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- Jan 31, 2002
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I just acquired my first Le Thiers knife from
JTB_5
and I am thrilled with it! I just can't get enough of this thing. With a ~3.5" / ~9cm blade, and ~8" / ~20cm overall length, it's a perfect pocket carry. It's light, at ~7oz / 200g, so it doesn't sit like a rock (cf Buck 112, its nearest size cousin in my collection).
Now, here's the deal with this Le Thiers knife. It's made by French maker Au Sabot in the town of Thiers (which I'll get to shortly). It's not the most expensive or prestigious of the makers of this knife design, but it's not the least, by any means. Hell, Douk Douk makes a version of the Le Thiers, and while I'd be proud to carry it, you're not going to see fine wood grain on their version! Au Sabot is known as makers of French "ethnographic" folding knives. Excluding the Opinel, they have a version of every folder common to L'Hexagone (The Hexagon, or mainland France) and Les Departments D'outre-mer (overseas). Their version of the Le Thiers (well, this version of their versions) is a friction folder with an exposed tang lever (think Svord peasant knife) with the terrific addition of a liner lock. Now, French folders from Opinel to the Laguioles are famous for not having much (if any) kick on the tang. This means that you need either a wood handle to absorb the contact of blade edge to the back of the handle (as in the Opinel) or you just need to close the knife carefully to avoid contact of the edge with the backspacer (as with many traditional Laguioles). Not so with Au Sabot's model of the Le Thiers! This thing has a stop pin! No more smacking the blade edge against the backspacer!
But all was still not well in my Francophile dreams. The stop pin did its job too well. When closed, Au Sabot's Le Thiers blade sat a bit proud, the very tip sticking up past the channel of the handle. I tried to live with it, considered a pocket slip, and even let it ride free in my pocket so I would just get used to it. JAMAIS! I stuck myself on it three times, finally leading to a trip to the Band Aid jar (and we all know how tolerant of cuts we knife knutz are). So I filed a little bit into the underside of the tang, where it rests on the stop pin, thus lowering the blade in the closed position and VOILA! the tip of the blade was safely concealed. Vraiment, I started with a file, then graduated to a Dremel when the 12C27 steel proved too resistant. But the Dremel did the job in seconds.
So what do I like about this knife so much? Well, it's not sharper than my carbon Opinels. Once I put them to a stone and strop, those things are Obi Wan Kenobi "This one's not worth the effort" now-your-arm's-on-the-cantina-floor sharp. But it's stainless. And my Inox Opinels just don't do it for me. This knife is French, and as I said before, I'm a Francophile from way back. I speak and read French, I practice and teach French horsemanship, and I love French culture. I'm trying to grow my French knife collection, needless to say. So there is that. But there is just a look to the Le Thiers. Oh, don't get me wrong, it cuts. Man, does it cut! The grind is darn near Scandinavian. The steel is great (equivalent to 440HC, I'm told) and the heat treat makes it quite tough and hard. Not difficult to sharpen but not too quick to dull. But there is something like a time warp going on with this knife. It's like the thoroughfare of traditional intersected with the boulevard of modern but the Department of Works forgot to put up a stoplight! The lines are almost 1960s Space Age but the action and materials are 19th century. If the crew of the Jupiter-2 from "Lost In Space" had had pocketknives, the Le Thiers would be what they would have carried. To be sure, there are other Le Thiers models that are more modern looking than this one, but that gets us to the rest of the story.
So it turns out that 1994 saw the meeting of La Confrérie Du Couteau Le Thiers, or The Brotherhood of the Le Thiers Knife. There were dozens of traditional and not so traditional knifemakers in Thiers France, and they were churning out scads of traditional French patterns, especially the Laguiole pattern, but no one had identified a knife traditionally associated with this area of France. Nevermind that the Laguiole pattern was ubiquitous, that it was ripped off by makers from Kansas City to Karachi, and that the craftsmen and -women of Thiers were not getting credit for their contribution to traditional French knife making. So the Le Thiers pattern was born. The Association requires that the knife be made only in Thiers, of Thiers materials, by shops registered with the association. They can tinker with the design to some degree, but the essence of the Le Thiers pattern must remain. The logo must be stamped on the near side of the blade and the maker can put their Mark beneath, as in Le Thiers . . . par [wooden shoe stamp] LE SABOT.
https://lethiers.fr
https://lethiers.fr/confrerie/
Forgive me for the Francophone website. Your browser should translate for you or you can use Google Translate. If you have no French, this video might frustrate, but the production values are good, nonetheless:
My model shows up very briefly at minute 7:54 in the video.
(Speak three languages and you're trilingual, two languages and you're bilingual, one language and you're . . . American.)
So that about covers my review of this knife. No matter it's artistic looking, it cuts. No matter its scales are fine ebony, it's durable. No matter it's fairly new historically, it's traditional. It's in my rotation. It goes to the barn with me and cuts open feed bags and baling twine. It opens mail and cuts bread. It's a good knife. It's a Le Thiers!
In addition, here is a video by Stephan Schmalhaus, a YouTuber doing great knife reviews of European folders both traditional and modern. In this one, he reviews a book on the history of the Le Thiers knife and shows off some of his own collection.
And if you find yourself in Thiers, you can stop by this studio and be coached by experts and build your own knife.
