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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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...

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...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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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...

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...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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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".

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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...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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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For the record, an RXB250L. And an RXB150L.

Ring-da-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding...

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..bom-bom-baaaaaaoo.

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Usually when I show you guys this kind of malarkey I have to sheepishly admit to you that I have absolutely no idea who made it or where it comes from. This time, though, that's not the case. This knife was made by none other than "Heng Hui Hardware Industrial Co., Ltd."

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I know this because they were kind enough to stamp it into the blade.

I've probably owned this knife for going on 16 years at this point so in light of that you may be surprised to learn that Heng Hui apparently somehow still exist, and they're still cranking out chintzy knives, among other things. Nothing quite like this, though. Here is clearly their high water mark.

Our little tradition is not completely abolished, though. While I know with certainty who made this, I can at the very least tell you I don't know what its designation is. There's nothing else marked on it. I can't find this knife for sale anywhere anymore except here, which is in Czech, and it's labeled "Z3594." This may or may not be the manufacturer's designation or it might just be the SKU it's sold under on this particular site and therefore means nothing. On this point the internet remains silent, and the trail runs cold. But given that the URL calls it item "1660" instead I think the former is as good a theory as any. So I'm sticking with it. (And while we're at it, just get a load of those product photos. Phowar.)

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Regardless of what who is calling it where, the Z3594 is obviously a balisong knife. It's got one thing going for it, which is the rather hard to miss ring on the heel of the blade. Obviously I bought it for no other reason than this.

And I know what you're thinking.

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Yes, you absolutely can.

The ring is 0.890" in diameter 22.62mm, and it's easily big enough to get a thumb through. This is no dinky decorative drilling, barely suitable for sticking a lanyard through. No, it's large, ostentatious, and ready for you to grab this knife confidently by the scruff of the neck and ninja forth with it right the fuck into the night.

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To assist in this, there actually is a pocket clip on the other side which is a surprising inclusion. As usual it's on the wrong side of the handle, but I can excuse it this time because it keeps the ring positioned away from your pocket seam, which realistically is the only way you're going to get this thing in your pants anyhow. And all that said, the clip works well and feels pretty good. I can't even come up with something incisive and sarcastic to say about it. It's fine.

You might think at first blush that the ring would get in the way when you're flipping this thing around, but it really doesn't. The Z3594 is actually competently designed in that respect, which is a thing that sounded much less absurd before I saw it written down just now. You'll note that the ring is actually positioned such that at rest it's on the bite side handle, which is not the one you're normally manipulating. The extreme curve throughout the whole knife allows the pivots to be very offset and that also keeps the ring out of your way during normal operation. Once you get the knife fully open, though, it's right there in the perfect position to get your index finger through.

Update: All of the above is surely because this knife appears to be a clone -- albeit not a perfect one -- of Terry Guinn's "Ring Fighter," which was a short production run semicustom (20 or 39 units, depending who you ask). Thus any design competency present is certainly borrowed.

And, competently designed is not to say that the Z3594 is competently made.

Because it isn't.

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For instance, these casting flaws are really rather laughable. My granny could do a better job casting the metal in a pot on her stove.

I have no idea what that pattern is supposed to be, either. A row of bunny ears? Deer tracks? Kamina's sunglasses? Beats me.

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This is definitely a throw back to those good old/bad old days when every piece of Chinese cutlery you were able to lay your hands on could be counted on to be a source of never ending hilarity. The handle slabs are clearly cast, so it's a puzzle how they also managed to utterly fail to manage to be flat at least on one side. The tips of both handles where the pivot screws go through exhibit this pronounced flare, which can't be improved with any amount of dicking with the screw tension, no matter how hard you try.

Thus, then, as you would expect the pivot action is very, er, free. And it is, because the entire thing rattles like a pair of castanets. It's a red letter day indeed when I can say that a balisong fails so hard at the wiggle test...

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...That it's not only possible but downright trivial to cause the latch to miss the opposite handle entirely.

But never mind the quality. Feel the price. I don't know how much I paid for this back in the day, but it was surely less than $10. You couldn't pry my wallet open for anything more even if you had a crowbar ninety feet long.

Of course anywhere there is machine work it is visibly crude. There are no sharp edges on the metalwork other than the cutting one, the one that's supposed to be there, but as an example the inner surface of the ring is more than a bit rough and I'm convinced its shape is actually stamped rather than milled. It works well enough, but feels distinctly unrefined and could probably benefit from with a pass with a Dremel -- a job which I've been putting off for all these years. And plan to continue to do so.

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Since I have a reputation to uphold around here I think I am obliged to provide you the above, so I did. For archival purposes, I left all of the components exactly as filthy as they were when delivered.

The Z3594 actually wasn't too tough to take apart at least to the point you see here. This despite its best efforts, up to and including all of its screw heads being not Torx like we've become accustomed to, but rather Allen heads which manage to not quite properly fit any size bit I own -- neither metric nor fractional inch.

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The screws came prefastened from the factory with one of only two torque values: Finger-tight, or irrevocably cranked. Luckily for us, enough of them were the former that I was able to get all four handle slabs apart and extract the blade. The knife is spaced out by two Chicago screws forming the pivots, and one simple threaded barrel on each handle, down towards the tail. Among the screws that would not come out were one of each of the spacer screws, and one but not the other of the screws holding down the clip -- which helpfully arrived pre-stripped from the factory.

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Here's a lineup of... most... of the hardware. No fancy features are evident whatsoever. No anti-rotation flats on the pivot screws, no fancy decorative screw heads, no springs, not even any pins.

The blade rides on what are easily the grimiest plastic washers I have ever seen in my life. At first glance I thought whatever is all over them might be graphite, if we could be so lucky, but I think in reality it's just dirt. Some of it could be cleaned off. Most of it couldn't.

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The blade works thusly, and when it's dismounted you can see how offset the pivot points are from each other to accommodate the high Banana Quotient present in the assembled knife. Strangely, the press job on the kicker pins is actually pretty good -- among the better examples I've seen on flea market grade cutlery, actually. Weird.

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Above: You, versus the guy she tells you not to worry about.

The Z3594 probably wishes it were a Benchmade Model 42. It's probably got pinups of it all over its room, and spends all afternoon listening to Depeche Mode and Morrissey while wistfully gazing into a mirror at itself and halfheartedly doing curls using weighs made of balsa wood and leaded Chinese paint, dreaming one day it might grow up to be half as good.

Proportionally, it looks as if somebody took a Model 4x, clamped it in a vise, and whacked it with a hammer until it bent. From the tip of the tail to its forwardmost kicker pin, it's almost exactly the same length as from the tail of a the Model 42 to its tang pin. That can't be a coincidence.

