Coming up, the November 2025 Gentleman Junkie Giveaway Knife.
One of the greatest, most classic knives from the Great White North.
And with the dropping of the agent 001 from Tel Knives, we'll
talk about it and other great tekel knives.
EDC blades 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. Marco,
welcome back to the show. One of my favorite comments from this past week
about my ESK episode comes from Jorge
Fernandez, good friend of the show. He says, I have an
SP10. That's the Marine Raider Bowie from Ontario Knife and Tool.
My youngest son fell in love with it the moment he held it, so he
got one. We rarely use them now because they aren't making
them anymore. Now my ESK folder is the large
G10 Espada. Yeah, that one. I think he means the
XL incidentally. I liked it so much I gave one to my three
boys, my grandson on his 21st birthday and my
nephew. I've started this male Espada tradition thingy
in the family. Lol. My girls like the gun sight
so they can carry it in their bottomless pit purses. We all know what those
are. Go figure. And the partisan that's from Station 9
is back in stock, making it my new Esk
fixie. I waited almost a year for it. Before that, my
ESK was and still is my Zabo Express
from Tops Knives, which I carry daily. The Partisan goes in
the backpack. Great show, Bob. I work nights as an ER
tech so sometimes things don't wind down until 3 or
4am But I get to participate now, which I love
doing. Thank you Jorge. I really appreciate that nice long comment.
And I love the enthusiasm around the concept of an
emotional support knife. That's what an EST is When you hear
us talk about those. Those are those knives that whether whether
it's a big beefy knife like the Partisan that you have around for
self protection or something like this JW
collab scuffle that you keep around a fidget with. It's the emotional
support that matters. So everyone
bone up on your emotional support knives and let me know what you're carrying.
Drop it in the comments below. I really appreciate it. All right,
time for 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 one I rarely carry. This is the
Emerson Knives Super CQC7. The
CQC7, the chisel ground. You can see
that flat side Tonto. That
really launched Emerson knives as a, not as a
custom. You know, he was making custom knives for a long time, but the
CQC7 was the one that really launched him into the
public eye. That and the Commander which followed hot on the heels.
They started making supermodels that's models with
nearly 4 inch bladed knives
sometime in the 90s. And this was a
giveaway knife. This was given to us by Bill S. A long time ago
and this was an auction knife that we did. My brother
bought the knife and in that auction and then gifted
it to me which was a pretty, pretty cool. No, it wasn't
inside baseball. It was a total surprise. That's how my brother is. He's cool.
Cool as hell. And a super generous dude. Has given me some of my absolute
best knives. Many of them hanging behind me on the wall. This one,
I, I don't know why I carried it today. I rarely carry this one,
but it just sang to me. Sometimes in the morning I go through this little
ritual where I open up my knife drawers and
whatever just jumps out, I pick up and, and
manipulate a little bit and it ends up going in my pocket. And that was
this one today. The one thing I had to modify about this knife, which I
do with most of my Emerson knives, I had to sand down the G10
on the clip side. It is so grippy and abrasive that
it is likely to destroy your pockets even sooner than
the other knives will do. So had that in my pocket
today on my belt. I had a bunch on me today. On my
belt I had this urban edge from cold steel.
I really love this little push dagger. It's so light and so
easy to carry. I just have it set up with this paracord and
it, it rides near my belt buckle. And so I had this.
I've been carrying this more often than I even let on. It's just
a great little self defense option if need be. Also
though, I know that um, in the old days, I don't know if this is
still the case, but in the cold steel warehouse, guys would like these
because they could sign, sign purchase
orders and stuff and then open up boxes and sign and you know, use a
pen, use a flashlight and not have to let go of the knife.
Sort of like a bird and trout might, might work. So
had this on me. That is also a chisel ground. I didn't I didn't put
that together, but flat on one side. Actually slightly concave
on that side. Next up, I had this
flashlight on me because I knew I was going to a
neighbor's house tonight for cigars and whiskey. A little
tradition. A great neighbor of mine has started and done it
twice and I've met some really good guys doing that.
But since it's a. It's about a half mile walk
and part of it is through a little wooded trail. I always have this
on me. This was given to me by Dave of OG Blade Reviews. I
love this. This is the Night Core EDC27. It has
three. You can basically have this button
do a whole bunch of different things. I'll put this under the knife cam. You
can program the main button to. To do different things like
have different combinations of. Of lighting. I haven't really
dug into that, but has three
different settings where it can go super bright, a
thousand lumens or down to like 60 lumens or something like that. If you're
just reading a map. Don't want to give away your position. And then what I
really love about it is that it has this instant,
instant strobe. Hope that didn't blow out the camera, but you can just
press this down and have a strobe immediately. To me that's like the
greatest self defense tool going. You could blind someone, especially in the
dark. They're coming up to you and their visual purple is.
Is on high and you can just blind them with that and run
away or kick them in the knee or the groin and then run away.
But I really like that light a lot. Nice and flat
though. I have learned not to carry it with the clip in my
pocket because oftentimes when I sit down,
it's close enough to my hip that it'll turn the light on and I'll be
like, why is my thigh on fire? And I'll look down and
see the light coming through my jeans. So I just drop it all the way
down in the pocket and if I need it or think I might need
it, I'll just carry it in my hand. Really great light
when I get used to carrying it more often. Next up, my fixed blade
knife in the three o' clock position today
was the beautiful Nova One.
