Today our knife banter we're talking about american-made fixed blades and I
may have locked Zack in a closet. okay guys that was funny for a few hours haha
let's talk knives. what's up guys happy fourth of July
hope you guys are having so much fun we've got some awesome knives that we're
gonna celebrate 4th of July with some american-made fixed blades. we've got
some great brands I have some knives Jamie's here with me he's got some
knives and let's just get jumping right into this thing Jamie's got the first
knife what you got Jamie. ok so I don't think it's any surprise to anybody that
we're gonna start with Benchmade so bench made I have the Benchmade Leuku
this is I think my adventure knife for the past month ever since we did that
ASMR camping video. I've had this on my hip and I've enjoyed it immensely so
whenever I get out on the weekend or whatever which is often guys I'm telling
you Jamie works his butt off all week so he can be like as soon as he leaves on
Friday he's going out into the wilderness somewhere you know I try I
try sometimes but anyway so this has been on my hip for probably the past
month or so and I've really been enjoying it it's got a CPM 3v blade
overall length coming in at nine point six nine inches weight itself is 5.2
inches with a drop-point configuration. like I said I've been really enjoying it
the handle which benchmade says has been designed to have zero hot spots I'm not
sure if zero hot spots is like completely I heard there might be a
little marketing fluff in there but it is an extremely comfortable injection
molded handle that I've been enjoying a lot and comes with this fantastic sheath
some people like it some people don't I've been really enjoying the dangler
portion of it as well as the fire steel loops so if you hear to be honest that's
the worst name for a part of a sheath. it's the worst name but
it is the best feature because it really is it gets out of the way so easily so
if you have it just with the belt loop with alpha dangler it can tend to be
kind of rigid on your hip when I get especially if you're getting
in out of a truck right that's what I'm just gonna was just gonna say so if I'm
getting in and out of my truck and this is rigid it's poking into my seat it's
poking into you know the back part of my seat with the dangler I can kind of just
scoop it up out of the way put my seat belt on and it's ready to rock so really
enjoying the dangler and then I have an XO tech firesteel
that I put in here so I have the knife in the the fire steel it makes a nice
little fire kid slash knife to have on your hips so is the Benchmade Leuku.
of course Benchmade makes a ton of other fixed blades there's a lot of good
fixed blades in the hunt series as well as kind of their their black line their
tactical more tactical applications but Leuky great knife bench made that's
knife number one Curt you have knife number two I have knife number two. I
have knife number two is an ESEE knife they come out of Idaho Falls Idaho now I
don't know if y'all have seen my knife collection or not but I have a
well-loved ESSE III in micarta when they came out with the s35vn blade I was like
oh I want that! I am still tempted to get this swap my micarta scales on it
because I love my patina on my micarta. right like you were saying earlier that
you really like the contoured portion of the handles but not so much the g10 yeah
yeah this g10 I think the contoured handles is a huge plus that's something
that ESSE should have done I think a while ago a long while ago but yeah the g10
it's got nice milling but it the grooves are a little smooth a little bit too
smooth almost. I can see that I suppose it's kind of just like you know
difference different strokes for different folks type of thing. it's
interesting that ESSE has started making some knives and s35 because when you
think of ESSE they're kind of like that hardcore survivalist like 1095 powder
coat right thing. but it's interesting to see them kind of
come out with some stuff that's kind of more your modern powdered stainless
steel and you know ten and if I have potentially tougher s35 you have your
stainless aspect so you have different applications for it. we were talking to
Patrick at at shot show he said he was really liking it and he was kind of just
really doing the same thing that they're just they're just for different
applications so. right another thing cool about ESSE is me and
Jamie were talking before we started and their crew spend over a hundred days a
year out in the field testing their knives trying new products seeing what
they like what they don't like basically beating the tar out of
everything they've beat they've built until they are like okay let's put this
on the product line I think i can't remember if they put it on Instagram or Facebook or
something they actually broke one of their s35 blades but like they're
completely transparent like okay this is what this is good for this is what it's
not good for so like it's definitely not as tough as a 1095 but it is good for
you know these other applications so I like the transparency that ESEE is giving
through kind of their QC process. so don't pry open any car hoods maybe
have you ever been walking down the street and you passed a car and you're
like man I really wish I could cut through the hood of that car. every day. I
have the knife for you! This is the Winkler belt knife and the reason why