All in, the Z3594 is precisely 6" long. Open it's 9-1/8", and the taking of both measurements is confounded in no small part by the radical curvature in it when it's both open and closed. The blade is 3-15/16" long measured from the tip of its scimitar-like profile to the forwardmost point on the nearest handle, with the one near the edge winding up noticeably closer to the front than the other one by the time it's open. The blade is 0.098" thick or 2.51mm, and is made of an unspecified alloy which is presumably stainless. Being entirely of low-tech materials, it weighs a not inconsiderable 197.8 grams or 6.98 ounces.

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The taper is hollow ground -- the cheapest kind of grind, of course -- and exhibits those ratty old machine marks we all know and love by now. I can't say anything about the edge because mine is not original. Perhaps unwisely, I elected to sharpen mine some years ago. I didn't put a lot off effort into it but alas, what was once the crude and sawtoothy original factory edge is now lost to time forever. However shall we cope.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There is a Venn diagram. On the one side, the Illustrious Pantheon of Knives with Cool Rings In Them. On the other, objects purporting to solve problems that most likely don't actually exist. Somewhere in the middle rests this knife. I couldn't tell you exactly where.

"Hey kid, do you find your balisong knife too hard to hold onto? Of course you do, nerd, that's the point!"

So maybe it's not built very well. But despite everything stacked up against it, the little Heng Hui actually manages to do something kind of special: In the world of balisong knives, it brings something genuinely new to the table. The ring might be silly but so are balisong knives in general, really, when you step back a bit and look at it. I won't go so far as to say that there are "myriad" ways you can use the ring to add to your repertoire of spinning tricks but there are certainly at least few, and thus there are things you can do with this that you can't do with most other balisongs. That's got to count for something.

It's just a shame that it's... you know.

Crap.

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Here's a short one today, regarding a pen I have not picked up in a very long time. I assure you this pen is not from a problematic origin, and in light of recent discussions I've queried it quite thoroughly for its political leanings and thus far received absolutely no response. I'm starting to form the conclusion that this may be, in fact, because it can't talk. I'm not entirely sure.

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This is the Ohto F-Lapa, which comes in -- or came in -- a variety of interesting finishes. Burgundy, brown, blue, that sort of thing. Those colorways are for people who didn't make the proactive decision to obtain a goddamn disco-ball mirror polished pen that'd present the maximum amount of difficulty in taking detailed photos of it while yammering about it on the internet, a decade after they bought it.

Not that I'd know, or anything.

This silver variant of the F-Lapa might just be the shiniest pen in the universe. Its body is actually quite striking in person. If I had to guess, I'd it's probably chrome plated. Handle it under bright lights at your own peril.

Despite this, the F-Lapa is and always was a budget pen, but it's one of the few I can think of off the top of my head that isn't made out of plastic and is also refreshingly slim. The widest part of its grip section, which is slightly tapered, is only 9.09mm in diameter. That makes it slimmer than most of its peers I can name off the top of my head. I don't know, really only the Pilot Cavalier leaps to mind as comparable, but even that's triple the cost.

I'm pretty sure the F-Lapa's body is aluminum. It's really light. Only 14.6 grams -- just a hair over half an ounce -- and that's fully filled with a typical International Short ink cartridge installed. Thus it's perfect for the use case I had for it at the time, which was to serve as a cheap daily carry replacement for my aging and continually appreciating in value Sheaffer Targa, while contriving not to look cheap and being compact, light, and easy to carry without making my shirt sag. It also has a clutch fit cap that just pulls off, and isn't a damn screw-on. These are all plusses in my book for practical daily use. (This was obviously before I developed my current fascination with retractable fountain pens.) But if that's what you want, too, the F-Lapa has you covered right down to the ground.

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If what you want is a flexy, expressive, valuable, or glassy smooth nib, though, this isn't it. The F-Lapa has a pretty typical steel nib that, frilly decorative scrollwork on it aside, provides completely ordinary performance. It comes with an apparently monomolecular gold coating which on my example wore away pretty quickly with cleaning and so forth, although this didn't impact the performance any. So even if it's ugly, it works. This is a "fine" point which runs maybe a touch wider than a typical Asian "fine" pen. I have not been able to verify if this was ever available in any other nib width, but I suspect it was not. It has no flex whatsoever but writes predictably with no trouble. It's not exceptionally smooth, which I guess is what folks these days call "high feedback" in the same way that back in the 80's cheap cameras were marketed as "focus free." I find it nicely controllable and basically zero pressure is required on it to write, which combined with the light weight makes it pleasantly non-fatiguing to use.

Before writing this I hadn't touched this pen for years and even so, I just jammed a random cartridge in it of unknown brand or origin and it picked right back up writing again as if I'd never put it down. So that's pretty cool.

The nib purports to have an iridium tip, and is also marked "Germany," and I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of either claim. That's kind of weird for a Japanese pen, but maybe it's true and that's why it writes broader than you'd think. I couldn't tell you.

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There are no surprises inside, but that said I've always been amused by the ridiculously fine pitch of the threads on its section. It's the little things in life.

By the way, this is one of those pens where you can carry a spare cartridge behind the one you've got installed, tail-to-tail, although only if having it rattle around inside won't annoy you.

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The only other point of note I have about the F-Lapa is that when Ohto refers to it by it's full title, they consistently call it an "Auto Fountain Pen." Well, I for one can't for the life of me figure out what's supposed to be automatic about it.

This one's a real reach. Mo' obsure, mo' better.

I got annoyed by my BRS Replicant (clone) showing up with very swanky channel milled handles, but no latch. Yes, it came with a little ballistic nylon belt pouch and no, even I of all people am not a big enough nerd to actually wear it that way.

So I made this, which is a little friction fit dingus you can print out of TPU that fits quite snugly over the bite handle and holds the knife shut, but you can slip it over the end of the safe handle with your pinky easily.

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This, ladies and gentlemen, is the CIVIVI Typhoeus.

(Gesundheit.)

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No, the Typhoeus is actually named as far as anyone can tell after the monster from Greek mythology. You know the one -- so tall his head brushed the stars, controlled the wind and breathed fire, had snakes for a butt.

What?

No, really.

Anyway, this incarnation of Typhoeus is not, in fact, so large it brushes the stars. It's actually pretty compact for what it is, which is a 6-1/4" long fixed blade knife shown here in stylin' purple, with a very modern looking upswept drop point blade that's 2-3/8" long. It weighs 81.1 grams or 2.86 ounces, making it quite light compared to many other fixed blade knives.

Actually, no. A fixed blade isn't quite what the Typhoeus is. But it's not a folder, either. In fact, it's kind of hard to describe just what it is, which I guess is exactly why it's here.

You see, it has a trick.

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Thanks to its articulated handle, it transforms before your very eyes...

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Into a punch dagger. (Yes, another one.)

Well, "dagger" is the wrong word, too. It's only single edged. But still. Can your zooty Zero-Tolerance-Benchmade-Emerson-5.11-Strider-Chris-Reeve even do that? I submit to you that it cannot.

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CIVIVI themselves call this an "adjustable fixed blade knife," which I guess is one way to describe it.

