It's clear that we have, as a whole, a certain fixed fascination with the objects and machines that grant us what we perceive to be superlative experiences. Foundational ones, even. Those which set the bar, against which all other things of their like are inevitably compared.

Your first ride in a Bugatti Veyron. Feeling the F-15's scream over the stands, barely 1000 feet off deck. Firing a 700 Nitro Express.

Well, all of those things can move over, because I have this. It's a transcendental religious experience.

It must be, because every single person I've handed it to so far has immediately uttered the same two words:

"Jesus Christ!"

This is the S-Tec TS004M-SL. I saw it in the Top Quest catalog months ago, and from the moment I laid eyes on it I knew I absolutely had to have one. Come hell or high water, storms, locusts, tariffs, or recessions. It must be mine.

Just looking at it, it's easy to dismiss this as just another meritless run of the mill knockoff knife.

But, you see. Well.

No.

The Numbers

That only lasts right up until the moment you hold it in your hand. It weighs not a single whisker less than 459.4 grams. Normally at this stage I follow up with the same reading, but in ounces. Fuck that; This thing weighs just over one pound.

The TS004M-SL is 10-1/8" long when open and 5-7/8" closed. It's also 2-5/8" wide when closed, from the bottom edge of the handle to the peak at the top of the blade. It's gargantuan. It's now the biggest folding knife I own, and none of those specifications matter.

That's because its blade is 10 millimeters thick. Well, 9.92 if we're counting. But I have no problem believing that the slab of raw steel this was made out of was a full 10 before machining and finishing. That's over 3/8" of an inch. That's right, your truck is held together with bolts that are skinnier than this thing's blade.

It's phenomenally absurd.

This is the S-Tec, in the middle. To its left, a Zero Tolerance 0630. To its right, a Cold Steel AD-15. Both of those are massive knives that are considered by many to be simply too big to carry.

And the S-Tec positively dwarfs both of them. Whatever you have to say, whatever point there is to make, it's all irrelevant. Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo.

Just look at it. It's so hulking enormous, I couldn't even fit all three of those knives in frame when them laying flat. The S-Tec is too wide and crowds out the shot.

The TS004M-SL is a through-and-through flipper opener and lacks a thumb stud or fingernail nick. The latter really doesn't matter; If you want to open it via the traditional two handed method, there's obviously plenty of acreage for you to grab. There's the flipper on the rear for one handed opening.

Defying all logic, there is a pocket clip on the back side. It's not reversible, leaving only this one tip-up position available. Defying expectation as well, the clip is actually pretty good. On my example, at least, it has an excellent balance of retention and draw. It's not difficult to stow at all owing to its upswept tip, and you can pull it smoothy, easily, without snagging. And somehow, it still manages to maintain enough retention that if you dangle the knife upside down by its clip -- at least when I tried it just now, using the bottom hem of my shirt -- it won't fall off. If you're right handed the knife will stow such that the flipper isn't oriented so it'll catch on your pants, either.

It's not only a flipper opener, but a ball bearing flipper opener. That fact alone instantly makes it like 30% more awesome. There is a rather strong detent built into the frame lock, done the traditional way, but once you overcome this the blade will easily fly or even just fall open of its own accord owing to the low resistance of the bearing pivot and also its own massive heft.

The chances that this will fall open in your pocket without your intervention, at least until the detent is significantly worn, appear remote. But I will point out that it is just barely possible to get the blade to swing out by holding the knife upside down and shaking it very vigorously. So maybe the possibility is there, but even so it seems unlikely you'd have a pocket big enough to allow this thing to open very far.

The blade is a Wharncliffe or possibly pseudo-reverse-tanto design and is hollow ground. It is not, unfortunately, a full flat or convex grind. Nor is it a distal taper all the way down to the edge, which would have been phenomenal. But given that this retails for a paltry $35, none of the above was ever going to happen. And as you'd expect, the blade is only 440C. For this price, you certainly aren't getting this much of anything else.

All of this is a trivial price to pay for the knowledge that you can easily demonstrate to anyone that their knife is made for knee-high pantywaist girly men, no matter what it is or how much they spent on it. Chris Reeve, Zero Tolerance, Emerson, or Benchmade? Ha! None of those could crush a soda can flat by smashing it with the spine of the blade, could they?

And then, TS004M-SL has remarkably competent build quality. Superficially, at least.

The blade centering is nearly perfect. There's no perceptible lash or wiggle in the blade when its locked open in any direction, which probably isn't too surprising owing to the ball bearing pivot. The handles are pretty simply machined but they're done so nicely, with no blemishes, apparent casting flaws, or pock marks -- even on the back sides where you'll never see. The only rough bit of finishing work on my example is on the inner face of the slot in the frame lock, which is barely noticeable given that it's also concealed under the clip.

You can get this in multiple color variants. Well, "silver" and black, anyway. Mine is the "silver" version which is actually an attractive grey satin finish that appears bead blasted, but I suspect is helped along with some kind of paint or coating. It feels great, but somehow has an uncanny ability to pick up and show fingerprints.

Dork Smash

Imagine my surprise when I found out just how easily the TS004M-SL can be disassembled.

Usually with cheap and nasty Chinese knives their nature becomes readily apparent as soon as you take a screwdriver to them. You're bound to either find screw heads stripped at the factory, one or more screws glued into place so firmly they won't come out, or maybe even a couple of them cross-threaded but reamed in anyway. It's always as if the Chinese are pathologically incapable of just doing it right all the way through.

Well, I didn't find any of that. Every screw on this thing is a regular T8 Torx head and they all just... came out, normally, without any fuss. And they all went back in again, too. I know that's not a high bar to clear, but a lot of the time whatever I have on the bench can't even manage that.

