Coming up, the Tekel agent 001 is dropping again. I
get a new one from Shed Knives. And we're going to talk all about
the fixed blades of Hogtooth knives. I'm Bob
DeMarco. This is the Knife Junkie Podcast.
Welcome to the Knife Junkie Podcast, your weekly dose of knife
news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your
host, Bob the knife junkie DeMarco.
Welcome to the show. One of my favorite comments from this past week in my
third interview with Rolando Estocada was from Lone Star
Dowboy who says, really superb episode. I was
on the edge of my seat. So many questions were answered and points brought
up that I had not considered until now. Look forward to more
from you and Rolando. My cold steel Marauder and
Espadas have moved up in the pecking order after this.
Well, thank you Lone Star. That's how I feel after every conversation with
Rolando, who just incidentally lives three blocks
from where I used to live in Manhattan. If I knew him then I'd be
hanging out at his apartment all the time. Much to his dismay, I'm sure.
Next one was From Terra Firma 2083 who just says,
absolutely fascinating. And I gotta say that's how I
feel too. So warms the cockles in my heart that you guys
like these conversations. It's hard not to like a conversation
with Rolando. He's a, he's a, a wealth of information,
knowledge and experience. All right, thanks for joining,
thanks for watching, be sure to like, comment, subscribe and all that
stuff. That said, let's get to a pocket check.
What's in his pocket? Let's find out.
Here's the knife junkie with his pocket check of knives. In my front right
pocket today was the large 5 inch
Cudamax. It's the Camillus Cudamax 5.5.
This was designed by Daryl Ralph and just a beautiful knife. He did
a whole bunch of these large folders, mostly custom
but some of them were produced by Camillus
or Camillus however you like to say it. But he did a lot of
these really, really cool and aggressive large folders
before he passed away in. He made these
in the early 2000s. This one I haven't
carried in a little while and so unearthed this one and
happily carried it. I, I love the size of it. To me it
reminds me of a, a long,
slender, sort of Hell's Bells style Bagwell, like
Bowie. It's got that coffin handle. It's got that long slender blade with the Long
clip point. And it's just beautiful, beautifully
well made and really fun to carry and use.
Speaking of use, the one I actually used today was this
little guy. Look at this. This is an exercise in contrast
here. This is my chrome
vanadium case peanut. This little,
little guy I bought on the secondary market from someone who took great care of
it, put incredible edges on both the blades, the pen
blade and that clip point blade. And had
a nice patina on there already when I bought it. This one has that
beautiful. I don't know what this bone is, but
it's. It's beautiful. I love the color of it. Very
autumnal. And of course, we're moving into fall here. So
I had this in my fifth pocket. I rarely carry in the
fifth pocket. I find that it actually interferes with
drawing out the main blade right below in the main pocket.
But this little guy doesn't really get in the way. So
those are my two main carries today. But of course I had a
fixed blade on me and today I had the new agent 001.
These are dropping on October 1st. Beautiful
blade. You can see the machining. This
exquisite machining now done by NCC Knives.
Nick Chuprin and NCC Knives up in New
Hampshire made this gorgeous blade. They're
machining most of the Tekel knives these days
and they're all coming out like this. Just exquisite. Nick is a
real perfectionist and he does not let anything leave
his facility that isn't positively top
notch. So I have a couple of these production samples.
I'm so excited for them to get in your hands. I want to see what
you think about the agent 001, the agent that started the series.
Plus, I have this on this really cool
Ulti Clip. It's a spring clip that you can spread
out this way. Say you only have holes,
grommet holes here and here. You could expand this,
stretch it out. But it is a super stout
and tight clip and it keeps this so
close to the body. I love this. This. At first I had
difficulty getting it on, getting it on the sheath,
but that was my own sort of poor handling. And
now that it's on, I'm convinced I love this. And I
texted Tim Kell of Decal Knives
to tell him how much I love that clip. He sent the clip with one
of these production samples. And I didn't know
this beforehand, but he designed that with the
late owner of Ulti Clip, who, rest in peace,
passed away pretty abruptly. But. So that is
a design that, that Tim and that that gentleman
worked on together and it works so great. There's so little to
it, so minimalist and it keeps it really secure.
I thought maybe with this triangular shape it would move around. It
doesn't. It stays super secured to the belt and really close to
the body. And for me, for every day carrying a fixed blade knife, especially
up front and in a front scout position,
really close to the body is essential.
Lastly, for emotional support, my esk today was the
awesome Cold Steel. Oh, I.
This is the Cold Steel Mayhem. I had this on me. I also
had the Magnum Tanto, but I ended up putting that away. My mistake.
But this beauty, the Mayhem has been riding around with
me quite a bit. I have the
Snaggletooth MF made specifically for this knife.
