- Joined
- Oct 26, 2000
- Messages
- 2,468
After someone had posted a link to these a week or so ago I decided that the time had come for me to get a new SAK. The only SAK I've ever owned was a penknife that I inherited from my grandfather when I was about 6 years old. It was my first knife.
Anyhow, this one looked like a good one and Anthony Cheeseboro and I both ordered one about the same time. It was not particularly expensive $56 US and that included shipping which was nearly as much as the knife!
The knife is really very nice. It has all the tools that you see in the pic plus the usual toothpick and tweezers. The blade is shaving sharp and the saw blade is quite sharp as well. It has the strong spring action that everyone is familiar with in an SAK. The coolest feature is obviously the one hand opening capability and also the fact that the blade locks via a liner lock. The large screwdriver blade on the end opposite the blade also locks via the other end of the same locking liner as the blade. Lockup is a not very secure on mine as it tends to rock a bit and fails the infamous spinewhack test but I still consider it an improvement over the nonlocking SAK.
One thing I found a little odd though, is that the liner lock is really made for a left handed person, that is, it is configured backwards as is the screwdriver blade. An additional feature which is very interesting is that there is no detent holding the blade in since it is still a traditional slip joint style knife. It just happens to also have the liner split so that it becomes a linerlock.
Also, the screwdriver has a unusual linerlock feature that I have not seen before: the lock face actually extends around the bottom of the tang and forms an additional locking face. So the tang end of the tool has two locking faces instead of the usual one. I may try to build a regular liner lock knife using this method since it seems to be really solid.
The handles are Zytel which I am not overly crazy about since they tend to be slightly slippery when your hands are dry but that is a small nit. The bigger and more serious nit concerned the blade opening. It was so slippery that I couldn't get the knife open with one hand. I solved the problem by grinding some traction grooves in the arch with a Dremel and cutoff wheel. What a difference!
All in all, I would say that this is a great knife and well worth the money. To my knowledge it is not yet available in the US. I ordered it from Switzerland and it arrived in a charming European style wrapping paper and box in about 8 days.
Anyhow, this one looked like a good one and Anthony Cheeseboro and I both ordered one about the same time. It was not particularly expensive $56 US and that included shipping which was nearly as much as the knife!
The knife is really very nice. It has all the tools that you see in the pic plus the usual toothpick and tweezers. The blade is shaving sharp and the saw blade is quite sharp as well. It has the strong spring action that everyone is familiar with in an SAK. The coolest feature is obviously the one hand opening capability and also the fact that the blade locks via a liner lock. The large screwdriver blade on the end opposite the blade also locks via the other end of the same locking liner as the blade. Lockup is a not very secure on mine as it tends to rock a bit and fails the infamous spinewhack test but I still consider it an improvement over the nonlocking SAK.
One thing I found a little odd though, is that the liner lock is really made for a left handed person, that is, it is configured backwards as is the screwdriver blade. An additional feature which is very interesting is that there is no detent holding the blade in since it is still a traditional slip joint style knife. It just happens to also have the liner split so that it becomes a linerlock.
Also, the screwdriver has a unusual linerlock feature that I have not seen before: the lock face actually extends around the bottom of the tang and forms an additional locking face. So the tang end of the tool has two locking faces instead of the usual one. I may try to build a regular liner lock knife using this method since it seems to be really solid.
The handles are Zytel which I am not overly crazy about since they tend to be slightly slippery when your hands are dry but that is a small nit. The bigger and more serious nit concerned the blade opening. It was so slippery that I couldn't get the knife open with one hand. I solved the problem by grinding some traction grooves in the arch with a Dremel and cutoff wheel. What a difference!
All in all, I would say that this is a great knife and well worth the money. To my knowledge it is not yet available in the US. I ordered it from Switzerland and it arrived in a charming European style wrapping paper and box in about 8 days.
