When a knife company owned by veterans of the U.S. military asks active-duty U.S. Special Operations Forces what they want in a fighting knife, this is the result: the Ares from Spartan Blades.
This is serious business.
(For more information about this and Spartan’s other made-in-USA products, visit the Spartan Blades website.)
We bought some amazing spalted maple burl at the recent Eugene Knife Show, gave it to Alan Warren and asked him to work his magic. Is this incredible or what?
(Learn more about this talented knifemaker at the Alan Warren Custom Knives website.)
Both of these framelock flippers are based on the award-winning Zero Tolerance ZT0454. The ZT0450 features an all-titanium frame, while the front scale on the ZT0452CF is carbon fiber.
Either one would make an ideal EDC — classy, cutting-edge and unapologetically cool.
(To find out more about these and ZT’s other American-made products, visit KnivesShipFree or the Zero Tolerance website.)
With all the praise lavished on the world-class Sebenza, sometimes it seems that Chris Reeve’s other knives don’t get the attention they deserve.
Take the Mnandi, an elegantly tough titanium framelock — honestly, it’s just an extraordinary folder. This one is scaled in Bocote.
(For more information, visit KnivesShipFree or the Chris Reeve website.)
If you haven’t met Jason Brous, we’d like to introduce you to his latest creation: The Exo.
We’ve been fans of Brous Blades for a while now, but this new folder really has our attention: D2 blade, 6AL4V titanium scales, unilateral skeletonized steel liner, and that crazy-good Brous Bearing pivot. All in an EDC-size package.
Oh, did we mention that The Exo comes in your choice of five flavors?
The Great Eastern Cutlery #73 frame is one of our favorites — it’s big enough to allow a solid grip, and it’s just the right shape.
Today’s wallpaper image is of the GEC #73 Tidioute Trapper, a slim slipjoint that features a single drop-point blade. This example is handled in green linen Micarta.
One of the smallest knives hand-forged by Lon Humphrey is his Custom Whitetail. It’s compact enough to carry comfortably in a pocket sheath, but it’s also incredibly versatile. It works great for EDC, or as a hiker or light hunter, or as a companion to a larger blade.
This particular Whitetail is handled in OD green Micarta.
(To learn more about this talented Ohio-based bladesmith, visit the Lon Humphrey Custom Knives website.)
Everyone should have at least one knife they don’t have to explain, a knife to love, a knife they bought just because.
This Fox River 3V, crafted by Bark River Knives, would fill that bill nicely. It’s a wonderful blade, no doubt about that, but oh, that handle — Desert Ironwood with mosaic pins — is simply spectacular.
If you called Lon Humphrey a knifemaker, we’d forgive you. He probably would, too.
But the truth is, Lon’s a bladesmith. He crafts his blades the old-fashioned way — hands, heat, hammer and anvil. It’s appropriate, then, that one of the knives that’s helped build Lon’s growing reputation is associated with iconic woodsman Horace Kephart.
In an early edition of Camping and Woodcraft, here’s the way Kephart himself described how the “knife of my own design” came to be:
“It was made by a country blacksmith, and is one of the homeliest things I ever saw; but it has outlived in my affections the score of other knives that I have used in competition with it, and has done more work than all of them put together.”
Lon Humphrey makes great knives by knowing what makes a great knife. And his Custom Kephart, featured in today’s wallpaper image, is as close as you can get these days to the blade carried by Horace Kephart — simple, strong and forged by hand.
To our eyes, it’s as beautiful as any we’ve ever seen.
Few slipjoints are as recognizable as a classic Barlow. Although the design originated in England, over the centuries it’s become an iconic American pocketknife.
Canal Street Cutlery understands the legacy, lore and love of the venerable pattern, offering us this two-blade English Barlow scaled in whimsically named “Tootsie Roll” smooth bone. And because it comes from the master cutlers at Canal Street, its quality, fit and finish are second to none.
(Learn more about this all-American company at the Canal Street Cutlery website.)
