Only if it gets a flipper.
It's actually kind of a tough call though.
In theory, I want knives to have the edge as close to my hand as possible, giving me the most leverage and the maximum amount of cutting edge.
In practice, I want a knife to have a safety in case the lock fails. The choil on my Chinook 3 actually saved me from my own stupidity while I was abusing the knife, ever since then I have been pretty firm on making sure my hard use knives will hit my fingers with the tang and not the blade if the lock fails. A flipper is the best compromise between the two that I've seen (and it's handy for opening the knife). It's a shame that the design of the Ball Lock doesn't allow for flippers, most Compression lock knives on the other hand could probably take one without changing anything on the handle.
I think Spyderco should put a flipper on every knife that doesn't have a choil, but that's just me.
I just can't see the utility of a choil on a larger sized folder which has an otherwise well designed handle, with a deep enough finger groove just at the pivot to provide a good, secure grip.
A smaller knife, which has a shorter handle might benefit from a choil of this type, but on a larger knife which has a handle big enough to get a full hand on it, the choil does nothing but shorten the blade and reduce its utility.
Let's take a look at the Resilience, for example. This is a knife with no choil. It has an over all length of just a touch under 9.5", a blade (measured from the front of the scales) of about 4.25", and a handle length of about 5.25".
Now the new XL Manix, which has a choil; OAL of just under 9", blade length (measured from the scales) of 3 7/8ths inches, and a handle length of 5".
The Resilience's cutting edge runs all the way to the scales; the cutting edge of the XL loses about 7/16ths to the choil.
If the choil on the XL were gotten rid of in favor of running the edge all the way to the scales, as the Resilience's blade is designed, you would have a knife with a shorter OAL than the Resilience, but with a usable blade almost as long, making it a more compact knife with almost the same capabilities.
With the choil, you lose nearly a half an inch of usable edge while at the same time losing the ability to keep a full grip on the handle while bringing pressure onto the edge ahead of the pivot. And if the handle of the XL had the same design as the Resilience at the pivot, the blade would be proportionally even longer, giving the user a cutting edge as long as the Resilience with an OAL of the Manix. More compact, with the same amount of edge.
The only use of a choil is allow the user to choke up on the knife to get closer to the edge. Small knives have shorter, smaller handles, so being able to choke up makes some sense. On a knife as large as the XL which has a large, well designed handle, the choil only FORCES the user to choke up to get to the edge; it forces the user to use the choil simply because the choil exists in the first place.
Large knives have no need for a choil. Small knives well may benefit from them.
I have an XL Manix and like it; I would like it A WHOLE BUNCH MORE if it didn't have a choil! I use my knives hard. I would like to use the XL hard, but instead find the Resilience in my pocket instead because it doesn't have a choil.
The XL Manix has the better designed handle, better materials, grippier handle material with jimping, but because the choil gets in the way, I'm not carrying it.
Andy
