Boker Plus SMKW Exclusive Large Carbon Fiber Balisong 4.02in Satin D2 Spear Point

Awesome budget bali for everyday carry

I love Balisongs, have a few Benchmades, 42, 51, and BRS Replicant. I love them, they flip amazingly well. Problem is they are sicontinued, collectible, and too expensive to use daily as a pocket knife. That is where the Boker come in, I was hoping for a practical knife I could carry, and for that it is great. It is a very stylish knife, woven carbon fiber, blue hardware, a polished blade with radiused spine, black steel pocket clip and spring latch. It looks great, and feels good in the hand. The BM style spring latch is metal, not sure if the report of it being plastic was in earlier models. It is zen pin construction, which I prefer, the liner functions as the spring for the latch, and the clip is 4 position and removable, which is great. THe latch tension, both closed and open is spot on, the latch springs open with a squeeze of the handles, and the spring keeps it out of the way when flipping, but out of the box it didn't quite clear the handle when squeezing to release, tuning the pivots, and flipping to wear it in a little did help the spring latch work much better. There are heavy backspacers in otherwise light handles, so it is handle heavy out of the box, the spacers can be removed, and the barrels inside them are sufficient to space the handles, and shave a lot of weight, making it flip better. Even so, the weight makes it easier to flip slowly and by novices, so not necessarily a bad thing. It flips like a budget bali, there is resistance from the washers(more on that next), the handles are heavy and sluggish, removing the spacers they speed up, but even so it is good for what it is, but nowhere near as smooth or balanced as a higher end BM or BRS bali, and for a fraction of the price it shouldn't be expected to be. The #1 problem is that the pivots are teflon washers and binding pins, for a sub $100 knife I don't expect bearings, but something more durable that holds adjustment better would have been nice. There is 0 loc-tite on the screws, and some were loose, so go over the hardware, loc-tite and adjust it. Probably the best, and somewhat unexpected surprise is the blade. It is D2, which is decent for what it is, the finish is very good, polished with light even grinder marks. It is radiused on the spine and around the tang, perfect lines and a perfectly even sharpening job. It's a nice high flat grind with swedge, similar to my BM42's weehawk blade, but actually finished better, despite the BM probably the most desirable bali ever made, and selling for 20X the price of this. It is an awesome practical blade shape for most any use with a nice thin edge and strong, but slender tip. All in all it is AWESOME for the money, and so far has been fun and useful to carry

Jeremy