- Joined
- Jun 23, 1999
- Messages
- 1,209
The Blink is one of SOG's new "assisted opening" knives. Like the Ken Onion "speed safe" this knife has a spring that kicks it open after you start it yourself by pushing on the (ambidexterous) thumb stud! You can see it here http://www.sogknives.com/blinknew.htm It is interesting in that the trick is to push the stud forward rather than trying to rotate it out as you would with a normal one-hander.
Good news... The knife is relatively inexpensive, High quality for the price, nice and thin, light, fully ambidexterous with dual-sided thumb stud and clip that can be placed on either side. Blade is short, but is angled and bellied such that there is more edge length than is obvious on such a short blade. Back lock is recessed a little so you can't accidentally disengage the lock gripping the knife. The knife has a sliding safety lock behind the spring on the spine. If the safety is pushed toward the pivot you can't open the knife. If you open the knife and then push the safety toward the pivot, you can't close the knife, and the lockup is really solid with the safety in place. All in all a nice piece of engineering!
Knife came razor sharp out of the box. Nothing special about the steel (AUS8) but it's OK. Edge geometry is fine for general cutting chores..
Bad news... There isn't much really. The scales are a little thin, but then this is supposed to be a light "genetlmen's knife" and/or money clip and it serves that role well. About the only bad thing I discovered is that dirt in the mechanism, even just a little pocket lint stuck between the blade tang and scales, will cause the lockup to fail, and the knife becomes dangerous! In this condition, even the safety switch will not save you! Naturally this happened to me when I was first showing the knife to a knife-maker friend of mine! Flushing the knife with water to remove the lint solved the problem.
My over-all rating would be A-, only thanks to its sensitivity to dirt. Everything else about this knife is really nice, and SOG is right in that once you learn to operate it, you end up opening and closing it hundreds of times just for the fun of it.
Good news... The knife is relatively inexpensive, High quality for the price, nice and thin, light, fully ambidexterous with dual-sided thumb stud and clip that can be placed on either side. Blade is short, but is angled and bellied such that there is more edge length than is obvious on such a short blade. Back lock is recessed a little so you can't accidentally disengage the lock gripping the knife. The knife has a sliding safety lock behind the spring on the spine. If the safety is pushed toward the pivot you can't open the knife. If you open the knife and then push the safety toward the pivot, you can't close the knife, and the lockup is really solid with the safety in place. All in all a nice piece of engineering!
Knife came razor sharp out of the box. Nothing special about the steel (AUS8) but it's OK. Edge geometry is fine for general cutting chores..
Bad news... There isn't much really. The scales are a little thin, but then this is supposed to be a light "genetlmen's knife" and/or money clip and it serves that role well. About the only bad thing I discovered is that dirt in the mechanism, even just a little pocket lint stuck between the blade tang and scales, will cause the lockup to fail, and the knife becomes dangerous! In this condition, even the safety switch will not save you! Naturally this happened to me when I was first showing the knife to a knife-maker friend of mine! Flushing the knife with water to remove the lint solved the problem.
My over-all rating would be A-, only thanks to its sensitivity to dirt. Everything else about this knife is really nice, and SOG is right in that once you learn to operate it, you end up opening and closing it hundreds of times just for the fun of it.
