Just got this a few weeks ago.
First impressions: Light, sharp, solidly built. :thumbup:
This knife is built with FRN scales w/no liners. As a result, the knife is very light, noticeably lighter than the Benchmade Ares I carry as part of my EDC rotation.
The initial opening/closing action of the knife was quite tight when brand new. Enough so that thumbing the blade open was almost difficult. A little bit of militec solved that issue.
The blade itself is ridiculously sharp--sharp enough to deliver a clean cut when drawn through newsprint. However, the blade had other, perhaps unintentionally sharp edges as well. The edges of the oval opening hole, the jimping, and the top edges of the knife were sharp as well. Maybe not enough to draw blood, but sharp enough to be uncomfortable during normal handling of the knife. I've touched these surfaces down with a ceramic rod to minimize their potential for causing injury.
There is no vertical, or sideways play on the knife blade when open. Nothing. The only thing I can notice is a bit of flex in the scales when the blade is torqued when open. How much force is necessary to snap the handle? Sorry, I'm not about to run a destruction test on this knife, but maybe someone else will be interested in doing that.
I did conduct a quick spinewhack test and the blade stayed open with no incident.
Unfortunately, I don't own the Emerson karambit (yet), so I can't run a side by side comparison.
First impressions: Light, sharp, solidly built. :thumbup:
This knife is built with FRN scales w/no liners. As a result, the knife is very light, noticeably lighter than the Benchmade Ares I carry as part of my EDC rotation.
The initial opening/closing action of the knife was quite tight when brand new. Enough so that thumbing the blade open was almost difficult. A little bit of militec solved that issue.
The blade itself is ridiculously sharp--sharp enough to deliver a clean cut when drawn through newsprint. However, the blade had other, perhaps unintentionally sharp edges as well. The edges of the oval opening hole, the jimping, and the top edges of the knife were sharp as well. Maybe not enough to draw blood, but sharp enough to be uncomfortable during normal handling of the knife. I've touched these surfaces down with a ceramic rod to minimize their potential for causing injury.
There is no vertical, or sideways play on the knife blade when open. Nothing. The only thing I can notice is a bit of flex in the scales when the blade is torqued when open. How much force is necessary to snap the handle? Sorry, I'm not about to run a destruction test on this knife, but maybe someone else will be interested in doing that.
I did conduct a quick spinewhack test and the blade stayed open with no incident.
Unfortunately, I don't own the Emerson karambit (yet), so I can't run a side by side comparison.
, the Tarani Karambits are really nice and they are the only folding karambits with a front-lock, instead of a liner-lock; I had a bad experience with a folding Karambit with a liner-lock (from a different manufacture, not 5.11 or Emerson) and IMO a folding Karambit must have a front-lock, like the 5.11 models.