Folding Knives

Open the Cold Steel Spartan and you'll probably say, "Wow! That's a big knife!" All the details of this pocket clip folder inspired by the Kopis sword of ancient Greece actually work well. Like it's ancestor, the Spartan is made for cutting meat.

In today's world, the Spartan is well ...

When Ginsu entered the outdoor knife market in 2008, the company put its best foot forward. The Ginsu Damascus Clip Point Folding Knife introduces high-end Japanese cutlery steel to the folding hunter design. It's a bold move you may really like.

The kitchen cutlery ancestry of the Ginsu Clip Point Knife ...

Manufactured by Petzl of Monaco, France, this colorful knife intends to meet the needs of alpine climbers. Light in weight and easily opened, the Petzl SPATHA will be most popular with people impressed by the name.

With high carbon stainless steel blades and polycarbonate handles, the SPATHA offers few ...

The 30-30 Folding Hunter from Columbia River Knife and Tool was designed by former Alaskan hunting guide Russ Kommer. The knife's build eliminates unsanitary gaps and shields important working parts from the mess that's an unavoidable part of field dressing game.

The 30-30 also looks great with a hollow ground ...

Knife maker Kit Carson created his series of M16 Knives with custom-built machined titanium handles. The Columbia River Knife and Tool M16-14T Big Dog Tanto now brings that superior quality to CRKT's production versions.

Ounce for ounce, the 6AL4V titanium in the Big Dog's machined handle is stronger and ...

In May 2010, Blade Magazine listed Benchmade's 585 Mini-Barrage among the most popular knife choices for women. This Warren Osborne design is for women or men who want the functionality of the full-sized Barrage in a small package.

You don't lose much when you choose the Mini-Barrage. This knife's blade features ...

Knife maker Kit Carson designed CRKT's M21-14DSFG Desert Big Dog for Special Forces use in desert warfare. A blade coating of titanium nitride and handle scales of G-10 give the knife its desert brown hue. Beneath the sand-brown exterior, the knife is all metal with frame and liners ...

The India Stag Bone Slimline Hunter from Bear and Son Cutlery of Jacksonville, Alabama, will be a useful companion anywhere you'd need a rugged light hunting knife. The knife lives up to its name, with a blade well-designed for field dressing small game.

The trailing point style of ...

The six-inch blade of the Rajah II serves either as a camp knife or a brush chopping bush knife with enough weight and size for effective work. Built in the style of the famous Gurkha kukri, this design by Andrew Demko adds modern materials and Cold Steel's high-tech ...

The favorite field and military knife of Nepal's Gurkha regiments inspired the Rajah III from Cold Steel. Recreating the broad and heavy blade of a kukri knife in a folding clip knife style is right in line with Cold Steel's philosophy.

The Rajah III is the smallest of the gurkha ...

The Higo Nokami knife originated in Japan about 150 years ago and probably was the first pocket folder of Japanese design. This elegant knife became popular with Japanese businessmen, who used it for cutting fruit or cheese. Today's Higo Nokami from Shun brings many of the features of ...

The Original Piranta Pro Skinning Knife from Havalon Knives offers outdoorsmen the quick blade changes and razor-sharp edges preferred by surgeons. Carry extra blades instead of a whetstone, and you'll save weight.

Designed for skinning and caping large and small game animals, the 6-3/4-inch open-length Piranta Pro starts with a strong ...

With a handle sized for a better grip and an even lighter build than the original pocket-sized Piranta, the Piranta-Z comes closer to the hunting and skinning knife design we find familiar. You'll find all the unique features that made the Piranta popular, but in a knife that's a little ...

The Havalon Baracuta-Edge is a great idea and a good knife, but five inches of replaceable high carbon stainless steel blade comes at a higher cost than the smaller Havalon Piranta system. You might want to keep that whetstone handy and recycle blades instead of throwing them out.

The Havalon concept ...

Spyderco's Resilience is that company's largest knife in the Spyderco "Value" series. With an open length of 9-3/8 inches and a blade 4-1/4 inches long, the Resilience has the size and heft of a small hunting knife. The Resilience's reasonable price might make you wonder where the company cut costs, ...

Gerber's Fast Draw Knife is one of the company's first knives to include the F.A.S.T opening system. This inexpensive pocket clip folder opens with the convenience and speed you'd expect from a more expensive automatic.

The patented Gerber Forward Action Spring Technology (FAST) is the work of Butch Vallotton, a ...

The Benchmade Barrage adds powerful spring-assisted opening to the already solid construction of Benchmade's Axis-lock knives. The Valox grip also has some excellent features, but doesn't beat Zytel in wet weather.

