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- Sep 12, 2023
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Excerpt from the full review:
First off, the best feature of the Anzu is the blade action is fantastic, as is the well-engineered detent. The blade will open with a sharp blast past that beautifully engineered detent, slamming into place with a confidence-inspiring BAM. The knife offers either a large, trapezoidal opening hole or an effectively jimped front flipper, and both work very well powering through that detent. Once opened, a hefty, all-steel liner lock bar slips in quite deeply behind the blade tang. When I was ready to close the blade, the handle’s generously cut liner lock cutouts gave me easy access to that thick lock bar. Just a gentle compression of that firm, sprung lock bar smoothly moved the liner off of the tang – no lock stick at all. The engineering of the liner lock bar detent enabled the blade to quickly pass the detent ball, and then begin its slow, buttery smooth descent toward the handle’s blade channel home. No guillotine here! And this knife’s pivot runs on caged bearings, not washers! The opening and closing blade action around that sweet detent is a thing of beauty.
The handle of the Anzu is based around 2 nice slabs of polished titanium. These Ti scales feature a pair of perfectly fit, inset carbon fiber inlays – 1 on each side! The handle is well chamfered and sculpted with the expected angular, geometric design of link removed The nicest features of the design are how the lines come together. When the blade is fully opened, the convex handle line just above the inlay is an extension of the crisply defined convex line on the blade that delineates the swedge from the primary bevel. And to add on to matching lines, the edge line of the concave section above the full-length knife line at the middle back of the handle corresponds to the top line of the opening hole.
To complement the sleek design elements of the handle are the complete absence of any visible fasteners. It’s not only beautifully engineered, it’s visually beautiful as well.
Next, we have the blade. I just love the incredibly taut, pronounced grind line between the full-length swedge and the main bevel. I am also impressed by the fact that the blade is heat treated to a hardness of between 60-62 HRc (although WhiteMountainKnives straight up calls it 62 HRc). That’s truly remarkable for M390. Although it does make me wonder how the low toughness of the already brittle M390 will handle that level of engineered hardness.
But there are some disappointments for me in the blade half of the Anzu. First off, the blade finish is a deeply striated series of vertical scratches that makes me think the blade was finished on either a bench grinder using a tungsten bristle wire wheel or a 10-grit belt sander. Despite appearing to be profoundly unfinished, the clarity in the application of the blade face striations, starting at the swedge, then crossing straight down through the main bevel, and continuing through the edge bevel, clearly identifies this as a precisely applied blade finish. It is definitely not my cup of tea (and in case you were wondering, my cup of tea is a hot serving of Golden Monkey tea).
Continuing with the blade issues, the blade is sharp along several edges. The perimeter of the opening hole was sort of cut to reduce the 90° edge, but this wasn’t enough. While I love using the opening hole to open the blade with a reverse, middle-finger flick, doing so scrapes off a bit of the surface of that fingernail. While it should not be as rounded as the body of a candlestick telephone (weird reference, huh?), the cut edge currently left behind is not finished as it should be.
And speaking of not finished, let’s talk about the blade spine. While it’s not the 90° abomination that comes on Spyderco and Opinel knives, the Anzu spine edge is slightly improved by the fact that the swedge angle makes the spine edge angle ~112°. But that is a purely unchamfered, untouched 112° of knifey sharpness, which makes the opening hole feel as soft and gentle as a velvet rope. This is an ergonomic disappointment for me.
Lastly, we’ll go back to the handle for one last nitpick. The blade pivot was installed backward! The clip side has the smooth, plain, circular steel inset pivot. On the clip side. The show side showed the pivot with the T8 socket. That’s backward, folks, but given the high design features applied elsewhere in this knife, I have to believe this was done on purpose, perhaps in an ironic sense of rebellion against the machine. The milling machine, to be exact.
To be sure, overall I really liked the TuyaKnife Anzu. For the $250 knife, it has a ton of excellent design and material features that make it a standout. The fact that it isn’t perfect makes this a typical example of human-made objects. I have yet to see a perfect knife, but that doesn’t mean “imperfect” is undesirable. I personally like the blade shape of the TuyaKnife Envy v4 even more, and it appears that it might have a less-heavy striated blade finish, which would be lovely. Maybe I’ll get a chance to review that later this year! Enjoy!