This is the prototype of the Nova One. We sold 27 of these, I
believe made and produced by
Hog Tooth Knives. So this is my blade shape on his
handle design. Him being Matt Chase of Hog tooth
knives. That's 154cm, very sharp,
gentle recurved bowie blade. We did this one,
I think it was 2022 and then we did one in
20, 23 and a half. And now we have to
get to the Nova 3. We've been talking about it back and
forth about what it could be. I've been giving them some
designs but I haven't really settled on anything quite yet. But
beautiful dark maroon micarta handles with red
liners. The final versions that people bought had a
slightly thinner handle but it had because the liners were
thinner and they were a forest green with that same beautiful
dark polished maroon micarta. Just a
classy, classy carry. Beautifully sharp
154cm and I just love this knife. Haven't
carried it in a while. You know there's always something new and exciting coming
through here and I had to just go back to basics
with that one today. Last up, my emotional support knife
today was the beautiful Attention to Detail Mercantile
Medium Fighter. This was my very first custom
knife bought from Douglas Esposito when
he and his Attention to Detail Mercantile knife brand
were located near me in Northern Virginia. He has since moved to
Mississippi and has since moved on to
exquisite folders which I have to get a new
one. I have an older one. I think it was the first folder he ever
made but first folder he ever
made with inlays. Anyway, I have, I have to get a new one. He's
been doing some incredible stuff and he's obviously gotten better with
time and I've seen some people
showing them off and it's making me jealous. But a
gorgeous tortoise shell handle here with the crown
spine. The double edged fighting blade
S35VN. It's 5 1/2 inches long.
Near I think it's 5 1/4 inches long actually fits in
the hand so perfectly. And you know how it is with older stuff. You kind
of. You don't forget you have it but you take it for granted. And
today I just had to carry it. It's so beautiful though
I didn't carry it, it was in my backpack. A a subtle
little detail here. No sharpening
choil which I'm starting to come around to. The
sharpening toil can hang up on clothing and other things if you
use it as a fighting knife. So that's what I had on
me today. Let me know what you had on you. I had the super CQC7
from Emerson Knives. I had the Urban Edge from
Cold Steel. The push dagger right there on my belt,
three o' clock position. I had the Nova one By myself. And Hog
Teeth Knives, by the way, that's that giant knife
junkie logo is just for me on the prototype. When you buy
a Hog Tooth Knives slash knife Junkie
collaboration, the logo is much smaller. I had the EDC
27 from Nightcore and then the beautiful
medium fighter from the Crunch into Detail Mercantile.
All right, speaking of cigars, which I was just a moment ago, the
second batch of the Knife Junkie
Zippos has just arrived at my place. So I
will be ready to ship these shortly. I have four people who have
said they want them and I think I just got a fifth message.
So they're selling out quickly. I will order more. I just didn't want to
order too many and then have be sitting on a bunch of Zippos.
They, they ship to you with the regular wick
and the windproof wick. I have bought
the jet. I like the jets for lighting cigars better than the regular
old school wick. But I gotta say I do love
that as well. I just wish the T it tasted better,
the fuel. But I just want to show this up close. Look at how
beautifully they nailed my logo. Even with those tight, tight
lines in the background above that horizon line. They just did
a beautiful job. This one is mine and I've had it
rattling around in my pocket a lot and it has not scuffed yet.
Hopefully it doesn't at all. But the logo
has remained perfectly un.
Unmolested. What's the word? I don't know. It just hasn't been
nicked up. So I really like the work Zippo does. They've been
doing this for many, many, many years and they're
doing a beautiful job. So now we have that to offer to you. They're 50
bucks. Knife junkie zippos for 50 bucks.
If you want one, let me know. Email me at the knife
junkiemail.com and if I get enough
people, I'll. I'll make another batch. Maybe I'll make it bigger this
time and just pock them and keep them around here and just kind of sell
them. But it's fun to have to have
Zippos out there with my logo on them. I've always loved Zippos.
So there it is. All right, next up. Another thing I'm very
proud about and happy about is on November 1st
of 2025, the second batch of TEL
knives agent 001s will be dropping.
This is a version of that. We'll be showing them off
a lot at the end of the show with some other really great
decal knives, EDC blades. But this is the one
we're going to be giving away on the during
on the 20th of November 2025.
This will be the gentleman junkie giveaway knife. But that beautiful
blue and black layered G10
handle though, you can get it in so many different
materials now. Different materials and many, many different colors.
So rest assured, if you don't like blue, you can order one in any
other color you like. You might see some of the foreshadowing up here at
the top of the screen. Screen. So there is the Knife
Junkie logo. This one is in
80 CRV2 I believe I have some that are
AEBL stainless and 80 CRV2.
They, they both seem to be somewhat equal in their
rust resistance as they are all coated with nickel
boron. And that nickel boron is not only a protective
coating, it adds A to the Rockwell hardness
and B it makes it really easy to slip in and
out of whatever you're sticking it into. Where whether it's
the sheath or a 50 gallon drum
of Uzis or an opponent or whatever it is,
it nickel boron is a material that is found in
guns. And Tim, Tim
Kell is a serious firearms
aficionado and he figured why not put every blade in
nickel bond? And I love that. So anyway, this is the
knife will be giving away on November 20th. Just become a
gentleman junkie. You can do that at Patreon. Go to the knife
junkie.com Patreon or you can also become a
gentleman junkie right here on YouTube when you become a member. We
have six members now and if you
do decide to become a member, please email me at the knife junkie
gmail.com so I can send you your stickers and your coaster and that kind
of thing. You just click the join button and take it from there.
All right. Speaking of Patreon, one last thing I want to plug on Patreon are
the Friday funnies. You know, I talk about Maker Mondays a lot and
knife notes. These are things that Jim put that
Jim puts together that are really fun to have in
the Patreon feed. Well, Friday funnies are also
a thing that Jim comes up with and posts every Friday.