The heads on these pivot screws are the widest I've ever seen in my life. I've said that before, taking apart various fat knives. This time I think it might stick. They're easily 3/4" across -- slightly bigger than a penny.

The pivots on this are so fat that it's the first time I've ever seen thrust ball bearing carriers like there where there are two concentric rows of balls. The blade is pocketed nicely for the bearings, whereas the inner surfaces of the handle slabs are just flat. It all fits together and works fine.

Okay, so there's no anti-rotation flat on the pivot screw. Big deal; just stick one T8 in each side and twist. You can't get it wrong. You have got two T8 drivers, haven't you?

All of the hardware is a standard M4 thread pitch which, to be fair, is one metric size up from what we usually find. If I were a gambler I would still predict that the point of failure on this will inevitably be the screws, since the ridiculous thickness of the blade will surely entice careless users to try to use this as a big fixed blade or even an axe rather than a folding knife. Batoning firewood, chopping trees, prying crate lids, and all the rest of that may ultimately wind up in this knife's superficial beefiness tempting the user to write checks the hardware can't cash. I think my main point of concern is the dinky little stump of thread sticking out of the male pivot screw's pie-plate head, which could theoretically apply an awful lot of leverage if it were twisted hard.

The two handle halves are separated by a pair of thick (7mm) threaded barrels that are also shouldered and drop precisely into their drilled holes, which should help with their strength. The end stop pin is also shouldered and just rests in its holes, with no screws.

It's also distressingly close to the edge of the handle slabs. Possibly close enough that there isn't enough meat left behind it to prevent it from eventually breaking free after many, many bashings of that heavy blade against it. Only time will tell.

Using The Thing

The manufacturer of this -- S-Tec, Top Quest, whoever they are -- market the TS004M-SL as a "cleaver." That says maybe, although its monumental heft should definitely help it excel at chopping tasks just from a physics perspective. Anything you bring this down on is likely not only to know about it, but remember it forever.

But there's very slight, small, tiny, teensy-weensy, massive problem with the ergonomics if that's the intended use case. I'll illustrate with the long edge of my Official Block o' Wood, what with I normally sink knives into for those cool action shots:

If you're cutting against a flat surface, you know, like how normal people typically do it with a cutting board or what have you, the flipper is completely in the way.

Normal cleavers have their handles mounted up high at the spine of the blade precisely for the purpose of leaving the full length of the edge unobstructed, and also to provide the maximum amount of cut depth they can achieve without you whacking your knuckles on the work surface. But the TS004M-SL doesn't do that. At all.

Instead, this is laid out more like a typical general purpose pocket knife which to some extent rather defeats the purpose. Now, it works just fine for any task that doesn't require working against a flat surface or, if you can manage it, by positioning your work at the edge of a table or what have you so you can keep the handle in empty air. But failing that you actually can't get any significant length of the edge onto your worktop, so you're left smashing things with the last 3/4" or so of the tip.

There's also the issue of the blade geometry, which is a bit limiting as well. For instance, the chopping-on-a-surface issue could also have been mitigated by giving the blade a strong upsweep, but that's what it hasn't got. There is a very slight belly to the edge but overall it's near as makes no difference to straight.

Zombies, then, you say.

Fair enough, and the TS004M-SL is pretty fast to deploy with its bearing pivots and the long flipper heel doubles as a better-than-nothing forward guard. But the Wharncliffe profile means its stabbing performance will be utter bollocks, and that's going to limit you a lot. Your best bet is hoping a potential assailant wets his pants in terror at the sound of that 10mm thick slab of steel slamming into place and simply runs away. Which, to be fair, he might.

I'll also point out that the position of the endstop pin and its attendant notch at the base of the flipper cause the blade to stop well short of how far it could actually be folded into the handle if it were designed a little better. Like, to the tune of probably over half an inch, which'd make the TS004M-SL much easier to carry. Just moving the flipper forward a couple of millimeters would probably have done it.

The Edge

Guess what.

I got one of those stupid portable digital microscopes.

Calling it a "microscope" is really a bit of a stretch. It's more of a webcam that's just capable of focusing on things stupidly close to the objective. But it lets me get all Wayne's World up in the face of tiddly little details like this, with considerably less hassle than my old gimcrack setup -- which involved balancing a linen magnifier on top of the subject, and then balancing my phone camera on top of that. (Yes, I am taking these photos these days with my phone's camera. Sue me.)

Anyway, here's what the S-Tec's edge grid looks like. It's actually not too shabby.

For comparison, here's the factory edge on a nice knife, in this case the Böker 06EX228. This was machined by Ze Germans, who can generally be trusted to do a pretty good job of it:

The S-Tec's grind is visibly not as fine, but honestly it's beyond not bad and actually way better than what I usually see on a novelty Chinese knife. Don't be fooled by the breadth of the grind implying a shallower edge angle, though -- the S-Tec's grind just is wider owing to the blade being so damn thick.

The factory edge angle on this is pretty steep, which is most likely down to the much aforementioned absurd thickness of the blade and the factory probably really preferring not to run the risk of gouging any part of the blade surface during the sharpening process, ruining the piece and eating into the profit margins so much it might cause the elderly chain-smoking Chinese men surely running the equipment to possibly have to cut back on their nicotine intake.

So the TS004M-SL just about manages to have what we might label "working sharpness" out of the box. It has none of the unevenness or sawtoothy crudeness that we usually see, but it also struggles to cleanly cut a Post-It in two without putting a lot more care into it than I really think is realistic.

