- Joined
- Dec 24, 2000
- Messages
- 1,055
You have got to be kidding me. It's sitting here right in front of me and I'm still trying to figure it out.
Little backstory first- bear with me. Used to be way into knives. Like big time. Spent way more than I probably should have back in the day on all sorts of high end production knives and an embarrassment of riches on customs.
Then my interest sort of waned when I got hooked on watches. That's my current "fix" now, although if you thought knives could put a hurting on your wallet, try watches. (Or even worse, both!)
Anyway, I still retain a healthy list of knife sites in my bookmarks and regularly check in with my old favorites. Just this past week, I was browsing Knifecenter's "News" page and I spotter the Boker Trance. I was immediately interested.
A few searches of this forum confirmed it was something pretty special- as I hoped- and not just a nice design let down by poor implementation or cute-rate manufacture. Sure, there are one or two nods to price point, but no real deal breakers.
So I pulled the trigger Wednesday evening, and the mailman just dropped off my very own Trance, the first new knife for me in a good long time.
I'm very, very impressed. From my years of acquiring many, many knives I know all too well how infrequent it is to buy a knife and have it immediately endear itself as a real standout. Plenty of them are good- even great- but in my expereince it's rare when one comes along and really presses all the buttons.
This CLB trance does just that. Intelligent design, framelock, perfect size, tip up (with an option for tip down), usable lanyard hole, flipper/guard, great action, impressive attention to detail, decent steel with an outstanding factory edge, quality build, and well finished.
And to my original point.....thirty bucks. Jeez, that is flat-out a smokin' great deal. Maybe I'm just that far removed and out of touch, but I simply can't recall any other knife that offered so much for such a small price of admission- not to mention looking so dang cool in the process.
My hat's off to Boker and CLB. Well done indeed. Were there some sort of "best small EDC folder" award, the Trance would simply HAVE to be in the running. Should I stumble into any of the all-too frequent threads asking that sort of question in the general forum, I will be sure to suggest the Trance. It's a hands down, no question winner.
And to those who complain about AUS-8 or pick some other minor nit, I say again: "Thirty bucks".
:thumbup:
