CRKT Ichi - assisted and manual openers

UnknownVT · Apr 21, 2006

Here's an interesting small knife that caught my attention -

I guess because of its small unobstrusive and subtle size.

I actually think it's very clean and good looking.

Nice sized for use "in public" without causing a stir

clip allows deeper pocket carry than the overly high ride of my $7 EDC....

About the same size closed - but a longer blade on the Ichi than that $7 EDC.

The Ichi is designed by Koji Hara and is available in both Outburst Assisted opening and manual opening.
("ichi" means #1 in Japanese).

The only way one can tell if the knife has the assisted opening is either open it and feel -
or by looking at the back/spine of the knives closed -

on closer examination one can see the "extra" black spring bar on the assisted openers.

The only difference between manual and ..................................... assisted-opening -

is that extra black spring bar - one can remove the spring to make an assisted-opener into a manual, and visa-versa......

Assisted on closed and at stand-off

Where the spring is just at/pass engaging the cam to open the knife -

Liner-lock is pretty substantial -

and engages well - for the size of the knife the liner thickness is almost approaching a frame-lock in proportion.

Spine view -

everything is nicely proportioned - nothing seems out of proportion.....

Like I said a good looking knife.

The assisted opening action is great the blade fair jumps out of the handle - but it's not too sudden to be jumpy - one can open it fast by almost flicking the disc opener and get the thumb up and out of the way. Or do it more slowly to the stand-off position where one can feel the spring take over and lift the thumb up out of the way.

The manual version feels nice and smooth with real positive click on lock-up - the thumb action is like any other regular manual one-hand opening - where one has to follow through.

The follow through is obviously not a good thing on the Outburst assisted-openers - but for some reason I do not have any inclination to do that - perhaps it's the positive way the assisted-opening takes over.

Only hint I can give is to place the thumb on/over the edge of the disc rather than trying to get the thumb behind the disc between it and the knife handle. Then push more or less in the direction of the cutout contour - works real well for both manual opening (with follow through), and assisted opening (lift thumb up out of the way).....

Handle scale material is Kraton - a rubbery type material with Zytel (I guess for the "bolsters") overall feel is very nice.

The black version is more subtle and probably would be "less seen" - however once seen - it conversely may attract more attention.

I really like the bright satin rubbed finish on the non-coated blade.....

then there's the "bad" news for some, the blade steel is none other than 420J2 (I may have wash after typing that... ) - not a particularly high grade steel - but probably adequate for a small light task knife.....
afterall I am carrying a $7 EDC that's most likely 420J2......

But they are sharp right out of the box - the blades have a very nice thin tapered flat ground - they not only slice free hanging paper well - but will cut through cardboard - deeper than the recent G-10 S30V Leek (matte version) I tested, and actually just better than the all steel Leeks too...

After playing with these Ichis I think I may try EDC'ing the manual version.......

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Drybones · Apr 22, 2006

Actually, I believe the handle liners are 420J2 and the blade is 420HC...a little better, anyway.

Death's Head · Apr 22, 2006

If it is 420HC, than that is much better than 420. But I wish they kept using at least AUS8. But with such a compact knife, 420 may be just fine when you are using it to open mail and boxes.
Great review. Keep it up.

UnknownVT · Apr 22, 2006

Drybones said:
Actually, I believe the handle liners are 420J2 and the blade is 420HC...a little better, anyway.

I wish that were true......

The liners are indeed 402J2, a very good thing -
BUT this is from the CRKT catalog page -

Also right on the CRKT.com web page of the Koji Hara Ichi
QUOTE:
Blade: Length: 2.50” (6.4 cm)
Thickness: 0.096” (0.245 cm)
Steel: 420J2, 54-56 HRC
Closed:Handle length: 3.25” (8.3 cm)
Open:Overall length: 5.625” (14.3 cm)
Weight: 1.9 oz. (54 g)
UNQUOTE

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Death's Head · Apr 22, 2006

420J2 blade. It is consistent with the street price of CRKT. It will hold up fairly well to paper and tape, but you are going to be doing some sharpening. It will sharpen easily though.

