You know, sometimes I almost miss the pre-Internet days. Or at least the early Internet era. Back then, the junk purveyors were all on late night television instead. In those pre-dawn hours, if you wanted to get your hands on the truly godawful and macabre you had to call the 1-800 number now, where operators were standing by, ready for your credit card and one easy payment. All of that took effort. Dedication, even. You had to be up at that hour, for a start, and even then you'd have to peel yourself out of your chair.

Nowadays it's just too easy. And some of us have a reputation to uphold and a show to keep going. So you scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and then you wind up with crap like this.

This is the NSOUR "Stainless Steel."

I'm serious. Its model designation is literally "Stainless Steel."

Or be precise, it's the "NSOUR New Stainless Steel Sharp Outdoor Camping Handle, Portable Meat Handle, Unboxing Fruit Knife for Self-defense."

I will let the record state that I am leaving the Portable Meat Handle completely unaddressed. At least this time they managed to get all the letters into "self-defense," and even in the right order. And NSOUR sounds like it ought to be the name of a Chinese knockoff boy band.

If a cigar cutter got drunk and fucked an out-the-front switchblade, the resulting crack baby would undoubtedly be this.

It's tough to miss the NSOUR's most prominent feature, which in fact isn't its silly name, but rather is this tantalizing trigger mechanism behind the big hole in the blade. At first blush it appears that sticking your finger in here ought to be an express ticket to amputation, but no part of the circular cutout is sharp nor contacts the edge in any way. This is a slide opening knife — not a side opening knife — and here's what that looks like:

The action is slightly gritty and drags noticeably. But it is not spring loaded and thus very emphatically, definitely and clearly, and by all legal precedent is absolutely not a switchblade. It just wishes it were.

The NSOUR weighs 57.8 grams or 2.04 ounces and is constructed entirely of steel of some description, most likely stainless per its blurb but with these things you can never really take anything at its face value. And it's not quite as compact as you'd think. It's nearly exactly 4" long when closed, call it 3-15/16". But thanks to a good chunk of its length being taken up by the finger hole the blade itself is actually a comically stubby 1-7/8". Open, then, it's 5-5/8" long overall. The heel of the blade ends in a short ricasso and somehow this knife manages to be the only one I think I've ever handled that actually has more length of sharpened edge than is actually presented to the user. Even with the blade fully extended there's about 1/8" of edge that doesn't come out far enough to ever actually make any contact with the outside world, instead preferring to hide in between the handle plates.

I guess that bit will never get dull, at least.

Because this sort of thing is contractually obligated to contain one on it somewhere, the front of it also serves as a bottle opener. Let it not be said that every part of this is useless, then. (And at this rate my collection of dumb bottle openers is nearly as large as my collection of dumb knives. Many of them are, in fact, one and the same.)

The NSOUR is nearly completely flat, made up of just two shiny polished handle plates made of sheet steel (also presumably stainless, or at least one would hope) separated by a springy backspacer. Only the screw heads protrude past this. Without them it's 0.217" thick. The designers probably could have countersunk the screw heads and made this much slicker, but they didn't. So with them, the total thickness is 0.304". That's still not much.

There's no clip. However, you do get a triangular lanyard/keyring cutout in the tail and a cheap split ring was included in the baggie with mine. For the paltry $10.25 this costs, perish the thought of actually getting a box. That's not how it works.

What It Do

Rather, here's how it works.

Opening this with one hand isn't quite impossible, but it's harder than you'd think. The blade doesn't lock in the retracted position, thankfully, because with only that trigger to work with unlocking it would probably take three hands. It simply detents there, but it does so just exactly too firmly to be convenient. The track the blade slides in isn't polished in the slightest, and despite the typical Chinese predilection to douse everything in petrochemical-smelling grease my example showed up entirely unlubricated. Matters improved a little bit once I dripped some machine oil in the track, but not much. Fidgeting with the thing a whole bunch helped, too. Even so, the amount you have to scooch the blade forward to get it locked open is too far to do in a single operation with one hand. You have to play this little game of push, scoot, push, scoot, regrip, and repeat which is not only inelegant but also makes to feel kind of like a twerp. Like you're doing it wrong. Every time you think if you choke up on it a little further, really reach for it, and contort your fingers like a sleight-of-hand magician, this time you'll get it in one smooth movement. And you can't. Not now, not ever. That's just how it is.

I think perhaps it would be best to ignore the purported self-defense application of this knife. I don't know about the fruit or the meat handling, either.

It might be better if there were some manner of grip greebles on the edges of it. But there aren't, and every face is polished smooth.

On the bright side, I thought for sure this would also be a self dulling knife with the edge raking across the bottom of the track every time you opened it. Surprisingly, it isn't and it doesn't, at least if you open it the usual way. Trust me, I'm just as shocked as you are. You can knock the edge into the bottom track if you deploy it halfway and deliberately push it down, but thanks to the spring action built into it, it won't want to stay there and it helpfully cams itself back up into a position where it won't damage itself. If you value what little edge this has from the factory, don't do that.