And they're knife related memes and
comics. They're more like comic strips. Like single frame comic strips. Think
the New Yorker or think the Far side, that kind of thing.
So go check it out. That's just another thing you get
from becoming a member on Patreon or a patron
on Patreon. Let me tell you again, how to do that. You can go to
the knife junkie.com/patreon. Check out what we have to
offer there. Or you can scan that QR code right there
on your screen. That'll take you right there. And if you buy an
entire year or pay for an entire year at once, you
get 12% off, which is, which is a lot percent off.
So you might want to take advantage of that. A lot of people have been
doing that recently and smart move. Go to the knife
junkie.com Patreon Again, that's the knife
junkie.com Patreon adventure delivered your
monthly subscription for handpicked outdoor survival, e
EDC and other cool gear from our expert team of outdoor
professionals, the knifejunkie.com
battlebox. You're listening to the Knife Junkie
podcast. And now here's the Knife Junkie with the Knife Life
News. All right, first up in Knife Life News, Civivi is doing
what I love when they do that didn't sound right, but you
know what I mean. This is one of the my favorite things about Civivi is
that they have some really cool fixed blade knives.
This new one that's coming out, it's not quite out yet,
is the Civivi Coravin. It's a beautiful,
I'm gonna call it kind of a modern looking Puukko
with the, with the blade shape. It's, it's 3.75 inches of
AEDL stainless steel in that drop point.
What's kind of, I, I hesitate to call it a drop point, but that's
what they call it. It's like a straight back sort of puukko style
do everything utility slash outdoors knife. But the
USP about this one is it's got serrations. This
is only the second knife out from Civivi with serrations
and you can see them right there by the Ricasso. Cool thing about this
is that there are three teeth and each one of
them are separated with a different distance. The, the
scalloped part between the two teeth is largest on
the serration closest to the hand. And then they get
progressively smaller as you go forward. And
that's kind of cool. You. So you get some real aggressive
cutting there. Say you have to cut rope or twine on
your outdoor adventure. That's probably the best place to do
it. Or at least it will start the cut. Those big serrations will start the
cut and you can finish it with the rest of that razor sharp
AEB L. This one is
4.34 ounces with a Kydex sheath. Beautiful
ergonomic handle that sort of brackets the hand
and has a nice palm swell there. Just, I mean you can just look at
that and if you have a hand, you know it's going to be comfortable. The
prototypes have been shown in two different handle materials
that sort of brown. What's it called?
Sack cloth. I guess there's another
word for it which is escaping me. Micarta
or that G10 that you can see in the blue and
white. Again, not available yet, but they
do have a price on them. These will be 94 and
I would say well worth it. I have been so happy with the Civivi fixed
blades I've gotten so far and I've only gotten the small fraction,
but they are awesome. All right, next up,
buck of the month. Now, as I record this, we are in the end
of October 2025, but they still have some of these left.
And it is the 101. The 101 is
a fixed bladed version of the Emblematic,
I guess I'll call it 110 Folding Hunter, the knife that
really put Buck on the map in the modern era. And
this, as you can see from the picture, is a fixed bladed version of this.
Now they had this one out for a while and then discontinued it,
but now it comes out every once in a while for a buck of the
month. Last time it was a drop point, which in my
opinion probably very, very useful and workable, but just
not as compelling as this beautiful California clip.
This one is now out with. That's
7 3.75 inches of
S35VN. Yep, yeah, S35VN on
this 101 with the Paul Boss heat treat. Paul Boss
is the boss when it comes to heat treating. He can even make
420. Screamingly sharp, yes, but
also very, very tough. So Paul
Boss heatridon. This handle scales are El Dorado rich
light with an Anzo pattern that, that
Jen's Anzo was the first one to do that sort of grooved pattern. So
it's been called the Anzo pattern for a long time. At least I still call
it that. But that layered rich light really looks like wood.
Looks like natural material. Perfect for the fall. Really,
really beautiful. Comes with a distressed leather sheath.
And there are still a few of these available at 175
bucks. So if you're a buck guy, and I wouldn't
necessarily call myself a buck guy, but I am a huge fan and
appreciator of the classic Buck models. And actually their
new range series is really sweet. But I love the old
110, the 112, the 119, the 120 fixed blades.
Those are awesome too. So if you're in that camp, you might really
want to save up your shekels and get that one. But you
better act fast because the bulk month is almost over.
All right, next up is from Giant Mouse, a
company that I again, Jen Zanzo, used to be a part of Giant Mouse
for the first 10 years. I absolutely love Giant Mouse
From a distance, I don't have any, but I just, I always love
their designs. Luckily they, they are always pretty much out of
my wheelhouse in terms of size. So I've never been, never had
that moral obligation to spend the money on a Giant mouse. But they
are beautiful. This new one is the Farley
V1 Farley V1
rim. It's called trim.
If any of you know Eddie Murphy, you know, I just chuckled. Anyway, so
the, this, the original release of the Fairly or
Farley, I'm not sure how they actually pronounce it was in
2022 and it was their, their answer
to the lack of slip jointage in their lineup.
And it had Micarta handles and then they had the v2 version
back then which was the bolstered Micarta versions.
So V1, no bolsters. V2 bolsters. So the
V1 trim is actually
now with contoured titanium. And then they
hopefully will come out with a V2 which will have the titanium
but also with bolsters. So this thing is
beautiful. Nice and slim as the as the name
would would
betray. And it has a beautiful
2.75 inch Elmax spear point blade. I think the
blade is beautiful. The handle is beautiful. Again, this is ergonomics
that the eye can sense. You have a wire clip.
