Giant Mouse Ace Riv Review
“Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.”
—Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacrum
There is a sense in which Baudrillard’s cascade of mirrors is playing out in the knife business. Custom makers produce a knife. It gets picked up by a production company that makes small changes and puts it out to the larger knife-buying public. Then, with feedback from that knife, the maker produces an iteration on the original custom incorporating the tweaks of the production. This also attracts attention and is popular and results in another production collab with more tweaks. Then, at this point, the maker gets an offer to do another collab and another and another. The well of creativity contains water with murky origins. This is not necessarily new in the knife world, but this time, instead of receiving influences from other makers in the past, makers are influenced by a self-referential loop but interestingly (and in a classic Baudrillard simulacrum example) the “self” part is slowly being withdrawn as a design influence. The most recent knife is a design palimsest where the traces of the designer’s influence have waned to the point of being undetectable. The most recent design is clearly not the result of the tabula rosa design process that made the maker famous in the first place nor is it a conglomeration of iterative changes that came about because of a dialog between the maker, the production company, and the knife-buying public. Instead is a design untethered but so worked over that it is completely familiar. The question is what is the design evoking to tap into that sense of familiar?
Compounding the Baudrillard Effect is the fact that knives show a strong bent towards minimal designs. When added into this heady mix of echo chamber product iteration, it becomes very difficult to determine who thought of what and how to distinguish designs not just between knives of a single maker but also between knives of different makers. Minimalism coupled with hyperreal referential design means that it is challenging to determine where one knife design ends and another supposedly different one begins.
The Baudrillard Effect, which I think is an apt description of this phenomenon and it has become a real issue in knife design in 2021. I think we can all agree that many knife designers have blades that demonstrate the Buadrillard Effect. Be clear—this isn’t a critique of the designer—he is doing his thing and looking to improve through iteration on his designs. It is also not a criticism, necessarily, of the companies. They are only following the unerring logic of capitalism. The Baudrillard Effect is really a criticism of the knife buying public. Their yearning for same note designs gets stultifying after a while. I am pretty much done with this trend. Give me a weirdo Spyderco Gunting or the strikingly bizarre Justin Lundquist Black Void Opus instead of yet another variant on a theme.
Jesper Voxnaes has been caught up in the pull of the Baudrillard Effect. He has a bunch of designs—CRKT, Giant Mouse, Urban EDC Supply—and they all follow similar lines with similar iterative patterns. Make no mistake—the Riv is the love child of the Pilar and the Biblio. Those are two pretty good knives. The question is—after the design churn of the Baudrillard Effect—is the Riv a good knife? Read on to find out.
BTW: The background here is provided by an original Shaker ladderback chair with a hand-caned rush seat. How beautiful and geometric. I love this chair to no end and you can see why it is so visually arresting here.
Here is the product page. There are currently three variations—a brass handled version for people that want a small knife that carries like a big knife, a titanium version, and this version in, stop me if you have heard this before, OD green micarta handles. The costs $185. The brass version is $195, while the Ti version is $210. Here is a written review. Here is a video review. Finally, here is my review sample (purchased with my money for me to keep):
Twitter Review Summary: A very competent knife that feels like a knife you have owned before…many times.
Design: 1
The Riv is very clearly a derivative of the also Voxnaes-designed CRKT Pilar. There are also hints of the Dragonfly here. Both, obviously, are good knives. The S35VN Pilar was one of the best CRKTs ever made and a truly superior blade. My love for the Dragonfly is well known. As a result, its pretty easy to like the Riv. But there are two things that nag at me—one a functional issue and the other a result of the Baudrillard Effect.
First, I am just not sure why they put a flipper on this knife. I am not talking about how the flipper works, which I will address below, but the fact that this is a flipper at all. The knife is just too small, the tab lacks leverage, and the handle makes it hard to get access to the tab. Finally, it is just unnecessary. The opening hole works well and it makes for a great finger flipper.
Second, I am getting a little tired the sameness of all the designs of this kind. This is not a performance issue, but a commentary on the state of knife designs right now. I am not willing to take a point off for the Baudrillard Effect, but it is getting a little tiresome reviewing knives over and over again that are only slightly different from each other.
The performance ratios are decent. The B:W is 1.01, crossing over the “respectable” threshold. The B:H is .72, just a smidge below the Golden Ratio of Knives of .75. These are pretty telling—this is a very good, but not elite knife; just like the performance ratios are very good but not elite.
Fit and Finish: 2
The Riv is one of the knives from Giant Mouse that were made not in Italy, like a lot of their first few knives, but made in China by Reate. The difference is obvious and immediate. This is an impeccable knife and unlike in-house Reate designs, the fit and finish is not just gee whiz stuff, but in service of a fundamentally solid cutter.
Grip: 2
The both the Pilar and the Dragonfly the Riv is excellent in hand. With a nice full forward choil it seems to melt into your hand. I am okay with iteration that results in improvement and this is clearly a place where the Voxnaes form has been tweaked over time. The Riv is basically a more finger-friendly Pilar and that was already a pretty good knife in hand.