Verdict
I found the link removed to be a very good knife. I enjoyed my time with it as I wrote this review (unfortunately, I had to borrow the knife to write this article, so it wasn’t mine to keep). Let me tell you why I liked it.First off, the best feature of the Anzu is the blade action is fantastic, as is the well-engineered detent. The blade will open with a sharp blast past that beautifully engineered detent, slamming into place with a confidence-inspiring BAM. The knife offers either a large, trapezoidal opening hole or an effectively jimped front flipper, and both work very well powering through that detent. Once opened, a hefty, all-steel liner lock bar slips in quite deeply behind the blade tang. When I was ready to close the blade, the handle’s generously cut liner lock cutouts gave me easy access to that thick lock bar. Just a gentle compression of that firm, sprung lock bar smoothly moved the liner off of the tang – no lock stick at all. The engineering of the liner lock bar detent enabled the blade to quickly pass the detent ball, and then begin its slow, buttery smooth descent toward the handle’s blade channel home. No guillotine here! And this knife’s pivot runs on caged bearings, not washers! The opening and closing blade action around that sweet detent is a thing of beauty.
The handle of the Anzu is based around 2 nice slabs of polished titanium. These Ti scales feature a pair of perfectly fit, inset carbon fiber inlays – 1 on each side! The handle is well chamfered and sculpted with the expected angular, geometric design of link removed The nicest features of the design are how the lines come together. When the blade is fully opened, the convex handle line just above the inlay is an extension of the crisply defined convex line on the blade that delineates the swedge from the primary bevel. And to add on to matching lines, the edge line of the concave section above the full-length knife line at the middle back of the handle corresponds to the top line of the opening hole.
To complement the sleek design elements of the handle are the complete absence of any visible fasteners. It’s not only beautifully engineered, it’s visually beautiful as well.
Next, we have the blade. I just love the incredibly taut, pronounced grind line between the full-length swedge and the main bevel. I am also impressed by the fact that the blade is heat treated to a hardness of between 60-62 HRc (although WhiteMountainKnives straight up calls it 62 HRc). That’s truly remarkable for M390. Although it does make me wonder how the low toughness of the already brittle M390 will handle that level of engineered hardness.
But there are some disappointments for me in the blade half of the Anzu. First off, the blade finish is a deeply striated series of vertical scratches that makes me think the blade was finished on either a bench grinder using a tungsten bristle wire wheel or a 10-grit belt sander. Despite appearing to be profoundly unfinished, the clarity in the application of the blade face striations, starting at the swedge, then crossing straight down through the main bevel, and continuing through the edge bevel, clearly identifies this as a precisely applied blade finish. It is definitely not my cup of tea (and in case you were wondering, my cup of tea is a hot serving of Golden Monkey tea).
Continuing with the blade issues, the blade is sharp along several edges. The perimeter of the opening hole was sort of cut to reduce the 90° edge, but this wasn’t enough. While I love using the opening hole to open the blade with a reverse, middle-finger flick, doing so scrapes off a bit of the surface of that fingernail. While it should not be as rounded as the body of a candlestick telephone (weird reference, huh?), the cut edge currently left behind is not finished as it should be.
And speaking of not finished, let’s talk about the blade spine. While it’s not the 90° abomination that comes on Spyderco and Opinel knives, the Anzu spine edge is slightly improved by the fact that the swedge angle makes the spine edge angle ~112°. But that is a purely unchamfered, untouched 112° of knifey sharpness, which makes the opening hole feel as soft and gentle as a velvet rope. This is an ergonomic disappointment for me.
Lastly, we’ll go back to the handle for one last nitpick. The blade pivot was installed backward! The clip side has the smooth, plain, circular steel inset pivot. On the clip side. The show side showed the pivot with the T8 socket. That’s backward, folks, but given the high design features applied elsewhere in this knife, I have to believe this was done on purpose, perhaps in an ironic sense of rebellion against the machine. The milling machine, to be exact.
To be sure, overall I really liked the TuyaKnife Anzu. For the $250 knife, it has a ton of excellent design and material features that make it a standout. The fact that it isn’t perfect makes this a typical example of human-made objects. I have yet to see a perfect knife, but that doesn’t mean “imperfect” is undesirable. I personally like the blade shape of the TuyaKnife Envy v4 even more, and it appears that it might have a less-heavy striated blade finish, which would be lovely. Maybe I’ll get a chance to review that later this year! Enjoy!
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