Quality metric #2 is trueness or how similar in angle to each other both sides of the edge grind are. This is usually where cheap knives fail, and the S-Tec certainly does exactly as expected. I oriented this one vertically because your brain is better at spotting the the difference left-to-right rather than top-to-bottom. It's plainly visible.

If you can't spot it, a good shortcut for this is to just peer down the edge from the tip of the blade, which is what I've done here. Thus using the Ocular Geometric Approximation Methodology, one side of the edge is 29 degrees whereas the other is just under 38, leading to a combined edge angle of 67 (!) degrees which... Well, let's phrase as, it probably ought to hold what sharpness it has got pretty well even given the totally unexciting steel, and leave it at that.

(I keep my "good" and showpiece knives at a 30 degree combined edge angle, that is 15 degrees per side, and my utilitarian knockaround ones at 40.)

Other than my Ruxin Edge Pro clone which is infinitely variable (within reason) I don't even have a guided sharpener that goes as high as 40 degrees per side. I think it would take some careful experimentation to figure out just how shallow you could go on this thing before you hit the spine, but I don't think a combined 40 -- 20 per side -- is technically out of the question. It's up to you if you want to spend the time to remove the colossal amount of material you'd have to in order to get there, though.

Feelies

The TS004M-SL comes in a rather pedestrian, but very shiny, cardboard box. As you would expect the box is just as enormous as the knife is, to the point that it doesn't cleanly fit into my photo box and I couldn't be bothered to crop the background out of the picture nor fiddle with it enough to get the reflections off of it. Here you go.

Despite having a perfectly cromulent pocket clip on it, the manufacturer couldn't help themselves but give you yet another lousy nylon belt pouch to go with this thing. But it's not just any lousy belt pouch. It is quite possibly the widest crappy nylon belt pouch...

In the world.

How wide is it? Well, here it is with three rolls of US quarters comfortably parked in it.

You get nothing else in the box but a little satchel of silica gel. No other freebies, no replacement hardware, no dinky crappy screwdriver, no leaflet covered in poorly translated chest-beating about this or the manufacturer's other products, not even a perfunctory business card begging you for five star reviews.

Oh well.

The Inevitable Conclusion

To some degree nothing I've written above matters. The TS004M-SL is the superlative. It has one aspect, and it's got big hairy bucketloads of it.

And at the end of the day, it's actually put together pretty damn well considering the price. It absolutely could have been worse. And it isn't.

The TS004M-SL is just fucking cool, and on some days that's a pretty good substitute for performance and practicality. It is absolutely The Business. Yes, it will fuck up anything you manage to get underneath of it. It took a shockingly small amount of effort to sink it into the wood in the headline photo I used up at the top of this column. Just feeling that kind of power in your hand speaks to some part of everyone.

And, I mean, come on.

Don't tell me you didn't see this and then immediately stick the model number into your search bar. I know you did.

More noodling around with Overture glow PLA.

I tried to tweak the exposure a bit this time to make it look more like how you perceive it in reality.

I'm finally getting around to messing with this stuff. Now I can balisong in the dark.

Step 2 is determining how badly all the particles of gumf in this filament negatively impact the mechanical strength.

Edit: I probably should have said this in the first place, but this is Overture green glow PLA.

The model is my Rockhopper balisong utility knife. Go check it out -- it's fully printable, even the hardware.

Opposing and complimentary, like the yin and yang; dichotomous, a contrast between light and dark.

That doesn't remind you of anything topical, does it?

This is the Craighill Sidewinder, and it's got it all in twos. Two handle halves, obviously, in two different finishes. It even has two designers, Kai Williams and Chen Chen, who describe it as "an enigmatic kinetic sculpture moonlighting as a knife."

And its mechanism is, yes, weird.

The handle is comprised of four steel plates forming two halves each, sine-wave shaped and with one stonewashed and the other black PVD coated. It has two pairs of pivots, and when you swing the blade open the handle halves swap places with each other.

If you compare the open and closed pictures you can spot the difference. It's hard to explain in writing. Here, watch this:

The action really is sublime. It's an art exhibition in motion.

The Sidewinder is compact, but being made entirely of steel it's extremely heavy for its size. 160.3 grams or 5.65 ounces, despite being only 4" long when closed. It's got a 2-5/8" long blade made of 12C27N, which is certainly a very capable if admittedly not very fancy steel.

But that, too, is nicely stonewashed. It has a drop pointed blade that, in keeping with its entire symmetry jam, has the point precisely centered along its width.

It's a liner locker although if you ask me, having a lock at all is probably unnecessary since this is one of those mechanisms where your grip on the handle inherently clamps the blade into position. The detent ball that keeps it from flopping open in your pocket is on the liner, though, so removing it isn't really advisable.

And sloshing around loose in your pocket it will be, because the Sidewinder does not have a clip nor does it have a lanyard hole or any other carrying provision. It doesn't even some with a perfunctory cheap ballistic nylon belt pouch. No, if you're going to carry this you have to suffer for your art and be prepared for commitment.

There isn't a thumb stud, either. This is a flipper opener.

To assist with this it has ball bearing pivots -- ceramic ones, no less -- the carriers for which you can see in the handle gaps.

With a bit of finesse it does indeed flick open very easily. You have to remember to hold it only by the black part, though, because the silver part will swing forward along with the blade and if you're holding onto that it'll stop short. This means you probably have less of a grip on it than you'd like and I certainly wouldn't want to try to bust this out in a hurry under duress. It's a fine line between an elegant draw to the adoration of all onlookers versus sinking the thing juddering half an inch into the floorboards.

I think the Sidewinder's mechanism is extremely clever, so obviously I took it apart for you.

