Comeuppance
Fixed Blade EDC Emisssary
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2013
- Messages
- 4,765
I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find knives with build quality and action far outside of their price range. Here are my impressions:
Stedemon: Very fast, fluid, excellent flippers. The designs are unique and reasonably functional. Every Stedemon I've owned has had drop-shut pivot action. No appreciable warranty department, though, so my Shy IV that developed some blade play was just a loss.
Aiorosu: I've only owned one - the Tornado, with 440C steel and a MRBS system. If it were a smaller knife, I would probably have carried it and used it. It's well-made, though, and was mechanically perfect. Probably not the most utilitarian design, however, and I ended up nicknaming it the Folding Airplane Wing.
Civivi (Praxis): This is probably the most effort I've ever seen in a knife under $100. The liners are polished and anodized, the blade finish is immaculate, and the design is extremely utilitarian. Also, it came with a reasonably nice box, pouch, and microfiber cloth. The blade stock is thin enough, however, that their decision to bevel the edges of the flipper tab actually made it thin enough to be painful to flip.
Overall, if your primary concern is a balance between cost and flipping action, these are all excellent options. That said, the blade steels are what tend to suffer the most when you get into this price range. Civivi uses 9Cr18MoV, however, which is apparently comparable to VG-10, and they also use VG-10 and D2 in some of their more expensive models. The other two brands primarily use 440C, which is a fine steel... But, really, if you want that "luxury knife experience", I'd say its worth coughing up the extra cash and getting a ZT, Kizer, Reate, or WE knife.
Stedemon: Very fast, fluid, excellent flippers. The designs are unique and reasonably functional. Every Stedemon I've owned has had drop-shut pivot action. No appreciable warranty department, though, so my Shy IV that developed some blade play was just a loss.
Aiorosu: I've only owned one - the Tornado, with 440C steel and a MRBS system. If it were a smaller knife, I would probably have carried it and used it. It's well-made, though, and was mechanically perfect. Probably not the most utilitarian design, however, and I ended up nicknaming it the Folding Airplane Wing.
Civivi (Praxis): This is probably the most effort I've ever seen in a knife under $100. The liners are polished and anodized, the blade finish is immaculate, and the design is extremely utilitarian. Also, it came with a reasonably nice box, pouch, and microfiber cloth. The blade stock is thin enough, however, that their decision to bevel the edges of the flipper tab actually made it thin enough to be painful to flip.
Overall, if your primary concern is a balance between cost and flipping action, these are all excellent options. That said, the blade steels are what tend to suffer the most when you get into this price range. Civivi uses 9Cr18MoV, however, which is apparently comparable to VG-10, and they also use VG-10 and D2 in some of their more expensive models. The other two brands primarily use 440C, which is a fine steel... But, really, if you want that "luxury knife experience", I'd say its worth coughing up the extra cash and getting a ZT, Kizer, Reate, or WE knife.
