Perfection! Almost, so close. Honestly the knife is everything I expected it to be. Actually better. I should explain what makes this one of the best knives ever made before we get lost in the pics.
First the blade. It's nearly 4" long, decently thick, has a nice long thumb ramp for my large hand to lazily stretch out my thumb on, and a flipper for easy opening and an absolutely safe grip. No slipping up and no cutting fingers off if I break the lock.
The edge is well centered on the blade. Something that is a little less common than you'd think.
The blade is also missing many annoying things, it has no choil to eat up edge length, no re-curve to make sharpening a pain, no thumbstuds to limit cutting depth, and no hole to snag in cardboard.
And this is a manual flipper knife. I had always assumed it would be AO, and am pretty thrilled that it's not. This thing opens smooth and easy every time, and I don't have to worry about replacing a spring sometime down the road.
Kershaw put Bohler M390 on the edge and CPM D-2 on the spine. Some people might have rust problems with CPM D-2 if you live near the ocean, I am well inland, so the steel combo works great for me. The alloy mixture in M390 is pretty much the same as S30V, with some minor modifications. The major difference being a slightly more refined grain structure, which results in higher hardness/toughness. It also has a little more Carbon and Chromium, making it slightly more wear resistant (and possibly more rust resistant).
Remember these are slight differences, no miracles or incredible performance gains like you'd see out of S90V, S110V*drools* or ZDP-189.
The handle is as fully featured as you'll ever find. It uses a Titanium Reeve Integral Lock with a Hinderer Lockbar Stabilizer. It has a very nice G-10 insert (which is perfectly flush on all sides) to match the pattern on the Composite Blade, and the milling is all around fantastic with subtle curves and dips giving an organic feel, while having the fine grooved texture to improve grip, and show off the weave of the G-10.
Of course this is all normal coming from Kershaw.
This knife has no wasted space and is incredibly utilitarian while being a nearly flawless work of art at the same time.
Except one thing...
The complaints about the clip were legitimate. I wonder if anyone at the factory actually held one of these things before ordering them for the whole batch?
Oh well, it was a relatively easy fix.
Now that it's nicely rounded the clip is as good as the rest of the knife. It carries deep, is tall enough to fit my thickest denim pocket seam, and is very low profile.
I give the knife a 8 out of 10 with the stock clip, and a 9.8 out of 10 with the modded clip. To get a 10 out of 10 it needs a distal tapered S110V blade, and a wire clip like you get on the Spyderco Caly 3.
Along with the Volt came a Victorinox Solo. Very nice knife, fit and finish is equally as good as the Volt.
The Volt actually has more primary grip (not including choil) handle space than the Military!
(Though the Military is still slightly more comfy with its more radical shape.)
And it has more edge length.
Unbelievable!
Here's a shot comparing the lockup on the three knives. The Volt and Military both have curved lock faces, the lock face on the Volt is kind of odd in that it doesn't go all the way across the tang. The angle is good and the contact point is correct so I won't complain.
The best lockface of the three, by far, is on the Victorinox Solo. The consistency on that lock is unparalleled, I have absolute confidence that it will lock up exactly the same every time I use it, and never wear out or break for the rest of my life. Sometimes I wonder why we don't see more knives with quality locking mechanisms like those coming out of Victorinox.