There's actually not as much in there as you'd think, but there are no less than eight ceramic ball bearing assemblies owing to the thing technically having four pivot points.

The hardware consists of said pile o' bearings, eight screws, and a quartet of threaded barrels with anti-rotation flats in them. Theoretically you should be able to remove either screw from either end to get the pivots out, but I found that one side of mine was permanently threadlockered and the other side wasn't, effectively converting these into normal male/female screws.

On the tail end is a little curved plate like the barrel link of an 1911, with two holes in it that actuates the pair of pivots opposite the main one when you swivel it open. The curve is in it for a reason, and it's shaped just so that it never actually protrudes from the handle at any time or in any position throughout the action's travel.

The mechanism is actually extremely simple, and its elegance comes down to just how precisely the machined halves of the handles slot together in both the open and closed positions. I've outlined it for you thusly:

Because both the open and closed states wind up with the halves interlocking so thoroughly, there is no need for endstop pins and the blade absolutely cannot overtravel, nor strike the toggle on the end even though it looks like it ought to be able to. The lockup is very solid and there's no lash in the blade in any direction when in the open position.

It's also worth mentioning that while it appears the scales could all be duplicates of each other, they're not. Each and every one is slightly different from the others, with one of the silver ones having the cutout for the liner lock in it which is a separate leaf that's screwed into place, while only one pair have the D shaped anti-rotation holes in them while the other two just have round holes.

At the end of the day it doesn't really make any difference which way you insert which screw, although half of them are silver and half of them are black, and you probably won't want to mix them up.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Sidewinder is a tad on the expensive side but there's no denying it's extremely well built and it's got style out the ying-yang. There isn't a single whiff of mall ninja about it. It's pleasingly refined, elegant, grown up. Very gentlemanly. The machine work is impeccable, with every edge smoothly chamfered and every surface fully finished, even the inside faces where you'll never see or touch.

Maybe it's small, and maybe it's not made out of the latest trendy supersteel, but when you're holding it you don't care. It's not your partner's clothes or makeup or perfume that matter. The beauty is in the dance.

NPD.

Actually, that day was several weeks ago. I've been putting off writing this all that time because I've been dreading doing so. You'll see why.

We've discussed the Majohn A1 and A2 several times in the past, up to and including my own previous take on the matter.

Did you know that there's an A3 now?

Well, in what's now apparently my ongoing quest to own at least one of every retractable fountain pen on earth, here it is.

This is the white variant, so chosen because I felt I needed to achieve the maximum level of irritation that's physically possible by attempting to take detailed photographs on a white background of an object that is not only also stark white itself, but also extremely glossy and all the parts of it that aren't white are mirror finished. Genius!

Anyway, the A3 is indeed yet another entry into the small but growing pantheon of retractable fountain pens.

As proof, here it is with the point retracted.

Like the A1 and A2 before it, the A3 is ostensibly a clone of a model from Pilot's Vanishing Point or "Capless" series, depending on what they're calling it this week. Except this time, the A3 is a clone of the new (ish) Vanishing Point LS. (Yes, the one that had that big recall.) I don't think you can buy the original from Pilot anymore, but there are a few third party retailers who allege to still have it in stock.

But instead you can have this right now for about $45. Jury's out on whether or not you'd want to, though.

The A3 is neither a click nor twist mechanism. Or rather, it's... half of both?

Just like the LS it mimics, the A3 has a strange and unique dual action extend/retract system where you click the long plunger on the end to extend it...

...But twist the knurled section on the end to retract it. You can't retract the point by clicking the plunger again, no matter many times you diddle with it. Unlike the previous click-action only pens the plunger stays pushed in when the point is deployed. And you can actually deploy it by twisting the tail end as well rather than clicking the plunger if you feel like it. But there's not a lot of point in doing so.

The action is... weird. The first thing you'll notice is that you turn the tail clockwise to retract the point, which feels backwards. I know why this is -- it's because the body unscrews in the middle in the usual righty-tighty fashion and this prevents you from unscrewing the body if you go overboard retracting the point. But it still feels wrong. Here's how it works:

Hark! For I have obtained a big sheet of black construction paper.

(Why didn't you take the rest of your pictures on it, I hear you cry. Good question, is my response.)

With a bit of practice it is possible to both deploy and retract the A3 one handed, but it's just not as convenient as a regular clicker pen. You have to consciously remember to twist the end rather than try to click the plunger again, but clicking the plunger is always the tempting default action because it's right there. It just doesn't do anything.

Pilot billed the original LS on its novelty factor, and it certainly has that. It makes for an excellent fiddle toy, but it's kind of annoying to actually use as a writing utensil.

That's because there's a major problem, and getting the point in and out isn't even the start. If you've been paying attention, you've already spotted it.

The clip is in the middle of the pen.

I have absolutely no idea why this is the case, because on the original Pilot the clip is mounted much further up, a centimeter or so from the nose of the pen. And that's how it is on the Majohn A1 and A2 already. So obviously they know how to mount a clip there, so why not copy the Pilot wholesale like they've done before, i.e. the correct way? Whoever was drafting up this thing must have just slammed an entire bottle of stupid pills that morning.

This means that if you try to pocket your A3 like a normal person, roughly half of its length is left sticking out. The point of balance winds up quite close to the top of your pocket hem and thus the pen tends to want to flip over even when by all rights you should have it securely stowed. It'll also tower well over anything else you have in your pocket and make you look like a colossal goober.