UnknownVT · Apr 23, 2006

Death's Head said:
420J2 blade. It is consistent with the street price of CRKT. It will hold up fairly well to paper and tape, but you are going to be doing some sharpening. It will sharpen easily though.

The street price so far of the CRKT Ichi is just over $30 - hardly cheap.

But it is a very well designed, and good looking knife - it's a great size for an unobstrusive knife - something I feel one can take out of one's pocket, open, cut something, and put it away without attracting much notice.....

I just started to try the manual version as an EDC.

However the 420J2 blade still bothers me - although it does cut really well - as I said it out cut the substantially longer G-10 S30V Leek .

Actually soft'ish steel like 420J2 is not that easy to sharpen well - as discussed by people like Cliff Stamp - the steel has a tendency to fold over the edge instead of forming a good burr and can cause problems of non-sharp blades due to this folding over if it is not cleared, and it is much, much harder to get rid of a fold-over cleanly than knocking off a burr. I have good experience of this on sharpening my $7 EDC.

As evidence of this - I noticed the very pointy tips on two of the Ichis had folded over and felt almost like hooks.
I ground/honed them down so that the tips were no longer bothering me -
I know I should have photographed them before I did that -
but even the "After" pictures show evidence that the tips had folded over -

look carefully at the extreme close up of the very tip to see they had folded over.

CRKT gives reasoning for their choice of steels on their Steel Facts page.

But most steels for knife sized blades are "tough" enough - I would have thought something like AUS-8A would have been much more appropriate for this "higher" calibre of knife.

Nevertheless, even with my animosity toward 420J2 - I feel the design, size, feel and operation of the CRKT Ichi far outweigh the choice of blade steel - I like Ichi as both an assisted and manual opener.

Using this Ichi manual version as an EDC I have already found a slight glitch for the very pointy tip - although it was easy to slide the blade under the plastic woven binding strips for tying newspapers - there was a tendency for the tip to catch and cut the newspaper itself....

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UnknownVT · Apr 25, 2006

Here's a nice photo showing the Ichi's OutBurst assisted opening sequence -

note this is CRKT photo.

There's an even better illustration using a small Macromedia Flash movie clip (fast loading) on the
CRKT.com OutBurst assisted Opening web page
where they show what I've called the slower/controlled opening by getting the blade to the stand-off position then nudging it past the critical on-cam point (and lifting the thumb up and out of the way) where the spring takes over and opens the knife the rest of the way.

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Vincent
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Cliff Stamp · Apr 25, 2006

The floppy edge on that steel is the worst aspect, if you don't get rid of it the edge retention can be 1/10 of optimal, which doesn't do it any favors. Nice looking knife though, very slim point, looks like a nice gentleman knife, doesn't say weapon too much.

-Cliff

UnknownVT · Apr 26, 2006

Cliff Stamp said:
The floppy edge on that steel is the worst aspect, if you don't get rid of it the edge retention can be 1/10 of optimal, which doesn't do it any favors. Nice looking knife though, very slim point, looks like a nice gentleman knife, doesn't say weapon too much.

I haven't encountered this floppy/fold-over edge much except for these two recent 420J2 blades (Ichi and the $7 EDC)
plus 2 samples of the #8 Opinel stainless steel.

However having said that, those stainless steel #8 Opinels are some of the sharpest knives I have, and that $7 EDC is no slouch either.

These Ichi(s) are pretty darned sharp - that's in terms of cutting through things - not just shallow cutting like shaving or scoring paper. The depth of cut into regular corrugated cardboard seems to be about the same depth as my sharpened Opinels - and these Ichis are considerably shorter - and that's just out of the box ......
in this way I'm real impressed.

Here's another size comparison photo with some similar sized knives and as well as a well known standard size of a Victorinox SAK.

Even though this may not be the most efficient in terms of blade/handle size ratio (look at the Kerhsaw Centofante-Onion for that) - the handle seems about the right size for my handling and the blade is about the right (small) size to be non-intimidating....... fairly unlikely to be mistaken for a "weapon" - although I have encountered people who thought that the tiny 2 5/8" Victorinox Classic was a "weapon"........

