With a name like "Chong Ming," you just know you're in for a good time.

We've touched on this sort of thing before, at this rate over a year ago. Yes, we've been at it with this nonsense for that long.

Anyway, as Darth Vader once said: Spinning's a good trick.

This is the Chong Ming CM78, and with it welcome to the current state of the art of the Chinese knockoff fidget spinner knife. I've scrolled by and passed up many of these over the last several months, but there was something about this one that I couldn't resist. I mean, just look at it.

That is some serious filigree. The CM78's vibe could probably best be described as, "overwrought." The fleur-de-lis styling even extends all the way down the blade.

For $13, you get 6-1/8" of ~~top quality~~ Chinese spring assisted stiletto-ish liner locking folding knife with a blade made of, er. Some manner of metal, surely.

Its product description goes on to propose that its intended purpose is "hunting," and describes its theme as... "sport?" But then, it also claims that it includes a pocket clip. Which it categorically does not. You really just can't believe everything you read these days.

As you can see, it's also sold as the "Ziekeer ZD00" and probably a myriad of other ridiculous and inscrutable monikers. If you see any of these anywhere you can rest assured that they're all probably the same.

But this one even bears an honest to goodness model descriptor, laser etched into its little aluminum backspacer. That's miles beyond how far we usually get with this sort of thing.

It's also singularly irritating to take a clean picture of when it's lying on a flat surface, because, well...

Yeah. That.

(If you'd like an infinitely looped version of the above, by the way, see here. You're welcome.)

The CM78 actually works as a fidget spinner, but not as well as you'd hope. It does have one thing going for it there, though: It's only 3-1/2" long closed, about half an inch shorter than our old spinner knife, which makes it significantly easier to use as such without whacking it against the web of your hand all the time. That means you don't need to have hands like a catcher's mitt to use it. With only thin steel liners and handle scales made of aluminum it's quite a bit less hefty, though. 73.5 grams by my scale, or 2.6 ounces. So it doesn't carry as much momentum as perhaps it could, which puts it in the curious position of being possibly the only object on Earth that could have been made better if more of it were constructed of some kind of potmetal. Its mass is also pretty evenly distributed throughout its length which is fine for a normal knife but not so much for something that's meant to be a fidget spinner. So the net result of all this is that it doesn't carry on spinning as easily or as long as you might like.

For comparison, my bog standard metal fidgeter I bought at the mall gods only know how long ago is 86.2 grams or 3.04 ounces, despite having a footprint of only around 2/3 of the size, and is correctly designed with the majority of its mass concentrated out at the tips of its arms. Despite both that and this being equipped with ball bearings, the former can easily remain spinning upwards of two minutes at a stretch while exhibiting a pleasing gyroscopic effect, whereas the CM78 runs out of steam after around eight seconds, even if you give it an unwisely vigorous flick to start it going.

Bummer.

The knife part is a downgrade from previous incarnations, as well. It has a good lockup, but a noticeable amount of wiggle in the pivot when it's open. The pivot washers are just plastic, not brass and alas not ball bearings, either. So it loses out there compared to our last foray, as well.

The blade triangular, ventillated, and short. Just 2-5/8" long and trying hard to look double edged, even though it isn't. I do like that it's spring assisted, though, because the assist mechanism also serves to hold the blade shut when it's at rest. It takes a concerted effort to get it over the hump and fire it off, which also serves to provide you a little peace of mind that the blade won't just spontaneously fling itself out when you've got the thing spinning away just half an inch from the palm of your hand.

...Probably.

It's totally symmetrical with one of the crossguard nubs serving as a kicker to push the blade open, whereas the other one resolutely doesn't. There's no real tactile indicator as to which side is which, and the spine of the blade doesn't even protrude past one side of the handle to give you a hint. Thus, opening this without looking at it carefully requires some trial and error, or an element of luck. A self-defense tool it is not.

The vaguely crucifix shaped profile is generally reminiscent of several other less ridiculous knives I can think of off the top of my head. Or, at least, ones that are ridiculous for different reasons. It's very Knights Templar, and the eagle-and-shaved-head crowd also tend to get all excited about things shaped like this for some reason. As you'd expect, it's not too tough to find a "Masonic" rendition of these, either. For "ceremonial" purposes, per the blurb.

