CJRB Kicker: Rant, review, teardown and rebuild (Knife Review)
Published: 4 years ago
I'm looking at the CJRB Kicker today. It's not a bad knife, I like the blade shape and the handle is decently comfortable. I also performed a cut test with it, to get a sense of CJRB's D2 steel, and found an aggravating thing with the Recoil lock due to the cutting task.
The Recoil lock has a lot of merits. It's quite strong; It certainly makes a better flipper than Benchmade has with the crossbar lock, but.. It really seems to be reinventing the wheel that didn't need to be reinvented. They had been working on their design for it before Benchmade's patent ran out... but their patent HAS run out now, and with Hogue and SOG making variations on the lock, it seems like the extra engineering ended up getting in their way.
It looks like their way around the patent was placing the top piece on there so you're not making direct contact with the crossbar itself. For me, this unfortunately creates a HUGE hotspot at the lock when cutting in a pinch grip, which is done for my cut tests with rope against a cutting board.
I also explain in the video that it's fairly overly complicated, with some tiny pins that are only held in place by the G10 scales. That might contribute to the wiggle that the lock actuator exhibits when both open and closed. That doesn't affect the lockup of the blade at all, but it does give you that metal on metal click when you walk.
The higher end Artisan Cutlery variant of the lock looks to remedy the hotspot issue, but they're a little out of my price range for a curiosity/impulse buy, so I'll have to take a look at one at a knife show at some point, when those are a possibility again.
In short, I like the design of the knife, I'm not crazy about the lock.
The Recoil lock has a lot of merits. It's quite strong; It certainly makes a better flipper than Benchmade has with the crossbar lock, but.. It really seems to be reinventing the wheel that didn't need to be reinvented. They had been working on their design for it before Benchmade's patent ran out... but their patent HAS run out now, and with Hogue and SOG making variations on the lock, it seems like the extra engineering ended up getting in their way.
It looks like their way around the patent was placing the top piece on there so you're not making direct contact with the crossbar itself. For me, this unfortunately creates a HUGE hotspot at the lock when cutting in a pinch grip, which is done for my cut tests with rope against a cutting board.
I also explain in the video that it's fairly overly complicated, with some tiny pins that are only held in place by the G10 scales. That might contribute to the wiggle that the lock actuator exhibits when both open and closed. That doesn't affect the lockup of the blade at all, but it does give you that metal on metal click when you walk.
The higher end Artisan Cutlery variant of the lock looks to remedy the hotspot issue, but they're a little out of my price range for a curiosity/impulse buy, so I'll have to take a look at one at a knife show at some point, when those are a possibility again.
In short, I like the design of the knife, I'm not crazy about the lock.