1st Day With The Razel.

Ok, so it's around 10:30 at night here and I've had my CKRT Razel in my hand since 1:45 or so this afternoon. So far I have tested it's puncture and stabbing competency, it's cutting and slicing ability, and the selling point for me, it's prying suitability. I was clearing a lot of debris in both my and my neighbors yards as there were a not so insignificant number of branches lying around as well as a good many large limbs and a fallen tree or two (for the record we live in a subdivision, not out in the sticks). As there was quite a lot of branches I thought it would be the perfect test for my new shiny toy, unfortunately, I did not get to use it very much. I did whack off a few branches using both the belly and the tip of the blade but for the size the branches were, it was just easier to snap them off of they required a heavy axe. So for the majority of the day the Razel just sat there clipped to my pocket.

 Speaking of pockets and clips
, here is how that second pocket clip works. It is on the very end of the knife and provides a low profile option to the regular pocket clip. This pocket clip is quite sturdy for it's size and I have no doubt it will keep the knife secure as long as it is clipped inside a pocket. As I said in my initial review the clip is going to be taken off as I don't care to use it, it just gets in the way for me personally.

Now this larger clip, this is more my speed. Great comfortable carry option for such a large knife, I use this clip because I like the feel of a knife this weight in my pocket. Tip down carry is my preferred method so that's probably just me though. The large clip doesn't bother me as my shirt usually covers it anyways. For reference I don't usually carry my knives like this as that pocket usually has my keys on a P-7 clip, and with such a large knife I'm not going to pocket carry it. I might take the small clip off and put a lanyard with the P-7 on that and pocket carry the keys but I'm not liking that idea so much. I do want to make my own P-7 style clips so that will probably wait for that to come in.

It's kinda hard to see here but I did notice one factory defect, the filework here has a small burr in one of the valleys that I missed earlier, minor detail that doesn't bother me at all but in the interest of fairness I thought I would point it out. Also you can see the blade thickness here, I am quite impressed, very solid blade and liners.

This is my "normal" hold on this knife, I use this hold for most things I would need the curved blade for. This knife just fits my hand so much better than the smaller Paraframe, while I love the Paraframe and I have coped with it, the larger blade is very nice as are the thick handles. The curve of the blade is quite nice, it really cuts through most of what I've put it up against easily and it's not even all that sharp! Which brings me to another point.

My "Chisel" hold. HA! You thought I was going to talk about blade sharpness here didn't you! Well I'm not! Although in saying that I wasn't gonna talk about the blade sharpness I guess I kind of did but you know what? I'm saving it for later with another set of totally unrelated pictures and witty commentary! So there! The chisel hold is nice for me because I use my knives for a lot of prying (Gasp! Sin of all sins! How could I bring myself to do such sacrilege?). Because of the prying I do is why I purchased this blade. I tested the prying on a Sentry 1100 Lockbox by the way.

Not this exact one but I have one exactly like it. This is some random picture I stole from Google Images. I would not recommend this particular safe as it was pretty easy to pry open and I hear that it's pretty easy to pick the lock as well. The locking mechanism is a simple rotating hook that slides onto a metal rod in the lid of the case, that, coupled with the fact that there is quite a bit of play in the lock itself makes this one very easy to open up.

Another stolen image, I do apoligize for these but my camera died and I had no remaining batteries for it so I was kinda stuck as far as options go, this one shows the simple locking mechanism pretty clearly, you might be able to guess what happened next. It was pretty simple really, I just placed the chisel end towards the lock to push it counter-clockwise with the back of the blade facing me and gently pushed the lock backwards while pulling up on the lid, it took me 10 seconds to do this including think of how I was going to do it in the first place.(*Note* I do not condone, nor intend to condone doing this to a lockbox that does not belong to you, if you do this to someone else box for malicious intents you accept all responsibility. I explain this only because even an inept drunk with an IQ in the negatives could figure it out anyway due to poor engineering of said lockbox. DO NOT MISUSE THIS INFORMATION). All things considered, if you were really careful you could probably use the back end of a Taco Bell spork (Not only a Taco Bell spork, but since I have eaten enough Taco Bell for a few lifetimes I'm fairly familiar with them and that's the first thing that came to mind, plus by using that I get to explain why and so I can use unnecessarily long explanations in parenthesis to make it appear to have some sort of depth of writing to hide my lack of creativity... or something like that). to open this up but I wanted to try it with the Razel for fun so I did, stop laughing at me! Fine, I'll just go cry in the corner if you wont... jerks. I'm telling my mom you are being mean to me! 

