I finally broke down and picked up one of these. I love the overall design and action. It's
almost a "Civivi Esprit", which would have been a win.
Bead blast finishes need to be a thing of the past. Maybe a dealbreaker all by itself.
I agree. I hate bead blast. It looks okay but not as good as a rough stone-wash that actually hides scratches. A bigger issue, especially with less resistant steels like D2 or AUS-8, is that this kind of surface effect will promote corrosion.
WE uses this finish on lots of knives and I have a few of them. Luckily, they tend to use it on 20CV, which is stainless enough that I don't care about increased susceptibility to corrosion. Here, the 14C28N is not quite as stainless but still stainless enough. WE's bead blast seems smoother than the old Kershaw bead blast that led to occasional examples of 14C28N rusting (probably in combination with neglect). Still, satin would have been much better and a rough and sparkly stone-wash would have been ideal.
In one of the āknife therapyā YouTube reviews, the guy also points out another fatal flawāthat the shallow sharpening choil is also a point of contact inside the joint on lockup, meaning that after a few sharpenings, lockup stability is going to start to change (unless you donāt sharpen all the way to the choil, which seems not at all ideal).
I saw that on Neeves Knives. He has noted it on a few recent knives from different companies. I'm wondering how much this is a recent trend in knife construction versus him pointing it out. I haven't had mine apart yet but I suspect he may be right. To be fair, there is still room and I've got a large EDC rotation so who knows if it will ever be a problem
for me. That's the thing though. Any good EDC knife should be able to be a person's only EDC knife... I'm curious to see if anyone has issues with this down the road.
Also, why donāt companies inset the clip only on one side and just drill holes on the other? Seems a good compromise. Righties get the inset, and lefties donāt, but at least they get a reversible clip. No sense in leaving that show side gouge for 90% of users.
This is a big deal to me and I totally agree with sticking to "just screw holes" on the "show side". An empty recess looks terrible, as if the knife is unfinished or missing a part. Of course, the fill plates some companies use also look bad to me. However they do it, it almost always breaks up the aesthetics of the show side.
A worse issue is that they almost always have crisp edges. That's definitely true here. The Sokoke has wonderfully rounded lines and good ergonomics
except here in the recess. Every time my hand brushes over this space, I notice it.
Honestly, I've passed on lots of knives because of this issue. I've made a few exceptions with micarta because I can sometimes sand it down in a way that looks and feels less bad. I'm going to try that here (and maybe also dye the scales). Still, I just wish it wasn't there. This is a long post but I really hope
WE Knife Media
reads it and thinks about these issues moving forward.
www.civivi.com
