So you want yourself a pocketknife?:

Specifications:
Steel:	154CM stainless-steel w/ Tungsten DLC coating.
Blade Length:	3 3/4 in. (9.5 cm).
Handle Length:	4.8 in. (12.5 cm).
Overall Length:	8.7 in. (22 cm)
Weight:	5.7 oz.

I offer the Zero Tolerance 650 ST, a badass pocketknife. Should you be down to your last resort, or your first encounter a pocket knife is as essential a melee weapon as it is a tool. A knife with single handed opening and closing capability is preferred to the old two handed lockback pocketknife (nothing against a good old Buck knife). The problem has been in finding an automatic or single handed opening knife with a useful blade, and strong locking mechanism. The last thing you want is to be life and death deep in a knife fight and have a skinny blade jack knife back onto your fingers, leaving you wounded and vulnerable to lethal repercussions.


In addition to the touted aircraft grade aluminum handle, and thumb rise serrations on the spine, they added G-10 overlay to enhance the gripability (that may or may not be an actual word), and weapon retention features. This is apparently a "G&G Hawk Design" as is printed on the rear side of the handle (one thing I really hate is advertising on my weapons which to me detracts from it's intended purpose, but I'll discuss this more in the cons section) The 650ST features a "unique safety integrated into the firing button." What this means is instead of having to fiddle with addition buttons to open and lock the knife the firing mechanism will also lock the knife when pushed to the left. To unlock the knife you push the button to the right then slide it down and the blade snaps out. I can tell you this the blade pops out with more force than my Benchmade 9100SBK stryker. This knife does come with a reversible pocketclip for right or left pocket carry. For simple closing of the knife pull right and down on the button and use your index finger to push down on the spine (which thanks to the serrations can easily attain friction with even wet fingers and fine leather gloves).





The 154CM steel is great but as mentioned at www.cutleryscience.com "154CM/ATS-34 is a high carbon stainless steel generally regarded as a direct upgrade to 440C. It has a high wear resistance for stainless steel and a low edge stability both due to the large carbide fraction with primary carbides as large as 25 microns. It is one of the more brittle stainless steels and in general works best on smaller blades intended for extended aggressive slicing." Which means try to avoid stabbing directly into things too often. I know that movies have made it look really cool to stab the blade down into a table to prove a point during a heated argument, but contrary to this popular imagery this is extremely bad for almost every blade. Translating this into a Z-day scenario, watch out for strong stabs into bone, aim for the eye or temple of your target to destroy the brain, as going through the skull may wreck your blade, causing you to have a very bad day. My recommendation is to train extensively in Haganah, and Kali (two very practical, and easy to learn knife fighting systems). With proper training you'll be able to use the wide blade on this automatic knife properly, allowing your slices get you to the stabs that count against zombies (because unlike living people, massive blood loss causing precision slices don't slow the undead down as much).

Now that I've explored the Pros let me get down to the few Cons that plague this otherwise great knife. The first big con to me is that as a simple pocketknife it's thick when it's sitting in your pocket, making maneuvering for anything else in your pocket difficult. The knife has enough printed on it to simply just be annoying as seen in the above photos, there are several statements the company wanted you to be aware of. I don't like it when companies do this; put this information on the documentation that accompanies the knife, not on the knife itself. Sure maybe someone wants to be hailed as genius when the world is being rebuilt, but let's be honest, surviving humanity will have much more important people to hail. A pro that I also list as a con just to be on the safe side is that the activation button is not your standard push button, which I have seen confuse a couple of people who pick it up for the first time. For instance if you had to throw this across a room to help a buddy and they're not familiar with the mechanism, they may lose precious fighting time, or their advantage. However, before Z-day occurs if you get this knife, leave it out on the table and watch your friends paw at it like neanderthals before showing them how to open it. The possible stabbing inability or subsequent blade breakage is a serious con. Who doesn't love a good slice, and any experienced knife fighter knows how important these are, but against zombies? As previously mentioned stabbing and skull penetration are the most important techniques. Using the knife as a pry tool is a con. I wasn't able to get a picture of it, but when running a simple pry test (popping a drain plug) the blade already showed dulling from the contact area. Yes the blade pried open the plug with ease, but not since I owned a SOG Twitch XL, have I witnessed a blade dull from a small pry test.

Other tests I have run on this blade (I've only owned the knife for 1 month) the denim cutting test (so far it goes through 5 swatches with minimal force and no repositioning), the paper test, the Styrofoam test, and cutting 550 cord, which is very easy for this knife. A soft ground drop test revealed that this knife is balanced VERY well, and in the proper hands could be thrown accurately (once again this is more useful against living targets than undead ones). I plan to try the underwater cutting test next.

I give the ZeroTolerance 650ST , any questions?



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