Mind you, that's because the one thing it doesn't do is fold. Well, okay, it self-evidently does because you just watched it do so. But it doesn't, like, fold fold. Not in such a way that the blade can be packed up within the handle.

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Therefore it comes with this leather sheath, which despite being decently made is unfortunately is rather horrid in how it's designed. That's a shame, really, because the Typhoeus itself is actually pretty well built. The sheath holds the knife only in its punch-dagger configuration, and you can either pull it as such or give it a little twist when you draw to convert it into its traditional mode in the process.

But the sheath is one of those ghastly fold-over retention flap jobbies with a chunky crude button snap on it, which makes it impossible to draw quickly and just plain old annoying to draw at all, what with the damn flap getting in the way and the snap scraping you and knocking against everything. Undoubtedly it would be better served by an injection molded or Kydex sheath with some kind of passive retention. But it hasn't got one of those, at least not from the factory, and not until I can be bothered pressing my own. So despite superficial appearances this is not in any way a self-defense knife. On the bright side, storing the knife in its punch configuration shortens the overall length considerably to just 4-1/2" (albeit now at 3" wide) which means it won't stick up as far to poke you in the ribs while you're carrying it. If only CIVIVI marketed this as a selling point. Instead, they don't seem to mention it at all.

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The Typhoeus' blade is, depending on how you look at it, either a design sans ricasso, or is one of those hip and trendy "all choil" dealybobbers. When you're holding it in what's for lack of a better word normal knife mode, your index finger goes in that space naturally. There is no jimping anywhere on it but the G-10 handle slabs are both milled and textured, so keeping a hold on it isn't too tough and its design lends itself to easy controlability. The upswept edge has a cutting profile that presents the entire length as a functional belly, making it quite usable.

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In punch dagger mode, a narrow tang is revealed behind the bulk of the blade which goes in between your fingers like so. The ensemble is not symmetrical and the blade is noticeably offset in the handle. While you can hold it either way 'round you'll probably find it more comfortable to have the shorter end of the handle towards your thumb, which is how it will naturally fall if you switch it from the traditional grip to punch dagger configuration anyway.

The lack of a ricasso does present a bit of a problem here, though, because it's easy to nick yourself with the corner of the blade at its base. Even moreso if you're trying to get a grip on it in a hurry, which is probably a further ding against it for self-defense duty. I probably wouldn't want to use it as such, anyway -- there are much better options available.

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I was going to take the Typhoeus all apart but I decided at the last moment I couldn't be arsed. The pivots do ride on bronze washers, though, which you can see peeking through the gaps. In total it has four pivot points, with two linkages between both handle halves.

The pivots don't present any perceptible wiggle at all, and the mechanism moves quite freely, to the point that you can just flick it back and forth between modes. This is sure to amuse anyone to no end.

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Well, it'll amuse you to no end, and annoy all bystanders in the process. That sounds like a win/win to me.

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The Typhoeus' action does not lock in either position. What keeps it there is your grip on the handles, which cam themselves together as you squeeze. Notably, pressing on the spine of the blade with your thumb does make it want to start folding up, and there's probably no jimping there specifically to discourage you from doing that. Keep your fingers instead on the handle itself around the scales and it's not going anywhere.

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The made is made of 14C28N steel which CIVIVI take great pains to point out as Swedish. Despite this it is still very much made in China. The blade is 0.119" thick, and I am very pleased to report that it's flat ground. It has an attractive satin finish on it, and bears no markings other than...

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...This nearly microscopic steel descriptor laser engraved into it. It bears no other inscriptions or maker's mark, although it does have CIVIVI's "C" logo as an emblem on the head of the center pivot screw:

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The Typhoeus is quite compact for a "fixed" knife, as evidenced by how much smaller it is even than a bog standard CQC-6K.

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The Inevitable Conclusion

The Typhoeus is a fidget toy par excellence, but at anywhere from $65 to around $100 depending on which color variant you want, it's kind of tough to justify on that merit alone. Luckily, it's also competently manufactured and pleasantly functional in the bargain. If I were you, I'd look at it as a "fixed blade" style knife that's easier to carry than most by magically making itself shorter when you put it away.

It's a shame about the sheath. You'll probably have to add $10 worth of Kydex and rivets to your bill of materials.

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Hello my friends, the day is once more / Just wait to see what we have in store / A silly knife no doubt, and one that is furthermore...

...Naughty.

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I have on multiple occasions mentioned owning several knives with various aspects that the law finds it within itself to frown upon. And probably just as often, expressed my own personal conclusion that regulations outlawing this feature or that particular mechanism or the other shape or whatever are ultimately all very silly when viewed from the perspective of anyone familiar with, you know, reality. Byzantine knife laws make the least sense out of pretty much anything because at the end of the day blade is a blade, and there is self-evidently no such thing, for example, as a "high capacity assault knife." You could cut someone just as well with a 4" paring knife from the Dollar General as you could with the latest tactical spring loaded all black half serrated tanto point karambit switchblade from 5.11 or Emerson. Or a chunk of obsidian you've knapped on a rock, for that matter. One sharpened chunk of metal is much the same as any other from the standpoint of someone wanting to perform mischief with it -- or one having mischief performed upon them with it.

(And that's notwithstanding the racist motivations that underpin specifically the US federal switchblade ban, balisong bans, and "dirk and dagger" laws.)

But this. This is easily the single most likely thing I've got liable to keep a harebrained legislator up at nights worrying.

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I've probably had it for about 20 years, and I'm pretty sure I bought it from BudK back in the day, when I was in one of my "get it before it's banned" moods.

Yes, this is a punch or push dagger. It is an early example of a brandless OEM Chinese special, so it never to my knowledge had any name or formal model designation, and while I can't find its exact ilk for sale anymore you can still find things online rather like it. If you prefer a brand name option, the Cold Steel FGX Push Blade leaps to mind. It has very little utilitarian purpose. This blade, it is made for stabbin'.

It's also made entirely of G-10, and is therefore completely nonmetallic.

In last week's column I gave an overview of a ceramic bladed folding knife, which doesn't have a metallic blade. But it still had a metallic liner, clip, and screws and therefore would not pass through a metal detector. This doesn't, and it absolutely would.

But even still, don't try it.

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This "knife" is a 5" long, 0.175" thick, single flat piece of textured G-10, which has a cord wrapped T handle and a flat ground "blade" profile milled into it. For its part, G-10 is extremely strong for its weight (in total here only 17.4 grams or 0.62 ounces) and also surprisingly rigid. But considering that the thing and the whole of the thing is just fiberglass suspended in an epoxy resin, it doesn't actually hold an edge worth a damn. Like, at all.

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So while there is an edge bevel on it, it's not even sharp enough to make a reliable letter opener. Even if you carefully sharpened it, it's unlikely it would last for more than one cut. The material is just too soft and prone to abrasion.