Fits absolutely perfectly. There's a big distance
between the thumb stud and the spine of the blade here. And
this is. Well, this is what I had. I love brings
emotional support not only in its large and capable
nature, but also in that air. This fidgety ness
which you can find. This is the largest fidgety knife I've ever had.
It probably the most dangerous fidgety knife also. But
that Atlas lock is pretty awesome. You like the shark lock, you'll
like the axis lock. They're very similar. So that's what I had on
me today. I had the Mayhem. I also had the, the
Magnum Tanto, but I put that away. I had the
agent double o one, the new version dropping October 1st,
don't forget. And I had a case peanut
and the Cuda Max 5.5 from Camillus
and Daryl Ralph, may he rest in peace.
All right, well, you know, I just said it, but I'll say it again. This
sucker, just as a little extra tidbit, this is dropping
October 1st. Be sure to jump in on this. I think there are only
500 of these being made. So,
you know, on this run, of course they'll be back. This is a
very high selling knife for Tim and I'm glad
about that and proud about that. This is with
the black and blue layer G10, but you can get it in
the, in the Battle Lock, Battle Lock
handles, the new GRN handles and of course
a 30 variety of Micarta and G10.
Like all sorts of handle scale materials. You can get it in this sheath, you
can get the leather, badger claw sheath, whatever you like.
They're really expanding the agent lineup and the
accessories that come with it. So definitely go to
tklknives.com and check that out. Next
up, I want to mention briefly after a long And
a long struggle. We have YouTube memberships now available.
Check them out. It's kind of like Patreon, except only
at the gentleman junkie level. So you get every, all the same things you
get as a gentleman junkie, plus some of the little,
little extra things that YouTube offers. Like if you're a,
if you're a gentleman junkie with a YouTube membership, you get a little star next
to your name when you comment. I don't know how important that is to you,
but little things like that. So go check us out. If you're
not interested in going on another platform like Patreon, but you want to help
support the show, just click join down here and that'll
take you through the process to become a member. So memberships
are live right here on YouTube. To become a gentleman
junkie, you want to. Because becoming a gentleman
junkie means every third Thursday of the month
you stand to win something exquisite like this.
This is our gentleman junkie giveaway knife for the month of September
2025. This is a three dog
knife riot and luckily we have been avoiding
riots lately in this country. And that's because,
well, I'm not going to get into it, but we have avoided riots. And here
we have a three dog knife riot coming out of
Anchorage, Alaska. This is the in house custom
knife brand of Northern knives. You know Mike and Northern
Knives. He's on Thursday night knives all the time. He's a great
guy and he's contributed a good many
knives and other accessories for giveaway here
and we're always happy to accept something awesome like this from
him. He gave me one myself. People
loved it so much he sent another one in to give away.
So this comes with a birth card in
the form of a dog tag. This is K110 steel which is
analogous to to D2 blade steel. It's got a black
micarta handle and feels great in hand.
Plus it's got this interesting recurve tanto shape which is
great for all sorts of outdoor activities plus a
little bit of self defense. It's not bad. Gorgeous leather
sheath here. Made from Johnston D. Johnston
maker, also out of Alaska. Very stout and sturdy.
Set up for that scout carry. So
memberships and Patreon go check it out. If you
want to be a gentleman junkie, you want to be in the running for this
really nice knife. We give away a lot of knives on Thursday night knives but
on the third Thursday of every month we reserve our finest,
our reserve for the gentleman junkies. So
you might want to check that out. Also speaking of Patreon, we have
Jim has been busy, busy, busy in his workshop coming
up with all these great features. We have the
Friday funnies, we have knife notes and then here
we have Maker Mondays. The most recent
Maker Monday is about the great Tony Bowes
coming from his humble eastern Kentucky
background or start and really got into knives and
fixing knives. The, the types of knives that the people around him,
farmers and craftsmen were using. So slip joints
and he went from repairing to designing and making some of the
finest slip joints of all times. He, he,
he partnered with Case. He did a lot to really make
slip joint knives. The, the fine, fine collector
items they are today. Quick, quick
Note. Back in 2019, before he passed
away, may he rest in peace, I got in touch with him and
he was going to come on the show and that's an interview that never happened.
Which is bittersweet for me. Mostly just bitter because
he left us and I can't interview him. But
that's, that's my problem. Anyway, all
of that on Patreon and more. Go to the knifejunkie.com
Patreon check out what we have to offer there you can scan the QR code
that's going to pop up on the screen any second now. You can do that.
That's a quick way to get there. Also, you can save 12% if you join
for an entire year at once, which a number of people recently have
taken advantage of. Pretty smart. Their, their bill has dropped down by
12%. So go check it out.
theknifejunkie.com/patreon Want
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You're listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. And now here's the Knife
Junkie with the Knife Life News. Okay, first up in Knife
Life news, a new one from Demko Knives. This is
piggybacking off well, it's part of the expansion of the
NanoShark line, their most recent line and their smallest
line of shark lock knives.