And these are available now at
225 bucks. Now I am not sure about
the action on these, but knowing, knowing
Giant Mouse's reputation, I'm sure it's absolutely
stellar. And I think that these have a stop pin. So they're
not a traditional. They. I know they have a stop pin just from looking at
it. They are not traditional slip joints that use the
kick on the Ricasso to stop it, stop the blade when you close it.
They use a stop pin against that sharpening notch. So
absolutely beautiful Again from Giant Mouse. All
right, last up in my in the knife
life news today from Victorinox, a company
that. Well, it doesn't change things too often,
but here's a nice big change. This is their Alox
Refined Collection Alox are those aluminum oxide
handled knives that we all know and love. I got a bunch of them.
The one thing I don't like about the Alox models parenthetically
is no toothpick because I use that all the time. When I have my
slip. My Victorinox is on me and no
tweezers but. And you think with this model they might
figure out a way to do that, but they haven't. But that's okay. I'm not
throwing shade. Three models in this refined
collection. Now you're looking, if you're looking at the screen you can see that there
are odd cutouts that we don't see ordinarily on
Victorinox knives. The one cutout that
concerns me is on the the
bottom side of it because it just it you can
see kind of the works of the slip joint there and, and I'm wondering
if that will introduce gunk and muck into the situation
and kind of jam up the action
on that side of the slip joint. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Beautiful cutouts on the top which I like a lot. And then
some of that knurled texturing but not on the whole thing. And
then the rest of it has a sort of brushed bark looking texturing
on those aluminum oxide handles. Okay, what are the
unique selling propositions of these besides the new look? The first
is a locking main blade. There is a locking
leaf there. It has a tab that extends out like an
old school liner lock and it locks that blade
open. I love that. I love that aspect. The second
USP here is the pocket clip. It has a
pocket clip, kind of a deep carry loop over
spring pocket clip. It does present the blade tip down
but that's not such a concern in this case because it is
a slip joint. There is no, I'm not a slip joint but it is a
two handed opening knife. So all of the reasons
we don't like a tip down modern folder don't really come into
play with this one. Three models of
this. The One Fold which is has a single blade
locking blade. The Synergy A word I absolutely
despise. But I can talk about that another time with a
blade nail file, bottle opener and a flat flathead
screwdriver. And then the boxer opener, that
funny looking tool at the very top there. And then the
Synergy X which has all of those tools
plus scissors. These are available now starting at
56 bucks for the one fold and rounding the
corner at 96 bucks for the Synergy
X. Very exciting news. I wish it had
a bale. I do love the bales on my, on my
Victorinox's, but it has a pocket clip so that sort of
precludes the bail. Right? I mean, doesn't for me, but might
for you. So go check those out and
you'll be excited to see them. All right, coming up, we're going to go to
the first tool, but I want to remind you that you can
sign up for the newsletter that comes every couple of
weeks. It should come every week, but sometimes I slack. That's all right.
You get enough emails anyway. But I want to get in your email
box just in case this show ever has to leave
this platform or other platforms. We can always be in touch
and talk about knives. Just go to the knife junkie.com
newsletter. All right, let's get to the first tool. You're
listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. Here's some cool knife history
with the knife junkies. The first tool. If you ever
hold an ulu in your hand, you'll feel something ancient,
something older than almost any other knife design still in use.
The ulu isn't just a tool. It's a living artifact of
survival, culture and ingenuity, born in one
of the harshest environments on Earth, the Arctic.
For thousands of years, Inuit, Yuptik and Elliot
women used the ulu for nearly everything. Skinning
seals, cutting hair, slicing meat, shaping hides,
even trimming the food for their children. It was a
multi tool before multi tools existed. But its
shape is what truly sets it apart. A crescent blade
that rocks gracefully against a cutting surface, powered not by
downward force, but by leverage and precision.
Early ulus were crafted from whatever the Arctic offered.
Before metal, there was slate, shale, or sharpened bone
lashed to a driftwood handle. When European
explorers brought steel to the north, the design hardly changed.
Only the materials did. That's how perfect the
form already was. Each ulu was personal,
passed from mother to daughter. It carried family, lineage and
spiritual weight. Some were engraved with simple carvings,
others decorated with ivory or antler handles.
And when an Inuit woman passed away, if not handed
down to the next generation, her ulu was often buried with
her, not as a possession, but as an extension of
who she was. There's a quiet poetry in that,
a tool so tied to daily life that it became a symbol of
womanhood, care and continuity.
In the Inuit tradition, men might make the blade, but women
gave it meaning through their work. The ulu wasn't just
used, it was lived. Even today, you can find
ulus being handmade in in Northern Alaska and
Canada sold both as practical kitchen tools and
cultural treasures. Modern versions may use stainless
steel and polymer handles, but the soul of the blade,
that perfect arc, that perfect balance,
remains unchanged. It's rare for a design to
survive untouched for millennia, but the ULU has done
just that. It's an Arctic's signature tool,
one that connects modern hands to ancestors who carved,
fed and thrived in a frozen world. Because
when a knife works perfectly, it doesn't need to
evolve, it simply endures. Now let's
get to the state of the collection. Want to sell your custom knives online?
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passion into a business. So we're going to be talking about Tea
Kel knives coming up here, especially their best EDC
models. But I wanted to show you the very first
Tekal knife I ever got. This one fascinated me
and man, it got me. It got me
right down the rabbit hole. This is the
guardian. I'm sorry, I almost said defender. This is the guardian.
There's also a night guard which is a smaller version of this,
but this is the one that really fascinated me because of the
audacity of that crazy bevel.
That bevel is just designed
sheerly for self defense. As you can see, the bevel
is very short, very shallow, extremely oblique.
