4/10 This is the peanut for a connoisseur
The good: Beautiful. Design is top notch. The steel is actual carbon (not sure if truly 1095) and stains an absolutely beautiful carbon-gray black (like the blacked out victorinox knives) with MY hand oils and rubbing oils. If you understand the ugly and the bad, you should get it. I haven't stopped carrying it since I got it and it might be my favorite miniature knife design. The wood is caramel. The handle is CONTOURED in an oval shape on the like modern "3d" handles or the old coke-bottle handles of traditional knives and it gives you perfect purchase even only able to grasp it with 3 fingers. The ugly: you can't "gorilla grip" this and use it for "work" but you can cut and carve. The blade is real carbon steel. It came dull as a butterknife and would barely cut thread/paper which was a good thing because I accidentally closed it on myself as soon as I got it (and I know how to handle a traditional knife) so had it been sharp from the factory, it would have taken an ounce of flesh. You probably shouldn't one-hand close this knife. There is a way to do it safely but it's not as intuitive as you might think. In the intuitive method, the skin from the meat of your thumb muscle will get in the way of the blade. This is a slipit so it has "bounce" on the open and the close. Bottom line, it sharpens like 1095 but it doesn't patina the same color as my other 1095 blades (either 1095 or 1095 cro-van) so I'm not going to speculate if it's "real" 1095 or bear and son's carbon steel. Either way, it sharpens well, cuts well, and you can't beat the patina. My 1095s patina to various colors of brown with my skin oils and rubbing oils. This patina is black. To make my 1095 black, I had to use a special vinegar and it still wasn't the carbon/ash-black of this one. On the flip-side, you really can't wash this knife without IMMEDIATELY drying it within a few seconds and oiling it within a couple minutes. You can't really even use it to cut flowers if you don't want the oxidation. There's a workaround with this and other 1095 steels: you use it SO MUCH that the act of using it actually keeps the steel polished bare as if it was freshly polished with steel wool; I've done this with another 1095 blade (not this one) and it takes about 2-3 hours of heavy use every day to keep it at that level so unless you're a butcher or a chef (and this knife isn't for that anyway), you won't be able to keep the patina off. The bad: There is about a quarter inch spot on the back that isn't finished AT ALL on the spine of the handle (and the handles are uneven). There is also a quarter inch spot on the handle right where the safety part of the blade rotates into the handle that has heavy machine-mark gouges on it and isn't finished at all there either. The "action" part of the blade is also COMPLETELY unfinished. The spine is ground off and feels amazing, the walk and talk is 9/10, and the unfinished "aciton" part of the blade obviously doesn't affect the action too much but if you "walk" it slowly, you can feel the unevenness of the unground cast/forged blade. You know that unfinished spine on some moras? That's what the action part of the blade is like. It's a 30$ knife and no case peanut... but what makes it different also makes it ... better (in a way). For someone what wants a good walk-and talk, a beater peanut, with carbon steel (and knows the limitations), this probably a must-buy. This knife will bring you joy. But if you're expecting a perfectly polished mini-knife that's perfect in every way and you can use it thoughtlessly, the case peanut may suit you better. Pair this with a buck 110 and you won't "need" any other knives until you destroy those two - though you are on SMKW and we all know you can't stop at just two.
Max S.