This is the Demko Razor Shark and as you can
see from the picture on screen, this is their take on the
utility blade folder. So this has
a an arm that fits in the handle that flips out just
like any normal Demko knife.
But this one, this arm of that blit of that knife
accepts a utility blade. So you can lock
out your favorite utility blade, whether serrated or straight edged with
that with that specific type utility blade
and have it good to go without worrying about destroying the
blade itself or doing any permanent, permanent damage. This is a
great one if you work in a warehouse. I gotta say I worked in a
Sherwin Williams back in the day for for about two years and
I would have loved to have had this. I opened up a billion boxes at
the time. This is 6 inches overall,
3.2 ounces. So nice and light. Two
different variety of GRN glass reinforced nylon scales. You
have orange as you see here or that ad
20.5 gray. These are available now
and they are $75. That's the MSRP.
So who knows what you'll find it for at your favorite knife
purveyor. Next up, another dirty
sounding name from Sencut. This is the Sencut Vornix.
This is an in house design trailing point clip point,
trailing point clip point blade.
Kind of a rare style blade but we're seeing more
more of these come back. This vornix is
3.6 inches of 9cr18 mov. Look at that
beautiful, beautiful shape and beautiful blade. Hollow ground
blade as Sencut is one to do. Flipper tab
and thumb studs are the means of deployment. Also a pretty
considerable row of jimping on the flat of the spine of the
blade. This comes as per usual in
G10 micarta and wood scales. It is a
liner lock as you might expect. Expect reversible deep
carry pocket clip on that cool kind of angular
handle. It looks pretty standard until you get to the aft end
and then it gets kind of angular. I have no doubt that it's very comfortable
though knowing from the 1917 frontier Bowie.
It'll probably be nice and comfy. Let's see.
Do you carry pocket clip? 3.6 ounces for a 3.6
inch blade. That's the exact ratio you want
if not lighter. This one is coming soon. $47
is the MSRP on this one. The Vornix.
Okay. Next up is the Bestech Heidi Blacksmith number three.
It's an EDC fixie. And of course this one is coming
on the heels of the 2019 Heidi
release which was Bestech's very first fixed blade knife. As a
matter of fact, made designed by the same maker, Marcus
Heideggen or Heidegen of Heidi
Blacksmith. This one is smaller than the original.
It Comes in two different blade shapes. This sort of sheepsfoot or
santoku. It looks like a santoku to me. Sheepsfoot blade or
an upswept blade. 3.
2.31 inches in both cases of 14C
28N on a very ergonomic handle measuring
4.7 inches. So good generous handle.
Nice diminutive blade. G10 or
Micarta. Also the blade comes in the black as you see on screen
or in a stone wash. This one is very
light at 1.55 ounces. Now
I. I don't know if that's just the knife or the knife with the sheath
but I would bet dollar for donuts it's
1.55 ounces without the sheath. This is
available now. $65 is the
MSRP on this. Very nice sculpting on the. On
those handle scales. But by the way. All right. Lastly in
Knifelife News we have we knife company's new
Ryson R Y so N. This is a Sam
Tran design. This beauty comes in
at 3.3 and a third inches. 3.33
inches of M390 blade steel. We've got a
harpoon drop point blade with a. An
edge profile that looks almost. It's like approaching
tanto. Right. Because you see a very two kind of distinct
edges on this but with a nice belly in. In between.
Hollow ground. Is this knife with a thumb stud only.
I love that kind of actuation. This is a
titanium frame lock handle. Pretty
neutral. Is that. Is that profile. It's got a sculpted
clip set up for right hand carry. The only
billboarding at all is a sl is a very
subtle we with their. With their. With their three
vertical lines and three horizontal lines spelling we
embossed at the very pommel of the blade. So no
billboarding at all on this. Very, very tasteful and discreet.
That's. That's something we is known for and as well as
Civivi and Sencut. 3.9 ounces.
So you got three and a third inches of blade and
3.09 ounces. So less than that one inch.
A one ounce per one inch ratio. This is available soon.
$294 is the MSRP
on this beauty. All right. Still to come we're gonna take a
look at the first tool. Remember the first tool. Well it's back. We're going
to talk first tool. But before that be sure to
like Comment. Subscribe Join as a member
it's. It's a. It's a great thing to do. Plus
you can get in on winning some pretty great knives.
Also, why not help support the show by sharing the show that
that does maybe even more than
joining you share the share the show with a friend,
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commercial goes. So do check that out and
and and do share. We would appreciate it. All right, let's
get to the first tool Tool you're listening to, the Knife Junkie podcast.
