I went through all the products available in EDC right now. ~65% of the category of EDC is knives or knife related products. What's worse is that most of the other categories only have one or two products each. I like knives as much as the next guy so I would be thrilled to have them in their own category. However they seems to be overshadowing the other products. [image]

How it started: a FRN Dragonfly 2 with British Racing Green scales and ZDP-189 steel. [image] Broken down: [image] This is a Seki City build. They fuse the two scales together, I didn't bother separating them -- I just extracted the contents. I picked up some Allen Putmans in jade G-10, and goosed the color with a little neon green dye. Starting replacement: [image] So, quite like the Delica/Endura/Native. Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it I suppose. This setup does work. Unlike the Delica and Endura but like the Native this is another washerless knife, which explains why it can't be easily flipped open one handed in the traditional manner. [image] ZDP-189 is a super steel with extreme high hardness, made by Hitachi, with no Western equivalents. Takes an unholy edge. It's brittle, is the issue -- so not a work steel unless you clad it with something more rugged. But for something like a Dragonfly, a little scalpel of a knife, it's an excellent choice, which is why I...

For reference: on the left is the Benchmade Greg Thompson SOCP. From the top down are the Fox 479TK, the Benchmade 551T, a Kershaw Emerson 6034 trainer with aftermarket modifications, and a Boker Plus Balisong Trainer. [image] Why the Swiss Cheese look? Trainer knives, when properly made, have the exact same shape and weight as the regular knife, but the blade can't have an edge, even an unsharpened one. Because blade blanks that haven't been ground down or sharpened weigh more than ones that have, manufacturers mill speed holes in the blade to give the blade the proper weight and distribution. Often a different steel is used, particularly for knives with high end steel -- good ol' 420 stainless will do you just fine for a training knife, so long as it's milled to have the correct weighting and edge dimensions. The overall idea is to make the training knife exactly the same in the hand as the edged version. Not close, but dead on. Most are red, the better to identify them as...