Yes, the clip is removable. As a matter of fact, it might be a little too removable. It just slides over the highly polished and tapered body of the pen relying on nothing more than its own spring tension to hold it in place. It's very easy to slip it down and off the front end of the pen, and as soon as you nudge it just enough to get it to let go from its rest position it'll take care of the rest positively leaping off on its own accord.

Even if you do remove the clip there's a square alignment and anti-rotation nub permanently molded into the body of the pen which will remain there, mocking you, forever. Theoretically this a concession for keeping the pen from rolling away when its clip is removed, and it would be if it weren't for the fact that Pilot already built a fin into the rotating tail section for that exact purpose, and Majohn dutifully copied it. So the nub is in reality completely superfluous.

The A3 has an inset equatorial band that the head of the clip fits into. Here you can see the other major problem with the clip, which is that the anti-rotation nub has square corners which will snag on your shirt something fierce. The nub also rests in a hollow on the back face of the clip, positively ensuring it will be in the way 100% of the time. It is therefore practically impossible to actually clip the damn thing to your pocket in the first place. That means all the other complaints about the clip and everything else have to get in line and wait their turn until you can actually manage to get the blasted thing situated.

It is possible to get it done if you grab the end of the clip with your fingernail and lift it away from the pen body. But that's stupid. Even if Majohn had to use this idiotic clip system they should have at least chamfered the corners on the anti-rotation nub. There is no mechanical reason they need to be square to work with the clip itself.

So no matter which way you go you can't win. Either the clip will irritate the hell out of you, or you can take it off and be stuck with the left over nub annoying you forever instead. I guess you could try to grind it off, but good luck retaining the finish in that spot.

The Pilot Vanishing Point LS is billed as a "luxury" pen and thus the A3 is as well -- up to a certain extent, anyway, with Majohn positioning it above its peers with verbiage like "upgraded version" and "quiet and smooth operation." Here it is compared to an OG Vanishing Point (top) and an A2 (bottom). If you ignore all the mechanical details it actually does look quite nice from a distance. It's also much denser than the plastic variants of the previous A1 and A2 and feels like it should be more expensive if you judge it by the Jurassic Park Binoculars Method. The body is noticeably thicker and feels less hollow than the A2 despite still being made largely of plastic. It weighs a full 41 grams or 1.45 ounces, roughly twice as much as the standard A2 which is 20.8 grams or 0.73 ounces.

It actually even weighs more than a normal clicker model genuine Vanishing Point, which is 29.9 grams or 1.05 ounces. That's pretty remarkable considering significant portions of the latter are made out of brass. I don't have a genuine Vanishing Point LS to compare to, though, so I can't tell you how it stacks up against one of those.

There is a new "Majohn" script logo on the tail section whereas the previous models were completely unmarked. Maybe that's where the luxury is hiding. It's only silkscreened on, though, not engraved, so it'll surely wear off over time.

Inside, the A3 uses the same nib and cartridge carrier as the A2 and A1, which is itself a clone of the internals from the Pilot Vanishing Point. A genuine Pilot assembly is compatible with this and vise-versa, and the assemblies are also interchangeable between all three versions of the Majohn pens. It takes Pilot cartridges, and also comes with two clean and empty cartridges plus an inkwell converter. The spread of included accessories is the same as the other Majohn retractables, so you also get a little pipette bulb for either cleaning or transferring ink to one of your cartridges, and a little rubber bung to reseal a spare cartridge which I absolutely would not trust to remain sealed if you tried carrying a full spare cartridge around with you.

How does it write, then?

Exactly the same as every other Majohn pen.

At present the A3 is only available in an "extra fine" nib width. Majohn do make a normal "fine" nib assembly available and even sell the A2 pre-equipped with it, but not the A3.

The nib is plain stainless steel and is very rigid rather than responsive. Functionally no line width variation is possible. I measured the output of mine as 0.5mm if you press hard, and 0.45 if you don't. The difference is basically unnoticeable.

The point is a little scratchy, probably just owing to being so sharp. It will drag noticeably on cheap paper, more so if you tend to press hard when writing. It feels nicer on better paper with a finer grain, but ultimately this may be putting pearls before swine.

At least mine feeds just fine without skipping, even including the perfunctory few drops of Parker Quink I put in it just to test it out, and immediately syringed back into the inkwell because I hate this pen's mechanism and stupid clip so much.

Since somehow we've never looked at one of Majohn's nibs in detail before, here it is:

The nib is marked "Moonman." Moonman and Majohn are the same entity, and the Majohn retractables were originally sold in the West under the Moonman name but now they aren't. Search me as to why; this is one of those baffling mysteries of Chinese branding that may never make sense.

The nib itself is crimped to the feed and is functionally not removable. I've read of people accomplishing it and I suppose you could get the two apart if you inflicted enough violence on one or the other, but there's not much reason to bother considering Majohn will sell you an entire new assembly for $19.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Don't buy this. Get an Majohn A2 or A1 instead.

Yet another from-the-saddle GoPro shot. I was quite surprised by the rainbow; it was only visible for about four minutes. By the time I got to work and was able to hop off and get out a bigger camera, it was gone.

With this knife it's tough for me to do that thing I do where I bury the lede in order to keep suspense for the first couple of paragraphs in order hook the reader before I reveal whatever its quirk is.

This is the WE Knife Double Helix, and it's easy to see what its deal is right away because it wears its underpants on the outside.

At its core the Double Helix is, more or less, an Axis lock style crossbar locking folder. However, rather than the typical pair of hair-thin "Omega" springs hidden inside the handles...

...Instead there's this trebble-clef external spring that runs almost the entire length of the knife. There are two, actually, with an identical but mirrored one on the other side. That's certainly a novel way to do it, and for this it was awarded "Most Innovative New Knife 2018" by Knife News. I'm sure WE will be trumpeting that at anyone who'll listen -- and anyone who won't -- until the sun burns out.