The Chong Ming Branded version has this rather more tasteful logo on its injection molded neon green pair of center buttons instead, with an (R) registered trademark symbol and everything. I was certain at first that this had to be fake, just one of those nod's-as-good-as-a-wink japes we've come to expect from the Chinese to add a layer of superficial yet fictitious legitimacy to the proceedings. But blow me down, I was able to find a bonna fide US trademark registration for the "Yangjiang Guanfeng Industry and Trade Co., Ltd," who are the apparent force behind this thing. There's the C and sideways M marking listed right there, bold as brass, exactly as it appears (incessantly...) on the CM78's box. Go figure.

These guys have zero presence on the web other than their trademark registration, which makes you wonder if they're a front for somebody else. There's also the tantalizingly hilarious prospect that some other anonymous joker in China counterfeited the trademark of this shitty knife company and slapped it on a different shitty knife, for purposes completely unknown. There are a myriad of "Chong Ming" branded low end knives of various flavors all over the usual Chinese storefronts, so either these guys are a shadowy OEM of cheap novelty cutlery, or somebody's rebranding and reselling white box goods from elsewhere on the mainland under this name. We'll probably never find out for sure.

Anyway, you're probably just chomping at the bit to see me smash this to pieces and see what all's inside, so here you go.

First up, the fidget spinner portion of this totally does ride on ball bearings. They're press fit into the scales and recalcitrant to come out, so lest I break the thing I left them alone. One side also houses the zigzaggy spring that powers the assist mechanism, which rests in a pocket hogged out in one of the scales and seems to be a common way to go about it. It is, of course, absolutely slathered in Chinese axle grease.

Inside is nothing much surprising. The only odd thing is the driver sizes for the various screws. The pivot is a T8 screw head but for some reason the rest of the assembly screws are T7, which you almost never see. Otherwise there are no fancy construction tricks. There's no anti-rotation flat on the pivot screw, for instance, so you have to stick a driver in both sides simultaneously. Nothing I found was threadlockered, but at least nothing was stripped, either. Bor-ing.

The fidget spinner buttons are held on with little wood screws that are just reamed into the plastic. The back faces of the buttons aren't flat so they don't quite sit on there straight, which gives the net effect of making the knife exhibit a noticeable wiggle when you're spinning it. I cured this by giving both of them a short lash on one of my diamond sharpening stones. This may be putting pearls before swine but it did at least straighten the damn thing out.

Here's your shocker of the day. The edge actually isn't completely terrible out of the box. The grind out to the point is pretty good and it's acceptably sharp for a dime store novelty. This'd make a serviceable letter opener or, more realistically, bong bowl scraper. I've seen worse.

It's out of true, though. Imagine how disappointed we'd be in the state of the world if it weren't.

While we've got the microscope out, here's something interesting. Despite ostensibly being just black and white, the pattern printed on the handles and blade is actually in color. Check it out:

The red and blue dots are not an optical illusion, as superfluous as they may be. I imagine whatever they're using to print these is also capable of producing full color output and whenever they're not cranking out these is probably used to make containerloads of all those other horrid Joker/Trump/Skullybones/Pot Leaf/Camo/Anime Tiddies/etc. patterned knives you'll find festooning the plexiglass case in your local truck stop. And I'll bet you whoever is in charge of the graphic design is not paid enough to apply a lot of care or attention to what they're doing, so we wound up with these little color fringes. They're only really visible under magnification.

The gold bits are even printed with some kind of metallized ink. The overall effect is pretty damn swanky, but I'll bet you it won't hold up to wear very well.

The texture appears to be a bitmap graphic that's been stretched in a manner that included some kind of fuzzy interpolation, probably because the Chinese tend to treat image aspect ratios as a bourgeoisie Western plot, so when viewed very up close it appears a bit blurry and indistinct.

The Inevitable Conclusion

From arm's length, at least, the CM78 is a slick looking little number for sure.

It's just too bad for it these days that it's so far behind the times. 10 years ago, sure, it'd probably be a sterling recommendation for $13. Instead with this we seem to be regressing rather than progressing; the Wish fidget spinner knife I showed off previously was built better than this, and it was cheaper to boot. Nowadays $13 (or less!) can buy you a lot of knife if you're careful with your choices and don't just jump on the first shiny novelty you see.

But that's not how we do things around here.

Good is boring. Sometimes you can have more fun being dumb.