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Cliff Stamp · Apr 27, 2006

UnknownVT said:
I haven't encountered this floppy/fold-over edge much except for these two recent 420J2 blades ...

Perspectives probably, most of my general user blades are very hard, well over 60 HRC, in comparison how the edges form on ~55 HRC blades is very annoying, there is little to no burr issue with 1095 at 66 HRC, the edge forms crisp and clean trivially. I have spent up to 15 minutes getting AUS-4/8 from CRK&T to push cut newsprint over one inch from the point it is held and it only took me about five minutes to regrind the edge on the Ratweiler and resharpen it after the recent metal cutting which left the edge visibly damaged.

The depth of cut into regular corrugated cardboard seems to be about the same depth as my sharpened Opinels - and these Ichis are considerably shorter - and that's just out of the box ......

It looks like a nice cutting profile, many of the "low end" steels they are using are on really thick edged tacticals, which radically reduces the ability of the steel to perform both in how it cuts and then stays cutting well. If they offered a simple and clean design with a very thin and acute edge, left with a bit of a bite, there would not be as many complaints.

-Cliff

UnknownVT · Apr 27, 2006

Cliff Stamp said:
Perspectives probably, most of my general user blades are very hard, well over 60 HRC, in comparison how the edges form on ~55 HRC blades is very annoying, there is little to no burr issue with 1095 at 66 HRC, the edge forms crisp and clean trivially. I have spent up to 15 minutes getting AUS-4/8 from CRK&T to push cut newsprint over one inch from the point it is held

Yes, it is all relative - since most of my knives are regular factory stainless steels - they are mostly in the mid- to upper 50's RC only.

My most sharpened knives are probably Victorinox SAKs which have relatively speaking soft steels - yet I had not encountered fold-over even though I have used round V-hone crock-sticks on them extensively. SAKs to me seem to generally sharpen up real well and easily.

Whereas these recent 420J2 are more annoying in their folding over at the edge - when I feel for a burr (which I find very useful) often I find it's more like burr with a fold-over/floppy bit.......

I do get a burr with the SAKs but have not seen the floppy bit.

For clarity - would you mind please describing your push cut of newsprint test?

Thanks again for the useful input.

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Cliff Stamp · Apr 27, 2006

The overall length is 9.5", the blade is 4.5" including the choil, here is a nicer picture of the same style of knife :

3.5%20inch%20Coyote%20Meadow%20with%20Stag%20and%20Desert%20Ironwood%20Handle.jpg

http://www.seamountknifeworks.com/gallery.htm

-Cliff

UnknownVT · May 2, 2006

Cliff Stamp said:
The overall length is 9.5", the blade is 4.5" including the choil, here is a nicer picture of the same style of knife :
http://www.seamountknifeworks.com/gallery.htm

Nice looking knife and interesting link (I liked the Francine Martin etched David Boye fillet knives there) - but perhaps in the wrong thread?

Anyway there is some difference in the assisted opening action between the satin finished and the Black OutBurst assisted opening Ichis.

The black seems pretty standard as I expected - but the high satin finished one seems to be just a bit "stronger" in its assisted opening.

Both are pretty fast - and I have confidence in both.

Up to now my standard for assisted openers has been the later versions of the Kershaw Leek - using their Index-Open/flipper - these Ichis are about as good - in a different way - I do really like the flipper on the Kershaw Leek - but the disc on the Ichi and the feel of the OutBurst assisted opening seems very good for an action using the thumb.

OK the difference - I think is the way the spring bar is installed in the stronger satin Ichi - I think it's been installed a bit further in, or "longer" if you will - so that it is still in contact with the blade tang/heel when fully open - so when I unlatch the liner-lock, the blade is (gently) nudged just past the ball-bearing detent - so if I now release the liner the blade is actually past the lock and can still be closed. There is absolutely no danger of the blade springing back - the nudge as I tried to emphasize is very gentle.

I actually like this stronger feel and the action of just nudging the blade past the lock when unlatching is a nice touch - I'm not sure if this is standard - but I may try to experiment with the other (black) Ichi to see if I can get it to be the same......

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