In my prior ramblings, I'm certain I've told you many times how the Axis lock is my favorite mechanism out of all the various non-balisong folders. You're probably sick of hearing it, along with the note that Benchmade's patent on it expired in 2018, enabling many other knifemakers to have a crack at the idea.

Part of why I like the Axis lock is its inherent capability, when properly designed and implemented anyway, to do the "Axis flick." That is, you can hold the crossbar back and just flick the knife open without any other manual intervention. The jury's out on whether or not this is actually an originally intended function of the mechanism.

Well, for its part the Double Helix doesn't leave much ambiguity about how its designers intended it to be opened. As you can see it is completely lacking in any kind of thumb stud, disk, hole, hook, or any other apparatus to aid you in getting it open with your thumb. And to further compound matters, unlike normal Axis lock folders its lock also resolutely holds the blade shut. You absolutely cannot open it without pulling the crossbar back.

The Double Helix is a fancy knife with ball bearing pivots, so with all of the above taken together we can only conclude that it's meant to be Axis-flicked open with a snap of the wrist. The only other way to do it is to use two hands, and what kind of self respecting individual is going to do that?

The flies in the ointment with the action are twofold, though. First is that the Double Helix is not one iota longer than it needs to be, which means that the tip of its 3-1/4" drop pointed blade passes extremely closely to the tail end of the knife. It's therefore not only possible but downright likely that some of the meat from the heel of your hand will at some point get squished into the gap between the handle halves and then the point will graze you as it goes by.

Second is that, visually striking though they may be, those two external springs are actually rather stout and it takes quite a bit of force to disengage the lock.

There is a pocket clip, which stands on long standoffs to ensure it clears the spring and is also for no particular reason not reversible. As usual there's no mechanical impetus as to why it couldn't be; there just aren't any holes for it on the other side even though both handle halves are total mirror images of each other. Apparently because WE decided they just couldn't be bothered. It's just as well, probably, because screws holding the end of the spring down have cylindrical heads that sit proud of the face of the spring by several millimeters and are incredibly snaggy. They wind up between the clip and your pants fabric, making the Double Helix nearly impossible to draw in a hurry without either tearing your pants fabric off or giving yourself an atomic wedgie. Both the clip and its standoffs are easily removable, although there is no lanyard hole either so if you do that you'll just have to leave the thing bouncing around your laptop bag like some kind of heathen, or something.

There is some thickness to the springs, and also to the handles -- arguably probably more than there needs to be just to get the mechanism to work -- which makes the Double Helix pretty chonkers. This is completely notwithstanding the fact that its groovy pivot screw with the machined-in "WE" logo is flush fitting.

It's 0.648" thick just across the handle slabs not including any of the other greebles; including the thickness of the two crossbar lock heads it's a whopping 0.770" and including the clip it's an even more ridiculous 0.807". And of course being made of zooty premium materials like titanium and aluminum, it's not as hefty as you'd expect: 99.8 grams or 3.52 ounces. Closed it's precisely 4-1/2" long, and open it's 7-13/16".

The blade is S35VN, surely mostly in order to maintain credibility among its intended purchasing demographic, and is 0.133" thick. It's fullered, and has a nicely rounded spine that's easily the least snaggy part of the entire knife. Reviewers who are more qualified than me have spent many words on its hollow grind and its excellent general purpose cutting ability, but I won't because this is a collector's knife and to the first couple of decimal places nobody is going to cut anything demanding with it anyway.

According to the stipulations of a very particular gypsy curse, I am incapable of giving an overview of any knife with a weird mechanism without taking it apart to see how it works. Although in the case of the Double Helix, pretty much everything interesting is visible from the outside.

I took it apart anyway.

Being firmly in the enthusiast knife category, the Double Helix was not at all difficult to take apart. It's all T8 and T6 Torx screws, as you'd expect. And also as an enthusiast knife, it breaks apart into a ridiculous number of individual parts, apparently to vainly attempt to justify its price tag.

This is most of the hardware. Each handle slab is actually two pieces, which is completely unnecessary from both a production and mechanical standpoint, but that's how it is anyway. I only took one of them apart for my disassembly photo, so the lineup above is short three additional screws. The trim collar around the male side of the pivot screw is also a separate piece, and it has two end stop pins. And also three washers per side of the pivot, for some reason. That all adds up to no less than 35 individual pieces of hardware required to assemble this, not including the blade itself, both pieces of both handle halves, the clip, and the springs.

Because the crossbar has to pass through holes in the ends of the springs externally, it is somewhat unusually a multi-piece design. It's right in the middle of the photo above, and it consists of a flanged center barrel while the nubbins on the outside that you interact with can be unscrewed. This is necessary because the usual method of installing an Axis crossbar through an offset pair of channels hidden under the handle scales obviously would not work in this case.

Note also the alarmingly tiny little spacer washers that go between the handle slabs and the springs, which are bound to disappear forever if you drop one on the carpet. So watch it.

Here you can see WE's weirdo crossbar lock track, including the dog-leg that locks it in place in the closed position. The general consensus online seems to be that this is supposed to be for "safe" pocket carry, as opposed to a weird design oversight, which I find highly dubious given that A) nobody in all of recorded history has ever had a problem with an Axis knife falling open in their pocket, and B) nobody is going to pocket carry this more than once anyway, see also the situation with the clip, above.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is one of those things built purely for knife collectors, and normal people probably need not apply. Knife mechanisms are sort of like the quantum multiverse theory -- for any given possible way to do it, it is not only likely but downright inevitable that someone will eventually try.