As a consolation prize, the frame totally does scratch up the mirror polished faces on the flat of the blade every time you open and close it. What, you didn't think we'd manage to skate by so easily without some crucial aspect of the mechanism being fucked up in such a way to perfectly annoy you, did you?

The trigger does indeed lock the blade in the open position. The lockup's not very solid and there's a great deal of rattle left in the blade in every direction you can think of even when it's ostensibly locked. But it won't close up on you until you deliberately pull the trigger back, which both unlocks it and retracts the blade back into the handle as you'd hope and expect. This brings your index finger with it so it's actually damn difficult to cut yourself with this even if you do accidentally cause it to fold up unexpectedly. So that's nice.

Obviously there's no real forward finger guard, but if you hold this the way it appears you're supposed to you'll have your index finger through the hole, which ought to do a good job of preventing your grip from sliding up onto the edge no matter how much of a muppet you are.

Since there's no externally visible mechanism on this thing whatsoever you're probably wondering, as was I, just how the hell it works. Well...

One. Moment. Please.

The NSOUR's external construction is superficially very simple, with just four Chicago screws in the corners holding it together. They're threadlockered and obviously they don't contain any anti-rotation flats, so getting the plates apart requires sticking a T6 driver in both sides and giving a hearty twist. Preferably without slipping out and stripping the screw heads, or stabbing yourself with your own screwdrivers.

Inside you can see the NSOUR's secrets, which are simultaneously brutally crude and ingeniously clever. It's just all dichotomous like that.

Which side you get off doesn't matter. Most of its mechanism is not only contained in, but also comprised of the backspacer. A selection of prongs carved into the spacer serve as both the detent and lock-open springs. A tiny ramp and notch carved into the top of the blade engage with these.

When the blade is retracted there's a pair of prongs that are just mashed against it and prevents the thing from just falling open in your pocket. It's not great but it works, in a broad sense. It's certainly better than nothing, and all this is what prevents the NSOUR from just being a gravity knife. I believe the lower one is also meant to assist in preventing the edge from riding against the lower surface of the spacer. There's a notch on the lower heel of the blade that I think is supposed to make the closed lockup a little more positive and less squidgy, but it doesn't quite accomplish that. Just by looking at it I have to figure that the assembly of one of these requires a fair amount of hand finishing and tuning with a file or more likely a tiny grinder. Expecting whoever-it-is to nail it perfectly every time is probably a reach. In my case they certainly didn't.

Out on the business end, another prong serves as an endstop and one more just barely falls into the notch on the back of the blade once you push it to its fully extended position, acting as a one way gate and preventing it from backing up. The trigger is very lightly spring loaded and pivots on its top screw, camming upwards when you pull it back to minutely push the locking prong out of the way so you can retract the blade.

The trigger itself is the most complicated part of the entire assembly. It's made of two plates held together with yet more Chicago screws, with a pin pressed into one of them. There's a hair-thin torsion spring around the lower screw which pokes into the little hole you see there and goes off "ping!" as soon as you take it apart. I couldn't get it to stay in place without putting the top plate back on, so I left it out for this shot. The interface with the prongs is a tiny lobe made out of what I presume is hardened steel, which is clearly the only precision machined part in the whole damn knife and rests in a dovetail notch on top of the blade.

Here are all the trigger components separated out, including the spring:

Reassembling the stupid tiny spring is exactly as annoying as you'd expect. The long arm of it doesn't go anywhere in particular and just rests against the back of the hole in the blade. Keen readers will have already spotted it in some of the other photos, but in the exceedingly unlikely event that you also own an NSOUR knife and have also unwisely it apart for some reason, here is where the other end of the spring is supposed to go when you finagle it back together:

And, the full spread of parts:

The left and right handle plates are identical, and you can swap them from one side to the other if you like. They're even polished on both sides.

All the internal bits, such as they are, in action:

It's always deeply satisfying once you get one of these weird knives apart and understand how its screwball action works. In some small part it represents a triumph over whichever dickhead designed it. It's even better when you can get the fucking thing back together without losing any parts, and it even still works. I'm happy to say I won this round, for whatever it's worth.

This knife's action is novel, but also really a stupid way to go about it. It's inevitable, though. The longer any mechanism exists, the closer the probability of some turkey trying to use it in a knife gets to 1:1.

And speaking of inevitable...

The Inevitable Conclusion

I have a friend who is an engineer. No, really. I do. For many years, he's told me he's kicked around the idea of writing a book. He wants to call it, "Why We Don't Do It This Way." I think I might have just found him a new chapter.

History is littered with dumb ideas that never caught on. How fortunate we are, perhaps, to have this opportunity to witness one of them unfolding right in front of us in real time. But the truth is, if nobody actually gave it a shot we would never discover what the next big thing might turn out to be.

Whatever that is, though, it probably isn't this.

It's easy to declare it's all been said already, everything's been done before, and there's nothing new under the sun. I don't think that's so, myself. But that doesn't mean that the next radical idea won't be a bloody stupid one.

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.

Summer skies, tall clouds, country lanes. Today is perfect; take the time now and tomorrow you can deal with tomorrow. For instance, maybe tomorrow I'll finally get around to painting that silly crate black to match the rest of the bike...

Scissors?

Scissors?

