There are a lot of things I want to leave behind from 2020. The gear, fortunately, has been pretty good. But there are some trends that I hope are also targeted by a Moderna vaccine, though I think they probably have a higher priority than stupid gear choices. Here a few things, as the year ends, that I think ought to die out as we turn the page on the calendar. Be forewarned, I am feeling nostaglic.

Limited Releases

Last year it was sprint runs—”new” versions of old knives with color changes and sometimes new steels. It reminded me a lot of “new” characters in Mortal Kombat when they did color palette swaps to make Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Smoke, Noob Saibot, Ermac, Rain, Khameleon, and Tremor all “different” characters (and no, I did not remember all of the names of the palette swap ninjas off the top of my head—I got to Noob Saibot and had the look the rest up…I have no memory whatsoever of Tremor). Sprint runs are simply knife companies foisting R&D costs on to us, the enthusiast market and passing it off as catering to customers and collectors. No, I am not interested in an M390 black coated blade version of the Native 5 with chartreuse handles.

But worse than sprint runs are limited editions. At least if you miss one of the stupid sprint runs you can go buy an evergreen version of the knife you missed and get 99.9999% of the functionality of the sprint. With limited editions, you are just out of luck. There is no reason why Pena X Series knives should sell out in under 5 minutes. If there is that much demand, make more. Its just good business sense. Even worse—the Indian River Jack has been out of production for four years and it comes back in an ultra limited run that sells out in under a minute. What’s the point of leaving money on the table like that? I get the idea of building up free hype with scarcity, after all I play console video games and have for 35 years, so I get it. But none of these knives are as complex as a new console to make. This is artificial scarcity at its worst.

In one particularly egregious example a well known high end company did two runs of two different knives. One was a run of five (yes, five). The “big” run was for 30 knives. Small batch and high end companies are ANNOUNCING new knives at a rapid pace, but not actually making them in anything like real numbers. The end result is the landscape is looking like video game systems in the mid-90s—lots of vaporware. If you were around you remember: bunches of people had SNES or Genesis, a few had Turbo Graphix 16, one kid per county had a Neo Geo, and then, someone knew a friend of a friend that imported a Super Graphx. And we all waited for 3DO and Jaguar. It was a stream of half baked ideas with promises of a glorious future. That future never arrived.

The high end production market should not seek to emulate that model. In the end, it is self-destructive and futile. Do real runs, sell actual knives, and don’t get caught in the quagmire of “scaling up production.” Sit tight, be quiet about things, and then release a bunch of knives. That model works. Look at TRM.

Crappy Shipping

Sure, sure the systematic attack on the postal service made shipping at the end of the year terrible, but that problem was not the fault of USPS nor is it likely to occur again. My bigger complaint was the shipping times for various retailers. Massdrop became Drop but I didn’t realize that meant that they were the worst drop shipper on the planet. There have been three or four knives that I have wanted from Drop but their atrocious track record on delivering things in an expeditious manner has prevented me from clicking on the Buy Link.

But it is not just Drop. Time and time again, in large part because of the Limited Edition issue, items were scantily available (yes you can use that word without it being followed by “clad”) and then took ponderously long to arrive. If you don’t have the stuff in stock, don’t sell it. If the stuff isn’t even made yet, don’t tell us about it. Driving up demand is one thing, but the gear market is trending towards persistent vaporware quickly. A lack of availability does drive up demand, but that only works to a certain extent. Eventually you have to deliver product.

Here is the other thing—you know what else drives up demand? Delivering good stuff over and over again. TRM is not one to sell 5 or 6 knives at a time and they ship quickly, and yet they sell through literally everything they make. Why? It is good stuff.

OD Green

I am done with OD green. I get that it is a hallowed color choice in the knife world thanks to Bob Loveless’s classic OD green with red liners on a drop point hunter. Like red is with sports cars so it is with knives and OD green. But OD green has reached a saturation point, much like carbon fiber did before it. There a lots of options and lots of them are aesthetically pleasing and a bit more exciting than yet another OD green handle.

Dave Deng: Yes, we can make your run of knives.

Customer: Charlie Brown Teacher Noise.

Dave Deng: Sure, we can do variants.

Customer: Charlie Brown Teacher Noise.

Dave Deng: Oh, you want an OD Green version. Sure. Yes, yes, it is very original. Daring design choice, if I may say so.

S30V Steel

Retire this steel. Its awful. While it has a decent combination of toughness, hardness, and corrosion resistance, it is an abysmal steel to sharpen. It is finicky. It takes forever. And the results are only mediocre. With other modern steels out there, it is quite obvious that this steel just doesn’t need to be used anymore.