Here's some cool knife history with the Knife junkies. The first tool
we're going to talk about the Bally song, not this one in particular. This
is the Kershaw. We're not going to talk about this or Kershaw.
We're going to talk about Balli songs in general.
In the quiet towns of Batangas in the Philippines, a curious
knife once flipped open with a snap so fast it
almost seemed like sleight of hand. Locals called it the
balisong, a word thought to come from baling
or broken horn. Since early handles were carved from
carabao horn, to the rest of the world, it became known
as the butterfly knife. Now what makes the
balisong so unique is its design.
Two handles rotating around a tang, concealing the blade
when closed. But with a flick of the wrist or for the skilled, a
dazzling series of spins and rolls, the blade snaps into
place. Part tool, part performance, it's a
knife that dances before it cuts. Filipino farmers
once carried these as utility knives. They'd cut rope, slice
fruit and use them for everyday chores. But in the hands of
martial artists, the balisong took on another reputation.
A fast, close quarters blade perfect for intimidation
and defense. The quick flipping motion wasn't just for
show. It was a way to deploy the knife faster than a traditional
folder. By the mid 20th century, American
servicemen stationed in the Philippines discovered the Bally Song and
brought it home. Suddenly, the knife became a cultural
icon. Not just a tool, but a symbol of danger,
mystery and skill. Movies in the 70s and
80s cemented its reputation, showing villains twirling
butterfly knives with menacing flair.
Of course, that fame came at a cost. The Bally song's
intimidating image led to bans and restrictions in many countries.
Lumped together with switchblades as a gangster's knife.
Ironically, most collectors today prize them less for combat
and more for the art of flipping. A whole community of
enthusiasts now treats Bally Song manipulation like a
sport, trading tricks, tutorials and custom
designs. And speaking of designs, some of the
most sought after Bally songs today come from high end
makers who craft them with aerospace grade titanium
precision bearings and Blades made for performance.
What began as a humble farmer's knife in Batangas is now a
collector's treasure. And in the right hands, still a
mesmerizing piece of kinetic art. The
balisong has long been more than just steel and horn or steel
and titanium. It's a story of culture, migration
and transformation from Filipino fields to
global fascination. And when you hear that signature
clack, clack as the handles flip into place,
you're not just hearing a knife open. You're hearing a
tradition unfold. Yes, that is the
bally song. And I'm glad you're here for
another first tool. Here's my favorite ballet
song right now, the Kershaw Lucha.
All right. Still to come is the state of the collection. Let me show you
something cool that I just got this week sent to me.
And I'm very grateful from the great Jack Billings of shed knives.
You might think that I'm about to show you something big, something hulking,
something to handle all of your outdoor camping chores and more, but
I'm not. I'm going to show you this. This is the Skir
Lite. I was kind of taken in by
this knife when I had Jack on the show last. He showed off the
Skir Lite. The Skir is a small blade that he makes
with big handle scales. The light one he makes without
scales to drop in the pocket or hang around
the neck as a neck knife. And I had to
get this one. I just think it's really, really cool. And
also I saw it as the perfect platform for jute
wrapping. So I got this. This is a
316 of an inch thick. And if not a
quarter inch, I think it started as quarter inch stock and
was brought down ever so slightly. Great jimping on
this. A deep hollow ground, 154cm
blade hardened to 58 Rockwell.
And so this is going to make a great work knife. A great.
We were talking about working in.
Working in warehouses before.
This would be a great warehouse and
works especially well in the finger bang posture here.
And I will be wrapping this, as I said, in juke cord only to
wear the. Where the holster starts, there, where the
sheath starts. Obviously it won't fit under there, but also it'll
add in pulling it out and grip all together.
What's cool now is Jack is adding a
certificate for the hardening for the. For the
Rockwell hardness of every blade he's selling, which is
a cool move. It's a good move on his part. He's made a lot of
changes since he first started first of all, he's got a beautiful
new big facility in Delaware where he makes his knives. And
he has gone down the the Rockwell
hardness rabbit hole and is adding all of that
material to the package when you get it. So you'll, you'll see
exactly what your blade is Rockwell
hardened to. Look at how thin it gets. It's a big,
chunky blade and it gets super thin and slicey. This thing
is awesome. The Skir lite. Go to
ShedKnives.com and check out the different knives that
Jack has up there for sale. Really, really cool stuff.
This one I'm really excited about. I've been dropping this in the pocket almost
on a daily basis. And with that shape of the
sheath, it fits perfectly, doesn't spin around in your pocket.
And it's also a good neck knife. But I've been
kind of not in a neck knife posture recently.
Maybe with the changing weather, I'll get back into my neck knives, but for
a drop in the pocket. Fix a fixie. This thing is awesome.
