’s also available in a tanto version.
It opens via dual thumb studs and stays locked with a liner lock. Jimping along the spine allows for more nuanced control when you need better control.
The quest for the perfect steel is never ending. Just as one steel is praised as the perfect steel, another one comes along to claim the title.
There is no perfect steel. Some of the super steels these days like S110V and M390 are at the top of the line for edge retention but can be very difficult to sharpen without the right tools. Beater steels like 420HC and 440A dull pretty quickly but can be brought back to razor sharp without effort.
For a while CPM-S30V was the top of the line steel. The premium steel boasts some of the best qualities of a good knife steel: it has great edge retention, solid corrosion resistance, and average ease of sharpening. Here’s what Buck Knives says about S30V: “We consider this the absolute best blade steel available, and it is made in America.”
The steel was developed by Chris Reeve and Crucible Industries and contains a 1.45% carbon, 14% chromium, 4% vanadium, and 2% molybdenum. The alloy composition creates an even distribution of vanadium carbides that improve sharpness and edge retention.
S30V has become pervasive in the knife community, though it does vary depending on who does the heat treatment.
If you’re interested in getting a knife with S30V steel, here are 15 of the best knives with S30V steel blades, including a few currently in stock at Knife Depot.
We’ll start off with the legend. The Spyderco Paramilitary 2 is widely billed as one of the best all-around EDC knives ever made and part of what made it so great is the S30V steel. These days, the PM2 can also be found in S110V or in many other steels during special runs (CTS-XHP, M390, M4 Cru-Wear).
The knife itself is a bit on the larger side with a nearly 3.5-inch leaf-shaped blade and grippy G-10 handle scales. The knife uses Spyderco’s popular Compression Lock and all the pieces seem to fit together just seamlessly.
If you don’t have one in your collection, get one now.
Gerber? Oh, yes. Gerber actually has a few knives in S30V steel, but the first we’re highlighting is one of the best American-made folders the company has to offer: the Gerber 06 Manual Combat.
Unfortunately, it’s not just déjà vu. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have reformed the gravity knife laws in the state for a second year in a row.
The illegality of gravity knives in New York City has been a controversial issue the last few years after it was revealed that police were using the vague law to claim nearly any folding knife illegal by using the wrist-flick test. Police reform advocates and the folks over at Knife Rights wanted to clarify the law to prevent law-abiding citizens from being treated like criminals.
Advocates for the reform were cautiously optimistic that the bill would be signed by Cuomo after satisfying his complaints from the previous year’s iteration of the bill but were disappointed to learn of the veto.
As the old edict goes, the piece of survival gear you need the most is whatever you’re carrying at the time.
That same philosophy can also apply to self-defense tools as well.
Retired bounty hunter Fugi Escobido and David Bloch from Outdoor Edge developed a versatile piece of gear that anyone — whether serious survivalist, martial artist, or average Joe — should and could wear at all times.
It’s called the Para-Claw, and it’s a paracord bracelet with a twist.
The paracord bracelet is nothing new. Ken Onion even created his own paracord bracelet for CRKT. So how do you make something so prevalent even better? Add a quick release hawkbill blade.
Here’s how it works.
The bracelet is hand-tied with 550 paracord (14.4 ft for the medium size), but hidden inside the buckle is a 1.5-inch hawkbill blade made from BlackStone finished 8Cr13MoV stainless steel. According to Outdoor Edge, the blade is integrally molded to the glass/nylon guard that attaches to the bracelet.
When Ken Onion left Kershaw a few years back to pursue new design opportunities with CRKT, some wondered whether Onion could still deliver. Our Badass Knife of the Week proves he’s still got it.
The CRKT Ripple brings the design quirks and aesthetics of the inimitable Ken Onion to an inexpensive and effective everyday carry flipper.
The Ripple Aluminum is the latest generation of the knife, and it has knife people all aflutter.
It has a plain satin finished 3.125-inch blade made from 8Cr14MoV stainless steel that springs to life with a silky smooth action from the patented IKBS ball-bearing pivot system and a well placed flipper tab.
If you want a smaller size, the Ripple 2 Aluminum boasts a blade length of 2.7 inches.
Knives face an uphill battle because they are often demonized by the media for how a small number of people opt to misuse the essential tool.
That’s why I try not to include things that portray knives as weapons for killing. But when Steve Miller of the forthcoming culinary blog F.N. Sharp (not live yet) reached out to me about a project they did that reimagined popular horror movies without knives, I was intrigued.
With Halloween around the corner, I thought it’d be a treat to indulge in the darker side of knives. While we all know the villains of horror movies — like Chucky, Jason, and Freddy Krueger — F.N. Sharp pays tribute to what they call the unsung hero of horror films: the knife.
It’s that time of year again.
The guillotine is falling on a few of our favorite knife models as companies begin announcing the knives being sent to the glue factory next year.
Spyderco was the first to release its list on the Spyderco Forum. You can see the full list of knives being discontinued for 2018 at the bottom, but I’ll be writing an obituary for a few of the most notable models being put out to pasture first.
It’s important to note that some of these knives may come back in updated iterations, so don’t be surprised to see the Nirvana 2 with different materials and a more streamline design. Also others have already received updates like the Salt 1 series, so it’s kind of a moot point.
As Neil Young once sang, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” The Nirvana was a short-lived, having only been released for 2016. Despite only seeing light for a couple of years, the knife burned bright and got a lot of people excited.
The Nirvana was Spyderco’s first integral folder from custom knifemaker Peter Rassenti. Its handle was made from a single piece of titanium and featured the Reeve Integral Lock mechanism. The 3.76-inch blade was made from S90V steel while the overall design was sexy.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVQCCk6AZWC/
So where did the Nirvana go wrong? It ran into production problems since titanium is such a difficult material to work with. A few people had complaints about the larger size and a lackluster design.
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