The Axis lock makes no such distinction, and coupled with the Mini Griptilian’s multi-position pocket clip, it results in a knife that remains fully accessible regardless of your hand dominance.

Choose stainless, like AUS-8, VG-10, or 8Cr13MoV, and its cousins in the 9Cr and 7Cr series if you will mostly be using your knife on the water, to process game, or to prepare dinner while camping.

Jackson and Sculimbrene include the Drifter on their respective best-of lists and have given the knife fantastic individual reviews. Most pocket knives have a fairly obtuse 20-degree or higher blade angle which makes them less challenging to sharpen yourself.

The Buck 55 opens and closes with a pronounced (and satisfying) snapping noise as the back lock falls into place. I’ve reviewed Leatherman’s excellent Free P4 in the past, and while it’s compact enough to pocket carry, its thickness makes it better worn on a belt in its pouch, so I hesitate to classify it as a pocket knife. But the all-metal handle is less comfortable and can become slippery in damp or sweaty hands; we noticed this problem when holding the knife and when flipping the blade out. It’s easy to dull a blade before you’re even a quarter of the way through an elk, and I know hunters who carry as many as four knives in their hunting pack (I used to) to avoid being stuck without a sharp knife when you really need one. To unlock it, you pull the ends of the bar away from the blade (the ends look like small thumb studs in the body of the knife).The sharpening system we used for testing, the Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker, is designed to deal with recurves, so we didn’t have a problem, but if you’re sharpening on a traditional stone, it will be a little trickier. A band of metal or other hard material worn on the hand, from which a number of sharp spikes come out. Blade reviewer Tony Sculimbrene told us that a good EDC knife “should be able to do general utility tasks, like package and box opening, and, if you go outdoors, outdoor/camp tasks like food prep and light whittling/carving.

While I have my favorites, I constantly have different pocket knives in my rotation, putting them to work opening boxes, sharpening pencils, prying things open, scraping off paint, cleaning fish, cutting meat and vegetables, and lots of other things pocket knives probably aren’t really designed to do. The Mini Swagger and Razorfish were marked by difficult and uncomfortable locks, while the Remix was tough to open. To enable personalized advertising (like interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. Not only can you customize the handle color, but you can also choose the blade shape, the blade steel, and the handle material.But a knife that you drop in your pocket just isn’t as practical as one with a clip, and a knife without a locking mechanism can be dangerous if, like me, you’re accustomed to modern, lock-out knives. Among many knife aficionados, the Drifter consistently pops up in conversations about the best inexpensive EDC knife.

The knife handle also seemed to twist slightly while we were gripping it, something that didn’t happen with the Drifter. Avoid putting wooden handled knives in a dishwasher as the high temperature and extended period in water will shrink and dry the wood and will ultimately ruin the knife. The unfortunate thing here is that the Drifter’s curve is enough to make sharpening a little more difficult but not enough to really aid in cutting. Sanrenmu isn’t trying to pass its knife off as a Sebenza, so the company is not counterfeiting (which is a huge problem in the knife world), but the similarities are difficult to deny.

The two knives are very similar, with nearly identical handle lengths (the blade of the Case is about ¼ inch longer).