It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Also, Me, in this review.

As enthusiasts age they tend to revel in well done classic details. Jay Leno loves round tail lights. I love a good clip point with sharp grind lines. The Iron Pup exudes classic knife details. Over and over again there were things that serenaded the old school knife guy—the blade shape, the grind, the thumb stud deployment.

But there are a bunch of unnecessary mistake in the design of this knife. It has amateurish thumb studs, gappy construction, and weighs probably twice what is should. Over and over again I was torn by things I love about the Iron Pup and head slapping decisions. In the end, the good vastly outweighs the bad, but there is some real room to improve here. Let’s get into this knife that almost caused me to pass out from review vertigo as I bounced between two extremes.

Here is the Iron Pup product page. There have been a few prior runs with some differences, including one run that had a fuller in the blade. This most current version of the Iron Pup has six variants, coated and uncoated versions in plain, green G10 insert, carbon fiber insert. The plain version costs $285. The insert versions both cost $305, but this model is on sale for $285. The Iron Pup is a production knife, what I call a “designer produced blade.” It is designed by Matt of Berg Blades and produced by WE Knives. These are made in China. Here is a video review. There are no written reviews. Here is my review sample (purchased with my own money):

Twitter Review Summary: a knife that appeals to enthusiasts with a few unforced errors.

Design: 2

The Iron Pup is an absolutely gorgeous design—simple, classic, and refined. On paper, in pictures on the web, and in my thoughts it is a practically perfect blade. Good size, good shape, strong lines. It’s got everything. There is something so pleasing about a good clip point. It seems untouched by trends and whims. It is what a knife should be. Similarly with thumb studs. I am not quite as enamored with them as the clip point blade, but still, they are classic.

The performance ratios are not great, hinting at the problem. The blade weighs 3.5 ounces and has a blade length of 2.857 inches with an overall length of 7 inches. The blade to weigh is: .82, which is kinda stinky. The blade to handle is: .69, which is okay but nothing remarkable.

Fit and Finish: 0

The fit is damn near perfect. The seam between the titanium handle scale and the G10 insert is more than fingernail flush. The grind lines are so crisp they look like cel-shaded animation.

But the implementation of the design causes me to say “Yikes”. The choice of blade stock and handle scale stock is just all wrong. Everything is too thick. My ten year old son refers to this knife as “The Chunk.” Its simply way too heavy for what it is. There is no effort to abate the “block of titanium” feel to the knife.

But that’s not all. Everything here is heavy AND way too thick. The blade stock and the handle scales are like 25% thicker than they need to be. Compare this knife to a similarly priced knife with the same putative design goals: the Strider PT. Here is an image of the Iron Pup trying to fit in the blade well of the PT (note—this is impossible):

Here is an image of the massive CRKT XOC’s blade passing entirely through the blade well of the Iron Pup (note, this is full thickness):

There is absolutely no reason for this knife to be this thick. It, as you can imagine, adds to the weight but it also hinders performance.

But there are even more issues. The spacing between the handle scales and the blade is just too much, too gappy, too imprecise, and just craving gunk. The pivot and and stop pin are clearly visible, lending the knife a “this is my first custom posted on Blade Forums” look.

None of this is necessary. All of this could be easily fixed by the designer and we know WE can make knives with a tighter feel than this. Its not WE’s fault, as the fit demonstrates, but how the blueprints were converted into reality leaves a lot to be desired. Everything about the Iron Pup could be thinner, tighter, and better with ZERO impact on the knife’s design and look. In short, the Iron Pup could be what it is, but better for no cost at all to the bottom line performance of the blade in its intended use case.

Case in point—the Berg Mini SLiM is, despite its name, still a very beefy blade, so much so, that Bladechops made a slimmed down version of the SLiM that appears, in all ways, to be a perfectly proportioned blade. This is, of course, because of Bladechops’s skill, but also because the original knife was unnecessarily bulky. If there is enough girth on the SLiM to make it thinner, than Berg’s designs are just too thick in the first place.

Grip: 2

Hidden choils are an amazing thing. They are there, but they are subtly designed to look like a sharpening choil. I first saw them on the Gayle Bradley from Spyderco and became intrigued. There is no real distinction between a hidden and unhidden choil, just a more subtle design, and here it is amazing.

Carry: 1

A knife with a sub-3 inch blade should not weigh this much. Despite the rounded handles, decent clip shape, and no exposed rear tang, there is no escaping this knife’s heft. Its always there and always noticeable. I wouldn’t say this is bad in the pocket, but man what I wouldn’t give for some internal milling and some thinner stock.

Steel: 2

I am bored writing about 20CV/M390/CTS 204P. They are all around very good steels and at this point the AUS8 of the 2020s. Pretty common and still very good.

Blade Shape: 2

Ah, the classic clip point shape. I am a huge fan of Spyderco and their leaf-shaped blades, but there is a classicist in me that just lights up when I see a good, traditional clip point, and boy is this a great looking blade. Of course, the clip point helps funnel mass to the tip making the blade pokey but strong. There is nothing bad here.

