Blade Show Report

[Blade First]

Please ... more pics, more reviews, more interactions with the folks who bring us the sharp things we like and collect.

Indeed, where else are we likely to "see" the latest in sheer innovation of design and materials that fascinate us so except through your eyes?

 

[hso]

The internet???



I gotta get a better camera than just toting around the BlackBerry and snapping pix.

Innovative? Fox had an interesting dagger I handled. Think of two slabs that pivoted back like a clam would open. The dagger blade was attached by pivot to one of the slabs. The blade pivoted out until it cleared the open mouth of the two handle slabs and then the slabs were closed face to face to capture the dagger blade. It got the Blade 2011 Imported Knife of the Year award. I'm a sucker for gizmos so I stood and played with it, but came to the conclusion that it was a solution in search of a problem and was too slow to be practical to deploy quickly.


I did handle an olllllldddddd Christy knife like paratroops and pilots carried. One of my buddies I see there every year (looks like Bull from night court) had bought it at the show and I was envious. I ripped these images off from an ebay sale that I'm bidding on.

 

[hso]

Oh, and I also handled every single one of the KnifeRights fundraising knives. Too numerous to list or show so you'll have to click over to them. (I was packing them up at the end of the show).

I also picked up a polished stag handled Breed neck knife similar to the one in the Breed Group Buy thread .
It lasted just minutes after I got home and I haven't seen it since Gwen spotted it (so she snatched both the stag Breed and the caramel G10 Wheeler after I got home).

I've handled Jim Hammond's Sealtac and Flesh Eater knives before and usually spend some time at Blade yakking with Jim. This time he had rev5 of the Flesh Eater and we went behind the curtain at CRKT and unwrapped the FE5. It is a radical departure from the other Flesh Eater variants being angled at the guard so that the blade "leans in" to the cut (Kopis/Falcata/Kukri). It is a freaking big scary looking knife! It also is lively and wants to move. Those of you that have handled a properly balanced fighting knife will know what I mean when I say that the thing works with your movements. It is so well designed and executed that it doesn't weigh in the hand what it actually weighs on a scale. I'll post a pic next week once Jim puts it up on his website with some video of it being used to cut tatami mats, in mid air.

 

[Gordon]

That's "positive included angle"
Oh yes I remember those nice Christy Safety knives!

 

[hso]

The previously alluded to Flesh Eater 5 held by proud papa Jim Hammond.
Jim is a full head taller than I am and has hands proportionally bigger, but the grip fit both my little monkey paws and his gorilla paws. Quite surprising.

The video Jim showed to me of the FE5 being used to cut tatami mat sections tossed into the air were very impressive.