Hey everyone, David C. Andersen here coming
at you from the KnifeCenter. And today we're taking a look at some of our
favorite automatic knives on the market. Let's check it out (KnifeCenter.com). So as more and more states have kind of amended
their laws over the last several years, we've seen a real surge in popularity of automatic
knives and a lot of stuff out there today. So this is a really good time to kind of see
what's out there and dip your toes into the market, if you if you maybe haven't bought
an automatic knife before. Now, automatic knives are different from assisted
openers where you're either using a thumb stud or a flipper to act upon the blade. And then a spring takes over and completes
the opening action. With a automatic knife, you're either pushing
a button or sliding a switch, and it's going to open the blade fully from there. And there's kind of two main different styles,
there's conventional folding knives, just given the automatic treatment, or there's
an OTF or out the front automatic, and we'll get into both of those. But I think we're gonna start with some of
the side openers or, or folding automatic knives. And we're going to take a look at at the push
button mechanisms out there today. I think one of the things that's kind of more
closely associated with the term switchblade than anything else, is like the old school
Italian stiletto knives. And for that, you're going to have kind of
a representation of that here. This is the godson from Pro-Tech, and Pro-Tech,
I think definitely one of the four most recognized names in automatic knives out there. And this is sort of the smaller version of
their godfather. But this is kind of their slightly stylized
take on that Italian stiletto. A few different versions of this are out there. price wise, they're not too bad. They started about 140. And go up from there. This particular one with the tuxedo look is
about 225 right now, but you can get this kind of really decked out, this is a really
good platform of a knife to do some really fancy stuff with, since you have the opportunity
for inlays. There, they'll do some cool stuff to the button,
and the blades as well so that the sky's almost the limit in terms of what you can do. Now as with most protects, we've got an aluminum
body here with antique ivory micarta in lays on both sides, which is quite nice. And a single position pocket clip on this
particular knife blade is 154 cm, comes in about about three point or little over three
inches, but not quite three and a quarter. And the action on these guys is quite good. Now to close it, you do push the button. And now the way these these push buttons side
openers work is the blade is essentially under tension right now. And as soon as you push that button, it's
gonna fly open quite nicely. And it's one of those things you notice when
you when you kind of open a lot of these Pro-Techs have kind of their own signature sound to
them. Like if I weren't even looking at the knife. This point I know that was a pro tech, which
is kind of funny. But really cool little knives really cool
take on that classic stiletto and protect as a broad range of stuff. Beyond this. Of course, they even do some things for Boker
and some other companies building some of their automatics. So definitely check these guys out. Now of course, the nice thing about a side opening
push button automatic is the Sky's kind of the limit in terms of the creativity there,
you can have all kinds of different blade shapes, you can have recurves bigger blades,
not just kind of needle points like that. And for a more, shall we say EDC friendly
blade, I want to talk about the Kershaw launch series, which the whole series of knives i
think is a great place to start. If, if you're not sure quite yet, if you if
you're really going to take to an automatic knife, because the quality you get here is
really good, especially when you throw in the price this particular model, not this
exact one. This is an older discontinued one that's actually
mine. So pardon the scuff, but current versions
of the launch one sell for just under 100 bucks, and you're getting some good materials
here as well. The bodies on these guys are aluminum as well. And we've got a black washed blade here about
3.4 inches and we've got CPM 154 steel. So the powdered version, or powdered equivalent
of the 154 Cm we just saw on that pro tech, and this they've got a whole bunch of different
body styles, including some stiletto inspired designs. But this is a shape that I just really love. I'd probably have bought this knife no matter
what lock was on it, because you've got a really elegant shape and a great slicing profile. Nice high flat grind fairly thin steel. It's just a rock star. The action on these guys are quite good as
well. Maybe not as good as the Pro-Tech but especially
when you consider it's just 100 bucks. You there's really nothing at all to apologize
for on the action at these guys. It truly is up there with you know anyone
else essentially Of course This is a very modern looking knife. But there's been a pretty long tradition of
kind of old school knives, having an automatic opening mechanism. And we're seeing some of that come back nowadays. And I think first and foremost among that
is the buck 110. This particular version being the 110, elite
automatic. Now you can get this in the classic old school
variant of the the buck 110. With the wood inlays and the brass with the
420 Hc blade that starts about 150. The Elite version here, swaps out the Steel's,
you've got s 30 v in this case, but same profile going on G 10 inlays and a nickel silver stainless
bolster, instead. So it's a different little bit of a different
look maybe slightly more classy, a little less rustic, but I mean, it's still a classic
110. Now, this does have a push button release
here, but the locking mechanism in this case is not provided by that push button. I mean, I can push on this all you want. And I'm actually not able to close the blade,