You thought this was a knife show and now I'm telling you I made you wait an entire week with no update and I'm showing you scissors?

You're damn skippy I am. Just wait until you get a load of this thing. These? These things.

Look, these are the "C5 Dismantling Chicken Bone Scissors." They're straight from China. The gods alone know who the hell the actual manufacturer is, but you can find similar things all over the Chinese market because apparently people over there are very keen on being able to dejoint chicken parts. I suspect, but can't prove, that the Chinese are probably the largest bloc of poultry consumers on the planet. This is Serious Business, so every pair of shears you see for sale from the Mainland makes a big deal about being able to cut up chicken bones.

But these aren't quite just like every other pair of random Chinese scissors.

Because you can break them apart into a bottle-opening-fish-scaly thing and...

...Yes, a knife.

"Big deal," you say. "My Faberware kitchen shears from Target come apart, too. That doesn't make 'em a knife."

Well, that's true for your common-or-garden loppers. One thing people don't realize until they try to use one as a letter opener is that your typical pair of shears has an edge on it that's not exactly sharp, per se, in the sense you're expecting. Scissors cut by way of having edges that are extremely square, usually shaped with a very steep angle in the order of 75 or 80 degrees. But you need two of those to tango — Without both halves coming together you're not cutting diddly squat.

So, uh, yeah. That's not how it works here.

One half of these shears has an honest to goodness knife edge ground onto it that's got an apex on it of exactly 30 degrees. I know this figure because that edge is so wide I'm actually able to firmly stick my Harbor Freight magnetic angle gauge doohickey to it, which is a feat you can't manage on most other cutlery.

It has a flat ground taper, too, albeit one that's extremely roughly machined. As is the edge.

Verily, it is capable of chopping things all on its lonesome without the aid of its other half. Although to be fair, this is far from a surgical slicer. Perish the thought of shaving tomatoes into paper-thin wafers. You're not shaving with this, either, at least without a significant effort in honing it. It's more for whacking indelicate foodstuffs into rough chunks. Or possibly chopping down a tree, in a pinch. It didn't quite make it cleanly through this Post-It, for instance, but it made a pretty respectable attempt nevertheless.

The blade is of course chisel ground by necessity, since its reverse side has to meet up squarely with the scissor edge on the other half, which has the typical 80-or-so degree steep and square angle on it. If you manage to ding up the knife edge this is also likely to adversely impact the scissoring performance dramatically, so try not to do that. The back side is dead flat, and you'll want to keep it that way as much as possible.

It doesn't come included with a sheath and its box is obviously designed for shipping and not for storage. The scissor handles are spring loaded and when not in use you can hold the ensemble shut with this little latch. The latch is spring loaded, too, and only the barest squeeze is required to make the thing pop open. Thus, handling the shears in the closed position is kind of annoying. Before just tossing them in your kitchen junk drawer all willy-nilly you might be advised to put a rubber band around the handles or something. Otherwise they'll be prone to pop open at random unexpectedly. Here's the latch action:

This is a complete multipurpose Ninja kitchen accessory. Thus, it has various tools and functions festooned all over.

For instance, there's this prybar end in the tip of one of the handles. The artwork on the box shows this being used for levering open clams, but it'd probably do a dandy job of opening a paint can or, if you whacked him smartly with the pommel, permanently embossing the enemy's forehead.

There's a lanyard hole in the other handle too for some reason.

You can dismount the halves by pressing on this little spring loaded pawl which allows the pivot to rotate beyond its usual endstop. Then, the knife portion and the fish scaler portion just slide apart from each other and you're ready for battle.

A torsion spring resides on the fish scaler side and is thankfully captive.

The scaler itself is very thick and does not posses any real edge anywhere on it. Cutting anything with it is out of the question.

I had something like this on one of my Swiss Army knives when I was a kid, too, and I've never successfully managed to descale anything with it. I'm not entirely certain anyone ever has, to be honest with you. All I ever managed to accomplish with the thing was debarking sticks, so maybe you could use this for a similar purpose if you could find somewhere to fit it within your culinary repertoire.

Never mind that, though. Because having both halves in hand lets you go all JTHM, thoroughly announcing to any passers-by that you are the goddamned boss motherfucker of this kitchen, thank you very much.

Not a single thing within your reach will go unstabbed, unpried, or unsnipped.

Special mention is due to the box.

Mine arrived just slightly crushed from its long trip from China. The front just shows off the article through a clear film window, but rear is considerably more interesting.

These are available in two colors, silver and "gray," the latter being notable as a color which this absolutely isn't. The handle scales are anodized aluminum and are really sort of mauve. It's not a trick of the light; they really are that color.

Note also the "scraping fish scale area," and that the knife can be separated... separately.

The feature list also calls out the slot in the back of the blade as a "peeler." And lo, on the spine of the box is depicted a bloke apparently using it just as such:

And a close inspection reveals that there is indeed an edge ground into the slot; here's yet another hidden function.

A hook on the ricasso of the fish scaler component also serves as a bottle opener. I tried the bottle opener and it works great. I can't speak for the efficacy of the peeler because I couldn't find an apple on short notice.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is easily the best-worst kitchen gizmo I've ever owned. You've heard of a combat knife? Never that, these are combat scissors.