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But that's not the point. The point is the point, and this knife is probably quite stout enough to Render Unto Caesar that what is Caesar's. Maybe not all 23 times, but certainly at least once. As a last-ditch holdout, it would seriously inconvenience anyone you punched with it although I imagine given how soft the material is it would utterly fail to penetrate leather or even the cheapest soft body armor.

Even so, I would not want to have this coming at me unexpectedly in the dark.

I present this to you bare, because although it did arrive with a belt sheath -- which ironically contained a large steel button snap on it, completely defeating its implied purpose -- this was made of fake leather so abysmal that it literally disintegrated into fish flakes while in storage in my knife cabinet. So I threw it away. Maybe some day I'll 3D print a replacement one, or something.

Whatevs. I'm obviously not carrying this thing with me anywhere, so I can't think of a single thing that's a lower priority.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's probably because of things like this that all of our airports have switched over from plain metal detectors to those backscatter X-ray machines now.

It's all theater, though. Both that and this. Despite what the hysterical shriekers would have you believe if they could, to the nearest couple of decimal points no one is actually smuggling these anywhere, nor are they the crux of any kind of secret terrorist plot, and while we're at it nor is anyone realistically going to successfully use it as a last-ditch self defense tool when so many other ones are both better and just as readily available.

Even so, it's sometimes nice to know that just by owning something like this you're pissing off the right people, even if only passively.

SCH404: Weirdness Not Found

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"What the hell is this?" I hear you ask. "This looks like the ordinariest ordinary thing that ever ordinaried."

Here's a hint, by way of a magnet.

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The Schrade SCH404 is indeed one of those from the burgeoning, but still uncommon, sector of ceramic bladed knives. But unlike the cheapie translucent ones that Amazon perpetually refuses to ship to your location, this one has a zirconia ceramic blade with this attractive obsidian finish.

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The SCH404 is very old and thus very discontinued. So much so that it's actually pretty tough to find any info on it online. It's also one of those things that perfectly illustrate how us spacemen are already living in the future, but we're so numb to everything nowadays that the mere presence the advanced wondermaterials it's made out of -- things unfathomable to an observer from, say, fifty years ago -- now just feel like they're old hat.

And this was an inexpensive entry level knife in its day, not even remotely premium.

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But despite its age, the SCH404 still has quite a few modern aspects about it. Like like the deep carry pocket clip, highly textured G10 scales, and slick single sided liner design. These are all highly desirable hallmarks of current EDC knives. Just in this case also including a blade made of a weird nonmetallic material.

For a start, this is a very light and compact knife. It's only 48.7 grams or 1.72 ounces -- that's actually 2.4 grams lighter than a Benchmade Bugout. It's just 3-3/4" long closed, 6-1/2" open, and sports a 2-3/4" long blade made of that groovy glassine ceramic. I think the only way to go lighter per displacement would be to pay a lot more and pony up for the likes of, say, a Böker Anti Grav.

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The SCH404 is pretty thin overall as well. It's 0.346" thick not including the clip, with its lack of bulk in both dimensions and weight combining to make it very easy to carry. The ceramic blade is 0.80" thick.

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Actually, let's talk about that blade.

Ceramic blades like this one are typically billed as "forever sharp." The zirconia ceramic material is incredibly hard, falling somewhere between 8.5 and 9 on the Moh's scale and thus much harder than steel. It resists abrasion to an incredible degree, and is essentially completely immune to the inherent abrasiveness of cardboard, sisal rope, leather, and even wood.

The glossy obsidian surface is a veritable beacon for fingerprints but not, it must be said, scratches. There is very little that can truly scratch the surface of the SCH404's blade. Basically only sapphire, diamond, and tungsten carbides -- all things you're unlikely to be trying to slice with your pocketknife on a daily basis.

But the material is also very brittle, and the thinner it is the more brittle it gets. Thus a ceramic knife like this chips near-microscopically rather than dulling via abrasion or the edge getting rounded down like a typical steel knife. It's also not a good idea to put any torsion on it at all, because the material would be prone to just snap.

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And I know what you're thinking. No, this knife will not sail through a metal detector. The liner, clip, and screws are all made of plain old steel. So forget it. Only the blade and scales are nonmetallic.

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It's a very good thing these come preground, because they are functionally impossible for a hobbyist to properly sharpen. Yes, you can theoretically do the job with resin bonded diamond stones but the process is arduous and difficult, and the penalty for failure is high. My example is very lightly used, so I can only imagine these tiny imperfections in the edge came from the factory. The SCH404 is not quite shaving sharp although it glides through paper and cardboard quite easily still. That's just as well, because if it were truly dull I probably wouldn't be too keen to do anything about it.

I dig the subtle refractive rainbow effect of the light playing off of the texture in the edge like a starling's wing. The SCH404's blade really is stunningly beautiful. The flat of the blade is literally mirror polished, to the point that it casts reflections. The machine marks, meanwhile, sparkle in the light. It's like waving a black diamond around.

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The edge is also fortunately exactly mathematically true. As it bloody well ought to be, given all of the above. If it weren't, good luck trying to correct it.

So, I mentioned the Böker Anti Grav earlier, and I did that on purpose. That's because I suspect, but cannot prove, that this knife was actually OEM'ed by Böker using much of the same equipment, material, and template.

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What clues me in is this highly distinctive five-holed spanner nut on the pivot, which is suspiciously reminiscent of the one on the Anti Grav and its sibling, the Anti MC. If so, that's huge -- that makes this an incredible poor man's version of that knife, especially considering that the former retails for about $195 nowadays. The main thing you're lacking is the zooty carbon fiber or titanium scales, but for the end-of-life retail cost of around $15 on this thing I'll sure take the $180 discount. So if that's true, there's the other half of the oddity surrounding this knife. We'll probably never know for sure.

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I bothered to take a macro photo of the SCH404's model number etching, so I'm going to show it to you and nobody's going to stop me. Here it is.

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Size wise, the SCH404 falls firmly into the compact category. It's basically the size of a Mini Bugout. Compared to the usual CQC-6K, there, it'll ride thoroughly unnoticed in your pocket.

The Inevitable Conclusion

You can't buy the SCH404 anymore, so there wasn't much point in me yammering on about it. But it's the only folding ceramic knife I own these days so it's the one you got.

Ceramic knives like these -- in their pocket knife incarnations, anyway, and not as the fairly ubiquitous cheap white kitchen knives -- shine for basically one and only one purpose. If your workflow involves cutting a lot of cardboard in a day, something like this absolutely will save you from endless resharpenings or having to go through box cutter blades like popcorn.

Like many things in my collection, both those I've shown you and ones I haven't gotten around to yet, the SCH404 is a bit of a relic. It's a peculiar combination of materials, construction, and price point we're not liable to see the likes of again. At least, not for what it cost when it was available.

I'm almost feeling like I'm being personally called out, here.