which is a bit of a throws you off a little bit if you're you know real, an old hand at
push button automatics, because your instincts going to be to close it. But this is still a classic lock back in this
case. So kind of taking the one of the most successful
locking mechanisms ever do ever to be put on a pocket knife, or a folding knife I should
say since you know the 110 is more of a belt folding knife. But marrying that with a spring release on
that push button. That's pretty cool. I mean, there's there's a lot to learn. There's a lot to love about that. And of course it's a classic 110 you've got
a great all around blade shape. Great for hunting, of course as the folding
hunter name in 110 suggests as well as being a good larger EDC if you need a heavier grip
on a work knife. He's got plenty of room there, and plenty
of thickness there to really get a solid hold on where's that book takes the the classic
lock back and, and marries it up with some automatic technology. This next guy uses a liner lock and brings
the brings the automatic into play. And it's got a little bit of a maybe an older school custom vibe to it as
well. This is the Terrain365 p 38. model. And what's special about this guy, still a
push button release. But this is a knife that's known as having
a dual action. So you can see there as I close the knife,
you heard that little spring pop. Now the spring is reset, you've got the push
button there, pops open quite nicely, but fold it back up. Now in this position, I can actually open
this manually, you don't have to use the the push button action, the automatic action at
all, you can just use it just like any regular old liner lock. Hence the drool action in the name of this
knife. Pretty cool, pretty cool thing you don't see
that too often. But it's certainly something nice if you don't
want to be a little more flashy when pushing that button. But it's a cool knife overall, as well, especially
for a smaller gentleman's knife with kind of those custom knife vibes. These guys come in with more of a lower end
custom price tag to coming in about 500 bucks is a little bit on the thicker side. So you've still got a decent hold on this
especially on heavier jobs. But kind of the star of the show apart from
that cool automatic action here is the blade itself. It's just under three inches, about two three
quarters in fact, and it's made out of terravantium which is a dendritic cobalt material that's
a lot harder than steel, and should have an edge that lasts an awful long time as a result
really cool pieces overall. Now one of the areas where automatics have
traditionally held a larger percentage of use and have knives really catered towards
these types of users is folks who are on the front lines where they're military or rescue
that sort of thing. So the next knife, I'm going to look at one
of these kind of battle ready automatics stuff like the microtek SOCOM elite come to mind,
but also the Gerber 06 auto. Now this is one of those knives that's just
super solid. They start about the $170 mark and top out
right now at least with this guy right here with the multi cam handle coming in about
200 the handles themselves nice and girthy kind of chunky in a good way a little bit
like myself in that regard. But definitely ready for those more trying
environments out there. Blade traditional drop point comes in at about
3.8 inches and we've got s 30 v steel with a black coating on this guy. And you can also get it with a tanto profile,
although not in this multi cam variant. And you can also get either the blade shapes
right now with partial serrations as well which are definitely going to come in more
important or be ranked more importantly for certain professional users for sure. The handles themselves are aluminum, got just
enough length on there for my slightly larger than average hands to have a you know an unrestricted
grip in the main section. There. back, you've got the protruding pommel here
to act as a striking surface. Now the automatic action on these guys, you
still have a push button, there's also the first knife we've looked at so far that has
a secondary safety. And that's going to work in the closed or
the open position. So with the the slider switched forward or
the switch slid forward, I should say, you're not going to be able to push that button and
open the guy, you got to open it till you see the red dot and push the button to open
it. And these have never been known as like the
fastest automatics out there. But again, the word solid definitely comes
to mind solid, and reliable, for sure. And now we're going to talk about rescue automatics. And that gives us a good chance to talk about
Benchmade and move over a little bit from the push button mechanisms out there into
some of the other things, starting with Benchmade's automatic version of their AXIS Lock. I think rescue personnel out of everyone out
there probably is served maybe the most well by the by the rapid access and convenience
of an automatic knife, especially if the adrenaline's flowing, chaos is high. And they may only have one hand available,
definitely definitely useful. And Benchmade's triage is just a great model. And actually, when I think makes a pretty
good EDC shape, as well, beyond just the rescue capabilities, these guys come in about 276. Right now, the blade itself is n 680. And it does have a black coating, that coating,
of course is going to help with corrosion resistance. But that n 680 even without the coating is
a very corrosion resistant seal. And you've got a really cool profile here,
that's going to work well at you if you need to get under some clothing or other things, the
tip is raised up a little bit. So it's less likely to actually like poke
into the person you're trying to help. But it's got a nice slicey profile overall