For when you have to chop the carrots at 5:00 and fend off Triad goons at 5:30, just make sure you've got a pair of these tucked into your apron pocket.

The CobraTec Quick Strike is exactly the kind of thing I would have been all over when I was a lad, just starting out with my knife collecting career. Here we have a tactical folder with a stiletto point profile that makes a sly insinuation along the lines of its Ninja Special Operator status. But, importantly, without yet another goddamned tanto point on it. It's got a pocket clip and injection molded reinforced nylon handles with rubber grip inserts that would have been state of the art... 25 years ago. And you can tell this is a tactical knife because it's all black, see?

With a pair of ambidextrous thumb studs and plain pivot action, the Quick Strike is nevertheless a 50 state legal liner locker.

...

Oh, of course it isn't. If it were, I wouldn't be showing it to you like this.

Surprise, motherfucker.

The Quick Strike is actually another entry in CobraTec's "Hidden Release" lineup. But this one is definitely an oddball, because it's both a normal side opening manual folder (that's not even spring assisted!) and also a side-firing automatic. You can open it the boring way, for instance if you're doing so in front of the normals. But if you're in good company or just by yourself where no one can see, you can let your freak flag fly and use it as a switchblade, too.

The release button is right here, on the side:

What, you can't see it? That's because it's concealed underneath the rubber grip insert on that side. There's no visual indicator as to where it is, or even that it's there at all, and it's actually quite a bit further down the handle than you'd expect.

That means the Quick Strike is something that's sure to make any right minded individual grin: A switchblade that's probably actually very likely to go unnoticed as such, even if the individual prepared to frown upon both it and you heavily -- your boss, a parent, a policeman, whoever -- is given an opportunity to handle it. You'd have to already know what it is or be extremely curious to make the rather obsessive effort at fiddling with it that'd be required to find out. Somebody just groping around on the handle isn't going to set it off.

And it carries within itself the constant, ineffable sense of getting away with something.

(Although of course now that I've spilled the beans everyone and their grandmother will know the secret.)

Stats

The Quick Strike is 7-11/16" long when open with a 3-3/16" long blade that's technically a drop point, I guess, with a spine that's nearly but not quite straight and a point that winds up just a smidge above the centerline. You can bicker amongst yourselves in the comments whether or not this truly counts as a "stiletto" or if it's just an emaciated drop point. Anyway, there's 2-7/8" of usable blade length and the rest of it forms a square ricasso at the base of the edge, which is actually mechanically important. More on that later. I would be remiss, as well, if I didn't mention that it is also available with a tanto point if you're really into that sort of thing.

It's nearly exactly 4-1/2" long when closed and it's not especially broad, only about 1-1/4" to the peak above the thumb stud when it's closed. But it's pretty thick, thanks to its injection molded scales: 0.675" not including the clip, or 0.810" with it. As a consequence of its narrow profile but thick handles, it feels pretty fat in your hand and almost totally round in cross section, even though it mathematically isn't.

It does have full length steel liners but despite this it's still pretty light for its displacement: about 3.8 ounces (107.72 grams), the majority of which seems to be the blade.

There's another point of contention with the specs, wherein CobraTec themselves claim the handles are made of "G-10." I'm quite certain they're not. They look, feel, sound, and taste exactly like reinforced Nylon. They're also quite clearly injection molded, which is something that G-10 isn't. So there's a mystery.

You absolutely could not use this as your Tactical Special Operator's knife if it didn't have a clip, so it does. It's single sided, not reversible, and not deep carry, either. It's held on with one long screw that sinks into the backspacer, and it's also inset into a little pocket so it can't wiggle around.... much. There's no lanyard hole, though, so you'll have to find somewhere else to mount your paracord lanyard with custom solid anodized titanium skull face pace counting challenge beads, or whatever.

I have a bone to pick with the clip, actually, because it's entirely too tight. And matters are made worse because it pinches whatever you clip it to against the absurdly grippy rubber insert on the scale beneath. The net effect of this is that it's damn near impossible to get the Quick Strike to let go of your pants, which really rather defeats the purpose if you ask me. I remedied this somewhat by taking the clip off and bending the shit out of it in a padded vise so that it's less grabby and thus a little more tolerable. Without this, or perhaps adhering some manner of smoother material to the scale where the clip touches it, the Quick Strike's chief contribution to proceedings would just be destroying the hem on the top of the pockets of all of your pants while you give yourself a wedgie. Perish the thought of getting it out in a hurry; without some kind of modification that's a total non-starter.

The blade is 440C, which is probably not too exciting to most people these days. But it's an excellent throwback to that early 2000's era that makes dumbasses like me go all nostalgic, so I guess that's cool. So far its edge retention performance is unknown to me, but it doesn't show any telltale signs of the edge having been burned when it was manufactured so it'll probably be perfectly acceptable. My all black example has a nice etched and stonewashed finish on the blade that seems reasonably durable. You can get this with a green, red, or tan handle if you prefer but all four color variants have the same black blade. CobraTec's viper logo is laser etched there, too, even though cobras still aren't vipers. Has anyone told them?