All right, we're going to get to fixed blade knives of
Hog Tooth Knives. But first I want to show off a new
design that Jim just came up with. Life's too short
for dull blades or weak coffee. Indeed.
We coffee. My God, why bother? I'd rather drink
dirt with water than weak coffee.
Except for my grandmother's. My grandmother made delicious kind of weak
coffee, but I don't need to go there. Okay, so check
out the the cool stuff you can get. You can get this in all of
the many taglines and designs that Jim comes up with at
the knife junkie.com shop. Get your apron,
get your hat, get your cups, get your T shirts
and. And do it there on the knife junkie.com
shop again, thanks, Jim, for all these beautiful designs.
We're fans, all right. Speaking of fans, I'm a
huge fan of Matt Chase and Hog
Tooth Knives. You've heard me talk about Hog Tooth knives here
ad nauseam and I love his
knives. His. His. Well, I'll get to that. I'll get
to the fig. It's his fixed blade knives that got me to first.
Seriously, Care carry fixed blade knives on a daily
basis. But let me show you my most recent acquisition,
which if you were here for Thursday Night Knives last week, you saw.
This thing's a beauty. This is an homage to the Bagwell
Bowies. This is a Bowie I commissioned
from Matt and Hog Tooth Knives. And let me just show it
to you before I get inside the sheath. Let me show you the
beautiful sheath. He does all of his own leather.
And to him it's no big deal. Yeah, of course I make my own sheaths.
But his sheaths are exquisite. They're perfection.
And let's look at this belt stud before we even get in there. I, I
requested a sheath that could slip under the belt and
with a belt stud stopping it from slipping out. And he, he
was not satisfied with any off the shelf studs he found.
So he turned this on his lathe. He made, he
made this out of wrought iron and brass. That's
brass in the middle there. Brass
beautifully peened in there. And then gorgeously
lathed. And it's the perfect size. It doesn't slip
from the belt through the belt. It's. It's perfect. But let's get into
the blade here. So
here we have a beautiful
W2 blade. I'm going to set this down.
W2 blade. You can see that hamon
running the length of the cutting edge and then also on the
swedge. Because I told him I wanted, no matter how
oblique this grind was, I wanted it to be sharpened
to an edge for back cutting and, and that kind of
thing. This I intended to be, as I told him,
a fighting knife. If I were ever called out on a duel, I would bring
this. And then the last knife we're going to show you here. But, but
I wanted it to be balanced as a fighting knife, not just have the
looks. Um, but speaking of looks, I wanted that Spanish
notch that you'll find on the, the
fighting knives of Bill Bagwell. I also wanted those sort of
devil horn guard here. So you've got the,
the, the upswept
quillians here, sharpened to a point, which is a
nice touch. The idea of having the guard higher
than the Spanish notch is that if a blade. Here,
let me use this. If a blade comes in
contact with this blade and slides on down, you can
capture it in there with the notch using that sort of
leverage with the slightly higher quillion. So it was important
that the quillion rises higher than the notch. We got that just
perfectly right. I asked him to put Luke 8:17
on there. Look it up. It's awesome. It basically says, the
truth will always come out, so stop your lion.
And that's more a message to myself than,
than to the world. There's your hog tooth knife engraving
there. Beautifully laser etched.
And then here we have ringed gidgee wood
from Australia. Really gorgeous
hardwood. And then a stainless steel.
What do you call those attacks or domes on there?
And these
what am I trying to say? These are
serve. That's the word, serve. A couple of purposes. First of all,
for indexing, they let you know where you are on the
handle. Say, coming down here
is where you might be for more of a.
More of a saber thrust. And then coming up above them and
kind of opening your hand, as you'll see over here,
opening up your hand and doing a drop,
a dropping sort of snap cut or back cut.
You're riding right in front of that stud there. And so it's a
good indexer. It's also a good place to put your finger to
know where you are. That's indexing. Same thing back here.
So I like that he added those. That's something we talked about. This
is nearly full tang. That tang comes down very,
very close to the pommel. This is a mechanical
connection through that stud there. And so
it's got all of the durability that you would need
from a full tang knife, but also
has that through tang. Look.
Look at that beauty. I am so thrilled with this. This has been
my carry around the house. I wish that we lived
in a society that would allow me to walk around with this. Or
maybe on second thought, maybe I don't. We don't need to be getting in Bowie
duels, but this thing has really.
Yeah, it's gotten me so, so excited. And I
want more from Matt and more from Hog Tooth Knives.
I've told him the next thing I order from him is a broke back sax
with a stag crown handle. But that will be in
a while. That will not be for some time.
But here we go. Putting it in its sheath.
This is like the perfect package for
yours truly, your favorite knife, Chucky. All right,
next up is the knife that I started carrying on a daily
basis, like, all the time. And this really
got me thinking about a collaborating with Matt to do a knife the
Nova series, but also about what other knives out there, not
just Hog Tooth Knives, can I carry on a daily basis.