as well. We've also got a spine mounted safety on this
case, or on this particular knife, you just slide that forward and that's going to work
to lock the blade or lock the lock into the open position, but also prevent it from being
opened. If you've got it closed and slid forward,
you're not going to have to worry about that accidentally coming open. But when you're ready to access slided back,
all you do is pull back on the AXIS Lock bar, and the springs are gonna send that blade
right out. The handles on this guy are aluminum with
a black g 10 inlay for a little more grip, got a single position pocket clip on this
version. And you've got a glass breaker there on the
end, which very important especially for the the rescue applications, of course. And we also got one more trick up the sleeve
of this guy. And that we've got a seatbelt cutter or a
fabric hook, shall we say that's also automatic, you just pull back on the small switch. There we go. And it flies open as well. It's single action, it's not going to close
automatically automatically, like some of the double action OTFs we're going to look
at shortly. But nice spring loaded action on that guy
to our next we're going to move to the OTF the out the front automatic. And we're going to start with something that's
a little bit in between what's kind of more standard versus the the push button locks
we've seen so far. And this is the heretic knives Hydra comes
in about 440 bucks right now. And this is a single action out the front
automatic. And where that's different is you push the
button on this guy, it'll shoot the blade out, but you have to manually reset the blade. And it's done. At least on this guy. It's done like so you've got a small safety
switch above the actual push button. So this is going to be a little tricky to
do while trying to show it to you on camera, but you push that guy out of the way push
down on the button lock. And you actually pull on the tail here. And that's going to essentially once you're
back here, the blade itself is under tension and it's loaded, it's ready to go slide that
back in. And then when you're ready, just move that
safety out of the way again, and push. And one of the benefits of this type of action
over some of the double action stuff is all the spring tension can go towards opening
the blade and the action you get on this knife as a result is pretty much among the best
out there it is rocket fast, and you can feel that feeling in your hand when you push the
button. It just feels awesome. Blade, here's s 35 v and about three and five
eighths of an inch of it. Nice kind of drop points, almost a spear point
profile with some decorative firework going there on going on there on the spine and a
red aluminum chassis in this case and just nice details too. Like I said that safety travels over kind
of nicely. You've got a nice thumb pad here for when
you go to pull open that that charging handles so you've got a nice positive grip, and a
very, very out there pocket clip on this guy as well. But overall just a really awesome action on
this knife. Alright, now we're going to get to the full
on double action OTF and there's probably two two knives or two companies at least that
kind of lead the pack on this to a slightly lesser extent you've got benchmade with their
The Dell series, but you've also got kind of microtech, who just had been leading the
charge on this style of knife for many, many years. Now when I say double action automatic, this
doesn't just push the blade open with a spring, you can also close it the same way with either
a switch on the side of the body like this, or a switch on the front like this infidel. But the way these work is while the blade
is open, and while the blade is closed, they're not under spring tension at all, they're just
at rest, essentially. And as you slide this switch forward or backward,
when you're closing, slowly, the pressure is going to build until you get to that kind
of tipping point, or once you pass it, it releases that spring that is built up the
pressure by sliding forward and rockets the blade out this particular knife from microtech
is the combat Troodon which I think is their signature knife for sure. They started a little bit under 500 bucks,
he got a three and three quarter inch blade. This particular one I think is really cool. It's a $520 knife with what do they call it
the bronze apocalyptic finish, you have a little bit of bronze coloration combined with
a stone washing it looks really good, especially against this green. Now one of the things that microtech likes
to do is they'll use kind of, they'll switch the Steel's up a little bit I should say,
as they go through, they'll kind of pick what they think is the best right now to put on
it. And they'll mark it on here always this one
currently is m 390. But you can see these in CPM 20CV, or 204P
a few other things as well, maybe, I think I've seen a few and Elmax over the years,
it could be remembering correctly. But that's kind of fun, too. If you're a collector of this style of knife,
you can kind of see all the or grab all the different things that he does put out, the
handles a little bit offset, and the double edged dagger here is offset a little bit as
well to kind of echo the front line of that handle. But you can get a few other blade shapes on
this guy as well. I've seen Tom toes and spear points and drop
points and that sort of thing as well. If you'd rather have a more, shall we say
EDC suitable shape, then the double edge, but the double edge is certainly very usable. And with those two edges, and that high end
steel, you've got a lot of sharpened edge there to work with, I mean getting a bit over
seven inches of 20 cv or M 390. In this case, you're going to be able to cut
for a long time, they've got a deep carry pocket clip here on the back, which is reversible. So this is going to be a completely ambidextrous
