Thanks to Lubo for extending me one of the Wasp folders, it arrived safely today and is a peach of a knife, my thoughts and searches were always for those knives with a thin blade profile and thin behind the edge, this is as thin a knife as I've ever handled, I don't know if I've seen any kitchen knives with as thin an edge as this has, with the S90v steel to support such a grind, I'm liking this right out of the box and she arrived very sharp too.
The folder does have the multiple step opening similar to what the Comrade slip joint folder does. Some may not care for that, myself I like the difference from all the rest out there so it makes no never mind for me.
The blade comes in under 3" from tip to handle, barely under but definitely less than 3" for those that may worry if carrying a knife with a longer blade could get you in trouble in your locale.
The clip is a deep pocket carry holds well and is changeable for left or right hand tip up only carry, while it has only one nail nick, well done and it is a real nail nick where the Comrade was more of a decorative grind and not meant to be a nail nick, but like the Comrade I would say most people would be able to pinch grip the blade open easily. The pull rates a little higher than say an SAK main blade and possibly if you adjust the pivot screw that may lighten it but I don't want to start messing with that as I can pull it open easily. Speaking of messing around, the folks at Manly send the folder in a nice small box, one area the knife fits into and a partitioned area there are two allen keys provided in case you do need to remove to clean the folder, good of them to do so, also inside is the Manly card that provides the details about the folder, steel and overall specs of the knife.
The spine of the blade is quite crisp, lets say sharp, I will be taking some sharpening stones to lightly round off those edges.
The scales are the digital camo, very nice look to them, my first
, but the inside edges of these also are quite crisp, ok lets say sharp and I'll be taking a small bit of sand paper folded up to soften those edges as well. Neither bit of fussing with is that hard to do and should not deter you from picking one of these up at your first opportunity, but I wanted to make folks aware that you may need to do that as I have also had to do similarly to other makes of folders too, so it isn't unique to this brand.
There are steel liners as well, and they have large areas removed to keep the weight down, I don't own a scale but the knife has a little heft to it but not what I would call heavy, just more like a very solid knife.
There isn't any jimping anywhere on the handle nor blade but being a smaller knife they probably felt it wasn't warranted to do so. The blade spine ramps up a slight bit as well as ramping down slightly by the edge which provides a little bit of a guard to protect you from sliding onto that razor sharp edge, man that is a thin edge! I was just whittling on some hard wood and it cut very well and handled nicely too.
Here are some images of this folder,
Wasp by
GaryWGraley, on Flickr
Wasp by
GaryWGraley, on Flickr
Wasp by
GaryWGraley, on Flickr
Wasp by
GaryWGraley, on Flickr
Wasp by
GaryWGraley, on Flickr
My one bit about it as well as the Comrade/Peak folders is they do lack a lanyard attachment, on the Peak I have I 'forged' out a piece of copper wire into a lanyard ring that fits into the area the clip filler sits and works well, so I guess I'll be doing a similar thing to this one
I'll post more after using her a bit longer,
G2