But that first knife was this one. This is the EDC
Bowie. I mean, EDC Tanto. Excuse me,
comes with that deep carry
DCC that's discrete Carry concepts clip, which is my
favorite clip. And here is the knife.
So ordinarily these come with G10 or Micarta
with a Anzo style grip pattern
milled in it. But this is that Griptex. So
it's got layers of G10 and then
layers of a sort of rubberized
material here. So it just peeks out here and there, and
it doesn't feel tacky and rubbery like say
the grivx you'll find on a cold
steel knife or a rubbery handled knife. But it just
gives a little bit of extra grip and I
really like this material. A lot of people have started using this but this
is the first place I saw this when I got it from Matt some,
I don't know, five or six years ago. Beautiful
154cm blade. This, unlike the
Bowie I just showed you is not forged. This
is laser laser cut. And so he. This
is every forging knife maker. Not maybe not every,
but many forging knife makers that
you'll run into also do stock reduction knives because
they're quicker and easier to make and they help keep the lights on.
And this is one of Matt's models that fits that
description. Deep hollow ground on the
straight which is most of the blade and then comes to that nice
faceted tip. A 154cm blade
steel. This is back when he was.
Oh that's. That is etched in there. All right,
so his logo etched in there. That is from
a Jim. The jimping is from a jimping file. He now laser
etches his jimping. But look at this beauty.
It just fits the hand perfectly and fits in
the belt or pocket beautifully. I've never pocket carried this
but I think that's how Matt carries his me.
For me it rides in the waistband whether in
the appendix or in the 3 o' clock position.
Now I'll tell you a little story about this that
Matt relayed to me. He made. Matt made one of these.
He's a former Marine Corps Scout sniper. I didn't mention that.
And he made one of these for a buddy of his that he served with
who had a son who was going into the Marine Corps and,
and was deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan or both.
I don't remember where he was, but he was in one of those two spots.
He had one of these on his plate carrier right up front
and. And actually had to use one of these in a self
defense situation. Thank God
he had this on him. It saved his life in the most real
sort of way you can imagine. And he was in a
very compromised position. And this was how he got
himself out of that compromise position. So
it's a testament to how effective the Tanto design is
and how incredible Matt Chase's knives are
for sure. I won't give you the details, but they are
gruesome details. And this saved
a great American serviceman's life. Not this knife in particular
but a. Another One of this type of
design, the EDC Tanto. All right,
next up. I remember the conversation I had with Matt when
I was like, I've been carrying the EDC Tanto with me every day
for, you know, weeks and weeks on end and can we do a
collaboration? I'd love to have this with other blade types. And he jumped at
it. I think that was just the impetus he needed to make more of
that style of knife. And I sent him a bowie
design to fit the same handle and that became the
Nova one. A number of you have the Nova one.
We did a pre order of this and I
think we made, we. He made 27 of them.
I sold 24 of them. And then the remaining three
went to my wife and daughters. My wife and older
daughter both have theirs. When my younger daughter graduates eighth grade.
That's the gift. That's the gift I get in this family. And since
my wife already graduated eighth grade years ago, I just gave her
hers. But we, we changed it up a little bit for the production
model. Now this is the prototype
and there's only one like this with the giant a knife
junkie logo on it, which I love, but I didn't expect
anyone else to love. So the, the production
version has a smaller knife junkie logo on
it. It's also numbered 1 out of 27.
And instead of maroon, beautiful maroon
micarta with red liners, it's beautiful maroon
micarta with forest green liners. We also moved
that jimping forward for a more practical
placement for the thumb up forward
and, and pretty much everything else was the same recurve
tanto. And as I hold this in my hand, I realize I haven't carried this
in a while. I have so many other knives that I'm tempted
away. But this is such a great knife. We need to do this
again. 154cm blade,
steel, wickedly sharp blade, hollow ground.
The spine comes to a zero ground edge. So not,
not sharp like you're going to be shaving parmesan with it, but
a nice zero ground swedge you could do a
back cut with if you could actually get the momentum on, on
the 3.7 inch blade here,
but really, really comfortable handle. And that's the thing. I
mean this is Matt's platform. I just sort of gave
him a blade design to add to it. But the handle
is just so comfortable. And we're going to see this handle design
over and over here. So this is the
prototype of the Nova one. Maybe we'll
come out with it again. But I know you can get these from Matt
now in, in different configurations, but
check that out. And, and every little bit
helps the knife junkie here. So we, we made this
and then a year later we made the Nova 2 and actually the Nova
3. We're in talks now for the Nova 3. Really what that means
is I'm trying to figure out the exact blade shape for the Nova
3. We're gonna do those coming up here soonish.
Probably it'll be a post Christmas delivery.