You can see it looks like a diamond in cross section here.
You are not cutting any salami with this. You
are not slicing lunch meat with this. This is
100% about gashing, stabbing,
thrusting and tearing. It is a super,
it's a super nasty blade. It's pretty heavy,
relatively speaking, for a knife of its size due to
the full slab that you have
up to that oblique bevel there.
This thing I, when it first came out, you know, Tim, Tim of
Tel Knives was admittedly more of a
gun guy than a knife guy when he first started. And
there were some things, some, some of the rules that he
broke as a gun guy and not a knife guy really
is what got him the attention and,
and, and, well, I should say just the attention and
infamy that made him who he is today.
Who would ever put a bevel on a knife like this? Especially
in this day and age when everyone's talking about Fin behind the edge and
slicey. Well, Tim did and it really
launched him. Now this is, you might look at this and
think, well that's just too oblique. That's just too thick behind the
edge to do anything. And all you got to do is take
this through some spare ribs or swing at
any soft material with this and you'll see what it does. It
yawns open, it powers through soft materials
like you would not believe. Actually, you can believe it. If
you just look this knife up, you'll see videos of him
going to town on his pork man. With this pork man is a
couple of thick pork loins wrapped around PVC
tubing and then wrapped with seven layers of Saran wrap to
to this to approximate skin. And
you, you will see what this thing does. It is admittedly
kind of a funky looking knife. It's a three way,
you know, tri edged sheepsfoot or
wharncliffe. Depends on, on what you want to call it. But
three distinct edges there. This thing is just wicked
and nasty and I'm glad I have it. I do not carry it
often to be 100% honest, because there are other tkal knives I just
prefer. But it's on the warthog handle.
So if you're looking at this, you can see the purple. Here
is the handle from the warthog which fits
perfectly in hand and is nice and small and fits on the belt easily.
But I do have this with the sentry grip. So you
can see how this side of the G10, the full black side
incorporates a ring on there and that gives you a better grip in
standard grip like this gives you more of a pommel
to resist centrifugal force. But also if you
carry it in such a way that you're drawing it, ring finger,
forefinger first, it gives you that sort of karambit style
engagement. Now for me, I wouldn't do much flipping with this. I'm not
much of a flipping, flipping guy. I've hurt myself enough
with curved karambits to just resist the urge
to flip. But that ring is superior
for drawing the knife. I absolutely love it and I
love it even more so on other, other knives. But.
So this is the guardian. You can still get it. If that style
of bevel is just not versatile enough for you and your
purposes. Check out the night guard. It's a, it's a
little bit shorter and it's a similar shaped handle, but it's
or similar shaped blade but it's got a swedge and
a much higher bevel so you can use it for more,
more cutting chores than just defending yourself.
So go check that out. All right, now let's talk about
Tekal knives. But before we do, I want to show off some of the cool
merch we have. This is new stuff that Jim has just come up with.
Jim is always busy at work and
making, coming up with new witty maxims like these and
designs for them. Don't make me unfold this, he says.
And I like it because, you know, I'm especially fond
of the more combative style knives. And here this is
a sort of a tip of the hat to those of us who like to
carry knives for self prot protection you need. It's
grilling season still. I mean, for me it's griddle season all
year round, but you're still going to be outside cooking or inside.
I made a big pot of sauce and meatballs just this week
and I wish I had this apron on me because it would have saved me
the shirt I was wearing. You can also put on a hat with this on
a T shirt or a great number of other things, mugs and other
such stuff. So if you're a coffee maker, you're a guy who wears shirts,
maybe you wear hats, maybe you cook. Check us out. Go to the knife
junkie.com shop. There are many pages of
merch there with really cool logos and,
and art on them. So go check it out. The
knife junkie.com shop. All right,
so to head up this conversation about TEL knives,
especially the EDC TEL knives, which is kind of what they're
born and bred for, but they have expanded and they have a lot more
larger knives out there. We're going to talk about the launch
of the Agent 001. I just said launch like
I'm from New York. I don't know why I said it like that. But let's
talk about these. They are really cool, super refined.
As I mentioned, the first one that I
showed off today is the blue one, which we're going to be giving away
to a lucky gentleman junkie on November 20th this
month of in this year of 2025. But I'm going
to show you a little cavalcade of agent
001s here. So first off,
you can get the 001 now with the badger
claw leather sheath. Truth be told, this is how I've been carrying
it. The most recent recently because this has been my main
blade. Often times I just dropped the whole thing in my pocket.
You can see from the shape of that sheath, it nestles down
perfectly into the bottom of a man's
jeans pocket. I'm not saying you got to be a man to buy this, but
if you're a woman, you know, you don't have pockets deep enough, so you might
just want to get a clip. But I just put it right in like this
and I can just draw the knife directly out. So something you
may have noticed, something I've been talking about a lot is that
Tim has outsourced some of his milling, or
much of his milling for his blades to Nick Chuprin
of NCC Knives. An absolute perfectionist and
amazing machinist. He's out of New
Hampshire. You might know Nick from his
beautiful folding knives. Well, he's taken all of the
meticulousness of making those knives and put it into fixed blade
knives. Look at the beautiful chamfering on this. Look at the
striations in the bevels here.
Beautifully, beautifully milled by Nick and NCC
Knives as a collaboration with Tkel.
And not only is this very much
kinder in the hand than the first run, I love
the first run. I still carry those all the time, but they're
nice and soft on the edges here so they don't bite into
the hand. He's reduced the number of gimps on the thumb
ramp from five to four bigger gyms. I actually
rather like that. My original design had five smaller ones.