I like the Double Helix's core conceit. It's just all the details surrounding its execution that I take exception to.

In my opinion it would not take much of a redesign to allow the Double Helix to retain its groovy external spring, but also make it significantly less irritating to carry and use. Just not locking the blade shut would put us well on our way, in addition to sinking the spring into the handle a bit and giving all the mounting screws countersunk heads.

WE, if you need to take me on board as a design consultant to straighten all this out I'll happily do so, and you'll find my rates to be very reasonable.

Look, if I had a nickel for every knife I've got all covered in gears, I'd have two nickels.

So here's the other one. This is the "DevilFish T20315," and with a name like that you know it's got to be good.

I've actually had my eye on this -- well, not precisely this by name -- for a little while. I dug this hole for myself by apparently deciding I'm like the stupid cutlery equivalent of Civvie 11 now, or something, and this whole thing has gotten so out of hand lately that I damn near give myself whiplash every time I'm scrolling through the internet and I catch a glimpse of another whack-ass shitty Chinese knife. I just have to page back and stare at it, like the broke kid pressing his face against the shop window at the candy store. It's some kind of Pavlovian complex now.

I've been flicking through and honing my apparently encyclopedic knowledge of the Top Quest catalog, you know, as you do, and I've passed by this knife multiple times. You see, this is actually a Top Quest knife. The "DevilFish" moniker is just some more of that Amazon fuckery, you know, where everything has to be sold under some kind of registered trademark and it doesn't matter if it's nonsense because all Amazon cares about is being able to pretend everything on there is a "brand" and isn't just drop Chinese shipped garbage?

So that whole grift actually works out pretty great for me for once, because Top Quest won't sell you a single knife. They're a distributor who wants to sell a whole shitload of pieces to a reseller and if you're just small potatoes like me as far as they're concerned you can just fuck off. Their web site won't even tell you how much these things are supposed to cost.

But I figured out the other week that I could buy just one of these from Jeff Bezos' Fun Time Candyland and I probably overpaid for it. It was still only $15.

It's obviously the same knife. It's right there on page 38 of the catalog if you want to check it out.

So the T20315 has this whole... aesthetic... going on. And I know what you're thinking. Yeah, the gears on the back side where the clip is are fake and they're just cast into the handle.

Here's the money shot. I know it's what you kids came here to see.

The gears around the pivot aren't fake, and they turn when you open the blade.

Of course this doesn't serve any purpose. It's just there to look cool. The blade is just mounted on a splined shaft and it turns the big gear in the middle, which in turn drives the little one. There's a flipper heel on the back but it's kind of a red herring. The action is extremely draggy and flicking the knife open with the flipper is completely out of the question. There's a cutout in the blade in place of a thumb stud for you to open it the traditional way, and with a bit of practice it is indeed openable one handed via that avenue.

You can also flip it open if you give it an unwisely brisk snap of the wrist when you hit the flipper or, if you're feeling super frisky, you can open it easily by doing it backwards -- grab the spine of the blade, and flick the handle out. Don't come crying to me if you flub your DEX save when you try it, though.

The T20315 is a frame locker, and that as we all know tends to come with a hilarious centering job on a cheap novelty knife like this. At the very least the blade doesn't contact any part of the handle nor can you entice it to do so, which is nice. But it's still pretty out of whack. It's solid once you have it locked open, though.

This thing is all steel. No fancy titanium, aluminum, or even inlaid Chinese mystery wood. Thus despite its skeletonized design it's pretty dense: 107.3 grams or 3.78 ounces altogether. The blurb calls it "7.5" inches, but by my measure it's actually 7-5/8. So you get a whole extra 0.125" for your money. The blade is a drop pointed affair that's 3-3/16" long if you're measuring the usable part, and rather less if you measure from the forwardmost tip of the rather rakishly angled handle, or a touch more if you want to measure from the center of the pivot. The blade is precisely 0.110" thick at the spine which I think we've become quite accustomed to seeing by now.

The handles are probably some kind of sintered material casting. They're steel, and a magnet sticks to them, but there are telltale mold release marks on the back sides. I think they've been tumbled, though, or possibly bead blasted. The outer surfaces are very consistent and feel pretty nice.

Despite all of its design tomfoolery the T20315 manages not to be cartoonishly thick. It's only 0.496" including the thickness of the gears. It includes a nonreversible pocket clip that carries the knife tip down, and against all logic actually feels pretty good and draws cleanly. The clip is on the side opposite the gears so they won't snag on your pocket fabric, either.

I was going to take this apart, but, well. I can't. The screw head on the little gear arrived pre-stripped from the factory, and I can see just by looking at it that the blade is press fit onto its shaft so I can only imagine this will be an exercise in frustration. Any disassembly would thus surely be destructive. And...

The Inevitable Conclusion

...Despite the T20315's shortcomings -- not least of which being, once again, a complete lack of a memorable name -- I actually kind of like it. So I think I'll leave it right where it is, i.e. un-destroyed.

The gears of mediocrity may grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.

And.

My.

Axe.

That's it. That's the joke.

The Inevitable Conclusion

 

 

 

...

^What?^ ^Okay,^ ^fine.^

...

This is the "Snake Eye Tactical" CE-5079BL. Like many of its ilk, its name doesn't exactly ring melodious.

And yes, that is "Snake Eye," singular. Not "Snake Eyes," like throwing a pair of ones.

I have no idea why. Whoever-it-is is very consistent with this nomenclature, at least, regardless of the fact that your brain's been trained to get it wrong every single time.