Should we tell them?

CobraTec is an American company and many of their models are indeed made in the US. Nothing on the packaging nor the blurb for the Quick Strike, though, goes as far as admitting where it's made. So it's certainly possible this is an imported knife, a notion backed up by its lower than average price compared to most of CobraTec's other models. At least for any shortcomings it may or may not have it's cheap: Only $49, which is peanuts for any decently competent automatic these days.

Regardless of where it's made, the Quick Strike is reasonably well put together. Despite being a liner locker the blade centering is nearly perfect. The blade lockup is precise and positive, with no rattle or wiggle. There is blemish on mine down at the tail, where there's a smudge of melted handle scale material left over from when it was shaped at the factory. This leads me to believe that the handles and liners are ground to shape in their final assembled positions, like smoothing the backstrap on a 1911, so there will be no gaps and everything winds up flush fitting. I could foresee someone being bothered about this, but I'm not too worried about it, personally. I may be motivated enough to grind it off later, or maybe I won't bother.

The blade grind is not terrible for a factory job on a budget knife, but it could be better. There's a secondary apex on it past the bulk of the main grind, or perhaps a micro-bevel if we're being all modern and hipster about it, which is decently fine and good enough to chop a Post-It in half without any effort. I gave it a quick once over on my dinkum homebrew strop, which is just a scrap of leather glued to a block of wood fuzzy side up, and doped with some Flitz metal polish (yes, really), and after about ten strokes on each side the factory grind became sharp enough to readily shave my arm hairs off. I call that success, I don't know about you.

The edge grind out to the tip is excellent, which is good because the tip angle is very shallow and the Quick Strike is extremely pointy.

The secondary apex is pretty true but the main grind behind it isn't even close. This will require fixing if you're the type of nut who gets bothered by this. Otherwise you can just sharpen to the angle of the secondary grind and find other things in life to worry about instead.

~~Night~~ Operations

The Quick Strike is deeply satisfying to set off on its automatic mode, but actually accomplishing that is a lot more of a faff than it ought to be. That's a disappointment, really. I like the bolster sliding mechanism on CobraTec's other knives better, which feels more natural and is a damn sight easier to use. But the tradeoff there is that those can't be opened manually at all.

The fire button is hidden nearly exactly 1-3/4" back from the forwardmost point on the knife and is decidedly difficult to find. You can feel it beneath the rubber insert on the left hand side of the knife if you know approximately where to look, but you can also feel what seems to be a fairly long and very pronounced hollow in front of it. You have to mash the concealed button very hard, and you have to do so accurately in order to get it to do anything. Mushing around in the open space in front of it doesn't produce any result. Moreover, missing the button and mashing the void, then trying to roll your thumb back into the correct location from there also usually doesn't work. You're then left holding the knife probably much further down the handle than you'd like to, especially if your next move was going to be sticking it in the enemy. As a self-defense tool, then, the Quick Strike is actually a bit of a miss.

It has to be said, it's actually less of a hassle most times to just open this normally. It doesn't make you feel nearly as badass, of course, but it's significantly more practical. That relegates the switchblade mode mostly to fidget toy duty, and also baffling and amusing your friends. Bummer.

Its lockup puts me in mind of the CRKT M16, with how it eschews the usual endstop pin and uses the thumb studs crashing into the liners as its travel endstop instead.

The engagement of the liner lock is positive, accurate, and solid. It's not terribly noisy, either, although it does make a distinctive hollow sounding noise probably caused by echoing around inside those injection molded scales. There's a typical ball detent in the liner which is actually perfect. It's not too tough to overcome but neatly keeps the blade from falling open in your pocket.

Of course this thing can't work the way a normal side opener does, which is self-evident because you can open it as if it were a normal folder without having to fight against the spring in the process.

Instead of the usual torsion spring around the pivot, the Quick Strike's automatic component is powered by a leaf spring which is restrained by a little triangular wedge block that's hooked up to the fire button. At rest it's pressed against the inside surface of the backspacer that separates the two handle halves. You can see the wedge peeking out in this picture, and the spring behind it. The fire button slides the wedge out of the way, which allows the leaf spring to pop up and smack the ricasso on the heel of the blade, flinging it open.

Thus the blade's only under spring power for a short part of its travel and inertia does the rest. You can partially close the knife to this point right here after the spring's been triggered, at which point closing it further also takes up the spring and reloads the mechanism.

Of course you can also set off the spring when the knife is already open if you feel like it. No harm is done (I think, anyway) although it makes an ear splitting snapping noise. The mechanism will be reset the same as usual the next time you close the knife even if you do this.

Parts

I'm zero for two with CobraTec knives so far, vis-a-vis being stymied trying to take them apart. It's pretty clear CobraTec don't want you dissembling these, and maybe we should take it as read that you ought not to.

There's a T8 Torx head on the male side of the pivot screw but as you can see here, the other side is smooth and doesn't have anywhere to stick a driver. That'd be fine if there were an anti-rotation flat in the screw and a matching D shaped hole broached into the liners, but there isn't.

You can twiddle the screw all day long and the assembly will just spin in its socket forever, bringing you no closer to getting the stupid thing apart.

