The original design for the Al Mar ultralight series is one of the best folding knife designs ever. If you look at from a pure design point of view and ignore the unchanging and high price and the mediocre steel, as a blueprint for folders, its hard to beat. Eminently pocketable, slicey as all get out blade, and a fabulous micarta handle, there is little that could be added or subtracted that would improve the knife. It, like the Emerson Mini A-100, is an unquestioned classic.

How do you improve upon a classic? How do you ride the line between “cupholders on a ladderback chair” and the Corvette C8? This is a design space for those not of the faint of heart.

But there is a reason why we have a TFF version of this beloved classic—Al Mar Knives has been reborn. After Al Mar died, the company carried on for a while, with Gary Fadden staying on after Al died. Over time the company seemed to be tapering down. Two or three years ago it looked like they were selling all inventory and not making new knives. I was sad to see that Al Mar Knives was likely going to go the way of Canal Street Cutlery. According to an unsourced claim on Wikipedia, Al Mar Knives was sold in 2019 a Maryland company called Edge Technologies LLC, but Fadden has remained on the board. The original OEM, G. Sakai in Seki City, were dropped in favor of OEMs in mainland China.

With a tale of corporate rebirth came the need for a bold statement. They now have two lines—a higher end line with titanium scales and D2 blades and an entry level line with FRN handles and 8CR steel. Many of the classics, like the Hawk, have been reinterpreted into more on-trend TFFs. This impulse was likely behind the willingness to go back into the Al Mar design book and tackle a classic.

Here is the product page for the Al Mar Hawk Titanium Hawk Flipper (hereinafter Hawk TFF). There are two versions—the FRN handled version and this version. This version costs $114 street. It has very limited availability in April of 2020. There are no video or written reviews. Here is my video overview. I purchased this knife with my own money. Here is my review sample (purchased with Amazon affiliate money):

Twitter Review Summary: It cuts like the dickens, carries like a feather, and flips like a Romanian gymnast.

Design: 2

The original design was a classic, but this design, I think, is better. First, there is a clip. Of course you don’t need a clip on a knife this small, but having a clip is nice. There if you want it, gone if you don’t. This was not a choice given to the consumer with the original Hawk. Second, by tightening up some small dimensions, Al Mar squeezed the exposed rear tang out of existence. This is an absolutely lovely choice. Great job. I would have preferred the knife use the original material, at least on the show side, as I like micarta much better than titanium, but the difference here isn’t that big and the addition of the clip and obliteration of the exposed rear tang means that the classic has been improved upon. Good deal.

The performance ratios are bananas, but not quite as bananas as the original as titanium is heavier than micarta. This is still one hell of a spec beast, though. The B:W is and the B:H is .

Fit and Finish: 2

This was the hallmark of the original—a warm lived with feel complimented by finger flush surfaces and gleaming steel. It had that unmistakeable Seki City feel. Moving production to China was a bit concerning but then I thought back to all of the great Reate and WE Knives I have handled and worried a bit less. The arrival of the Hawk proved that Al Mar Knives still knows who to pick to produce their designs. The D2 is gleaming, just like the original. Centering and lock up are great. And every surface has just the right texture. I don’t know the OEM here, but it would not surprise me if it was Reate. These are beautifully made blades. Just like the original though, this, and not the steel, is the driving factor for costs.

Grip: 2

This knife FEELS small. It FEELS flimsy. But, in practice, I have found that it is actually quite hardy, significantly more so than the classic Micarta version. I can get a full four fingers on the handle and I have medium hands. The clip is actually helpful, providing even more grip. The jimping on the flipper tab is so finely cut that it is very grippy and gives excellent traction. Overall, despite how it looks and how you think it will work, the grip on this knife is just excellent.

Carry: 2

No knife carries better than the Ti Hawk. Some carry as well, like TRM Nerd and the Spyderco Dragonfly. Honestly, this knife reminds me a lot of the AG Russell Light’n Bug—small, thin, narrow, and exceptionally light. Its like having a knife stored in a pocket dimension only to appear when you need it. Even in the thinnest material there so little of a space and weight penalty that you can always carry the Ti Hawk. Paired with my Veleno Designs 40DD, I have a capable EDC kit that weighs about 1.8 ounces and easily fits in a coin pocket. Pretty good.

