I was very happy to see the Harnds Talisman upgraded to 14C28N.
I have the older AUS-8 version. It’s a great knife for what it is but it never seemed to get the love it deserved. Some of that has to do with distribution and brand recognition in the United States. Some of it might have been the steel. At least when I discovered it, Civivi was already on the scene and AUS-8 just didn’t feel very exciting for the price. The edge retention was decent for AUS-8 but budget knives in better steels tended to push it out of my EDC rotation.
That seemed like a shame because it was otherwise a gem. It remained my go-to example for sweet action on a budget knife. I found myself wishing it was available in better steel… and now it is!
I’ve had two of them and gave the first one to my gal for cutting merchandise boxes open, but she promptly lost it, so I bought her the example in your pic in that color. The first was electric blue.
They work OK and at $13 shipped, pretty cheap off of Ebay.
Usually, the gun-branded knives are not very good. As usual though, “good” is relative. For $2.60, that’s an incredible bargain and 7Cr17Mov isn’t unreasonable at the usual $15.99. Edge retention isn’t too far off from 8Cr13Mov and corrosion resistance is actually quite good. Much like 440A, 7Cr17Mov used to be a celebrated steel for budget diving, camping, and survival knives.
Of course, these did sell out right away. Just in the time since you posted, this model is gone. Looking over all the items on sale under ten bucks, only one model was left. It was an 8Cr13Mov knife similarly marked down to $5.97. I ordered it because “what the heck”.
Yeh, like the dreaded go,comma knives that were PF clones that went for… 7bux a pop when GB was dumping ’em?
I still edc mine.
I don’t care about that much about edge-retention or the kind of stuff that a lot of “knife guys” need for using it every day on the job, etc. If the blade dulls, I sharpen it. <shrug/>
So some of these critters at 3-7bux each? Yeah, I’ll “sample” whatever I can.
Oh, and inventory comes’n’goes. The electric blue one was OOS, but then I see later that it’s available. Placed an order, literally only 1 available, so I grabbed it. Someone maybe dawdled a bit too long with an order, and 1 went back into stock. I couldn’t complete an order because one critter suddenly became unavailable, too. Removed it from the lineup (after wasting like 10min trying to figure out wtf’s wrong, as the “error” sounded like CC info was bad), but once it was gone from the cart, the order went through fine.
So with free shipping, grab what you can and check out fast, then go back for something else. No need to “bundle” 4-5 knives at a time.
Although I often carry a different dedicated knife depending on the expected situation (and MT, too), since we were talking about ultra inexpensive blades I thought I’d mention the box cutter that I’ve been using for the last 10+ years. I have them in my tool bags, vehicle, and even winter coat. It’s my go to when I know I’m cutting things A LOT, like fiberglass insulation for my attic. That being said, I’ve tried Stanley, as well as some other $20+ boxcutters over the years. They all are sitting in my garage replaced by this version.
When I bought them over the last few years, they were going for 89 cents. I think their price is now around $1.25 at WMt. I do, however, use better replacement blades after using up the ones that are included:
sometimes, for some tasks, you just cant beat ole reliable! plus, every day of the week i would take this red boxcuttah against a roll of insulation instead of my dogma or baklash (my main EDC’s that is)
Despite my more expensive knives having blade steels with better wear resistance, being more expensive makes me especially disinterested in cutting fiberglass, opening cement bags, or slicing really dirty stuff.
Damn, I don’t know if it qualifies as “budget” per this thread standards, and maybe many already have it, but I just became aware of the QSPpenguin, and I received this yesterday:
Except up until yesterday it was on sale for $25.99 (sorry I should’ve shared yesterday)
This knife is quite possibly the nicest value-per-dollar knife I have ever recieved.
Meaning: this thing drips quality = action, design, micarta feel, sharp as razor, just really really good.
I could not be happier. Probably going to grab their Hawk next. Amazing.
I am pretty sure a youtuber has many of these budget knives tested, but this knife & company ( i found out recently) is supported by the knife community in a way that I am willing to bet the blade is real D2, id be mroe surprised if it wasnt. I do really like the look too, and im not crazy about knives with blades under 3.25” (usually too small for my hand) but this has a great feel in hand.
Centering = excellent (tough to get a good picture, but its spot on)
Blade play = get outta here! (there is NONE)
Lock up = Ive never known whats good, but it looks like first third of blade, and it feels Solid.
It's a nicely ground blade, thick at the spine and thin behind the edge, slices perfect.
Only thing is i will be tearing it down to clean it, as theres a little coarseness to the action, feels like it is the detent ball's (ceramic) path, oh and its on bronze and teflon washers which is cool, and interesting they used both on both sides..
Oh, and the last picture is just to show that they took the time to do a high polish on the liners. pretty nice detail i must say