Carry: 2
With a compact frame and metal only one side, and an overall weight under 3 ounces, this is a very nice companion in the pocket and a perfect “coin pocket” blade. It doesn’t hurt that the knife has a crowned spine either. All of the right touches. If only it were a linerlock and not a framelock…they are always better carries.
Steel: 2
Elmax is a perfectly fine performer. No criticisms there, but for the money, well I will take that up in the value section below.
Blade Shape: 2
The epicenter of iterative hyperreality in knives is always the blade shape. Is this an extreme drop point, a wharncliffe, or a modified sheepsfoot? At some point it doesn’t matter because the blade shape here works, but it is exceptionally clear that this blade shape is iteration upon iteration. It doesn’t make it bad, it doesn’t hamper performance, but it makes the knife look a bit less interesting and engaging.
Grind: 2
Here the Riv scores. This is a tall blade with thin stock that is brought down to an ultraslim edge right behind the cutting bevel. You will be very hard pressed to find a significantly thinner blade. The elite cutters like the Otter 365, the TRM Neutron, and the Chaparral are a bit ahead, but that is because they start with thinner stock. Still, quite compentent.
Deployment Method: 1
Not every knife needs a flipper. Really. I promise you, it is not necessary. But in the design churn that is the Baudrillard Effect, flippers magically appear even if the original design (or designer) didn’t have it. This is the perfect example of the hyperreal taking over. The Pilar was great, but the Pilarge had a flipper. So when this knife was designed, with the size of the Pilar but the design heritage of the Biblio and the Pilarge, a flipper, as if by magic, appeared out of nowhere. And here is the thing—it stinks. It is hard to get leverage on and as a result the knife doesn’t deploy consistently. In this day and age of perfect flippers on $30 knives this is inexcuseable. Had this been only a flipper I would have given it a 0. Fortunately, the thumb hole is the right size and shape for a finger flick opening or to do a slow roll open. The detent is too strong for a reliable Spydie drop. The finger flick open is really fast and smooth and I open the knife this way like 99% of the time. Its enough to save the deployment, but a purely vestigial flipper earns this a 1. It is wholly unnecessary and earns you a deduction for tempting the user to try the wrong way of opening the knife.
Retention Method: 2
In another iterative touch, the wire clip here is indistinguishable from the wire clip on some Spydercos. And that is a good thing, performance-wise. This simple design has none of the problems of sculpted clips and is more elegant than a stamped steel clip. Again, the Baudrillard Effect isn’t bad or good, its just an explanation for how designs develop and begin to converge despite different origins.
Lock: 2
This knife as a framelock makes tons of sense, but really, it would have been equally nice and perhaps a bit more pocket friendly as a liner lock. This is true for 99% of designs, but it is not an issue of performance, but preference. Here, as with most Reate-made blades, the lock up is insanely tight with no wiggle in any direction. One side note, the lockbar cutout area is a bit messy.
Other Considerations
Fidget Factor: High
With a crisp detent for a finger flick deployment and the pleasing texture of a micarta handle, the Riv is great to play with on a pretty regular basis.
Fett Effect: Low
Micarta and stonewashed steel conceal most wear. Only the titanium handle reflects actual use.
Value: Low
None of the material here is exotic and prices have risen across the board, but it still feels a bit bad to pay almost $200 for an Elmax blade when lots of brands offer similar performing steels for closer to $100.
Overall Score: 18 of 20
The Baudrillard Effect has rendered a blade that is familar with one trait that is completely unnecessary driven not by design choices but by market desires. The end result is a very good knife with one bad feature. I like the Riv a lot, more than the score, which is a good one, indicates. But I can’t shake the feel that I have had this knife before, more than once. Its better than the CRKT Pilar in S35VN but not quite as good as the Dragonfly I have with aftermarket micarta scales. Its an excellent EDC knife and if you are new to knives, this is a good place to start. They are sold out as I write this, but Giant Mouse produces blades in waves and given how fast this one sold out I think we will see them again. This is definitely worth a look, even if it is a good exemplar of the Baudrillard Effect. Lots of knives are these days, so I can’t really fault the Riv or Giant Mouse.
Don’t be an aesthete, don’t worry about the design implications. This is just a good knife. Try it you will like it. That is the advantage of the design hyperreality.
Competition
The stock Dragonfly, now without ZDP-189, is not an upgrade to this knife. Similarly the S35VN Pilar no longer gets produced so the competetion isn’t stiff in the small, stocky blade category. I like this much more than the Techno or the Techno 2. The also out of production Strider PT is pretty good as competition, but it is, in its last issuance, more than twice the price. The knife that makes me think of the Riv the most is the larger and more distinctive Brouwer. The clip issue aside, the Brouwer is one of the best knives Spyderco has ever made and it is still widely available. I give the Riv a nod for better steel, but the Brouwer is a superior design.
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Jean Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacrum
