CRKT Nirk Tighe Overview

[Kyui Su Kim]

As someone on this forum said, what I have here is an overview, not a review. I will simply have my first impressions of the knife up and have not made hard use of this knife.
Yesterday, the Mrs. presented me with a knife that I have been ecstatic about ever since it was announced, the Nirk Tighe from CRKT. Now to start off, she and the fella at the shop that she bought it from, both agreed that it was ugly. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find the knife to very "unique" and classy looking. The blue accents are very subtle and do well to keep the knife from being too bland with stainless steel. The handle is large and provides for a decent grip. I say decent because the thin profile of the knife and cutouts make it a bit less than comfortable to "fist" grip. The pocket clip rides fairly high allowing almost the whole of the knife to be concealed in a pocket and goes in and out the with ease and without shredding your pants. With that said, the clip is unfortunately only tapped for right hand, tip up/tip down carry. The lanyard hole is a generous size that will fit 550 cord easily through, but honestly with the look of this knife, may be kind of a moot point. The lock back is actually part of the frame of the knife and is easy to disengage. At first I thought that it may become a problem if you were to grip the knife too hard and unintentionally disengage the lock. This is not the case due to the lock being so far down the back of the handle. The flipper on this knife, sadly, is not very useful. the knife will require some wrist action to get the blade all the way out and I find myself using the thumb cutout more often than not to open the knife. As far as I can tell the lock will hold up well enough. I gave it a few light taps on the back of my hand without the lock budging. Besides, if you are holding this knife in forward grip, your thumb will rest on the lockup portion, which should keep it from disengaging. Overall, I love this knife for what it was intended, a large gents knife. This is not something you will take out into the woods and baton with. I see that the knife retails on most on line places for about $90-$100. The Mrs. picked this up for around $140, but it is worth it to me to support my local brick and mortar shop. And now the photos:

(I have relatively small hands)

PS: Once my jaw heals up, I wil be doing a video.

 

[GCG199]

I saw someone buy one of these at a local gun show a while ago. I normally don't pay very much attention to CRKT products because of lack of tip-up carry options on most models.

I find the original to be too big, I think I would get the smaller one instead.

Great overview!

 

[Kyui Su Kim]

I saw someone buy one of these at a local gun show a while ago. I normally don't pay very much attention to CRKT products because of lack of tip-up carry options on most models.

I find the original to be too big, I think I would get the smaller one instead.

Great overview!

That's what my the shop owner said. He said he would be more interested in the smaller version. I, personally, love big knives.

 

[Noctis3880]

Regarding the opening, how are you pressing against the flipper?

I find that this position, the standard position for most flippers, will not open the blade as reliably:

This position, with the pointer at the side of the handles rather than riding along the back, will have more success:

Though opening is still not assured as you can still occasionally slip a bit. I find jimping along the flipper would have helped, though Brian insists that it is not necessary. Still, a flipper design on a lockback is tricky since the lockback puts constant pressure on the blade, which would cancel out a lot of the inertia from the flipper. Not like the framelock where any detent force is mostly removed once the detent ball clears the detent hole. I also find that Tuf Glide is good for this knife since the open design tends to attract dust to the pivot area if you use oil. Probably why Brian sent me some of the stuff along with my knife, though I didn't find out why until I tried using the usual Blue Lube and found myself dealing with a dusty oily mess.

 

[Kyui Su Kim]

Thank you Noctis. I am finding that more I flip it, the easier it is becoming. Guess it needed to be broken in. Plus I did loosent he pivot just a very slight bit. BTW is that a real one!?

 

[Noctis3880]

Yes it is. Custom made with M390 steel at Rc 62 and with a stonewashed finish on the handles as opposed to bead blasted.