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I’ve been worried about Case for a few years.

Many of the iconic and classic knife companies have closed their doors. Imperial Schrade Company went under in 2004 (though it lives on in some form after its name has been bought and sold by a few other companies) and Queen Cutlery called it day in 2018 after nearly 100 years in operation.

While traditional knives have been seeing a resurgence, especially with places like Great Eastern Cutlery committed to keeping the past alive, Case has been around for a long, long time and have been making largely the same knives for more than a century.

That’s why I was encouraged when they made a leap into the 21st century with some new knives and modern designs — a move I likened to the time when Bob Dylan went electric.

2019 is still young, but Case has been active in announcing new projects and even recently released its 2019 catalog.

Interestingly, this year is full of a lot of reworked knives and classics that were brought back to please the audience. Case is still in full blown going electric mode and I love it.

Feel free to skip to the actual knives, but hear me out if you want more Dylan deep dives. 2019 Case is the live at “Royal Albert Hall” bootleg era — completely reworking classics, revisiting old stuff, and continuing with the new.

Let’s dive deeper.

Case Reworks the Shark Tooth Flipper

The is the Case Shark Tooth.

It used to be like that.

But now it goes like this.

In case you didn’t catch that (and why would you if you aren’t a Dylan fanatic), that’s a line from this:

Similar to the way Dylan completely transformed that song from its acoustic folksiness, Case strips the old Shark Tooth to its bones and rebuilds it into something modern and sleek.

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We’re still going through some of the new knives for 2019. KA-BAR is one of those companies that releases knives throughout the year, such as the later releases of the Jarosz Flippers last year.

But, KA-BAR recently pinpointed which knives it considers part of its 2019 lineup at SHOT Show. There are only a handful of models, but I expect the company to release more in the future.

KA-BAR Becker BK62 Kephart

The biggest new release is the KA-BAR Becker Kephart. This one was actually announced in October 2018 with limited quantities available the following months, but it wasn’t widely available until January.

It’s always great to get a new knife in the Becker series, which is probably the best series out of KA-BAR — besides the classic fighting knife lineup. What’s interesting is that the Kephart is based on an existing design. Noted outdoorsman Horace Kephart designed the knife in the late 19th century and early 20th century. There are a lot of Kephart-style knives out there, but Ethan Becker has a special bond to the knife.

The full details about Kephart and Becker are extolled in a recent Knife Magazine article, but essentially Becker obtained an original Kephart knife and even handled Kephart’s personal knife that now resides at a museum.

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It’s no secret that I am somewhat of a Hawk Head. That is I am a huge fan of the father and son knifemaking duo of Grant and Gavin Hawk.

Well, the Hawks — who are best known for making some of the most innovative and boundary-pushing knives on the market — are back with another production model called the Gearhead.

Check it out:

The aptly named Mantis Gearhead is a new design that uses a lever to turn gears to engage the knife. According to the Hawks, they made the design after noticing that people like to put gears on knives for decoration. They wanted to make a knife with functional gears.

The deployment method looks quick, reliable, and really fun to use.

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Leatherman is a true pioneer in the field of multitools.

Tim Leatherman wanted to make a knife with pliers because his regular tools were lacking. The result was the Pocket Survival Tool (PST), which would become one of the very first multitool pliers.

Leatherman dominated the market and although many companies have copied the overall aesthetics of the multitool, the Portland-based brand remains the top choice for plier multitools.

The company never stopped innovating, but finding new bents on a tool that has worked so well is quite difficult. In 2008, Leatherman released the Skeletool, which made an EDC version of the plier tool. It even won the 2008 Most Innovative American-Made Design at Blade Show.

They’ve had some other cool designs like the Tread Multi-Tool Bracelet, which is something you’d find around MacGyver’s wrist. But it looks like the brand may be onto a new technology that could change the Leatherman game — magnets.

So magnets aren’t anything new, but it looks like Leatherman has managed to use magnets in a way that allows a user to fully operate a Leatherman multitool with only one hand. You can access any of the individual tools with some pressure on a lever and close it securely. You also get an almost balisong-like opening and closing once the lock is disengaged.

It looks like Leatherman is betting big on this new technology as the brand decided to unveil a new logo to accompany the release of the Free series. Gone is the yellow swirling multitool and greetings to a gray multitool that forms an L.

You can tell Leatherman is going all in because it’s not just introducing one multitool with magnets but is releasing at least six different designs this year with the magnets.

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