Pros: Materials, Finish, Overall Quality, Handle Material, Blade Sharpness, Blade Material, None
Cons: Sheath/Scabbard
Another great 5.11 product!
Out of the box you'll note that this knife's blade is sharp and not made of ordinary steel. S30V Crucible steel is the result of a collaboration between: Crucible Materials Corporation Chris Reeve. It's "martensitic"stainless steel designed to offer the best combination of toughness, wear resistance and corrosion resistance. It's a bit difficult to sharpen, but retains an edge very well. With exception to the actual blade's edge, It's a nice non-reflective black Teflon covered blade. Being a Silat player, I reversed the clip immediately for point down, edge out "ice pick" grip carry. I also added the cable tie modification one person mentions on the 5.11 CUB web page comments section. This allows for one handed deployment in a similar fashion to the Emerson "wave" Karambit designs. I used a medium sized cable tie, pulled as tight as possible, cut it with bull nosed cutters and then burned the end some to remove burrs smooth out the top of the cable tie's head. Works like a charm with some deployment practice. A female friend of mine who wears this knife with dresses, so she uses the ridge of her live hand to catch the cable tie to deploy the blade as it comes up. Works fine and puts her live hand in a back guard position right after blade deployment. There are also great thumb ridges where the blade and handled meet for use if you chose to deploy the knife in standard grip. Speaking of "grip" this knife's grips feel pretty solid and I like the channel pattern on them. I'd also note several other things: The mechanics of this knife are very stiff and will take some getting used to. The thumb hole is extra large to help with this, but it's still significantly stiff to open. This can also be said of the spine lock on the back of the knife. It takes a fair amount of pressure to press and unlock the blade to close it. Overall, it's still a great knife! Buy it!
My Cart 