This annoys me on pure ideological grounds, of course, so I carefully if not quite accurately cut a slot in the head of the pivot screw on mine, what for to engage with a screwdriver. With this, you can at least get the blade out.

(You can also cheat these types of things by putting two blocks of wood in your vise and clamping the top spine of the blade very firmly down into the handle. The expectation there is that the force of the pivot hole in the blade being smashed into the barrel of the female half screw will bind it in place enough to get the male side out. The wood is to prevent marring the finish on your knife. This often works, but I'll be buggered if I'm ever doing that in the field, so I used my slot cutting method instead.)

The result of this was only marginally ugly, but it worked.

CobraTec claim that their knives carry a lifetime warranty, but I have a hunch that they will not extend this generosity as far as giving you a new set of screws if your break your knife trying to get it apart.

From here we run into another problem, which is that there's no non-destructive way to dismount the scales.

If I'd known this in advance, of course, or if I could have managed to work up the foresight to check for this sort of thing first, I wouldn't have bothered with the main screw.

There are two screws driven through the scales and into the liners which also poke out in order to restrain the leaf spring inside, and the only way to access the heads on these is to rip off the rubber inserts in the scales, which are glued in place. Or I guess note their positions and then extremely accurately lance a hole in the rubber directly over them.

Whatever the inserts are glued down with appears to be some kind of epoxy. This is evidenced by the tiny droplets of it you can see that were squeezed out from under the rubber before it cured. It's hard as nails, and doesn't respond to heat. Any solvent that would break it would surely also eat the scales themselves, and it seems unlikely that you'd be able to pry the inserts out without destroying them utterly.

I considered this for some time, and then concluded that I just couldn't be arsed.

It's self evident that the Quick Strike has nylon pivot washers, which can be seen even without taking it apart. If you can muscle the pivot screw out these could at least be cleaned if necessary, or relubricated. Despite the unglamorous hardware, the blade still doesn't wiggle any even when it's deployed.

Having the pivot screw out also presents the opportunity to find out what happens if you press the button when the blade's not held in with anything. In fact, I can think of no more irresistible pursuit in the universe right now.

What happens is, it makes an extremely amusing "ping!" noise, not unlike a Garand that's just run out of ammo. And the blade goes flying. (Here it is with sound.)

With the blade out we can also get a good look at the leaf spring inside. Here it is in its triggered state.

Looking at it from the end you can see how far it swings out. The spring is curved like a bow, and just the very tip of it engages with the heel of the blade. It's much more stout than you'd think, and having to pull its trigger wedge across the surface against all that spring force probably goes a long way towards explaining why the button is so hard to press. On the bright side, that obviates the need for a safety, the presence of which would be a giveaway of what this knife is. You can rest easy -- or walk, jump, climb, or roll around on the ground as much as you like -- knowing that there's no way you could set this off in your pocket.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's easy to admonish the Quick Strike as a gimmick. And fair dues where they're owed, that's exactly what it is.

But it's also a rare breed, one wherein its gimmick can be completely ignored if it annoys you, and it still works just fine. You don't see that every day. Usually when some jackass comes down with a case of vision trumping practicality, the end result winds up being something that expects you to suffer for someone else's art.

But the Quick Strike isn't artistic. It's damn well cheeky. And it's not sorry about it, either.

And I love that.

It is with great satisfaction that I report the banner image at the top of this page is now out of date.

The fourth bike in from the left, the blue one, is my old Bashan Enforcer (A.K.A. BSR-250, A.K.A.BS250GY-18D, A.K.A. Vitacci Raven, et cetera) which was a bike I bought for my nephew to learn to ride and also to tootle around behind me on adventure rides. This is a task at which it actually excelled. There wasn't a single damn thing wrong with it other than its tiny stature and even tinier engine. It did everything the big bikes did on our trips as long as it wasn't asked to do so quickly, thanks to cranking out only about 14 horsepower. This is much the same platform as the RPS Hawk 250 and its myriad derivatives, except the Bashan is genuinely 49 state street legal whereas the Hawk is an "off highway vehicle" you may or may not be able to talk your state into putting a plate on, and the Bashan is also built slightly better. Most if not all of the parts including bodywork are compatible.

But my nephew outgrew it pretty quickly and despite him throwing quite a bit of effort at it trying to make it faster -- new exhaust, carb, changing the sprocket ratios, etc. -- there's only so much you can squeeze out of a 229cc mill knocked off from Honda by the Chinese circa about 1988.

He was talking about finding a CRF250L Rally or a DR250.

A buddy of mine who flips bikes came into possession of exactly this CRF Rally was moaning to me about how he doesn't like it, because he wishes it was an XR650L. Hombre, do I have the perfect solution for you. So just yesterday we rolled this off his truck and now we have a new member of the family.

It's a 2018 and only has 3200 miles on it or so. Somebody obviously wiped out and put it down on its left hand side at some point in history which seems to be a recurring theme with all of the rescue bikes I've adopted over the years. There's a small dent in the tank and a scuff in the plastic on that side, no big deal in either case, and the rear luggage rack must have hit the ground because it was slightly bent. So I bent it back. Oh, and it was missing all of its reflectors because of course it was, hence the cheap Autozone bullshit screwed to it there just to get it through inspection. I'll do a better job on that later.