Steel: 1

D2. Oh D2, you and I have such a complicated relationship. I knew of D2 for a long time, but I really fell in love with it when I reviewed the HEST. Its ability to soak up damage and still hold an edge is pretty impressive. I get excellent results on my Worksharp, regularly producing hair-whittling cutting bevels and while most complain it is hard to make look nice, the high polish satin here is very good looking.

But D2 is not M390. It is not LC200N. Its not even CPM-154 or S35VN. It is simply not a premium steel. It is a good steel but not a great one and the price here dictates a better steel (or, conversely a lower price). I get that a lot of the money here goes into fit and finish and ultimately that is more important than steel, but a lot of knives are nicely finished at the $120 price point and they have better steel than D2.

Blade Shape: 2

Dagger? Drop point? Spearpoint? Ultimately the taxonomy of blade shapes is as vague and silly as the taxonomy of electronic music. Whatever you want this to be called, its a good shape: some belly, some tip, and a whole lotta slice.

Grind: 2

Thin stock, thinly ground, with nice, clean transitions, a downright crispy plunge, and slicey as hell. There is, of course, a strong relationship between grind and fit and finish and so it is unsurprising that the grind here is masterfully done. Al Mar fans won’t be disappointed, given if they would prefer an FFG (I do too).

Deployment: 2

The old Hawk was a buttery smooth blade, that slowly rolled out as if it were running on greased glass. That sense of smoothness is replaced by that classic bearings feel, but the deployment is snappy, utterly failsafe, and fast as lightning. If you dreamed of a flipping Al Mar and were underwhelmed by the Kershaw flipper, this is the salve for your wounds. It works as well as you would expect an Al Mar flipper to work.

Retention: 2

This is a good clip, not only avoiding stupid mistakes, but also enhancing grip for cutting and deployment. I also like that it is removable, though I wish you got two fill plates in the box. It is not as clever as the clip on the Falcon and Eagle, which ran in the lanyard hole, but it is very solid.

Lock/Safety: 2

With a knife this small you might expect some lock flex or wiggle, but thanks to superior craftsmanship, this lock is dead solid. The lock insert also gives you a push tab to disengage the lock bar easily. Finally the tension is just right—snug enough there is no wander over to the scale side, but not so tight that the lock is hard to engage.

Other Considerations:

Fidget Factor: Very High

With a snappy flipper and a sleek shape the Ti Hawk is a fiddler’s delight.

Fett Effect: Very High

The titanium will take some nice wear as will the bright satin blade. If you want to look like the Mandalorian, wait a month or two and you will be there.

Value: Low

D2 in a knife that costs $114 is an albatross for this knife. I can swallow it because the rest of the knife is good and the package is so small and light, but man, this is not the part of the “Al Mar Legacy” I hoped would carry over to the new company.

Overall Score: 19 out of 20

Competition

In 2020 the name of the game is light, carry-friendly knives so the Hawk TFF fits right in. The Nerd, the MBO, the Mini Smoke, and the DF II are all real competitors. Clearly the steel holds the Hawk TFF back, given the price, among this group of elite performers. But all of these competitors aren’t really directly on-point. Its the Drop Gent that I think represents the best true competitor and, in the end, demonstrates the Hawk’s biggest shortcoming (and the biggest shortcoming for all Al Mar’s): price.

Both are clearly designed to be EDC knives. Both are small, light, titanium framelock flippers. But the Hawk sports a D2 blade and the Gent an S35VN blade. D2, as discussed above, is currently my minimum acceptable blade steel, but that doesn’t mean I like paying premium prices for a clearly less than premium steel. And thus the rub (as is tradition with Al Mar Knives)—great design, impeccable fit and finish, and exorbitant prices for the steel.

That would make you think that the comp is a blow out in favor of the Gent, which is one of my current favorite knives, but in actuality it isn’t. This knife is better made than the Gent. It is lighter and fills the same role in my collection. I like the Gent better, but not by much. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this kind of design and Al Mar blades in particular, so I admit a bias, but this is just a darn good little pocket knife even if it is overpriced and sports “lowly” D2 for blade steel. It cuts like the dickens, carries like a feather, and flips like a Romanian gymnast.

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