Alright. We’re looking for tactical here. Mmm… I dunno the handle looks like a Crayola color
and it’s too damn light. Nope. Ok… this is heavier it has a bigger blade. But
it only has a single grind on the blade. Nope. How about this… it has some black stuff on the
blade up top that looks tactical I guess. Doesn’t look like something off the Bud K instagram
though, and it takes about 5 minutes to open. Nope.
Oh wait… what’s this… oh yeah…. Right there. While tactical doesn’t really have
a cohesive look, its one of those things we all know when we see it. And Quartermaster
knew it when they saw it… when designing the Strickland, you know as soon as they came
across a picture of the blade of the GTC Airborne. So they made the knife, asked for permission,
and here we are some time later. Fellow Youtube knife and gear channel knives save lives,
unless of course they end lives, traded me some junk for some junk. Check out his channel
via a link at the end- but before that let’s go over the dimensions of this knife as we
ponder if this is the right thing to do. On an unrelated note if you saw $100 on the ground
is it ok to take it? Blade length and cutting edge. What if it’s next to a body- let’s
say its been dead a while. Handle size and grip area, it’s not like you killed the
guy right. Spine thickness and handle thickness, and if you get a few minutes check out Blade
Forums for some more reviews of Quartermaster knives. and tallness closed. That’s ok you
can pause the video.
The Quartermaster Strickland is a big ass tactical as shit folding knife, named after
a character from Back to the Future and manufactured right here in the People’s Republic of Texas.
Swear to god, they’ve got pictures. The blade you might recognize is similar to the
Zero Tolerance 0055, which is a knife designed by the same dude who created the GTC Airborne…
And as far as I know Zero Tolerance asked him to ask himself if it was ok he used it.
The blade and knife are finished in a stonewashed finish known as Tactical Texas Tea. The blade
has a couple edge grinds per side, instead of one, for double the cutting power. Viewers
with eyes may also notice they went with a thick spine basically to fit serial numbers
on there. So although this is one of 300 made in 2015, don’t despair- GPknives, Blade
HQ, and Knife Center are all currently well stocked.
The handle also like the blade has a prominent curve, and believe it or not isn’t that
uncomfortable. No sharp edges exist on my model, I mean except for the blade. There’s
some THICC… jimping up top… of course spelled like this… and some on the back
underside of the handle. It’s good for big hands and my hand fits it well- if I were
to ever carry this knife and use it. The handle is made from two pieces of titanium and is
an open backed design. Great. The deployment is handled by a thumb stud, disc, trapezoid,
I dunno maybe a praying mantis head. That doesn’t stick out much when closed. You
have to practice a few times to get it down, and it opens fairly easily. Even with gloves,
well sorta. The lockup is handled by the frame lock which when I got it was pretty easy to
disengage, but maybe not by the end of this video. The clip is reversible to the right
or left size in a tip up configuration only… the clip is nice and springy without being
too tight, but it isn’t a deep carry… but why should it be- people need to know
to back the hell off. Detent is ok, but you can flip it hard downward whilst closed and
it can open. Shouldn’t open in your black cargo pants.
Let’s do some comparisons. You have this… knife. Which is tactical because it’s stonewashed
and has a bunch of angles. Then there’s my Spyderco. It also has a nice long handle,
is relatively light, and much cheaper. And no I haven’t batoned with it. This is a
great every day carry option with a long blade. Now we have the Benchmade Bugout. Very very
lightweight of a knife that I have beaten the crap out of… easy to sharpen thick as
it needs to be blade stock, easy to sharpen. Great Every day carry knife. We’re done
here, now let’s do some whacking. You’re like that was inappropriate. No not true.
I never said that. So there’s this theory that knife makers push, and people accept,
that bigger folding knives with thick blade stock, are somehow more able to withstand
abuse than a tiny little lightweight fancy boy puny knife like the Bugout. And I’m
not saying that’s not true at least 45% of the time occasionally. But sometimes a
beefier knife just means it’s heavier… not talking about my baby girl Cold Steel-
you know I love you.
Also knife makers and most serious knife guys arguing with you about intellectual properties
on something with a blade and handle on blade forums will swear up and down that folding
knives aren’t meant for batoning. And I absolutely agree with them. Knives are just
straight up cutting tools. You need a blade a handle and maybe a lock if you do some heavy
rope cutting for your steel retention test on Youtube- and if you have to baton buy a
fixed blade.
Ok with that out of the way… I was really trying hard to just pummel this. But I don’t
have to tell you some light chopping generally leads to some heavy batoning. Sorry it’s
nature. So I did this off an on for I dunno 5 minutes. It was cold outside, and I’m
tender… but the pivot started to loosen up at some point, but luckily I had an allen
key handy in my basement. No big deal just tighten it back up… but the real problem
was then was the blade was then hard to unlock. The frame lock was too hard to disengage without
jamming the allen key up in there and use it as a lever to open it. Then I looked to
the steel insert for the frame lock… and thought that may have loosened. That wasn’t
it either… I tried tightening an loosening the pivot trying to find the sweet spot, and
couldn’t. But that’s fine I have a ton of knives. If you like this sort of review.
Comment, give the video a thumbs up, subscribe, click that bell so you can be alerted every
time I upload some dumb shit. And sometimes that bell doesn’t work because Youtube has
some serious problems… So check back once a week on my channel because I usually upload
a 2 videos a week on Monday and Tuesday and film them while my kid takes a nap. Thanks
for watching.