This is the "TZGUO" model Q19. As I'm sure you're getting tired of me telling you, both the brand and the model on this thing really don't mean much; you can find this and many of its near identical siblings wherever Chinese white-box goods are sold, under a near infinite array of names and non-brand monikers. This particular instance came from Amazon, hence the unpronounceable five letter combination. The fact that it sneakily violates the "no balisongs on Amazon" rule is just delicious icing on the cake of overt cheekiness. You can also find these all over AliExpress and probably Wish and Temu by now, too, where they're cheaper and you can score one for about $35. The search term you want is "titanium design balisong," apparently.

But never mind all that. Just check this thing out.

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The Q19 is a balisong utility knife. It takes standard Stanley style trapezoid blades, as are readily available everywhere.

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It has a spring loaded latch, too.

Does that remind you of a particular knife? It certainly reminds me of one... Mine!

Now, I don't think I've been scooped, here. Rather, I think this is a case of convergent evolution, as it were, with both myself and whoever is churning these things out arriving at some similar design conclusions for similar reasons.

And it turns out I like The Q19. I've actually been using it as my daily driver for about the past two weeks, which is why you haven't seen me blathering about much of anything else in the interim. And this will go a long way towards explaining the tape gunk stuck to the blade in some of these pictures.

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The Q19 is, as implied by its product description, made of titanium. Well, a lot of it is, anyway. The handle scales and latch certainly are. A magnet reveals that the blade carrier and clip are actually steel. That's fine, and the combination of materials adds up to a total weight of 76.5 grams or 2.7 ounces exactly.

It's definitely more of an "EDC" size and not a competition sized knife, measuring out at 4-9/16" long when closed including the tail of the latch sticking out, and precisely 7" long when open with a typical blade installed. It's square in profile with flat sided handle scales, 0.416" thick not including the clip.

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Said clip is a traditional design and rides in a little pocket machined into one of the handle slabs. Of course it's not reversible, with no matching pocket on the other side, because this is in accordance with the deeply rooted worldwide conspiracy among all balisong manufacturers everywhere designed specifically to annoy me in particular, wherein it is also on the wrong side of its handle.

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Ahem.

Anyway, the heel of the blade contains a slotted screwdriver tip or, as it's described in the specs, a "pry bar." And the hook on the end of the latch functions as a bottle opener. The manufacturer is thus pathologically driven to bill this as a multi-tool.

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Fair enough, actually. The tailhook does open bottles like nobody's business -- provided you manage to lever it the right way around, and don't try to use it backwards.

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I spent some time trying to research what the Q19 is a knockoff of and ultimately came up empty. If anything, the closest I can come up with is the Artisan ATZ-1823PO, the now discontinued utility knife version of their Kinetic Tool thing. This certainly has a T shaped latch strongly reminiscent of the Artisan one, although that isn't spring loaded and this is. And the Artisan tool has that weird combination switchblade/balisong action which this certainly doesn't.

Annoyingly, then, the Q19 appears to be a more-or-less bespoke design that against all expectation actually turns out to be pretty good. Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are. That's not how these things are supposed to go.

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Its action is excellent, for a start. The titanium handles are fairly light but the Q19's balance is spot on, with the center of gravity remaining well inside the handles and not out in the blade carrier. The pivots exhibit no drag and are totally consistent in their nearly complete lack of friction throughout the entire range of travel. The rebound is pleasant and distinct, without setting up any vibrations or resonances in the handles. And thanks to having an extension spring driven design ripped off directly from Benchmade, the latch is held out and away from the handles at all times and can't strike either one during manipulation. It just feels good overall.

You would think that the bottle opener hook would make it snaggy as all hell but somehow it doesn't. The knife is thin enough and rides against your pocket tightly enough that it doesn't seem to cause an issue. The only real fly in the ointment I can see from a design perspective is the prybar tip sticking out of the end, which might get in the way if you're trying to do over-the-finger spin tricks. I guess if it bothers you, you could just grind it off. It's a $35 knife with no collector's value. Who cares?

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Hier ist Der Viggletesten.

The Q19 scores favorably here, exhibiting very little wiggle and absolutely zero tap of the blade carrier against the insides of the handles.

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Yes, this is a $35 knife wherein a significant portion of it is constructed of titanium, and it has ball bearing pivots. Nice ones, too. And the inside faces of the handles are pocketed for the bearings, so this wasn't a case of some existing design somebody just decided to slap bearings in and add $2 to the bill of materials. No, it was designed for them from the start.

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Here's the latch spring mechanism, which is dead simple and suspiciously similar to that of the Benchmade Model 42 and subsequent knives. It will spring open from either the latched or unlatched positions if you give the handles a hearty squeeze together.

The Q19 also has a Zen pin design without the need for kicker pins to be pressed through the blade carrier. This is just as well, because every time you see kicker pins on a cheap Chinese knife they're invariably pressed badly. In this they're just basic straight pins with no shoulders or fancy features, but they sit acceptably square when assembled and don't cause any problems or weirdness.

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You might think at first blush that installing or changing a blade in this requires tools, based on the two little Torx screws on the blade carrier. But those are a cost cutting measure, not a mechanical necessity; they obviate the manufacturer from having to machine a narrow slot into the blade carrier and instead allow it to be assembled out of two pieces which has got to make it much easier to manufacture. Rather, the nubs that engage the cutouts in the blade are actually mounted on a flexible prong, which you can pull down with the aid of a fingernail just far enough to allow you slide it in and out. If you're chicken you can still install a blade the hard way, by removing those two screws and the top plate. But that's not actually necessary.

Again, this is highly reminiscent of how I do it on all of my printed utility knives. Obviously great minds think alike.

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The pivot screws have anti-rotation flats and the handle slabs do indeed have matching D shaped cutouts in them for once -- on all four of them, even. Thus undoing the pivot screws is easy provided only that you start reefing on it from the correct side. There is no visual indicator on either of the screw heads which is the male side and which is the female. But you'll quickly discover that the female side refuses to turn, which clue you in pretty quickly. The Torx head on that side is thus ultimately just decorative. You can install the pivot screws either way around depending on whatever suits your fancy.

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The Q19 comes in a pretty nice woven-textured box, and I was surprised to find that it even comes with a nearly complete set of replacement hardware inside as well. It comes with a spare clip, too, which may be an addition prompted by the smattering of reviews on Amazon bitching about said clip breaking. But I can't prove it. To be fair it is only held down by one screw, so I imagine if you were truly hopelessly uncoordinated it's possible you could rip the clip clean off of the knife. Remember, kids: The clip is for carrying the knife on the inside of your pocket, not for dangling it out in the open off of your belt to get snagged on every damn fool thing you might happen to pass by.

You get two replacement assembly screws (all five are the same, including the one mounting the clip), one each of the male and female pivot screws, one spacer barrel, and a clip. You don't get a replacement spring, though.