knife, and you've got a glass breaker there on the end as well. Our next up is Benchmade's infidel, which
switches things up a little bit, instead of having a switch from the side of the the chassis
itself, the switch is mounted on the face or on the cover of the handle. And one of the advantages of this style of
switch is you can have a pocket clip that doesn't have to be reversible. In order for this knife to be completely ambidextrous,
at least on a double edge profile such as this, because the experience is going to be
exactly the same. No matter which side of the knife you are
which hand you pull this knife out with. Now there's a mini version of this knife with
a blade just over three inches starts about 375. But for 425, you get the full version that
comes with a D two blade and the aluminum handle. But they will put out some special editions
now and then including this one, which is good for I think most of the rest of 2021
if you want to get your hands on one, and it has an s 30 v blade with the blue aluminum
comes in a bit more expensive at about 446 as well. Now the backside of this knife is nice and
smooth. So it's going to be easy in and out of your
pocket. But the front side, you've got two different
directions of kind of milled grooves in the handle here or milled peaks in the handle. That's going to give you a lot of traction
both fore and aft as you're manipulating the blade. And the action works the same way. It's just a front firing or a cover firing
switch instead of the sitefire build up that pressure push past blade flies open. Now there's certainly a lot of folks out there
doing OTFs, but to others I want to talk about today. They're kind of approaching things from a
slightly different angle or trying to push the envelope envelope a little bit and are
worth paying attention to our Hogue and SOG. I'm going to start with the Hogue and I want
to show you their compound OTF which looks not too dissimilar from what we've seen so
far. But in this case, the word compound really
speaks to the handle construction here. Now rather than going with a full aluminum
handle, like the OTFs we've looked at so far, they've kept aluminum internals, but the handle
itself is made out of G 10. On the outside and as such they've been able
to keep the weight on this guy. Way, way down for this style of knife. I mean the the last two we looked at were
just under in just over five ounces. This particular knife comes in just 3.6 doesn't
sound super dramatic, but you can definitely feel the difference. It's going to be a lot friendlier. You're carrying it all day long especially
in some lighter pants out there. Now the whole compound comes in just over
300 right now and you've got two blade shapes right now you've got a tanto and this nice
clip point that I'm really big fan of the the angles of it are just they look really
good to my eye. What can I say? This is an Alan Elishewitz designed by the
way, and he gets he gets those lines and those proportions just right. Great, great EDC friendly shape, we've got
s 30 v steel here with a nice stonewashed finish, although black is also available. And the handles few different colors out there,
you can get a plain black if you want, you can get some slightly more colorful ones if
you want. But the G 10s that have some layering in it,
have what Hogue calls their Gmascus pattern, it's still g 10. But they randomize it a little bit randomize
the layers a little bit. So you get this more chaotic appearance a
little bit rather than the more defined layers that you might expect to see. It's definitely a nice signature element from
them. This is a side firing automatic. As you can see, action is quite good, as you
can hear. And we've got a deep carry pocket clip here
that is reversible. And there's a few other versions of this too,
they actually make a version of this for SIG the firearm company that has some finishes
that match some of the gun products they make just overall a very cool knife, and definitely
a company to keep an eye on if you haven't already. Right, next up is SOG. And their new Pentagon OTF definitely needs
to be talked about here. Now there's now this isn't available just
yet. This is going to be available a little bit
later in 2021. So I've got a pre production sample right
here. But this guy comes in about 350. And in the world of production or mass production
OTF automatics kind of one of the things you can never really completely get away from,
is there's a little bit of blade wiggle in the open position. And there are some some high end custom stuff
the the grant and Gavin Hawk deadbolt that are... sorry, Deadlock, you know what I'm
talking about that have eliminated this. But so far, we haven't really seen this on
the the mass market production side until just about now, these are by far the most
rock solid OTF on the production scale that I've held yet, just a hint of a little bit
of blade play on these on these pre production samples, it's very, very minimal. And if they're able to maintain that into
the production run, definitely definitely going to be a little bit of a game changer. But apart from that it's just a solidly designed
automatic just on its own merits even apart from that blade as 35 vn. I don't actually have a spec on there, but
we'll hold it up next to that Benchmade Yeah, about the same as that guy right there. And really nicely ground double edged as you
can see, nice profile here on the handle a little bit broader, very, very good to hold
on to you got to pinch points here, right on either side of the pitch in the open position. And that pocket clip on the side. Nice ambidextrous design overall, what I really
like though, apart from just you know, the rock solid construction going on, is the switch
itself, they kind of took a cue from the that Hawk design I mentioned a little bit ago,
we've got an oversize switch works the same way as any of the other of these switches