It'll definitely be a post Christmas 2025 delivery. But
not sure how far beyond that. We're just starting to talk about it. But the
Nova 2 came along. And this is the Nova 2.
Now this is the prototype also. But the prototype is
pretty much exactly like the delivered. The
delivered Nova 2s. We made fewer of these. About half
the price did have to rise. I took a, took a bath on the
Nova one and we had to raise the price up a little bit. But
those who wanted them got them. And they are beautiful.
Now when you look at it from this perspective, the only thing that changed
was the color of the Kydex. For the sheath we went with a deep
charcoal gray instead of this light gray. But the rest is
as it was delivered. But this here is the prototype.
This is the Kiridashi, the Nova 2
Kiridashi. And this one also
had the file ground.
File ground. Jimping. But on the production models that
went out, those were laser cut. So they were perfectly straight
across the back. No, no,
no hand imper imperfections, which I don't mind.
But the Kiridashi blade shape is the important part. So when you hold
the spine straight across the back like this, you can
see an upward ascending straight edge with
a center line point. Some people
might call it a wharncliffe, some people might call it a
sheep's foot. But really this is a Kiridashi. Deeply
hollow ground. Again here. Like this one is
even deeper than the Nova one. So very, very thin behind the
edge. Extremely sharp. 154cm blade
steel. The smaller knife junkie logo there
and then ivory Micarta. I mean G10.
A beautiful ivory G10. Right now it's just kind of blowing
out and looking white on, on the screen. That's the problem with
Ivory. Anything on camera here with
the red liners, G10 liners.
Positively beautiful. And I'm not saying that because I designed it. I'm saying that
because Matt makes an incredible blade. I just drew a picture and sent it to
him. He made the knives and they are beautiful. I do love
the Ivory G10. That was a suggestion from Matt. I was
vacillating, oh, should it be? What color should it be? And he sent
me a sample of this and I love the way it looked. It's also
evocative of bone. And with this one I'm, I'm going for
an old school look and it's got the white and the red kind of
Japanese, kind of Japanese meets Viking, I
don't know. But it works for me and it worked for a number of people
who ordered this. I just got an email from someone asking if we were
going to come back out with these. And, well, not
quite like this, but maybe, maybe in the future if demand
is high enough. That's the Nova
2. This one I carry with the soft loop in the front scout
position. Okay, Next up
is the pocket ruffian. Now I'm
showing you the second knife in this
series. The first one will come next, but I
was just featuring this on my pocket fixed blade
knife episode. And I've been carrying this one
a lot more since when I got it. I carried
it a lot. And then of course it got put down because all sorts of
new things came in and distracted me. But I've been carrying this
one a lot more recently. Summer is winding down,
so it may end up going back on the back burner. But this
is the ruffian, just
reduced by some sort of percentage. Fits
perfectly in the hand. I get a 3 1/2 inch grip on this
or finger grip on this. But if you were to put a leather
fob on there, it would give you a little bit
of extra grip. This of course drops in the pocket with the
use of this DCC pocket clip
and that thumb ramp, it removes real easily, revealing
this beautiful long clip flip
point, hollow ground. Again, he does a great hollow grind.
I love a hollow grind. Nice and slicey, nice and
sharp, always 154cm.
And this one has the super grippy, laser etched
jimping and natural
canvas micarta with no liners. The no liners bit
keeps it a little bit thinner, which you're gonna want for
pocket carry in my opinion. This of course has that
anzo pattern that, that Matt likes to
put in his grips, especially on the
smaller EDC style knives. Let me show you
this with the, with the one that is
probably the most. I don't know. People love this knife and
I carry this a lot in the, in the fall
and winter because this is about as large as I like to go
for an EDC fixed blade. This is the ruffian.
I got the ruffian for my 51st birthday
and I was in Matt's shop
in August of that year and I
saw a couple of blanks of the roughy and I was like, I want one.
And then I saw the different handle materials and picked them out right there.
This started out as a natural canvas micarta,
more of a tan. But it's as it has aged and
taken my hand oils, it's gotten a little bit redder,
a little bit more of a warm tan color. And
man alive, this thing is, this is a great,
great blade. He makes this in a drop point.
So imagine everything up until here, including the edge, the
same except having a drop point. And that one is. Can't remember the
name of it, but man, the hunters go crazy over that
one. And I, I guess it's because it's easier to field dress animals
with. I'm not sure you don't have that swedge up there,
but this one's my favorite. I just love the
ruffian. Again, deeply hollow ground.
