$25 Knife Challenge

[Grant Lamontagne]

Since Inky has infected Abe with the Chinese Knife Bug and I have been fascinated by high quality knockoffs lately, we have decided to do a challenge on EDC-TV and you are all invited to play along.

The challenge is to get the new, best one handed opening, locking tactical style knife you can find for $25 or less. Otherwise we would all get a second hand Spartan and declare ourselves the winner!

My knife recently arrived, although I have to admit that I overspent a little.  Mine came to #25.11 with all the taxes etc, and it had free shipping. But, it’s a company I have been looking at for some time now and this was a good excuse to finally pull the trigger on a knife from them!

I can’t tell you what I got just yet, because none of us know what the other one got, and we are going to reveal them to each other on the show. I have a feeling that Inky is going to outclass all of us, but I’m not making it easy for him- mine is pretty sweet!

But, if any of you want to play along (it’s the EDC-TV Home Game!) by picking up a $25 knife that fits the rules, I’d love to hear what you’ve come up with!

And, you know, most importantly, many pictures!   

Def

[AzteCypher]

I picked mine  up and I'm honestly impressed.  I think it counts as a tactical style knife.  At least the descriptions named it as such.     It's an Eafengrow EF67.

* It was sharp out of the box.
* The walk and talk is good.
* The liner lock has solid engagement.
* The OHO operation works very well.
* Its' a good looking knife.  In my opinion at least. 

Two complaints:

* The clip can cause a hot spot in the palm of my hand.  I might remove it and try to bend it down a bit more.
* I can't swap the clip to carry it tip up.

[Grant Lamontagne]

That is a pretty solid looking knife!   

I haven't tried any Eafengrows yet myself, but Inky has been a fan of them for a while and he seems to have converted Abe as well.  I wouldn't be surprised to find at least one of them has gotten an Eafengrow for their $25 knife.

And you made out better than I did- mine cost $25.11, so you have me beat by about a chocolate bar!   

Good work!  I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts as you get some mileage on it!

Def

[Grant Lamontagne]

Oops, forgot to add that I absolutely love that texturing on the handle!

Def

[Grant Lamontagne]

We've hit a bit of a snag on this one as Abe's knife has been held up for unknowable reasons.

Which is really annoying as I desperately want to talk about the knife I got, and I really want to share it with all of you!

I think if Abe doesn't get his soon I may just have to break the rules and post it here.   

Def

[AzteCypher]

Amazon has been a bit goofy with their deliveries lately as least for us.  Stuff keeps getting delayed and going the long way around before reaching us.  My wife had a package coming in that was in our local area in the morning but by mid-evening, it was already headed out to the next town.   

[Grant Lamontagne]

Megan has had a few issues with Amazon deliveries as well lately.  She ordered some things at a specific time to have them delivered on a certain day a d they came either the next day or a few days later.

She's been very frustrated by that.

I'm of the "allow six to eight weeks for delivery" generation so I'm a little more forgiving.   

The issue with Abe's delivery isn't Amazon though- it's a bit more convoluted than that unfortunately.

Def

[AzteCypher]

I grew up with 6 - 8 week deliveries as well.  The kids were surprised things took that long back then.  I told them the longest I had to wait for a delivery was 9 months.  When they asked what it was I pointed to both of them.   

They weren't impressed.   

Hope Abe's knife gets to him soon.

[Grant Lamontagne]

So do i- there's actually a few episode tooics being held up by this shipment right now. 

You'll know it arrived when suddenly the show starts getting good!   

Def

[Grant Lamontagne]

We finally managed to record the $25 knife challenge!

It ended up having a very interesting twist!

Def

[BPRoberts]

There've been quite a few small/unofficial Cheap and Cheerful challenges (I think Lynn did a bunch?) over the years, but it would be fun for us awl (or at least a bigger group) to hop in on one at some point.

[Grant Lamontagne]

There've been quite a few small/unofficial Cheap and Cheerful challenges (I think Lynn did a bunch?) over the years, but it would be fun for us awl (or at least a bigger group) to hop in on one at some point.

I agree completely.

This episode will air on May 15th, so if anyone else wants to play and get a $25 knife in the meantime I'd love to hear about it!

Once the episode airs we will ask everyone to vote on who got the best $25 knife!   

Def

[Grant Lamontagne]

I was going ng to wait until the episode was up to share my $25 knife, but forum members deserve better than that.   

So here is my $25 knife- a Petrified Fish Forward.

As I mentioned, I went over budget a bit on this, and it cost me $25.11 all told and I have to say, this is a lot of knife for not a lot of money.  It is easily on par with (or better than) many CRKT knives as far as quality goes.  I'd have easily spent over $100 on a knife of this quality and not lost a moment of sleep over it.

It's D2, flips open beautifully, locks up like a bank vault and folds even better.  I like the shape, I like the ergonomics, I like the color (although it's available in several others as well) and the design is remarkably beautiful.

I feel like I stole this knife at $25, and I've been carrying and using it pretty consistently for the last month or so.

It is absolute proof that you can get a good knife for $25.

Well, and eleven cents.   

Def

[Grant Lamontagne]

Here are another couple of pics of this one, showing it next to a Compact to give you an idea of scale.  It's a pretty good sized blade, which makes the cost that much more impressive.

Def