PocketKNIFE

You know balisong knives, right?

I mean, you're here. So of course you do. Two handles, two pivots, and the blade in the middle...

No, not like that.

...This is the "CIZPIROK Double Edge Blade Folding Knife," which comes variously plus or minus the usual mantle of edc-gadget-gift-cool-folding-knives-for-men. It's one of those. You know how it is.

The CIZPIROK, quite aside sounding like somebody who just sneezed in Polish, I think is considerably more interesting once you don't consider it to address the question of, "How do you make a knife with two edges fold?"

I mean, that much about it is glaringly self-evident.

The 4-3/8" long double edged dagger blade is there, plain as the nose on your face. That's barely interesting at all.

Rather, I think it's better as an exploration of this: What if someone who had never seen one before set out to make a balisong knife, possibly by having one described to them over a bad telephone line, but happened to get one critical parameter absolutely wrong?

The CIZPIROK, you see, has all the elements of a balisong knife. It has two handles, drilled through with decorative and lightening holes. Just like a Benchmade Model 42, right? And it has two pivots at the heel, one for each handle, and it's even held shut by a reversible latch on the tips of the handles that can lock it both open and closed.

All the ingredients are there, but somehow despite starting with some ground beef and a bun, the chef wound up producing a flan. And it's just wobbling away on the plate, damned if he knows how it got there.

You can even, with a fair bit of practice, luck, and a following wind, manipulate it somewhat akin to a balisong knife. Though overall the experience feels mildly cursed.

But rotating the entire kit and kaboodle 90 degrees makes the whole thing decidedly uncanny, if you try to think of it in balisong terms. The CIZPIROK's major defining feature, other that what we've already covered, could best be summed up as "flat."

The two handle halves are unitary flat slabs of steel, rounded over on the edges, and with the entire thing painted black. It's 9-1/4" long open including the latch, and folds up to about 5-1/4". It's precisely 1/2" thick either open or closed, not including the pocket clip. Said clip is mounted very far down on the side of the knife and leaves a huge 1-1/4" or so of it sticking out of your pocket. But it doesn't get in the way otherwise, because it winds up in between the handle halves, trading places with the blade, when the knife is opened.

There's a "thumb" ring in the tail where the point of the blade winds up when it's closed. Calling it that is a bit of a stretch, really. The hole is a shade under 3/4" in diameter which certainly makes it much too small to get my thumb or index finger through, and failing that I can't find any other use for it.

The entire thing has a kind of techno-dirk vibe to it, a cross between one of those classic diver's knives and an OSS dagger. If this appeared in a movie the femme fatale would have it tucked in her garter, and the directors probably couldn't resist making her try to use it as a throwing knife.

Being entirely made of steel, it feels quite dense in the hand at 163.6 grams or 5.75 ounces. The blade purports to be made of 440C which is plausible. As for the country of origin? Go on, you'll never guess.

The CIZPIROK's sideways design automatically engenders some mechanical weirdness. The pivots are riveted together so nondestructive disassembly is, unfortunately, completely impossible. So much for that.

Running the axis of each handle through the blade would otherwise require making the heel of the blade really thick, which obviously hasn't happened. Instead, there are two of these H shaped plates, one on either side, through which the pivot pins go.

You would imagine that this would make it awfully hard to keep the entire assembly within square and resist torsion, and that's exactly right. When it's unlatched, the whole thing can wiggle pretty significantly.

But at less than $20, you weren't really expecting this thing to be machined by Swiss watchmakers, were you?

As such, close inspection of the details reveals all the places wherein the crudeness lies. Here's the tip, for instance, which is definitely capable of administering a poke but the finish has been rubbed off in the process of grinding the edges. It works, but is decidedly unrefined. The bevels have highly pronounced machine marks on them, plus all the usual other hallmarks of cheapness. They're all here.

So as is tradition for these types of things I'm positive the edges have been ground freehand, and they're quite out of true. But in this case there are four edge grinds to contend with rather than two, so it can be twice as whacked. What a bargain.

From the factory the grind doesn't even make it all the way to the point. But then, given the hyper budget construction and unknown heat treating quality, this may ultimately be for the best.

With its all black finish, double edge, and crossguard-eque side protrusions which are really more finger guards than anything else, the CIZPIROK postures itself with fighting knife aspirations. It's a little big for EDC duty but not excessively large.

And of course, it can posture just as much as it feels like. That doesn't make it so. Here in reality, I think you'd probably prefer something that's a little less tough to open in a hurry.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The CIZPIROK Double Edge is a fascinating case study in bonkers knife design, and probably serves as a good example of why we don't do it this way. It's novel for sure, but I'm not entirely certain the problem it's setting out to solve is one that actually needed solving.

But just the fact that it exists means you don't have to ask, "what if?" Here it is, in reality, where you can hold it. Now you know. How strange.