Sometimes there is a reason to use an old steel. When S30V was coming on the market AUS-8 was still widely used and it was justifiable. AUS-8 was both substantially cheaper and substantially easier to sharpen. S30V was better than AUS-8 but it wasn’t better in every way. S30V has been improved upon in every possible way and no serves no purpose other than to annoy people that sharpen their own knives.

S35VN was a very close replacement for S30V but it is SPY27 that, for me, took this horse out to the pasture and shot it. Other than being a company exclusive, SPY27 is better than S30V in every possible way. It is not even that much more expensive compare models with both. S30V had a good run, but it is over now.

Chris Reeve’s Rut Widens and Deepens

This has been an issue for long, long, long, long time. I get it. The Sebenza and its variants are classics. But Chris Reeve is moving in the wrong direction in a bunch of ways, not just when looking at their commitment to a very small number of very similar knives. CRK has four worrying trends: 1) new knives lack innovation; 2) they have not embraced new steel; 3) you are getting less for more; and 4) they have an unhealthy addiction to the bling niche of the knife market. Some of these problems have been bubbling on the stove for a while, but 2020 was the year when they all culminated into a year that was really disappointing for America’s premiere high end knife brand.

CRK’s new knives are more Sebenza-like than before. In the past, we got treated to the Mnandi and that was a completely different knife, and probably the best production knife in the world when it was a one hand open design. Similarly with the Ti Lock. Recently we have been treated to such amazing variation as the Inkosi (aka “the Chubby Sebenza” or “The Chubenza”) and the Sebenza 31 (Sebenza 21 minus the referencing hole). The Impinda was different, I guess, but in a move that makes no sense, they changed the Mnandi to a two handed knife and then released the Impinda—a two handed knife without a lock. Its gotten so bad that even innovative designs are being made similar to other knives. Of course, this trend is an old one. Its the other three that are really concerning.

S45VN was announced at the same SHOT Show that the Sebenza 31 debuted. It seemed almost guaranteed that the new Sebenza would have the third generation of steel that was originally built for the Sebenza (S30V, which begat S35VN and S45VN). In a startling move, CRK stuck with S35VN. Its not a bad steel by any means. But it is not a premium steel anymore. Overseas brands are running S35VN on sub-$80 knives. I’d absolutely love a Small Sebenza in S125V. That would get knife folks attention again. But the 31st anniversary of the Sebenza should have had something better than S35VN on it.

But it gets worse. When CRK was the only game in town in terms of high end design and ultrahigh end fit and finish, they could rest on their laurels a bit. They have not had that territory to themselves for a decade now. Folks like Rick Hinderer and Spartan Blade Works, not to mention Reate, TRM, and Millit all do what CRK does as well as CRK does it. Look at Hinderer’s stable of knives—its large and changing. They all have a Hinderer feel, but he innovates. New steels, the Tri-way pivot, and other things make the brand fresh, unlike CRK. And yet CRK RAISED its prices when the 31 was announced. They aren’t the sole occupant of the “high end fit and finish” niche anymore and everyone is charging the same or less. Reate is making some really good collabs for the same price with better steel, more complex designs, flippers (you know…flippers), and they sell well.

Yet, there is more bad. CRK made a big splash when they released a collab with Shirogorov (another brand with similar issues compared to others in the market). But these were really just bling knives. Regular designs with machined up handles and flashy anodizing. Literally nothing even slightly exotic. They were nothing special at all, compared to something like the Kanscept Knives Mini Accipter which gives you real timascus inlays for around $200. But then there were the prices. These were production collabs that sold for multi-kilobuck prices. This was both a limited edition and a bling knife that was based on old designs. These knives were all of the problems in knives in 2020 in a single blade. This is definitely NOT where CRK needs to go. This, as we have seen with many other companies, is fallow ground.

CRK is one of my favorite knife brands. It was the first brand reviewed on this site. And I love the Sebenza. But CRK’s 2020 was concerning. They are still doing well, but it is getting strange. Let’s see a flipper already. Upgrade the steel. Acknowledge the market has changed and hold the line on prices for a while. I love to see a truly reborn CRK in 2021 and for them to leave this rut behind them. The entire knife market will benefit from them doing so.

The bottom line is this: a $375 S35VN titanium frame lock is not a good value regardless of how well it is made. Time to move on, update, and change.

Bad Leather Sheaths for Production Fixed Blades

Sheaths on production knives used to fall into two categories: Cold Steel and Spyderco sheaths and garbage. Some of the worst made and worst designed pieces of gear are fixed blade sheaths. They are, aside from the two exceptions listed above, TERRIBLE. Leather sheaths are even worse than the nylon sock sheaths that most knives come with. But the Gerber Terracraft proves that it is possible to make a good production sheath and do it in leather. There is no excuse now folks. Gerber can do it. So can you.