Quiet Carry Drift G10 Review
IYKYK
Dear Mainstream Knife Companies,
You are in serious trouble. As you shift from fundamentally good and new designs to a catalog chock full of rehashes, iterations, and sprint runs, the upstart brands are innovative, pushing, and creating great knives. I don’t need a third, teal-handled version of a knife I already own twice. Make new knives please.
Sincerely,
The Internet Knife Community
From TRM to Quiet Carry, some of the best and most interesting production knives are not coming from the Big Six (Benchmade, Spyderco, CRKT, KAI, SOG, and Cold Steel) but from brands that didn’t exist ten years ago. When you add in the trend towards designer produced blades, it becomes clear that we are in a different market than we were 10 or even 5 years ago. There is no better symbol of this sea change than the Quiet Carry Drift in G10. This is an astoundingly good knife at a shockingly fair price. It is the anti-TFF. And it is damn good.
How good? Keep reading, but as foreshadowing, you should get your wallet out.
Here is the product page. All Drifts on the market are 2nd generation versions. The Drift in G10 costs $250, an odd price, which I will discuss below. There are three G10 models—ones with black, orange, and gray G10. There is also a frame lock version for $300 or $305. There are four versions of that knife. You can get plain or knurled handles in either a stonewashed or satin finished blade. The extra machining on the knurled version costs an additional $5. Here is a written review. Here is a video review. Finally, here is my review sample (purchased with personal funds):
Every single aspect of the Drift G10 design is like cat nip for knife enthusiasts. The ultra thin grind, the forward choil with no guard, the exotic steel, the deep carry wire clip. This is a knife that skips the bling and goes right for the throat with high end performance birthed by insightful design. You can’t expect more from a knife design than what you get here. The Drift G10 design just checks all the boxes for EDC folks. The fact that it is neither a frame lock nor a flipper is also greatly appreciated and enough of a departure from the bulk of new releases that it will get the Drift G10 a bit more spotlight. BTW, there is literally no reason to buy the other version unless you like extra weight and extra cost without extra performance. If that is your jam I have a production knife Shiro/RJ Martin collab that sells for the same amount as the handmade custom. Perhaps you remember this rant.
Fit and Finish: 2
As I discussed in other recent reviews, the bar for machining has gone up considerably in the past few years. In 2007 this would have been one of the best made knives on the market not made by Chris Reeve. Now it is merely one of dozen or so superlatively well made knives on the market. It is easily a peer with the nicest Benchmades and bests all of Golden’s offerings but the Taichung Spyderco knives. I don’t know who the OEM is, but it if were WE I would not be terribly surprised. This is a nicely made knife.
Grip: 2
I strongly prefer guardless choils as they allow you to sharpen the knife the entire length of the edge. In many ways I think of this like the Native but with a better choil. That classic Spyderco choil, while very good, is no longer state of the art. I like the rest of the Drift’s handle as well with the G10 providing a lot of traction without any hand or pocket shredding. The size of the handle is just right too.
A close look at the choil area shows you a pattern that is quite familiar—the double dip of a choil and an index notch. I don’t need them to be this pronounced, as the Drift is AWFULLY close to the dreaded finger scallops, but as implemented I didn’t have a problem with the knife. Take note—if you have something other than medium sized glove hands, your results may differ. As such, this is a score of 2 with a caveat (so yeah, no perfect score…).
Carry: 2
Geez, thin profile, softened edges, and unoffensive G10—what more could a person ask for? The Drift just carries superbly well. During the hot summer months you won’t notice this knife in your pocket. That is about as good a carry as one can get.
Steel: 2
Even a reformed steel junkie still gets tempted everyone once in a while. The thin, tall grind is excellent, and would be good in just about any steel, but Vanax Superclean is an amazing chemistry. Here is the datasheet. Here is Larrin’s article on Vanax and other high nitrogen steels. It is a relatively exotic steel. To my knowledge, it has only been used by one other brand on production knives—there are a few Shirogorov knives that sport this steel. Nitrogen, like carbon, acts to harden steel, but unlike carbon, nitrogen less readily forms carbides (nitrides, to be precise). As a result makers can add comparatively large amounts of nitrogen, boosting hardness without making the steel prone to corrosion.
