FreeTiger FT31: Review & Teardown (Knife Content)
Published: 3 years ago
Stumbled across this guy when I was trolling through Amazon's new listings for knives.
I've taken a look at FreeTiger knives in the past and they've been generally favorable, including cut tests. This also doesn't have a detent ball to fall out like one of the other ones did.
This thing has bearings in the pivot. As I'll take a look at in the video, these are essentially nylon washers that have minuscule steel bearings embedded. Much smaller than I've seen on other knives. Small enough that they don't have cutouts on the liners OR the blade for them to sit in.
It has nested liners to keep it thin while still having a decent thickness of G10 to the handles. The liners are very well skeletonized and you have "peel-ply" texture on the flats of the G10 scales.
The thumb disc I'm not crazy about. It doesn't have any jimping to add any friction, so it's super slick. It works if you push out on the stud, but I really don't like deploying knives this way.
The clip I'm not super crazy about either. It's deep carry which is fine, but if they angled it just slightly more, the landing patch would avoid the peel-ply G10 altogether which would be smoother in and out of the pocket. I think it's a bit too thin, so it becomes a bit of a hotspot and it's a bit sharp at the end that exacerbates this.
Overall though... Gotdamn, budget knives are just improving more and more all the time. $22 for a nested liner G10 Crossbar lock with bearings? Heck yeah.
Specs:
3.4" D2 blade with 3.15 mm stock thickness
3.14 oz / 89 gram weight
0.52" handle thickness (G10)
Crossbar Lock
Steel Bearings
I've taken a look at FreeTiger knives in the past and they've been generally favorable, including cut tests. This also doesn't have a detent ball to fall out like one of the other ones did.
This thing has bearings in the pivot. As I'll take a look at in the video, these are essentially nylon washers that have minuscule steel bearings embedded. Much smaller than I've seen on other knives. Small enough that they don't have cutouts on the liners OR the blade for them to sit in.
It has nested liners to keep it thin while still having a decent thickness of G10 to the handles. The liners are very well skeletonized and you have "peel-ply" texture on the flats of the G10 scales.
The thumb disc I'm not crazy about. It doesn't have any jimping to add any friction, so it's super slick. It works if you push out on the stud, but I really don't like deploying knives this way.
The clip I'm not super crazy about either. It's deep carry which is fine, but if they angled it just slightly more, the landing patch would avoid the peel-ply G10 altogether which would be smoother in and out of the pocket. I think it's a bit too thin, so it becomes a bit of a hotspot and it's a bit sharp at the end that exacerbates this.
Overall though... Gotdamn, budget knives are just improving more and more all the time. $22 for a nested liner G10 Crossbar lock with bearings? Heck yeah.
Specs:
3.4" D2 blade with 3.15 mm stock thickness
3.14 oz / 89 gram weight
0.52" handle thickness (G10)
Crossbar Lock
Steel Bearings