It also comes with a box of "WYNNS" utility knife blades, so you don't even have to get on your bicycle and pedal down to the hardware store to get your own. These aren't great, exactly, even easily outperformed in edge retention by those in my cheapo 100 pack from Lowes. But they'll do to start with. Of course you can mount any Stanley style blade in this provided it's thin enough to go in the slot, including fancy composite edged or even the forever-sharp ceramic ones.

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Oh, and the handle slabs are completely interchangeable so when I put it back together I swapped the bite side slabs, so I could put the clip on the correct goddamn side of the knife. I will begrudgingly re-award the points I docked for this originally, even though it should have come this way from the factory in the first place. Dagnabbit.

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While we're flaunting that Benchmade Morpho, though, let's do our usual size comparison thing.

The Q19 is actually very similar in proportions to the Model 32, the smaller of the two Morphos. It's smaller than my Rockhopper balisong, although not for any mechanical reason -- I just designed the Rockhopper to be longer than it strictly needs to be for comfort purposes.

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Open it's the same story, although both the Q19 and my Rockhopper's blade carriers are shorter overall than a normal fully steel blade probably would be.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is pretty much the second coolest box cutter in the world. (The absolute coolest, of course, would be the one I designed. But I would say that, wouldn't I?)

In fact, the Q19 is way better in reality than it has any right to be. I can't find much of anything to complain about, really. It's actually built rather well, it's slick as all fuck, it has all the features, and the price is right, too.

Plus, I think it'd probably make a good introduction for anybody looking to get into balisongs. With a spring latch, titanium handles, and ball bearing pivots all in one package you really can't go wrong. And it's worth mentioning that it's significantly safer to be fucking around with than a normal live bladed balisong, for two reasons: One, you can just take the blade out of it if you feel like it. And two, even on the sharp "bite" side of the blade carrier, about a third of it has no edge exposed. Unless you're holding the handles really far down it's a fair bet you'll just whack the blunt part against your index finger rather than find yourself contributing an express blood donation.

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Usually I spend all of my time with this type of thing damning with faint praise. Oh look at the little thing, it thinks it's a real knife, isn't that cute? But with the Q19, I can do no such thing.

It has all the hallmarks of crapness. It's a Chinese made, cheaply sold, generic and endlessly rebadged non-brand product that, for once, actually turns out to deliver 100% of what it promises. I'll be damned.

Okay, okay, this one is kind of a cheap shot.

Not just because this knife is cheap per se, although it definitely is: Only $6 at the moment. Rather, it's because I kinda-sorta posted it already.

But not really.

This knife has no real designation other than it's non-brand name, "Treszen(R)," and we are led to believe its model name is literally "EDC Pocket Knife." I have to wonder if that (R) there means whoever the hell is flogging these things on Amazon actually bothered to register their trademark in the US. Do you know, I'll bet you a nickel they didn't.

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This knife bears more than a passing resemblance to one that I showed off in one of my very first Weird Knife Wednesday posts. That was the "SDOKEDC SD604A," and both that and this are very nearly clones of the Scorpiodesign Shapeshifter.

All three of the above are strong contenders for the king of knives that the uninitiated are guaranteed to never be able to figure out how to open. Just let motherfuckers find out you have one of these on you and they'll stop pestering you about borrowing your knife in a big hurry.

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The action is this Rube Goldberg triple-jointed nonsense that achieves, at least according to the design goals of the Scorpiodesign original, a knife with an effective blade length longer than the handle is once it's deployed. If you find somehow that this was a void that absolutely needed filling in your life, well, here you go.

The product description goes on to describe it as, "Special Folding Method."

Yeah, that's for damn sure.

It doesn't really feature a lock as such, but when it's all folded out your grip on the handle forces the two halves to cam together, which effectively holds it open and prevents it from folding up on you.

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The critical difference here is that the Treszen here is much, much smaller than its inspiration. Small enough that you realistically could actually carry it if you were so inclined, which means I like this incarnation a lot better than the others -- which, novelty aside, are entirely too large and doofy to actually keep on you. That's the SDOKEDC on the right, there, which is near as I can figure identical in dimensions to the original Shapeshifter. And on the left, the bog standard Kershaw CQC-6K.

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The Treszen is 5-1/4" long when open and 4" long closed, which puts it well within the realm of actual EDC friendly sizes. It's also only 0.320" thick.

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It's way slimmer than the SDOKEDC/Shapeshifter. It's about as thick as a Bugout, actually. But despite this, your EDC aspirations won't be helped in any way whatsoever by the complete lack of any kind of clip, lanyard hole, or even perfunctory ratty nylon belt pouch. You'll just have to let it slosh around in your pocket, I guess.

If it helps you any, though, it is extremely shiny.

That's because it is constructed entirely of metal. What kind of metal? Who knows. The best anyone can tell us is "high carbon steel." But because of this it weighs 61.3 grams overall or 1.16 ounces and feels denser in the hand than you'd expect. Its 2-3/16" blade has a drop point-ish profile that's not too weird to use for things, and is 0.096" thick.

The near mirror-polished surface is, of course, a complete magnet for both scratches and fingerprints. But damned if it doesn't give the thing an unexpectedly grown up vibe. This could, at least in dim lighting perhaps, pass for a gentleman's knife.

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Playing with it is strangely satisfying, too. But that's only after you figure out the inherent fly in the ointment, which is that the tip of the blade by necessity pokes through one of the sections of the handle as a part of the opening process. And if you don't know this and you're not careful about it, it'll poke you, too.

I'll tell you what's not so elegant, though. The Treszen's build quality is actually kind of crap.

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The edge grind features this rather hilarious chicane in it at the tip, for instance. I figure whoever had this on the grinding wheel must have sneezed right when they got to that part.

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And but of course, the edge is gloriously out of true. At this rate, I would almost be disappointed if it weren't. For $6, would you really deprive yourself of the amusement, nay, sheer joy of spending an hour with your very best diamond stones bullying the edge back into shape?

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To its credit, the Treszen actually does away with the ridiculous gaps between all the moving parts that the old SDOKEDC featured. Despite not actually being built that well in an objective sense, this helps in making it at least superficially feel quite a bit less naff. The main pivot where the blade slides down along its track is spaced out with these nylon washers, for instance, which probably help reduce the mechanism's friction from completely untenable to merely absurd, and also result in a fairly low amount of wiggle in the blade once it's deployed.

I was going to take the Treszen apart to show you this, but I'm ashamed to admit that, well... I can't.

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That's because while it's theoretically held together with Torx screws, several of them are pre-stripped from the factory and some of the others are so malformed that they don't fit any driver I own. Just look at them. I have no idea how the factory even managed to assemble it.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I've never held a knife so crappy that I liked so much.

I don't even really know why. At the end of the day, the Treszen really isn't any more practical than its larger brethren despite being markedly easier to carry. There still isn't any way to describe its method of operation that does not somewhere include the words "deeply silly." And yet.