Two previous owners, only one not counting my friend who had it for about a week. The original owner was dad who bought this, for some damn fool reason, to follow his kids around on the trails on their dirt bikes. Why the hell he did not just buy a dirt bike in the first place is beyond me, so that's exactly what my buddy traded him for this.

Look at this bird

And how it squawks at you

He'll eat your mangoes, too

And he is all...

Green herons are indeed green, or at least appear so via some kind of iridescence when they're hit by sunlight. You don't typically think of finding herons in a tree, but in a tree is precisely where these two were. I believe this is a male and female pair but I don't know enough to be sure.

They have quite an extensible neck, but when they're just sitting around and not pecking at anything they usually keep it retracted like this. It makes them look like any other songbird until you notice the long legs and the bodaciousness of that beak.

Bonus picture of this one having a floof:

Not as in its description. "Superb starling" is literally what it's called. Lamprotornis superbus. I find them significantly more superb than the common European starling, anyway.

These are endemic to Eastern Africa which is obviously not where I spotted this one. Naturally, it was in a zoo.

Here's a bonus picture of it going scritch.

I have no idea if this was a male or a female since they are not sexually dimorphic and this one was, for the first time in recorded history, not making any noises.

Edit: I notice these are the very birds pictured in the "birds make friends, too" article posted here recently. How serendipitous.

It's gosling season. This family has been hanging around my work for the last several days, presumably overnighting under one of the shrubs or maybe in the drainage pond at the bottom of the property which has been quite full as of late. Sometimes they even come peck at the door.

If they like, I have a couple of clients I wouldn't mind if they came over and hissed at. But so far no such luck.

All aboard! This train bound for another episode of Sino-silliness, Chinese chicanery, Oriental oddity, and points Eastward.

Insomuch as it has a name, this is the "Originality Pendulum," third of three by our friends from YESISOK. But that, of course, is only the first tidbit of its name, which makes it sound like it ought to be a Lancrastian resident. As usual its full name is longer and rather less melodious: It's the "Originality Pendulum Folding Knife Mini Sharp Stainless Steel Fruit Knife Carry Key Chain Pendant Portable Open Express Knife." If you expect to actually use this for fruit, I'll just say there is a definite upperbound limit of fruit to which it'll be applicable.

Rarely can we judge a book so readily from its cover. The Originality Pendulum is a breath of fresh air in that respect, since it's easy to see precisely what it has to offer.

Originality is right. Yes, this is a small slip joint folder that's long on the joint but a bit short on the slip. This is because it has what can only be described as a real live and functional locomotive drive arm on it. The arm is spring loaded and is what serves as a detent to keep the blade positively, albeit gently, held in its open or closed positions. For this its maker consistently refers to it by using the word "pendulum." I don't think that quite means what they think it means. I would have said "piston," personally, but what do I know? We'll roll with it anyway.

That's because this is pretty rad, it must be said. I'm just chuffed to bits over it.

The Originality Pendulum is definitely angling for the keychain knife or possibly urban micro-EDC category. It's quite small, but not unusably so: 4-3/16" long when open with a pseudo-sheepsfoot 1-1/2" blade. It's 2-11/16" long when closed and just 0.280" thick across the flat of its handles. The piston mechanism actually sits proud of the handle slightly and bulks the whole thing out to about 0.322". The blade has a section of sharpened edge just a hair under 1-5/16" with a genuine choil behind it, so that all of the short length is at least usable. Of course, exactly what that blade is made out of is a bit of a mystery, per usual. The specifications claim it's 7cr which is certainly within the realm of plausibility but it's likely we'll never know for sure. Still, for a novelty miniature knife that's likely to be used only for non-demanding tasks, that's probably fine.

It's 42 grams precisely or 1.48 ounces, being made entirely of steel of one description or another, except for the piston which is prominently made of brass. So it's small and arguably light enough that you genuinely could dangle it alongside your keys. Or, perhaps, from your pocketwatch chain. Here it is with a quarter for scale.

There's no thumb stud or anything but there is what amounts to a fingernail nick on the form of a triangular hole through the spine of the blade. You might think this is for use as a thumb hole like a Spyderco knife, but not much of it is left exposed sticking out of the handle and it's really too small to access with your thumb. A fingernail really is the best way to get at it. There are some ridges around the spine and a small heel on the back of the blade, though, so you can just barely and with a fair bit of practice open this as if it were a rear flipper. It's not easy, though, because the piston is indeed spring loaded and it will want to snap the blade back shut if you don't manage to rotate it far enough. Fair dues, though, once you get it tipped past the halfway point it'll snap the blade open for you instead.

If you're used to a traditional small slip joint folder the Originality Pendulum is actually a bit easier and, if you ask me, a lot nicer to use. It's not as tightly sprung, and its spring action is longer and more progressive. It feels like it's working with you rather than against you. It feels more modern and refined, despite basically just being the same thing arrived at via a silly avenue.