Grind: 2

There are hollow grinds and then there are scoops. I personally love the scooped out hollow grind. It gives you a ton of slicing power and the normal disadvantage to these grinds—they can jam in tough material—doesn’t really apply to a knife this size. Scoopy hollows would kill you on a chopper. On an EDC knife they are good to go. This is the second snoopiest of hollow grinds I have seen, trailing only the absolute laser thin grind on the Yuna. That was a scoopy grind on a thin stock—you can imagine how it cut.

Deployment Method: 1

The knife fires like an assist and the detent and pivot are perfectly tuned. Snapping this thing open with just a nudge is positively addicting. I love the action here. What I don’t love are the thumb studs. Without any sort of texturing, they rely on their blockiness to snag a thumb. The result is a bland looking thumb stud that is pretty punishing on your thumb pad. Its like there was no thought that went into the thumb stud, like there is a “make a cylinder” button in CAD and that was all that was used. This isn’t minimalism, it has a whiff of amateurism. There is a reason Benchmade, Kershaw, CRKT, TRM, and Chris Reeve have more visually interesting and complexly machined thumb studs—to be effective thumb studs need a bit of nuance.

Retention Method: 2

Lock: 2

The lock here, like the rest of the fit on this knife, is absolutely dead solid. There is no blade play, the lock engages and disengages easily, and there is a bit of access thanks to a routed edge on both the lockbar and the handle scales.

Other Considerations

Fidget Factor: Very High

With snappy, cannon-shot like blade deployment, the Iron Pup is an absolute blast to play with and ranks very high on fidget factor.

Fett Effect: Very Low

Thanks a very dark finish, there is no possibility to show any real wear, which is good, if that is what you want.

Value: Very Low

If you want to sell a blade in the same price range, roughly, as the Sebenza, with the same appeal to classic knife design, you need to kill it. It needs to be clearly better than the Sebenza in some way to get a second look. Here with the meh part of the Iron Pup, there is really no reason to consider it over a small Sebenza. I’d love if this knife were $225. That would make it much more competitive. As it is, the Iron Pup is just too expensive for what you get.

Overall Score: 16 of 20

I really like this knife. It is beautiful, well made, and classic. It is a knife knut’s knife. But its not a knife I have to own forever because it is just too bulky and primitive for what it is. The trends in the knife world are clearly working against the Iron Pup. Its oddly out of step with other designs on the market today. It weighs twice what the Benchmade Bugout or the SOG Terminus XR LTE weigh and those knives are plenty tough for what we do with folders. Even compared to something like the Strider PT, which is pretty clearly overbuilt, the Iron Pup seems like one chubby little dog.

Its not the end of the world that this folder is a chunk. Lots of good folders weigh 3.5 ounces and that was, back in the day, near the arbitrary line Nutnfancy set for folders. The problem is that with modern designs, materials, and manufacturing methods, a sub 3 inch blade should not come in at 3.5 ounces, especially when there are quite a few 3.25 inch bladed knives that weigh less than 2 ounces. Its never really hampered me when carrying the Iron Pup, but it keeps me from putting the knife in the top echelon of folders on the market right now. But if weight doesn’t bother you, grab one, they are fantastic blades and cut well despite the chubby blade stock.

Competition

In the designer-produced blades space, competition is fierce. With the ability to choose materials and manufacturers, designers can get exactly what they want for relatively low prices in relatively high quantities. The Micro Evo is superior in every way, ranking at the top of the heap in terms of EDC blades in 2021. Similarly I find the Pena X Series modern traditional line to contain clearly superior knives, especially my favorite of that line, the Zulu Spear. I also think the Boos Blades Mini Smoke is better, especially in the new upgraded carbon fiber edition. When you have custom makers turned knife designers using the best OEMs in the world, the resulting products are going to be awesome.

Painfully, there are a handful of small batch knives that just kill the Iron Pup. TRMs Atom and Neutron are way better and half the price. The American Bladeworks Model 1, which I got around the same time, is half the price and significantly better. It is quite a bit larger, and a tenth of an ounce lighter, which tells you more about the Iron Pup than the Model 1. I also think the SUPER underrated Progeny MR from Adam Purvis rings the Iron Pup’s bell in a boxing match, and it is even cheaper than the Atom, Neutron, and Model 1.

Finally, in terms of high end production knives, again there are blades that lap the Iron Pup. The Sebenza is more refined and only a little bit more money. The Mnandi is a lot more refined and only a bit more money. The Benchmade Anthem is an uglier knife, but more fun. The Spyderco Drunken, well, okay, that knife is worse, but it is a pretty terrible knife—its worse than a lot of knives out there. Compared to something like the Spydiechef, the Iron Pup doesn’t do well. ZT’s more reasonably sized stuff, like the ZT0740, is better and slightly cheaper, though it doesn’t deploy as well (don’t mention the ZT0707’s tuned detent—the less said about that knife the better, its the Leek but breakier).

In the end, the big flaw of the Iron Pup is that it is out of step with where knives are headed in 2021 and really for no reason. It is relatively poor showing against the best of the market is indicative not of its failings, necessarily, but of how good the market is right now. Problem is, when the market is this good, any little mistake is a glaring one.

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