This set of pictures shows how I normally open the knife, I was going to take a video but I don't have a tripod so deal with it, you were laughing at me anyways. I start by holding the knife with the blade on the bottom and pushing out with my thumb to get the blade moving.

Once the blade is out about this far I begin to flick my wrist upwards for a quick opening, If I don't want to scare or alarm people I will use two hands or just slowly open it without flicking my wrist. But mostly I just flick my wrist, it's fun. I like the clicking noise it makes.

I usually keep my thumb pushing on the pin while flicking my wrist just to gain added momentum or to make sure the blade doesn't get stuck on a rough point, so far I have no issues with this knife doing that. If I did have such issues I would be pretty disappointed in this knife.

When the knife is completely open I switch my grip rotating my hand to put my thumb on the top of the knife and the rest of my fingers on the bottom, it does take some practice to do this quickly and correctly but I've got it down, so I'm fairly sure you could too.

To close the knife one handed I use this grip, pushing the liner lock back with my thumb and closing the blade with my index finger, it's worked pretty well so far so I see no need for any other style of closing it.

Just follow through here and your golden, remember to move your thumb though, knives hurt when they get slammed against fingers.

Like I said, move your thumb, I haven't chopped it off so far (I think, there is no nasty scar there so I have a pretty good argument as to me not being inept with knives.

This picture here shows the LAWKS system which is a small tab (that looks surprisingly similar to the safety on my 30.6 rifle) that locks the blade open, I was surprised that this would not lock the blade shut however but I guess that it was really not needed.

The handles on this knife is milled Micarta and while the description from CKRT says they are "swirled" they were just milled down in a pattern somewhat resembling swirls. The liners are 2CR13 steel (I have no idea about this steel honestly, it could be made of dead cows and painted silver and I wouldn't notice the difference, at least, until it broke, and I'm fairly certain this wont break) while the blade is 8Cr13Mov Steel hardened to 58-59 HRC on the usual Rockwell scale. The blade is 3.13 inches long and .117 inches thick giving an overall open length of 8 inches, a 4.75 inch closed length, and weighing in at a hefty 6.1 ounces. As you might have noticed I got the plain edge version, I like the plain edges best, the aesthetics of the knife just work better that way I think, that and I have no use for serrated blades in an EDC knife. Speaking of the edge, it sucks. This knife is not sharp at all from the factory so I need to find a good sharpener and get it to a razor edge and get the chisel end from its hollow V grind to a chisel grind.

I know I used this picture earlier but it really does show how much bigger this knife is, it's quite nice. I am very pleased with this purchase and I intend to use it well, or in anger at whatever inanimate object I decide to put it through. for $43 it was a pretty good buy and it should last me a while.

One thing I would like in the near future is a Pelican 1010 case for storage, this one isn't mine and I just used it for pictures. I don't think my Razel will fit in here so maybe the next size up would work better but I still want a 1010 for my Zippos and my Gerber as seen here. The Leatherman usually comes with me anyway.

Here is a picture of the outside. I'm really tired so I apologize to anyone I offended (except those with a negative IQ, to which I mean those who are completely clueless and oblivious to everyone and everything around them, those people can take offense to this because they probably have no idea what I am talking about anyway). I get really random when I'm tired, and slightly ADosOMGLAT (Attention Deficit oooohhh, shin-OMG LOOK AT THIS!) I am also told I get funny when I'm tired, or coked up on painkillers, or both. Usually both. Anyways I've been at this for a few hours with some distractions in between and it's like 1:40 in the morning here so I'm done.