There's no clip or anything but there is a hole on the tail you can use for a lanyard or keyring. And this time you actually can use it, without interfering with the function of the knife... The maker (or possibly seller) demonstrates such in this picture, which I've gleefully stolen because it means I don't need to bother to put forth the effort to find a keyring and then take my own. Hey, this must be efficiency. (While we're at it, get a load of those fake keys!)

Surprisingly, the Originality Pendulum's product photos are 100% accurate, which for fly-by-night Chinese cutlery may actually be a first. For instance, no polishing job whatsoever has been done on the taper grind on the blade. It's left with machining ridges on it so pronounced they'll stop your fingernail if you rake it across. But that's exactly as it's depicted in all of its photos, so you can't say you've been misled. Also, that grind may in fact actually be flat. Or if it's not, it's a hollow grind that's so subtle it's impossible to detect as such. The flats, meanwhile, are very shiny. Nearly mirror polished. The net effect is kind of attractive, but if you know what you're looking at it does broadcast "cheap."

What's carefully not depicted is the back side of the knife, probably because it's boring and just flat:

It's got a satin bead blasted finish which doesn't look too bad, though. I would have liked to maybe see a small clip here as well, but given that this retails for $10.27 at the moment -- tariffs and all -- at that price you probably can't have everything. It didn't come with its own keyring, either. Nor a box; it just shows up in a plastic baggie.

Obviously I was drawn to this purely for its mechanism and I was far less concerned about the rest of its qualities. It's a bonus, then, that this thing manages not to be complete crap in the bargain.

The Originality Pendulum is definitely built on a budget, but it's still surprisingly competently put together. Mine, for instance, barely had any lash in the pivot.

The cost saving features include making all three of its assembly screws identical: The two at the tail and the one through the pivot are the same. The pivot is spaced out with some small brass washers, which is a damn sight better than what I was expecting, which was nothing. That explains the solidity of the blade on its pivot, and its lack of rubbing against the handle plates.

Here's the piston, which we all know is what we really came here to see. It's two pieces, a hollow tube that comprises the rear half and a rod that goes to the front. There's a tiny coil spring inside which provides the, well, springiness. This is what keeps the blade held in either of its two positions. There is also a fantastically tiny spacer that goes between the end of the piston arm (which is threaded!) and the blade, keeping the former from rubbing against the latter. If you ever one of these apart, do not drop that part on the carpet lest you never see it again.

The end of the piston attaches to this screw, which is sunk into a machined pocket on the back face of the blade. The screw spins freely in its hole here and machining this pocket into the blade must have contributed a nontrivial amount to this thing's production cost.

The hardware. None of the screws have anti-rotation flats on them and they are threadlocked from the factory, so you will need a T6 driver in each side to disengage these, should the urge ever strike you. The pin there is the endstop for the blade which lands in the choil when it's closed and the heel of it rests against when it's open.

The edge grind is not exceptionally fine, but mine arrived sharp enough to be serviceable for light package-openeing duty, at least.

It appears that a slight secondary apex has been put on the edge which is presumably what actually manages to make it sharp, or at least as sharp as it is. At the angle the primary edge is ground at, the two sides wouldn't have actually met at the apex.

The tip is not especially pokey because it's been rounded off slightly in this process, as you can see. I imagine the final sharpening was probably done by hand. (The backdrop here is a random piece of mail I had on my desk, which the microscope reveals to actually be printed on security paper. Hence the rather festive 1990s confetti pattern, there. They say you'll discover a whole new world under a microscope, and it turns out they were right.)

You can see here how different the edge angle is on either side. In all honesty I've seen worse in terms of factory trueness even on much more expensive cutlery, and 7cr isn't exactly a difficult steel to sharpen. Given this knife's short edge length to begin with, fixing this up if it annoys you should easy for anyone equipped with pretty much any stone, and a modicum more care and skill than was possessed by whoever-it-was at the factory. I don't think either of those will be an especially tough bar to clear. So making this little tacker unwisely sharp should be the work a mere moment.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There's just something about the way the Originality Pendulum works that inherently makes any man or boy grin. It's probably the locomotive-adjacency to its mechanism. It ought to come with its own miniature conductor.

It's steampunkishness is there, for sure, but it's restrained. More subtle. Refined.

Less in your face. It's much more New Atlantis than New Atlanta. A gentleman's (or woman's) knife, then.

If this were sold by The Sharper Image I'll bet it would cost sixty bucks. But it's not, so you can have one for not much more than a single Hamilton. You could absolutely use this in polite company and if you did, the comments you'll receive would probably all be positive.

In case you couldn't tell, I really like the Originality Pendulum. Even despite its cheapness and its stupid name. Every once in a while that happens, with what you thought for sure was going to be a piece of junk worth it only for the memes turning out to be a genuine diamond in the rough.

The problem is, that'll embolden you, tempting you to buy the next one. And then... Well. You know how it usually goes.

Nnneeeeeooow, sploosh.

Cormorants may just be the least graceful water birds in the universe. They also have the distinction of being self-evidently floaty maritime birds whose feathers aren't waterproof, so feel free to roll that one up and smack the next creationist who argues with you online over "intermediate steps" or "irreducible complexity" or whatever the hell.