Again, really tough and sharp. 154
cm. The handle, scales and materials
are my own choice. You can get this however you want it. I've
seen he's done one, he's done a pair of these recently
with bolsters of how's it
Mokutai bolsters and then like
ancient walrus tusk or some sort of beautiful
sort of tusk material. So you can get these in all
manner and means. And those were forged with 1
forged with 10, 95 and 15
N20 of Damascus. So even though this
is a design or a profile that, that is
mostly done by him in the pre cut
blade, you know, laser or water
jet blade blanks. He can also make all of
these in custom forge versions. You're just going to pay
more for them. The ruffian. This one
gets so much love on the knife Junkie podcast
and in on Thursday night Knives and in the videos, people
love this knife. I do too. I carry
this one at the three o' clock position, ready
for reverse grip, you know, because when
that's the ruffian and the mini ruffian
or pocket ruffian.
All right, last up. And, and my most
prized hog tooth knife because it was
commissioned by my parents. It was, you know, drawn up by me and
the, my, my parents commissioned it. They wanted to buy this for me
because they didn't know what to get me when I turned 50 and they, they
thought this is the perfect thing. And then that led to
two Kitchen knives that my dad had made for my mom. So
a lot of cool Hog tooth knives in the family now. But this is
the, this is the crown jewel. This is
the Hog Tooth knives sub hilt fighter. And
I'll show it to you in this exquisite sheath,
probably the only sheath I've ever labeled sexy
because first of all the leather work is impeccable,
the stitching is absolutely perfect. But it looks like a
corset here. So it looks like, hey, looks like a
corset that a lady might wear it. So I find that rather fetching.
But that corset on the front is what attaches
the belt loop to the main piece of leather. So just,
I mean really expertly made and imaginatively
designed and executed. And then it has this really cool
just stud and, and retention strap
here. So here it is my only
forged custom forged
Damascus blade in my collection. This
is also 1095 and
15N20. And that was
made very very in a very
painstaking way. And actually I happen to have a little
piece of it. So he made, he
made the Damascus, he'd pound it out, flatten it and
then cut it up into cubes and, and stack them in
certain ways and re weld them. And this is one of the little bits
that turned into the blade. You can see the pattern, the diamond like pattern there.
So it's kind of cool. I have that to the side but
a long slender. This is a. As the first Bowie you
saw was an homage to Bill Bagwell. This is an homage
to Bob Loveless. Both of them actually legends
of the Knife Makers Guild here or
yeah, the Knife Makers Guild founding members actually
both of them. But this one has that long
slender double edged clip point blade. Both
incredibly sharp on the top and on the bottom. Both
hollow ground though this one less so because it's a
shorter run there. And then you have a 27
piece handle. This was the first time he ever made a
sub hilt fighter. And this is
the. The tang of the blade comes down here and then there's a
frame. So this is not a full tang, a true full
tang. Meaning this is this piece of metal you see here is
not the tang of the blade. It's a frame that holds
this stag. And then these are to
the frame and these are silver sterling silver
studs here. And then there's a mechanical connection with a,
a steel pin here keeping
that attached as well as all the other stuff keeping it
attached to that blade tag. And then you have a paper
micarta here and here as
spacers and Then wrought iron from
the Longfellow Bridge in Boston, reclaimed
wrought iron from the Longfellow Bridge in Boston,
making up these gorgeous and beautifully sculpted
quillians and guards here. So
I've long said that this is my dedicated dueling knife. But
now that I have this and
this, I don't have a dedicated dueling knife. I have two
dueling knives. So I could come out with my sinawale
and, and go hog tooth on whoever
steps to me. So here are my, my two favorite hog tooth
knives. I will place them down here. Even though we've done the
collaborations and, and such, these are
just the cream of the crop, the creme de la creme,
as they say. So I can't get enough hog
tooth knives. I can't wait to come out with the Nova 3, which we'll let
you know about. But someday in the offing
I got some knives to get from some other makers. But someday
you will see in this lineup here, not just this
Bagwell style Bowie and this Loveless style fighter,
but you will see a Viking style brokeback sax.
I think that's the next one. It's gotta be the next one to fit in
or he makes some pretty, some pretty beautiful daggers.
So I don't know, you'll, you'll be along for the process, the waffling and
decision process. Go, go to Instagram and and
follow Hogtooth Knives. You'll be glad you did.
Even if you never buy a hog tooth knife, it is eye candy
as the day is long. Just beautiful, beautiful stuff. All right,
thanks for watching me go on and on about Hogtooth Knives. I'll never
stop. I'll never ever stop. Also, thanks for joining me for
the talk about the Bally Song and of course everything
else we've done here on the Knife Junkie. Thanks for joining
us on Thursday night Knives. Be sure to join us every Thursday at 10:00pm
Eastern Standard Time right here on YouTube. All right. For Jim
working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DiMarco saying until
next time, don't take dull for an answer. Thanks
for listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please
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Visit our website thenifejunkie.com youm can also watch
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you enjoyed the show, please rate and
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