I can say one thing about it, though, which may also be a result of its German roots: It is categorically impossible to open with one hand. That's not a benefit anybody, except for someone who lives in a place where one-hand opening and locking knives are illegal. Like, oh, Germany. Just a thought.

Strange as it is, ridiculous as it is, I think it would take a indefensibly unreasonable leap for anyone to claim view the Treszen as a weapon. You can't call it anything more than a pennknife. Hell, a Swiss Army Classic is just about John Rambo's Bowie knife compared to this thing. It's so stupid that it's completely nonthreatening.

I mean, just look at him face. How can you not adore that?

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I took this photo and the one below for my post about the Dialog, but did not wind up using it therein.

From left to right:

• Platinum Curidas
• Majohn A2 Press (Modified)
• Lamy Dialog 3
• Pilot Vanishing Point
• Oaso K016

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Gentlemen.

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I promise I'm not doing this as a showing-up. Given my predilection for retractable fountain pens, I've had my eye on one of these for years and it's the one I've never actually been able to own. Up until now, anyway, because I finally found the opportunity to get my hands on one without going broke. This legitimately did just show up the mail just recently.

And since we don't get to do this every day, why not share in the unboxing experience of a pen that lists for four hundred United States dollars?

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It seems how seriously the manufacturer takes any given pen is directly proportional to the size of the box it shows up in. The box my Oaso K012 came in, for instance, could barely contain a deck of cards. Hell, my Ohto F-Lapa didn't even come in a box at all, just a flimsy baggie.

The Dialog, meanwhile, comes in a woven-textured matte presentation box that's so big it won't even fit in my illuminated photo booth, so to get this picture I had to take it outside. Hence the shadow. It's 7-1/8" square and if my algebra is correct, if you were so inclined you could easily fill it with about 44 Lamy Dialogs.

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But alas, inside you only get one.

The box is lined with some kind of fuzzy fabric all over the inner surfaces, and the walls of the lower half of it, at least, feel like they're about five layers thick.

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The Dialog is one of Lamy's flagship pens. Thus as you would expect, the Germans left very few stops unpulled when they were constructing it. The body is all aluminum, with various internal structures made of stainless steel. It's ridiculously dense, weighing 46 grams precisely with a standard Lamy ink cartridge installed. It is without a doubt the heaviest fountain pen I own and possibly the heaviest I've ever handled for any length of time. For comparison, my OG Pilot Vanishing point -- which is made of brass, mind you -- also feels incredibly dense but still only weighs 29.8 grams.

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Lamy always go for a Euro-chic minimalist vibe with their nicer pens and the Dialog is certainly no exception. Its profile is a postmodern, completely untapered capsule shape with nearly spherical ends. It is thus exactly 14mm in diameter down its entire length by my measure, or 0.551", not including the clip. So that's actually slightly thicker than a Platinum Curidas and noticeably thicker than a Vanishing Point or clone thereof. If you are a fancier of slim pens, this one probably isn't for you.

It's available in four finishes: The satin silver I got, matte black, and a duo of "piano" gloss black or gloss white that frankly I'd be terrified to even store outside of the box. The latter two have got to be both fingerprint and scratch magnets. That, and they almost look like they're trying to be an Apple product.

So yeah, I got the silver one.

And this is the current Dialog 3, not the slightly newer Dialog CC which is shorter, has an aesthetically different tail, and lacks the pocket clip. What kind of heathen philistine would want a pen like that with no clip is beyond me, but the option to pander to such strange individuals does at least exist.

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The Dialog is, needless to say, a retractable fountain pen. One of the very few entries into that select brotherhood, in fact, along with the Pilot Vanishing Point and its clones, the Platinum Curidas, the aforementioned Oaso K012, and the historical and quite collectible Platinum Knock and OG Pilot Capless. There may be others. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

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As the youngsters are fond of saying these days, no cap.

The Dialog is unique among all of these because it's the only one that's not a click pen -- It is a twist-to-extend mechanism, instead.

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Here's the part you all want to see.

The various retractable fountain pens of the world use an array of mechanisms to prevent themselves from drying out when their points are retracted. Hinged or spring loaded trap doors, or in the case of Oaso's entry a flexible rubber diaphragm. The Dialog meanwhile uses what Lamy describes as a "ball valve," a hemispherical rotary cover that pivots into place over the open end of the pen when you retract the point.

The Dialog's operation is a mechanical symphony conducted by a helical thread inside the grip section that drives three separate mechanical actions. First is the extension and retraction of the point itself, second is the operation of the ball valve cover...

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...And third is the slight but noticeable retraction of the clip when the point is extended. Now, Lamy's marketing materials try pretty hard to imply that the clip sinks flush into the pen body but this is not the case. It would be rad it if it did. But the retraction is only probably about two millimeters. Note the difference in the amount of daylight showing through the gap in the pictures above.

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The Dialog's twist mechanism has a tactile detent in it when you rotate it into either the fully extended or retracted positions. There is no tactile indicator on the surface of the pen body, though; it's completely smooth all the way around. Instead there is a visual indicator in the form of these two pairs of lines marked on both halves of the body. When the point is fully retracted these all line up with each other as shown.

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The Dialog comes packing Lamy's fanciest premium nib, their "Z 55" which is made of 14k gold with platinum plating. I got the medium variant, the 585. The gold nib is fairly flexible although at least with the medium point the variation in stroke width with pressure and direction is fairly subtle. (Magnified shot here, although it fell out of my depth of field slightly.)

I prefer a broad-ish stroke and the 585 certainly delivers on that front. It's the second fattest you can get in Lamy's gold nibs, and the second fattest overall without going to one of their calligraphy or oblique options. Lamy's entire line of nib widths -- which they inexplicably call "grades" as if to imply that one is better than another which is obviously nonsense -- trend wider than their Asian counterparts. A Lamy fine is probably more akin to a medium from many of the Japanese makers, for instance.

So this nib combined with the Dialog's feed is a very wet writer as evidenced by the feathering on the cheap Post-It I used for my headline photo as well as this comparison:

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Some of this may be down to the ink, since both of my Lamy pens are currently loaded with genuine Lamy branded ink which seems pretty thin, and they both do this. The Majohn in the middle is filled with Diamine Shimmering Seas which, although weird, seems to be slightly better behaved on bad paper.

This thing would certainly drive any writers of tiny katakana completely nuts. Which is exactly how I like it. Lamy's blue is also a very transparent ink which combined with the high output results in a pleasing display of shading variation, if you're into that kind of thing. If you like novelty metallized, shimmering, glittery, or iridescent inks that require you to flood the paper with them in order to do their thing, I think they should all work exceptionally in the Dialog. At least if you select one of the broader nib options.

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Towards that end, though, all of Lamy's nibs are interchangeable (except on their 2000 pen) so you could in theory yank the stock nib off of this and replace it with anything. The nib mounting interface is obviously exactly the same as Lamy's other pens, as shown here. The Z 55 series nibs retail separately for an eye-watering $155, so if gold isn't your jam you could probably flog yours on eBay and buy a lifetime supply of steel Lamy nibs of all shapes and sizes.