They've gone to four, four larger ones. And I really, really
like it actually. It's more comfortable. And the, the thumb
really buries deep in there. We have
battle lock grips on this one. I have a bunch of battle lock grips. I'm
going to show you in a minute. Beautiful
saturated color. This is something I'm loving about these battle lock
grips. Not only does that stone texturing portion
in the center really grip, I mean, it grips beautifully. I
mean, like, but it doesn't harsh the hand and it
doesn't like, destroy your jeans somehow, maybe because
those tiny little pebbles are very, very small. But in
addition, with the battle grip here on the
sides, that's this tkal knives sort of patented
grip pattern here. It just feels so good in hand.
This is another one of those knife handles that you can just look at visually
and tell how ergonomically sound it is. Now I,
when presenting the original agent design
to Tim, he said, I love that blade. We're going to, we're going to
nail that blade. And they did exactly as I drew it.
But he said, I think the handle needs a little work. And he went to
town and this is what he came up with, I had
a more severe choil here for the pinky and
here for the four finger heat kind of made it more graceful and
arced and man, it feels so good in hand.
We added the jimping on the back. Three here for my wife and my two
daughters. Three here for the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.
It doesn't have to be for you if that's not your thing. Totally get it.
But that's what, what my what I was thinking, I was thinking how cool it
is that say the Kukris or all of the
Filipino blades and the Malaysian blades have different
spiritual aspects to the designs that you don't need to know about and
to make them effective but they are there nonetheless. And that's what I was
thinking when I came up with that. So don't worry, don't have to be a
Catholic own and appreciate these.
So let me show you this. Now this is the standard sheath.
It ships with awesome, awesome
slender Kydex sheaths that Tim
has kind of made his name on for, for
serious everyday carry. But this one, now they don't
ship with this clip but you can, you can purchase that extra and I
highly recommend it. I am, I'm a total convert to this.
I love the DCC clips for vertical carry but for horizontal
carry I am 100% behind these ulti clips here.
This is an Ulti Clip wire clip that
Tim co designed with the, with the
late great gentleman who started Ulticlip,
may he rest in peace. But this thing is great. You can
spread it out to fit any sort of
grommet or lashing option, you know, within
reason. But this could go even further and
I could put it over here if I wanted to, but it keeps it really
close to the belt, close to the body. There's very little
standoff distance between the blade and your belt and it
just holds perfectly and very stout. I, I, I
thought just from looking at it that it would turn on the belt, it would
swivel. It doesn't at all. Keeps it right where it needs to be.
Here again is another beautifully saturated and it's funny
to call this saturated because I've shown you two pretty dull colors
in that olive drab and this desert tan. But when you get
your eyes on these as well as your hands, you'll see how really
great these battle lock grips are. All right,
now I'm going to show you two special editions that are shipping right now.
So these knives as you see them right here, are shipping out soon enough
November 1st. But you better jump on them because they're not unlimited.
But if you want one of these two special editions right
now, you could buy it right now because they're already ready to go.
Now how TKL knives works, you order it, say, you order it with this
blue, blue grip. Say I want the blue
grip on the, on the 001. Then they make your knife, they have the blades
ready to go. They put the, they select the
handle you want, make the handle, put it on, select the sheath you want
and get all that ready. They put the edge on the knife and then the,
they ship it to you. But these are already made. And I've got
two special editions to show you. First has that
beautiful cobalt blue battle
lock grip. Again, super saturated color that I love
so much. Check out the blade. This is
the storm edition. I still have the oil on there. Maybe just
for our purposes here, I'll wipe the oil off.
So you got a laser etched lightning pattern on
there that is so cool. And it's perfect for this time of year.
Perfect for any time of year. But I love it for fall because,
you know, creepy movies and thunderstorms go hand in hand.
But you got the same super sharp blade.
These are coming in aedl. So these are
stainless. Am I right about that? Okay.
Honestly, I don't know. All TCAL knives come in
either AEBL or ADCRV2, but they're
all coated with, with that nickel boron coating,
so it kind of doesn't matter. Do you like a tougher,
do you like a tougher, more outdoorsy steel
in the ADC RV2 or do you like a more EDC style
with the aebl? Uh, really, they're kind of interchangeable for me.
They kind of don't matter. But both great steels. And
look at that really cool lightened pattern on there.
Of course it comes with whatever handle color you want.
Actually, that's not true. These ready to ship ones have
handle colors that you can choose from. It's not like getting a custom
one here. Next one is, and I love this, especially
for, for Halloween. You can tell from that. Again,
super saturated lime green. You know what this is going to
be? That's right. It's a Zombie edition. Remember
when zombies were everywhere? I mean, not literally,
thank God, but the zombie craze that started
with the Walking Dead and, and ran its way through knives. There
were, there was a long period of that. Well, at this point, this is kind
of a tip of the hat. This is sort of a nostalgia bid
here with the, with the Zombie Blood splatter on
the blade. Of course, that is laser engraved
or not engraved. Laser etched in there I guess is the word.
And then you have that beautiful green handle. Now these, the
zombie edition is shipping only in
this green handle. And I love
it. This will be what I carry on Halloween. I can't wait.
And, well, I'll probably carry both of them, but
I really love the look of this. I don't have too many
zombie blades in my collection, so I'm really
happy that the one I do have is an agent 001. How
beautiful that is. All right, I'm gonna set this down here.
That is representation of the full line
of the Agent 001 series.
You've got the Ulti clip here. And then this is
the clip that they ship with. And this clip is actually really
awesome. I love this. And if you have a
couple extras of the. You could always swap. If you say you buy an
aftermarket clip like this, you can take this off and put it on your favorite
holster. It'll work on the holsters for in the waistband carry.