Benchmade recommends the Barrage for boaters, rescue workers, and anyone else who needs a dependable multi-purpose blade which opens one-handed in ...

The Bear & Son 504D is the Damascus steel version of the Alabama company's Sideliner folding knife. All the steel parts, and even the dies and jigs which make the parts, are manufactured at the company facility in Jacksonville. The bone handle slabs were cut from genuine imported ...

Puma's recommended knife for backpackers -- the Puma Packer -- actually is slightly heavier than other Puma folders with the same blade length. The extra-large handle adds practical working strength -- a handy feature for anyone who needs a good camp knife -- but increases weight to 4.2 ounces.

The Packer ...

One of Leatherman's larger folding knives for the outdoorsman, the Leatherman E55 Expanse takes basic concepts introduced in the Leatherman Crater knife and improves on them. The several models of the Expanse offer choices of edge type and a bit driver blade option.

The Leatherman E55 Expanse is ...

This upgrade of the Leatherman Ukiah design replaces the Ukiah's glass-filled nylon handle construction with stronger components of machined aluminum and inlays of tropical rosewood. Even the steel takes a step up in quality to S30V high carbon stainless steel.

You'd expect the Steens to fold like a pocket clip knife, but ...

Kershaw's Black Storm's recurved blade offers quick cutting action for severing rope and harness straps with a plain edge that's easily sharpened with ordinary tools. With comfortable handle inserts and one-handed manual opening, it's a knife that's easy to understand and use.

While the Kershaw Black Shallot provides much the ...

The Kershaw tactical knife called the Black Shallot at first looks a little too sleek if you're accustomed to blocky, tactical knives. You won't see the usual marks of a dependable knife -- no cross-hatched handle slabs or overly heavy blade -- but the dependability is still there.

One of ...

Designed by Bob Dozier, marketed by Ka-Bar, and manufactured in Taiwan, the Bobcat Dozier from Ka-Bar looks much like Dozier's larger fixed blade designs when open and locked. The Bobcat offers similar grip strength and versatility in a folding lockback build with qualities tactical users and woodsmen both appreciate.

This ...

Only 3-1/2 inches long, the Swiss Army Bantam Alox Pocket Knife packs five useful functions into a pocket folder with only two blades. With size and weight equivalent to an American gentleman's knife with nothing more than cutting blades, the Bantam Alox still manages to be a toolkit.

The main blade ...

Unless you're a sailor, you may not know what the spike blade of this knife is actually for. Myerchin knives like the Offshore Crew Pro are finding increasing use even away from the water, as truckers and climbers and other people who work with cargo straps and rope ...

Myerchin's patented double-lock system allows this unusual and practical folding rigging knife to be used with both blade and marlinspike locked in full open position. A number of other features of this heavy eight-ounce folder were designed with the sailor in mind but serve well for anyone who works ...

Thumb-stud opening and smooth action complement the high carbon stainless steel blade of the Gerber AR 3.0. This tactical black folder fits the pocket of anyone who needs a handy utility blade capable of much more than opening boxes.

Drop-point blade styling gives the AR 3.0 even more of that ...

Columbia River Knife & Tool's Natural series brings the quality and appearance of good custom blades to the price range more of us can afford. Designed by Pat Crawford, an Arkansas knife maker from West Memphis, the Natural 2 7080M represents one of CRKT recent efforts to raise the ...

Columbia River Knife & Tool outfits the Lift Off 2 with both Outburst assisted-opening and Firesafe lock. Included in many of CRKT's newer folders, this combination approach finally makes legal one-handers fast instead of just awkward.

The Lift Off 2 would be a temptation even without the new technology. ...

Pat Crawford, a knife designer from West Memphis, Arkansas, collaborated with Columbia River Knife and Tool on production versions of several other well known Crawford designs prior to the Natural. Usually steel quality drops and corners are cut in the mass market version of a knife, but with the ...

SOG's Woodline WD-50 Folder fits in a belt pouch, not in the pocket. For a compact survival knife large enough to make difference, that's a very sensible idea -- pocket clip styles get snagged on brush and disappear.

The Woodline WD-50 keeps the unusual styling of SOG's other Woodline civilian ...

Blade Magazine presented Columbia River Knife & Tool with the 2009 Most Innovative Imported Design award, earned by CRKT's Flux knife and tool combination system. Whether your frontier is the city or the country, you'll find a useful combination to tailor to your own pursuits.

Although the Flux tools ...