this is cool well for one it's winkler so you have that but this is an ADC rb2
knife an 80 or CRV 2 is an extremely tough steel it's brutally tough
depending on how you treat heat treated so if you heat treated correctly this
will withstand some crazy abuse this particular knife has an overall length
of nine point two five inches blade length of four point eight seven five
and of course it's ADC every two with a clip point configuration. winkler has
kind of reputation for making crazy tough knives and this one is no
exception I remember seeing I saw some Winkler
videos a while back and they were literally like like stabbing bricks and
car hoods and chop it like literally chopping metal in like other pieces of
metal in half with their their knives they also come with these I guess
they're kind of hybrid type sheets they're very they're made out of leather
but they also have some interesting mounting options with belt clips they
have screw points here we could I'm sure mount anything like a like a tech lock
or things of that nature so right need to mount it somewhere else
there's an option for that too so very high quality knife very high-quality
sheath Winkler comes out of there in North Carolina that particular knife
goes for three hundred sixty five dollars on the website so yeah there's a
Winkler Winkler belt knife for you. that's awesome
alright guys up next I have a white river hunter fixed blade now these come
out of Fremont Michigan. it's kind of a family-owned operated little knife
manufacturing company but they do exceptional quality. these knives are
gorgeous s35vn steel it's a drop-point blade this burlap micarta
is the smoothest burlap micarta I've ever felt in my entire life. it's so
beautiful and the the handle is really shaped and contoured that fits the
Christmas hams like a glove. yeah I think white river is definitely known for the
FC 5 FC well the FC series I guess so there's a bunch of different models of
that so if you haven't seen our Montana adventure video we have some fire craft
series knives in there so you should check that out but yeah I don't think
that knife is as far as fit and finish wise is any different than the fire craft
series knives they're all fantastic and you can get this on the site for 180
dollars. 180 bucks nice. next up we have a micro tech SOCOM
Alpha micro tech is based out of North Carolina and this is an interesting
knife because you see you think of micro tech you think OTF's automatics that
type of thing right folding knives good-good OTF so this is something I
have in the fixed-blade line so it is 10.5 inches overall blade length of five
point three seven five inches it has a CTS to o4p blade so for people that
aren't in the know that's basically the same thing as m390 or 20 CV it's just
carpenters version of it and then it's got g10 handles it has an interesting
kind of profile here where it's not completely straight it almost has like a
boomerang like a slight boomerang shape to it okay so that's kind of a cool
feature I guess if you think of like how crew curries work it has hack ability
something like that that should be a term if that's not a term make it a term
think of this as maybe like a just a very very slight crew Cree esque knife
it also has some interesting jimping so normally you would have kind of thumb
ram jimping and maybe jumping up here on the web this is jumping all the way
around on the handle so it is a very grippy knife it has this finger choil
that locks your hand in as well as that thumb ramp there it also has this area
you can put your thumb so if you're doing draw cuts need to pull backwards
there's also an option to put your thumb up here and give you you know even
better grip in that situation so Microtech SOCOM alpha interesting design
also comes with this sheath and I think this sheath is one of the better Kydex
sheets that I've seen it's got a very satisfying
clicky action so the retention on it is fantastic that it's not extremely hard
to pull out and then you also have this I don't think it's a tech lock but I
think it's a tech lock esque type lock so micro tech SOCOM alpha fixed
blade interesting thing for micro tech. that that definitely is next knife up
actually Portland Oregon and it's also a tactical esque knife this is the Gerber
strong arm this one is the half serrated version this is a 420 steel. I'm telling
you right now this thing's a workhorse and there are a lot of people out there
that are absolutely in love with this knife it's really cool the sheath I
think is where you get your options yeah you know what I mean
for sure it's an ambidextrous sheath it can go left or right
and this thing is actually really cool it has a system that you can pull apart
and you can attach it to belt or a MOLLE strap or literally you can configure
this to strap it to anything and that's that's Tim Kennedy's knife of choice man
oh man you got a respect Tim Kennedy. and this so okay a long time ago I had a
Bear Grylls Gerber fix plate and it was very similar to this and yes there was a
long time ago this thing is cool it fits my hand so well I would say out of any
knife on my end of the table you're not going to get this knife out of my hands
like it's gonna take quite a bit to get this knife out of my hand. sure I think
that's one thing that I noticed about that knife too when I put it in my hand
is it's extremely comfortable and it's very form-fitting to your hand.