The CE-5079BL is, without a doubt...

...Yeah, that wasn't much of a stretch.

What this is, is, a frame locking spring assist folder with a very funky blade shape. The way it's designed is as if a 14 year old D&D nerd just drew what they thought a fancy dwarven bearded battle axe ought to look like, from the top down. And that metaphor is more apt than you'd think.

That's because there's very little else axelike about the CE-5079BL. Its blade has none of the wedge-profiled thickness of an axe, for instance. It's just a regular old 0.110" thick slab of "440" series stainless steel, the exact species of which is unspecified. The bevel is hollow ground, not convex as you'd expect an axe to be.

And then of course it's dinky. It's 7-7/8" long open and 4-1/2" long closed.

I've blocked out a half an hour on the schedule here for the argument about how the blade length ought to be measured. The whole thing from the forward end of the handle to the tip is 3-3/8", but the actual sharp part is only 1-7/8" and the rest of it is largely empty air. Neither of these figures match the manufacturer's stated blade length of "2.75 inches."

The CE-5079BL's got one other measurement going for it, as well. It is extra, extra broad. Easily 1-7/8" across when it's closed thanks to the wide handle and upswept horn on the peak of the blade.

Here it is with a selection of other wide bois picked at random from my collection. If you absolutely need to pick a superlative, I think the CE-5079BL has the highest breadth-to-cost ratio out of anything I've ever owned since it was only $15. I did not dig into this in extreme detail, but it may just take the crown for the broadest folding knife I now own, period.

The CE-5079BL's looks are also very funky. The handles are steel of some description with this groovy machined finish -- both figuratively and literally -- that winds up a striated surface that really catches the light. I like this blue incarnation best out of the available options, and the accent color is very shiny and almost appears... anodized? I wasn't aware you could color anodize steel like that. Maybe it's something else. In any event, the blade is finished the same way.

It does sport clip that is even deep carry, if you feel like being perverse and actually bringing this with you anywhere. Although the clip is not reversible, lacking screw holes in the opposite handle slab. Which is weird, come to think of it. I mean, just look at the thing. It's obviously not like anybody was afraid to drill any holes in it.

I'm going to keep showing off pictures of the shiny handle slabs for no other reason than I think they're so damn neat.

Anyway, this is a spring assisted opener and can be set off either via the ambidextrous thumb studs or the flipper on the back. But that said I found the spring action on mine to be... what's the word... iffy. Often it would not lock open unless I rotated the blade out all the way manually.

I figured out why pretty quickly.

Ever wondered why you haven't received anything coated in Cosmoline recently? That's because the world's entire supply has been used up by packing it into this thing.

I think this was so liberally gooped by the factory with the expectation that this would be a lubricant, but I'll be damned if the stuff doesn't look and smell just like Cosmoline, so it probably is. Which, I should point out to anyone blessedly unaware, solidifies over time.

Needless to say I cleaned the bugger very thoroughly on both sides of all of its surfaces before taking this picture.

I will also mention that this zigzaggy spring for the assist action is certainly a novel way to do it, and not one that I've seen before. Maybe I just haven't taken apart enough spring assisted knives.

The CE-5079BL is a weird hybrid design with two handle scales, both steel, but only one liner. It is a frame or body locking knife, with the bent lock portion being on the side that hasn't got the separate liner. I think the liner serves no other purpose than to keep the spring in place, and provide a pocket for it to wiggle around in and do its thing.

Here's the hardware. The shiny blue accents around the pivot are clearly just ordinary flat washers that have had the same bluification process as the other parts applied to them, whatever it is. There's nothing else clever in there whatsoever. The pivot screw is completely round, with no anti-rotation flat. The pivot rides on the customary grubby Nylon washers. And the halves are separated with two shiny but otherwise very basic round threaded spacers. All the screws are the same save the two spacer screws that must pass through both a scale and a liner, and are thus longer.

Oh, and while the pivot screws are probably meant to be T8 Torx head, the male screw on my example actually fit a T9 driver much better. The female side solidly fit a T8. Search me on that one.

Whatever these are dipped in to make them blue, the process was clearly applied to the entirety of every part. The accent work is then accomplished by machining the rest of the part which exposes the shiny metal underneath. I now know this, because the pocket beneath the pivot screw washer also has this finish in it, albeit unevenly, and despite the fact that it'll never be seen. If I had to guess I would say the handle scales are probably cast, then dipped, then machined afterwards. I can think of no explanation for the weird slope present in that pocket.

This may go some way towards explaining why the entire assembly is somewhat canted. Not just the blade in the channel, but the entire knife. If you rest it on a flat surface, it just always sits off kilter.

The Summation Or Whatever, Again

There's no getting around it that the CE-5079BL is probably precisely suited to the type of purchaser where it is likely to be sold, vis-a-vis the bong shop.

Otherwise, the blade shape really begs the question of what the heck anyone is supposed to use this for or how. With the tail of it ending in a wicked point aimed right back at the user, this is probably one of those deals where it's just as dangerous for whoever's holding it as anyone else.

It looks cool as all hell, though.

Wouldn't you know it, I've been messing with the current release candidate for FreeCAD lately. Just now, I used it to make this.

I got annoyed at having to search through all these multipacks of files to find a Gridfinity bin in the size I want. So I decided the hell with it, and made a parametric configurable FreeCAD model that creates bins or you, in any size (within reason) and also with a configurable number of fixed dividers in the bargain.

My main intent was, of course, to use these to organize oodles and oodles of pocketknives. You'll never be able to guess why. But if you have a use for it, knock yourself out.

For the record, an RXB250L. And an RXB150L.