The Spyderco Chokwe G-10 Titanium knife includes an important locking system from the Chris Reeve product line. Chris Reeve Knives won the 2009 Blade Magazine Manufacturing Quality Award for such excellent innovations as the R.I.L. or Reeve Integral Lock used in the Spyderco Chokwe.

One of Spyderco's modern folder designs ...

Winner of Blade Magazine's 2009 Collaboration of the Year award, the Spyderco Bob T. Slip-It -- also known as the Spyderco Terzuola -- combines Spyderco's popular folding clip design with Bob Terzuola's improved slip joint. If you want a knife with traditional action but modern features, the Slip-It is the ...

The Paul Defender from Lone Wolf Knives won Blade Magazine's 2009 award for Overall Knife of the Year. Termed the Gentleman's Tactical Folder by the manufacturer, the Defender is a collaboration between Lone Wolf's designers and Paul Poehlmann, inventor of the Paul Axiel lock.

What you'll notice first is ...

Credit card knives usually don't include much steel or much functionality, but the SOG Access Card 2.0 Knife is very impressive for a low profile cutter. Only 3/16 inches thick without the pocket clip, this tactical black folder opens and closes with one hand and even provides a ...

SOG's Tomcat -- the company's first folding knife -- won Knife of the Year in 1988, with innovations that set the bar for large lockbacks. This updated model called the Tomcat 3.0 Carbon Fiber is a limited edition of 450 knives with the same improved features included in the ...

More than a folding knife and not quite a fixed blade, the SOG Speciality Knives & Tools FX21-N Revolver SEAL shows some of the good features of both. Both knife and saw blades were ground from the same strong bar of 440A high carbon stainless steel.

The basics of the ...

Ka-Bar made the FIN Folding Frame Lock Knife in both drop point and tanto blade styles and offered a choice of combo-serrated or plain edges on each version. This combo-serrated drop point FIN offers very little plain edge for fine cutting. Make sure it fits your purposes.

Open length of the ...

The Stratofighter might slip past your notice if you saw it on a display shelf. It's angular and ungainly and not designed with beauty in mind, but there are some excellent tactical features in this heavy folder. In fact, if you need a pocket clip folder with the functionality of a ...

Spyderco's Tenacious High-Performance Knife was built with a grip designed for work. The knife conceals some other interesting features beneath that ample handle of textured G-10.

One of the best synthetic materials for handles, G-10 resists damage from heat, water, and chemicals, and won't suck away the warmth from your fingers ...

The Bear & Son 205R mid-size Lockback with rosewood handle slabs does resemble the Buck 110, but Bear & Son always do things their own way, and those differences show up plainly here.

The 205R's 3-3/4-inch blade of high carbon stainless steel looks a little undersized compared to ...

Al Mar's Falcon Ultralight Folding Knife does not have the stripped-down look of minimal back country knives. This pocket clip folder works like heavier counterparts with extra features you'd not expect in a knife that weighs only 1.25 ounces.

The Falcon's overall length of just over 7 inches includes ...

Inspired by the assault rifle adopted by the Russian Army in 1949, the Cold Steel AK-47 Knife's most obvious resemblance to "the People's Rifle" is the bayonet groove in the four-inch AUS-8 blade. Add to that the kind of rugged construction that you can drop in a muddy ...

The Byrd Meadowlark with G-10 handle combines one of the best tactical knife handle materials with a popular pocket folder design. G-10's good insulating qualities and resistance to all types of chemicals add to the Meadowlark's already practical features.

Crosshatched jimping on the G-10 handle slabs makes the grip of this ...

Climber's knives often seem under-designed, with strength cut back to save weight. The 14 K Summit Long's Peak folding clip knife from Columbia River Knife and Tool takes inspiration from the climber's choice of either weight or strength and provides a rugged answer.

Four ounces for a pocket clip folder ...

The biggest attraction of the Smith & Wesson SWMP5LS Liner lock knife isn't the upgraded design. What makes this five-inch (folded length) beast popular is the MAGIC Assisted Opening system. Currently, it's one of the closest substitutes for an automatic opening knife that civilians are allowed to own.

Possibly a ...

SOG's FF-11 Salute -- which the company refers to as their first Fusion tactical folder -- puts all the technical expertise of that innovative manufacturer to good use. The result is a high-tech knife that isn't tough to understand, with a few unusually good features.

Full-length steel liners and machined ...

Browning, the famous American rifle manufacturer, produced only 2,000 of these collector's knives as part of its Hunting Traditions series. Beginning in 2008, Browning produced these limited edition knives in two themes -- Whitetail and Mallard.

Produced as a collector's knife and presentation piece, the Browning Whitetail Model 321290 fits a hollowed ...