Zieg
JTB_5
and I am thrilled with it! I just can't get enough of this thing. With a ~3.5" / ~9cm blade, and ~8" / ~20cm overall length, it's a perfect pocket carry. It's light, at ~7oz / 200g, so it doesn't sit like a rock (cf Buck 112, its nearest size cousin in my collection).
Now, here's the deal with this Le Thiers knife. It's made by French maker Au Sabot in the town of Thiers (which I'll get to shortly). It's not the most expensive or prestigious of the makers of this knife design, but it's not the least, by any means. Hell, Douk Douk makes a version of the Le Thiers, and while I'd be proud to carry it, you're not going to see fine wood grain on their version! Au Sabot is known as makers of French "ethnographic" folding knives. Excluding the Opinel, they have a version of every folder common to L'Hexagone (The Hexagon, or mainland France) and Les Departments D'outre-mer (overseas). Their version of the Le Thiers (well, this version of their versions) is a friction folder with an exposed tang lever (think Svord peasant knife) with the terrific addition of a liner lock. Now, French folders from Opinel to the Laguioles are famous for not having much (if any) kick on the tang. This means that you need either a wood handle to absorb the contact of blade edge to the back of the handle (as in the Opinel) or you just need to close the knife carefully to avoid contact of the edge with the backspacer (as with many traditional Laguioles). Not so with Au Sabot's model of the Le Thiers! This thing has a stop pin! No more smacking the blade edge against the backspacer!
But all was still not well in my Francophile dreams. The stop pin did its job too well. When closed, Au Sabot's Le Thiers blade sat a bit proud, the very tip sticking up past the channel of the handle. I tried to live with it, considered a pocket slip, and even let it ride free in my pocket so I would just get used to it. JAMAIS! I stuck myself on it three times, finally leading to a trip to the Band Aid jar (and we all know how tolerant of cuts we knife knutz are). So I filed a little bit into the underside of the tang, where it rests on the stop pin, thus lowering the blade in the closed position and VOILA! the tip of the blade was safely concealed. Vraiment, I started with a file, then graduated to a Dremel when the 12C27 steel proved too resistant. But the Dremel did the job in seconds.
So what do I like about this knife so much? Well, it's not sharper than my carbon Opinels. Once I put them to a stone and strop, those things are Obi Wan Kenobi "This one's not worth the effort" now-your-arm's-on-the-cantina-floor sharp. But it's stainless. And my Inox Opinels just don't do it for me. This knife is French, and as I said before, I'm a Francophile from way back. I speak and read French, I practice and teach French horsemanship, and I love French culture. I'm trying to grow my French knife collection, needless to say. So there is that. But there is just a look to the Le Thiers. Oh, don't get me wrong, it cuts. Man, does it cut! The grind is darn near Scandinavian. The steel is great (equivalent to 440HC, I'm told) and the heat treat makes it quite tough and hard. Not difficult to sharpen but not too quick to dull. But there is something like a time warp going on with this knife. It's like the thoroughfare of traditional intersected with the boulevard of modern but the Department of Works forgot to put up a stoplight! The lines are almost 1960s Space Age but the action and materials are 19th century. If the crew of the Jupiter-2 from "Lost In Space" had had pocketknives, the Le Thiers would be what they would have carried. To be sure, there are other Le Thiers models that are more modern looking than this one, but that gets us to the rest of the story.
So it turns out that 1994 saw the meeting of La Confrérie Du Couteau Le Thiers, or The Brotherhood of the Le Thiers Knife. There were dozens of traditional and not so traditional knifemakers in Thiers France, and they were churning out scads of traditional French patterns, especially the Laguiole pattern, but no one had identified a knife traditionally associated with this area of France. Nevermind that the Laguiole pattern was ubiquitous, that it was ripped off by makers from Kansas City to Karachi, and that the craftsmen and -women of Thiers were not getting credit for their contribution to traditional French knife making. So the Le Thiers pattern was born. The Association requires that the knife be made only in Thiers, of Thiers materials, by shops registered with the association. They can tinker with the design to some degree, but the essence of the Le Thiers pattern must remain. The logo must be stamped on the near side of the blade and the maker can put their Mark beneath, as in Le Thiers . . . par [wooden shoe stamp] LE SABOT.
https://lethiers.fr
https://lethiers.fr/confrerie/
Forgive me for the Francophone website. Your browser should translate for you or you can use Google Translate. If you have no French, this video might frustrate, but the production values are good, nonetheless:
My model shows up very briefly at minute 7:54 in the video.
(Speak three languages and you're trilingual, two languages and you're bilingual, one language and you're . . . American.)
So that about covers my review of this knife. No matter it's artistic looking, it cuts. No matter its scales are fine ebony, it's durable. No matter it's fairly new historically, it's traditional. It's in my rotation. It goes to the barn with me and cuts open feed bags and baling twine. It opens mail and cuts bread. It's a good knife. It's a Le Thiers!
In addition, here is a video by Stephan Schmalhaus, a YouTuber doing great knife reviews of European folders both traditional and modern. In this one, he reviews a book on the history of the Le Thiers knife and shows off some of his own collection.
And if you find yourself in Thiers, you can stop by this studio and be coached by experts and build your own knife.
Zieg
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