All right, let me, let me remove these very, very, very sharp
knives and let me do it very carefully so as not to cut
myself. I've cut myself on, on camera here so many times
that not all about that, as the kids say.
Do they say that? I think they say. All right, next up is also from
the Agent series. This is the agent 002.
Now this is taking the agent handle to. So this handle
that Tim and I collaborated on launched the entire
agent series. And the second one is
borrowing from the Night Guard. So you see that really
great looking modified sheepsfoot modified wharncliffe
blade on this agent
handle. I've told the story many times, but I'll tell it again
because that's the DeMarco way to retell stories
over and over. Just ask my dad or my brother
or my sister. I think my mom's the only one who
doesn't indulge in all that. But. So this is the
knife I used to install this
flooring in our pool. My wife is a pool board member,
much to her dismay at our local pool.
You wouldn't believe how crazy political a pool board can be. But
anyway, so she bought a whole bunch of
this flooring to put on the pool
on the tiled floor in the locker rooms. And
this knife was perfect for putting that damn
pain in the ass together because a. This
wharncliffe blade with that straight edge was perfect for cutting really hard
plastic. I horsed this through a lot of really hard plastic.
And then this awesome handle, which was originally
designed for thumb capping for. For reverse grip,
turned out to be a great hammer. I used this so
much to hammer pieces of these
floor tiles together. And the Jims
actually worked great to grip kind of like the knurling on the
hammer pole of a roofing hammer. It just grabbed into whatever
I was hammering into, especially the soft.
The. The. The tough material I was using that.
That I was pounding this into.
Something I failed to mention when I was showing off the 001 is
that this terminates in a comfortable yet effective
glass breaker here. Like when you put your thumb here, it's right
in the nook of your thumb, so you don't even feel
this sort of diamond shape, that pyramidal shape
there. But it works great as a glass cutter, not glass cutter. I'm
sorry, glass breaker. And remember, if you ever have
to break glass in, say, a car, do it in the corner.
You'll. You'll see a lot of great videos of people trying to break the
glass right in the center. Doesn't work, but once you do it in the
corner, just shatters easily. Also, you don't want to do it in the
middle because if you did make it through, you'd be smacking whoever's in there in
the face with the butt of your knife. But the beautiful
agent 002 right here. Love this
knife. Now, this is wearing the. The
woodland burl G10. So tan, brown
and black, all swirled together. Not in layers like you saw on
the blue and black, blue and black, blue and black. But each layer
has swirls. And this is something that Tim worked with the
G10 supplier to actually create. So really, really
cool. All right, next up is the
agent 003. Now, the 003
is with the night Stalker blade,
the very popular night stalker blade on that
agent handle. So here it is.
You can see this one is when they first started working
with ncc. You can see the, the.
The milling lines on the bevel, but a little more subtle.
Everyone loved the mill line, so they made them slightly more pronounced. Now
has great, great jimping. Really
grabs the. Grabs the thumb, though. I have it on
good word that the new ones will have more chamfering on the side
of those jimps, making them less sharp on the sides, but
still as effective. This is wearing blue jean
Micarta. I love, love denim
Micarta. I'm a huge Micarta fan. I
love the burlap. I love the canvas. I love the.
The linen with that real tight weave. But I'm especially fond
of the denim. I'm a big blue jeans wearer
as it is for most of us are. But I love the look
of it. It's, it's. I don't know, it's wistful
and. But what's really the, the special part about this
blade is about this knife is that blade. You've got a
beautiful drop point. It almost looks like a clip point to me. With a full
length swedge. This is great for piercing. You've got a
center line point. If you align the point with the screws on
the handle, it's exactly down the center. So you get great
utility, great self defense capability in this and
then just great everyday carry
utility out of this. Admittedly, the
agent001 is a bit combative with its double edge.
This one can do double duty. It's combative
but also utilitarian. Also it's
probably more legal in some areas as it's single
edge. Okay. Last of my collection
of the agent series Tim just sent to me. And this thing
is so sweet. This is the agent 004. Now the
004 is based on the Puukko
blade. The Puukko from. From Northern Europe.
Kind of a do everything outdoors blade. This
one with that super saturated pink bad
lock. Yes. My daughters want this when I die. Yes. I
mean it's gonna. Yeah. Every time you try, you take off a
sheath, it'll fly off the tcal unless you stop
it from doing so. So there it is. Now this one is just
under 3 inches and I got a little, little
cloth stuck in that battle rock. I'll have to, I'll have to get out later.
But this is just under 3 inches. So if you're
concerned about knife lengths in
your area, this one will probably pass muster.
You've got a beautiful straight back blade there.
Oh, that will drive me nuts. Let me just try it.
All right. This is not. There it goes. Thank you. Thank
you. You got that beautiful straight back Puukko blade,
very high bevel. So nice and slicey for such a
thin blade. You've got the quad gimps there,
nicely chamfered. And that beautiful hand. You
know you don't have to get the pink. I recommend it. I think it's
wistful. I've used that word twice. I think it's kind of
fun and, and fanciful. That's the word I'm looking for.
Fanciful looks really cool too with the black bolts.
I'm a big fan of pink when it's with black or that color
combination. Used to hate pink altogether, but then had daughters, had to learn to
love it. And that hot pink, man, that is
something. You will see it a mile away though. So if your intention is
to carry this surreptitiously on your person
for self defense, you might want to shy away from that. But if you're
taking this out as an everyday carry and you're going in the woods with it
and stuff, which, this would make a pretty good little woods knife.
You might buy something like this or that. Blaze orange or
something in case you drop it. I dare say this would be even better
than blaze orange because if it's in the fall, it won't get lost
with the orange leaves on the ground. So this is the agent 004.