My time with Vanax has proven to me that it is a truly superior steel. I have had no issues with it whatsoever, even with a lot of cardboard cutting and outdoor use. Sharpening and stropping has been easy. In use the steel reminds me a lot of Elmax, which is a good thing. It has proven to be what it claims—stain proof. Nothing I have done to the knife, from cutting food and leaving residue on the blade to using it outdoors in a rain storm have impacted the steel in anyway. It would rate it as highly as I rate LC200N. This is the second steel I have used that I would recommend without reservation regardless of the cutting task.
Blade Shape: 2
If you start your folder design with a liner lock and a drop point made of thin stock you are like 90% of the way to a very good knife. Honestly, it is not a hard formula and seeing companies fail to do this this over and over and over again is pretty frustrating (see e.g.: Reate). None of these design features are patented or proprietary, so why they are not more universally seen is a mystery. The only possible explanation is that makers are chase trends over focusing on performance. This is why the new guard, Tactile Knife Co, Quiet Carry, and TRM to name a few, are making amazing stuff.
Grind: 2
Grinds are like good tortilla chips—the thinner the better. Those bland, flavorless triangles that are thick enough to use as diving boards are pretty awful and blade as thick as trade paperbacks are similarly terrible. Here, Quiet Carry, perhaps because of cost, uses an absolutely wafer thin plank of Vanax and the result is a brilliant slicer. This is as good or better than most of the knives in my kitchen at food prep (which is, perhaps, a sad commentary on the knives in my kitchen).
Deployment Method: 2
Thumb studs just aren’t bad. I never find them to be great, like a perfectly tuned flipper or an elegant Spydiehole, but thumb studs are more consistent, kinda like Tom Petty music—it will never blow you away but it will never disappoint you either. There is value in consistency and here, the thumb studs are very, very good. They pop the knife open quickly and then stay out of the way.
Retention Method: 2
I love the wire clip. If there were half as many sculpted clips and twice as many wire clips in the world, it would be a better place. They are discrete, carry nicely, and look good. This is a pretty stiff wire clip, so folks that were let down by wobbly ones have nothing to worry about. Between Spyderco, Quiet Carry, and Giant Mouse, we are in something of a wire clip renaissance and that is a good thing.
Lock: 1
It pains me to take off a point on such a superb knife, but the lack of access to the lock bar is a bit of an issue, especially if you are doing a bunch of cutting tasks where you have to repeatedly open and close the knife. There is a bare sliver of access and that is frustrating, but the rest of the lock is amazing, snapping into place easy and getting out of the way just as easy.
Other Considerations
Fidget Factor: Low
With a niggly lock, I am not sure this knife will ever been a fidgeter’s friend.
Fett Effect: Low
Rustproof steel and G10 pretty much guarantee you will never see wear on the knife, regardless of what you do.
Value: High
State of the art steel and superior fit and finish for under $300 is a good deal in this day and age.
Overall Score: 19 of 20
The new wave of knife makers are really sticking it to the mainstream brands. None are making stuff to rival TRM stuff and now Quiet Carry has jumped from shill site darling to legit contender. The Drift G10 is a very by the numbers design, but it is absolutely great despite being a bit predictable. Only the lock access issue and a bit too scallop-y handle holds it back from a perfect seal. As it is, the Drift G10 is more exciting that the entire Spyderco 2021 line up altogether.
Competition
The Drift in G10 is one of the better knives on the market. Its price point is super weird as it clearly undercuts the Sebenza but is more than hundred dollars more than the SOG Terminus XR LTE. Its something of a no-mans land in the knife market right now. And so it is hard to draw a direct comp. The Spydiechef is a close call, but that is a significantly larger knife. The LC200N Native is a very good comp and significantly cheaper, but I think this is a better knife. The Otter AT Flipper is another very similar knife. I like it a bit more, but a review will be coming in the near future so you can decide yourself.
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