I know how some here hate Chinese knives. If that is you, don't bother reading this.
With my experience with the CH Knives CH 3001 as one of my forays into ball bearing knives to see if I could like them, I decided to try another CH Knives model. The CH 3001 has become my favorite EDC in any situation that I might encounter.
So after the usual wait of 2 months for delivery where I live, I now have my CH 3504 for a day. You could call this post more of a first impressions rather than a full review. I will update this this with further experience. The original CH 3504 knife had a skull motif which I hated. I was happy to see a plain handle design and I jumped on it.
The CH 3504 has a S35VN blade in a titanium frame lock handle. The frame lock has a stainless steel insert and over travel stop. It is a broad blade, semi drop point, flipper with no thumb studs
. I have learned that I prefer no thumb studs on flippers as they just get in the way. The blade is an almost full flat grind with a swedge on the back. Ferrorod users can forget this knife as the back of the knife is well chamfered. The gimping on the back is rather large and bumpy but functional. I would prefer every company just have gimping like Spyderco does on their knives, but oh well. The blade has a nice flat area with a long belly to the tip. I hope I can believe that the blade steel is as advertised, S35VN, but I have no way to test it. The blade is around 3.54" long or 90mm. This is bigger than the Rat 1. Centering is perfect.
The handle is 4.72" or 120mm long. It is nicely contoured and very comfortable in my very large hands in any grip. It might not be as comfortable for those with small hands. The pocket clip is milled titanium. It works very well and is fairly deep carry. It has a back spacer that is titanium and all is a very dark blue anodized.
The pivot is on ceramic ball thrust bearings. The surprising thing is that there are thick steel washers in the titanium handles to take the load of the bearings. This is great thing! This means that the balls will not wear their way into the titanium and cause the same problems as might happen in ball bearings against titanium in the future. This makes this knife a harder use knife IMHO. The action was great out of the box, but if possible I remove the factory grease, clean, and apply better oil/grease. It got even better with 85 weight Nano-oil in the bearings and pivot. The pivot screws are large headed but have normal Torx T9 sockets. The pivot screws have thin o-rings under the heads that make thread locker unnecessary. Everything stays in place once adjusted.
Now this thing isn't light. It weighs 5.7oz or 160g. There is no attempt to lighten the knife by milling out the handles inside. Milling to lighten the knife would add more cost of course. It is a bit heavy but given how much more blade you get over a ZT0566 for basically the same weight, well....
This is a big and relatively heavy knife. Is it for everyone? No. It is for those who are looking for a big knife for sheeple be damned, EDC, no apologies do most things well folder. It carries the same size as a Spyderco PM2, carries a blade much longer, and hides in the pocket discretely like a ZT0566. A blade with S35VN is nothing to laugh at. All this at around $88USD shipped to your door? What can I say?
So far I have been very impressed with CH Knives. They have original designs, good materials, and good workmanship. People need to start paying more attention to this company.
Pictures to come later.
As promised, pictures!
You can see the steel washer insert for the ball bearings. Nice touch. You can also see the perfectly symmetrical grinds and edge. It came very sharp but I gave it strop to refine the edge. The o-ring goes under the head of the pivot screw and keeps the screws from moving once adjusted. All the hardware seems to properly hardened too.
With my experience with the CH Knives CH 3001 as one of my forays into ball bearing knives to see if I could like them, I decided to try another CH Knives model. The CH 3001 has become my favorite EDC in any situation that I might encounter.
So after the usual wait of 2 months for delivery where I live, I now have my CH 3504 for a day. You could call this post more of a first impressions rather than a full review. I will update this this with further experience. The original CH 3504 knife had a skull motif which I hated. I was happy to see a plain handle design and I jumped on it.
The CH 3504 has a S35VN blade in a titanium frame lock handle. The frame lock has a stainless steel insert and over travel stop. It is a broad blade, semi drop point, flipper with no thumb studs
. I have learned that I prefer no thumb studs on flippers as they just get in the way. The blade is an almost full flat grind with a swedge on the back. Ferrorod users can forget this knife as the back of the knife is well chamfered. The gimping on the back is rather large and bumpy but functional. I would prefer every company just have gimping like Spyderco does on their knives, but oh well. The blade has a nice flat area with a long belly to the tip. I hope I can believe that the blade steel is as advertised, S35VN, but I have no way to test it. The blade is around 3.54" long or 90mm. This is bigger than the Rat 1. Centering is perfect.The handle is 4.72" or 120mm long. It is nicely contoured and very comfortable in my very large hands in any grip. It might not be as comfortable for those with small hands. The pocket clip is milled titanium. It works very well and is fairly deep carry. It has a back spacer that is titanium and all is a very dark blue anodized.
The pivot is on ceramic ball thrust bearings. The surprising thing is that there are thick steel washers in the titanium handles to take the load of the bearings. This is great thing! This means that the balls will not wear their way into the titanium and cause the same problems as might happen in ball bearings against titanium in the future. This makes this knife a harder use knife IMHO. The action was great out of the box, but if possible I remove the factory grease, clean, and apply better oil/grease. It got even better with 85 weight Nano-oil in the bearings and pivot. The pivot screws are large headed but have normal Torx T9 sockets. The pivot screws have thin o-rings under the heads that make thread locker unnecessary. Everything stays in place once adjusted.
Now this thing isn't light. It weighs 5.7oz or 160g. There is no attempt to lighten the knife by milling out the handles inside. Milling to lighten the knife would add more cost of course. It is a bit heavy but given how much more blade you get over a ZT0566 for basically the same weight, well....
This is a big and relatively heavy knife. Is it for everyone? No. It is for those who are looking for a big knife for sheeple be damned, EDC, no apologies do most things well folder. It carries the same size as a Spyderco PM2, carries a blade much longer, and hides in the pocket discretely like a ZT0566. A blade with S35VN is nothing to laugh at. All this at around $88USD shipped to your door? What can I say?
So far I have been very impressed with CH Knives. They have original designs, good materials, and good workmanship. People need to start paying more attention to this company.
Pictures to come later.
As promised, pictures!
You can see the steel washer insert for the ball bearings. Nice touch. You can also see the perfectly symmetrical grinds and edge. It came very sharp but I gave it strop to refine the edge. The o-ring goes under the head of the pivot screw and keeps the screws from moving once adjusted. All the hardware seems to properly hardened too.
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