I'm a huge fan of this blade design and I'm
very grateful that Tim sent it to me to check out. Thank you, Tim. All
right, next up, I just want to show real briefly. Here is the
new version of the Night Stalker, also with the battle
lock grips. What's new about this? It's the thinness of the blade, a
little more svelte. They have a number of different versions of this
knife, but this is now with thicker blades for,
for more hardcore scenarios. But this is the
standard version and it has a slimmer blade
stock and I really like it. Super, super light. This is the
knife that inspired the 001 in terms of
carry length. It fits in the
same carry envelope I was, I had my
original Nightstalker, which I don't have on the table here. I was carrying it
all the time. So when I proposed
doing a collaboration with Tim, I told him
this is fits right in the carry envelope of Night
Stalker and I, I just,
it's the perfect length and I love this blade. This is the one that really
sold me on rings. Again, I started shying away from rings
and karambits and then I got this and it, it
reignited my love of the utility
of the ring, not the fancy flipping and that kind of thing.
All right, next up is new. This is the Nautilus
and this is based on the Night Stalker.
It's just a ring delete with a little change of the handle here and
then pushing the thumb ramp forward so you
could get good purchase on this three finger knife. Yeah, this is a,
this is a little big knife if ever I've had one.
Really only three fingers on there, but the, the pinky braces
against the pommel so you get a really,
really excellent grip on this. The thumb is able to Extend
forward and you get the full
night stalker blade on there. Just a little less on
top to accommodate the thumb. So same cutting edge, same
point, same blade, basically. And same handle
in a lot of ways. I know you tweaked the handle once he deleted the
ring, but this thing is awesome. The Nautilus, it's a
great, super subtle on the belt, very
small, easy to carry. I mean this is a great office fixed
blade. If you have a sweater on and you can just kind of COVID up
the knife, this will not print at all. It's so small
yet so, so right. I don't know, it just fits the hand
perfectly. And most three finger rings I
want to put a fob on just for extra grip. You could
with those rings there, those bolts, ring bolts. But
I have no desire to do so on this. It just feels great in
hand. There it is. That's the
Nautilus. Brand new. And now I'm
going to show you my FLN and just let you know that they have
come out with the new FLN 2.0. They are hollow
ground. So much more effective
slicer. This, I mean, this is pretty damn effective as it, as
it is, but this is the first version and then this is a
collaboration with Neves Knives, as you can see there.
And the new one has a hole cutout, which is great
because it, it really makes the sheathing much better. The
sheath on this is okay, but it's
the, it's it something about it just not as
good as the new ones. I experienced the new ones at Blade show, they are
now out, so you can order one. The new FLN with
the, with the high hollow grind and the, and
the blade hole for retention. So check that out. These things are
wicked. Jared Neeve just did a video showing it off against
a ballistics dummy and yeah, it's pretty damn cool.
Last up, I'm just going to show you these. I'm not sure when these are
available again. I know they had a recent run of them, but I absolutely
love them. Some of my very favorite EDC knives at
all. Here's the Adversary. And on the
same platform is the combatant. Now, the combatant was the first
one and this is the second iteration of the karambit of the
combatant. They did change the blade a little bit, gave it a swedge and
a, a lower point, more of a spear point. But these things
just melt in the hand. They are outstanding
knives. I think the Adversary is my favorite because of that
thumb swale and that beautiful wharncliffe blade. If You've
got giant meat hooks and. And this is just going to be too
small for you. I can get four fingers on it, but you have big hands.
You can get a sentry grip for this. So that adds the. No, actually
it's not a sentry grip. It's just an extended grip. So it doesn't have
a ring. It just extends this handle a little bit.
And it's just done with G10 and it's super solid.
Again, that's something I got to experience at Blade Show. I don't have one for
my knife, but I don't want the longer handle on this. I love how
discreet the carry is on the combatant and the
adversary. All right, if you want any of these knives,
especially the 001 dropping on
November 1, 2025,
or you can get the Zombie or the Storm edition right now ready to
ship, go to the knifejunkie.com
TKEL and use our affiliate link. That's what that is.
And you got to put on the coupe. You have to put in the coupon
code. Knife junkie, all lowercase. Knife
junkie. One word, all lowercase will give you 10% off
your purchase. So do that. We all win from
that. And you get 10% off one of these
beautiful knives. They're not inexpensive knives, so take advantage of
10% off. But you will be very, very happy
you did this. Looks like we've, we've crossed the
43,000 subscriber line in the last
24 hours as I record this. Very excited and happy about
that. But I want you to
know, spread the word because when we get to 50,000
subscribers, Dirk Pinkerton, the great and powerful and
awesome Derek Pinkerton will be making us a custom knife
to give away. And that's, that's to anyone on the third
Thursday of the month or no, we'll do a special giveaway for that.
That's, that's reserved for gentleman junkies. This is for everyone. So
we'll, we'll find a day. I'll announce it. I'll do a close up video of
whatever that custom knife is. We're going to decide together. It'll be
something big and cool and we're going to give that away when we hit
50,000 subscribers. All right, thank you for
joining me and thanks for checking out all these beautiful tel
edc knives. They are great. I love Tim and I love
his work. And I am so smitten with this design
and how it comes out. And this second run is even better
than the first. So go check them out. They do drop on the TKL
website November 1, 2025. Or if you want a Zombie or a
Storm edition just in time for Halloween, they are available.
All right. For Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob
DeMarco 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 rate and review@reviewthepodcast.com
for show notes for today's episode, additional resources and to listen to past
episodes, Visit our website thenifejunkie.com you
can also watch our latest videos on YouTube@thenifjunkie.com
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