You're on your own for figuring out how to get the stock nib off without damaging it, though. Lamy describes the standard procedure as to clamp the nib upside down against a table using the bottom of your pen's cap and yank it off thusly, but the Dialog hasn't got a cap and the notion of applying unknown tools to a $155 nib isn't one I find immediately appealing. Especially one that isn't made of indestructible stainless steel.

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And for its part, the included 39 page double-sided full color glossy instructions manual doesn't describe how they intend for you to remove the nib from this pen, either, despite going into significant detail about everything else.

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Not even the page specifically about (and titled) the nib.

So I think I'll leave mine right where it is for now, thanks.

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For four hundred bucks you figure they could at least include more than one poxy cartridge. But all you get is a single lonely blue T10 cartridge, an inkwell converter, the pen itself, and one official Lamy Dialog Kurled Thingy.

Lamy apparently do straight-facedly expect you to dip this thing into an inkwell as one of its intended modes of operation, which I think is deeply silly. An entire page is devoted to this in the manual, in fact. Sane people, if using the inkwell converter, will probably want to fill it with a syringe separate from the pen so as not to get ink trapped in every nook and cranny inside that expensive retractable mechanism.

Like most (possibly all?) Lamy pens, the cartridge is not held captive by the tail end of the pen body once assembled and just screwing the halves together won't pierce a cartridge like on a Sheaffer or Parker. You have to shove it home yourself all the way to get the ink flowing. It's not even close to being restrained even with the pen assembled and the point fully retracted, with at least half an inch of empty air behind the tail of the cartridge. So it is theoretically possible for it to get knocked off the feed in transit somehow, although I have to imagine any force capable of doing that to a fresh cartridge would probably cause other problems for the pen... or you. But if you're a habitual cartridge-refiller, be mindful of the necks of your cartridges eventually getting wallered out and loose over time. The neck of the inkwell converter has a rubber gasket on it but the plastic cartridges don't.

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The Dialog comes apart simply by unscrewing it beyond its tip-retracted position.

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Inside Lamy is surely showing off with the core feed and nib carrier precision machined with fine crosshatched grip knurling, not to mention various threaded parts. This unscrews from the front section rather than pulling straight out, and is captive until you do so. Unlike other retractables, the Dialog doesn't appear to contain any springs.

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The Knurled Thingy is actually a cleaning tool.

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It can be screwed on in place of the core, and if you twist it further it'll open the ball valve mechanism at the front of the pen, the same as if you'd deployed the point normally.

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This enables you not only to peer straight through the thing and out the other side, but also gets the valve out of the way so you can rinse the section out or get a Q-tip through it.

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As far as feel in the hand goes, the Dialog is, of course, absolutely boss. Flawless provided only that you can handle its girth. I was surprised to find that mine did require a noticeable amount of break in before it would write reliably, however. Maybe this is normal for Lamy's gold nibs, but it's the first and only one of those I've ever owned (despite having handled oodles of their steel ones in my time) so maybe that's normal.

Out of the box it was reliably unreliable, invariantly failing to write for the first quarter inch or so any time it'd been left idle without putting down any ink for more than a few seconds. Once it got going it was bulletproof. This behavior stopped after about two days of use.

I've seen this sort of thing before and it's either cured by a few lashes on a fine Arkansas stone or a thorough cleaning, both of which I was avoiding at first to see if the Dialog would improve on its own, because at the price it retails for it's the principle of the thing, damn it.

And it eventually did. So that's nice.

Like most modern pens, the Dialog (and by extension one must assume all Lamy Z 55 nibs) seems to be designed for "smoothness" first and foremost, that being the quality that most fountain pen writers constantly rave about. So its nib is indeed extremely smooth and quite polished. It has no noticeable scratchiness at all, even on cheap paper. It produces a very low resistance writing experience, which is fine if that's your preference but if your writing style relies on friction against the paper to maintain control then the Dialog may annoy you because it has very, very little of that.

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Also, despite its massive heft it actually will not reliably write with no pressure on the paper other than its own weight. Very little pressure is required to get the ink to flow, for sure, but some is always required. More pressure results in a wider stroke, and depending on your habitual baseline level of pressure against the paper you may find you wind up with little to no variation at all which is certainly the case for me. If you conscientiously try to begin all of your strokes with the absolute minimum of pressure to get the Dialog to write reliably you can achieve about a 2:1 variation in stroke width. With my medium nib and by my measure, the Dialog will produce a 0.52mm line at minimum and 1.04mm at maximum. I don't know how that ranks on the scale of "expressiveness," but I have $2 Speedball dip pen nibs that are capable of more variation and are more controllable to boot. Make of that what you will.

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Everyday practicality is where retractable fountain pens aim to shine, of course. That's why I like all mine, anyway, but on the topic of the Dialog I'm of two minds about that. It is, undoubtedly, a very fine pen. Exquisitely constructed, luxurious, and without a doubt a very special object to behold. I can't say a single thing against it, there.

It's just that the twist mechanism is kind of a pain in the ass.

Don't get me wrong, mechanically it's certainly very competently built. It's just not exactly practical. It's essentially impossible to deploy the Dialog with one hand, which is something that allows its myriad plunger-clicker competitors to walk all over it. Getting out the Dialog certainly feels like an event, a sense that's no doubt also contributed to by its price. But for quick note taking, intermittent on-again, off-again use, or any spur of the moment anything, it's just much easier and more convenient to use a clicker pen instead.

There's also the issue of its completely round cross section. Sure, the sleek Bauhaus minimalism makes it look very swank. But it also makes the bugger very prone to rolling away on you. On a flat surface this is no problem, because any casual accidental bump or nudge will be stopped fairly shortly by the clip. But if you ever use an angled work surface like, oh, a drawing or drafting table, the clip doesn't protrude enough to stop the pen's own weight and inertia. The rounded edges on the clip also don't help. It doesn't take too steep of a slope at all to enable the Dialog to roll right over its own clip and onto the floor.

Said floor had better then be carpeted, because otherwise you are sure to utter a word that starts with F and ends with K, and it sure won't be "fire truck." Especially if the point is deployed at the time.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Lamy Dialog is a very, very nice pen.

It is certain that the majority of its owners, however, will only be two types of people. Type the first will be those who buy it as a bauble or a status symbol, a prestige piece, probably to use it rarely if ever. Type the second will be dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts, who will buy and use it despite knowing all of its shortcomings because of what it is, and that's the type of people they are.

Either camp will have to be willing to part with the better part of a week's paycheck or more to afford one. For a pen that ultimately doesn't do much to functionally outshine its competition, that's a pretty high bar to clear.

But none of that prevents the Dialog from being an item that is even at a glance from a casual observer, uniquely and unquestionably special.

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