My new pocket knife
I haven’t bought a new pocket knife for a long time, but this one caught my eye and turns out to be very nice in the hand. Action was tight at first, but with a little oil and continued opening and closing, it is much easier and smoother now.
I’ve over the years noticed the odd phenomenon of other people’s preferences occasionally diverging from mine, so some may not find the knife to their taste. I like it because it’s relatively small and lightweight, has nice lines, and is one-hand open-and-close. And the opening mechanism is new to me. The blade locks open, of course: that’s a requirement. This one uses a liner lock, which is fine. And I find that I like single-bladed knives.
It has a clip, which I don’t like, but that’s easily removed if you have a set of small Torx drivers, which I do. Clip and its two Torx screws are in a small plastic bag with my pocket knives now.
UPDATE: The Wife commented that, for all that I liked the knife, she was struck by the things “wrong” with it that I had to take action on (stiffness and pocket clip). Those, to me, are more or less irrelevant because those are easily fixed—it’s like buying a house: the key thing is location (of course) and overall design and construction. The color of a painted house is irrelevant: it’s easily changed.
So removing the clip is no biggie—nowadays it’s common for some models of pocketknives to have clips, but almost always they readily removed—and the knife’s overall design and its action are unaffected.
And a stiff action in a new folding knife is absolutely normal: that’s the way they come. But the wear-in is not a problem. It just shows that you got a really new knife. 
Nice! It’s a bit big for my pocket, though. I’ve owned a lot of knives, but the one I put in my pocket the most is the Benchmade Benchmite II.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottfeldstein/327835875/
scott
5 June 2011 at 3:54 pm
Very nice. I have quite a few very small pocket knives (Al Mar, Browning, Gerber, the Peck (small version of KISS), et al.), including a California-legal switchblade (very, very short blade).
LeisureGuy
5 June 2011 at 4:11 pm
While I can appreciate a fine single blade knife, I have always felt that a gentleman must carry a knife with a scissors and a corkscrew. Nobody makes one of these as thin as it could be, unfortunately.
Bob Slaughter
5 June 2011 at 8:22 pm
The new knife looks nice. What do you use to sharpen your pocket knives?
Joel
6 June 2011 at 7:43 am
Good question. I have a set of Japanese waterstones, and also one of the sharpening jigs (clamp blade with guides, stones on a rod that goes through a hole in the guide to maintain constant angle). However, I keep eyeing this. More info on knife sharpening in this post.
LeisureGuy
6 June 2011 at 7:53 am
Thanks. The Edge Pro systems look really nice!
Joel
6 June 2011 at 5:25 pm
Yeah. I keep fighting the urge to get it… Thankfully, all my knives are sharp. Now. For a while longer.
LeisureGuy
6 June 2011 at 5:58 pm
Indeed. Do you use a strop?
Joel
7 June 2011 at 7:00 am
No, but I do use a steel. A strop is a good idea, though. I’ll look into that.
LeisureGuy
7 June 2011 at 7:27 am