this one comes in at 70 bucks yeah it's hard to beat just the the amount
options you have to mount it the quality and then of course the price it's hard
to beat the Gerber Strongarm. plus listen to that click mmm yes it's a good one
that's what I'm talking about Gerber strong-arm okay my last knife so
I have one from bark River bark rivers based in Escanaba Michigan and bark
river definitely known for making some high-quality bushcrafting survival
outdoor knives and of course this is no exception.
so this is the Bark River Fox River comes in overall length of eight point
three seven five inches blade length of four inches CPM 3v blade and then of
course the handle material here is kind of this polished micarta and we
were talking about this before we started shooting
do you prefer like a Polish micarta or do you prefer a more grippy kind of less
shiny McCarter? I really enjoy the patina that comes from natural non-coated non
polished. I this is kind of gross to say it but I like the like grit that gets in
there and the nastiness you know it looks really cool and I don't know like
I'd sure there's blood and some DNA or something in my I don't know but I
personally I prefer in my hand a non polished micarta but I do love the look
of the Polish micarta it's very pretty. yeah this definitely
has an aesthetic to it and and this is pretty common among a lot of bark rivers
as you get this polish micarta the other thing cool about bark rivers
is a I'm gonna say all but I'm sure there's like some fringe case somewhere
but basically all of their knives come with a convex crime and they come
extremely sharp out of the box that's one thing that I've noticed out of bark
rivers is not a lot of companies will put a convex grind on a knife bark River
does so that's that's pretty cool also comes with this sheath. I'll have to
say I think you need to break in this sheath a little bit before it's good
like I feel like the leather quality is good
but it comes a little stiff out of the box so be forewarned at least if you get
the sheath on the Fox River it's a little stiff so maybe you get some like
baseball glove conditioner or something and hey that's not works I've used it
before on other sheaths yeah so you definitely you definitely can do some
work there or you know just wear it and it'll definitely break in so has an
option for belt carry it just slides in and covers probably 3/4 of the handle
like so so that's the Bark River Fox River comes
in at 219.95 so not a bad price for the materials and the quality you're
getting right on a fixed blade. so yeah I really love the leather that they
produce every time we get a new knife in from them I always go out on the shelf
and I open the box and I'm like oh all right guys last up for me I have a tops
mini scandi now this thing is pretty cool I'm gonna put this on my neck you
can wear it as a neck knife
hang on wait a minute wait a minute got it
this thing's cool okay UConn Idaho they're real close to Idaho Falls tops
is a cool company they build these rough rugged knives that just honestly even
for this little neck knife it's not any different 1095 steal the micarta that
they use is great it has really good feel to it this is a natural it's like
open micarta not at all like round polished you get
yourself a lanyard hold there one thing I wish so okay the blade length is 2.75
inches I wish that the handle was a quarter inch or maybe even a half inch
longer it fits really good in the hams but I wish I had a little leverage might
be it's almost like my pinkies trying to get leverage off the nub on the end but
other than that the jimping is great I've been trying to find
the perfect for me a small fixed blade that I can carry every day and not have
it drive me crazy and I was looking at these and I couldn't do it just because
the nub but for somebody else's hand this is a great knife yeah
so you actually ended up going with a slightly different tops knife right
right I want the street scalpel mm-hmm and so does that fit your hand better
than it does it does yeah nothing on that - you mentioned earlier was it's
clear cherakote right oh yeah yeah they it's got a clear seracote and
basically the whole reason why you'd seracote a knife is to add corrosion
resistance to it it gives it a protective layer which is cool because a
lot of times you can't get the satin or the metal look because a lot of them are
powder coated right but with this the clear cerekote you get the option of a
clean blade and that's a 1095 blade correct yep 1095 so yeah 1095 probably
nice to have that clear cerekote for some corrosion resistance right you can
get this one this is second less expensive it is $75 on the website mini
scandi cool well that's it did we do it man
we finish awesome we got through all of them uh yeah I don't know how to end one
of these. oh hey guys uh I guess this was a video
I hope it was good make sure to subscribe for more knife stuff check out
Blade HQ.com and there's probably a playlist somewhere down here now I'm
gonna go find Kurt. Forth of July!