SHOT Show is basically CES for knife nerds and this year did not disappoint. Be clear I did not go, but I do get most of the preshow press releases and now that the show has happened, I feel like its okay to go through what I oogled over in that week between Christmas and New Years.

Here are my favorite things.

CRKT Provoke x Axe

Okay, we can talk all we want about serious knife stuff—blade steel, grinds, prices, but blah blah blah. We like knives because at some visceral level they are cool. The cool factor on the Caswell Axe is OFF…THE…CHARTS. Of course there are brilliant and interesting feats of engineering, but it is that clack that you get when the axe pops open that is intoxicating. I can only imagine the pitch meeting at CRKT:

Joe Caswell: So…I worked out how to do a folding a…

[CRKT executive handling the review sample and a SNAP from the other side of conference room]

[IN UNISON] We’ll take it.

It is an amazing design and a great offering in CRKT’s line up, but blah blah blah blah this axe is amazing.

Buck Mini Range Elite

The Vantage was a sweet form factor, but it was not a great knife. The pivot was gritty, the flipper tab was too small, the detent wasn‘t great, and the steel, while better than 420HC, wasn’t great. The Mini Range looks to fix a lot of those problems and carry the idea of a modern Buck folder into the market. After all, Uncle Randy has children.

Spyderco Sage 6 in S90V

I am going to let you in on a secret: there has been a best Spyderco for a while. That is, there is a Spyderco that does what Spyderco does best and serves the most people well. In my opinion that knife has been the Caly3. The Chaparral, the Sage, and the Dragonfly are all good choices and for me the DF is the winner, but its size means that most people will think they need something bigger (they don’t but that is another point). Don’t even mention the Para3…its not good people. The Sage has a great form factor, probably the peer of the Caly3, but for the Compression Lock. It is just too pinchy. Enter the button activated compression lock, first designed by Kevin Smock. Toss in some S90V goodness and I think the Sage 6 might be the knife to displace the Caly3. Its been 21 years with the Caly3 at the top of the mountain. Is this the year it passed over its crown as the Best Spyderco?

Magpul Breslau

What if, instead of using a water jet or laser to cut sheets of steel into blade blanks, you could batch out blades with no waste? Now toss in the fact that you can use high end steels AND that you can get impressive details on the blade

Chris Reeve MIM Clip

“A FRIGGIN’ Pocket Clip? Common on, yer serious….” I can hear the anti-CRK contingent complaining right now. But the truth is, if the MIM tech works in blades AND in clips where it needs to be springy we are in the cusp of a revolution. Plus, I figure if Civivi can get press coverage for its 307 new knives EVERY year, the CRK clip deserves some coverage given that it is just the second clip ever made for the vaunted Sebenza.

Protech Vero

Joseph Vero is one of the few self-publishers that is still pumping out stuff that is both new and good. This collaboration with Protech is something of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in the knife world as the collaborators with Protech are basically Inner Circle GOAT knife makers.

Boker Plus Micro Tracker

Dave Wenger is one of my very favorite custom makers. His edges are simply the best I have ever seen, full stop. And his Micro Tracker is a wickedly cool and seemingly daunting to make blade. I’d love to take a class where he shows people how to grind that thing. Its kind of mindbending, like the grind equivalent of a Klein bottle. So if you took that cool factor and made it a folder, well, that is an interesting object. I don’t think I would buy it as my one and done, but as a third folder, why not? Sometimes it is okay to just be cool even if us mere mortals have no chance of ever sharpening that thing back to factory sharpness.

ZT 0044

The slow morphing of ZT from GRRR tactical to Oh…Premium has been a pleasant one. About 1,000 people in the world can truly justify having a massive, slabby tactical folder with a $300 price tag. This knife is definitely more in line with the premium mindset and looks to be just one of this “really solid” knives. Good steel, good shape, nothing dumb. Sometimes ZTs are burdened by unforced errors—slabby designs, overly thick steel, and well, I don’t know how the ZT0223 happened. The ZT0044 has no unenforced errors. Sometimes playing it safe is the right call and this is a fundamentally safe and sound design.