so far. But because it's oversized enough, you never
actually see the the track underneath of where it travels forward and aft so you get the
look of like a floating switch. It's just really nice. I like that little bit of detail. And of course, really nice action to Alright,
now we're gonna get into a little bit of a kind of funny genre. And that is the California compliant automatic
knife. And this has become a genre because of course,
California is a big state there's a lot of people there for companies to sell knives
to, and automatics under two inches and automatics bigger than two inches shared kind of different
legal statuses from each other. And as such, you see a lot of sub two inch
bladed automatics out there that are dubbed California compliant. So I'll talk about a few of those here. You can get it in either the styles to push
button or OTF. But at first I'm going to talk about another
knife from the launch series. This is the launch nine in the blue finish
but bunch of different colors can be had. Same, essentially the same specs as the larger
launch one that we saw earlier. In fact, same color just about even but price
is about 90 bucks a little bit cheaper. But there's still a lot going on with these
knives. They can't bring that price down too much
unfortunately. But the blades still CPM 154 aluminum handle
and about 1.8 inches here, and it's a really nice little blade shape. I like this amongst all their California compliant
models, because there's a blade shape that just really speaks to me. And one of the other things that's kind of
cool about the this smaller versions are the smaller knives in the launch series is the
spring action feels proportionally even stronger than the big guys. You got to really you got to kind of hold
on to one of these guys, when you open it for sure. Deep carry pocket clip on this particular
one and it is reversible. And even though the the lock like so is definitely
a right hand bias lock can certainly be closed with the left hand, maybe not so easily one
handed for me being a right hander. But if you're a lefty might be a little easier. Actually. I usually like to close these two handed anyway,
for myself personally. But like I said, you can get OTFs in this
style as well. And this next one, it's another microtek This
is the Exocet really shows you you know the two different tacts you can take in that sub
two inch range, you can either go with a smaller handle as a result and go for complete discretion
or you can go with something like the Exocet that gives you that shorter blade length,
but you still have a nice full handle to grab onto. So it doesn't feel as much like you've got
a little knife as it does with some of the other design choices out there, I can get this in a double edge profile, if you if you like
that classic, classic OTF. Look, I actually really liked this tanto. For a more utilitarian shape, though, just
it works really well. And again, you got that nice full grab, to
hold on to to really put the blade to work. And that's kind of achieved in this case,
because they went for a kind of money clip style design with this nice broad clip on
this side. This, of course, is one of the more popular
bounty hunter variants that that is definitely one of the cooler options out there. But bunch of different colors on these as
well. And those aren't kind of pre distressed like
these are if, if that's not your thing, prices on these start around the $250 mark, these
bounty hunters come in just over 300. And you've got that great microtech action. But because the blade is smaller and thinner,
there's I don't know it feels almost a little more precise than some of the larger OTFs
out there. I don't know if that's just me imagining things
or not. But they are really cool. All right, last but not least, I've got one
more ca compliant version, the Hogue a one micro switch, and this is another one that
went with the small blade but kept a larger handle on it. So you can really feel confident putting that
smaller blade to work blade in this case is CPM 150, for about 1.95 inches are coming
in just under where you want to be. And pricing on these starts around $127.50
or so. And you can get it with a drop point or this
cool wharncliffe profile handles are aluminum, you've got a synthetic Backspacer there as
well comes down to a point so you can kind of bash on things or use it as a some kind
of glass breaker maybe if you need to. And then you've got that push button action
on the side, they don't just do OTF over there at Hogue and you've got the switch that's
going to work in the open or closed position on this guy as well. I'll close them up. And I would definitely recommend engaging
the lock if you want to use this feature. But you've also got a bottle opener as you
can see, which is something the larger x one micro flip doesn't have because it's got a
larger blade instead. But I don't know maybe we'll call that a consolation
prize for having the having to do the slightly smaller blade, you get that added functionality
there. But unlock the safety push the button. You've got a nice nifty little blade that
flies right out at your command. Alright, that's all I've got to show you today. Now of course, this is not everybody who makes
an automatic out there. But I hope this kind of shows kind of a breadth
of the range of options out there kind of describes the different styles and gets you
a good feel for some things to check out. Let me know what your favorites were down
in the comments. And if you want to get your hands on these,
we will leave links in the description to take you over to the knife center. While you're over there, make sure to sign
up for our knife awards program. Because if you're going to spend your money
on one of these knives might as well earn some free money to spend on your next one. (KnifeRewards) I'm David C. Andersen from
the KnifeCenter signing off. See you next time.
