Category: Reviews

Being Swedish, the town Mora more or less equates to knives and I would even go so far as to claim that “Mora” is pretty much a synonym for the word “knife”, here in Sweden, much like Wellingtons are a synonym for rubber boots in the UK. Say the word, and people will inevitably see a red-handled knife before them. Cheap, reliable, if you respect it, and very sharp, it is an icon ever since the 19th century, deeply embedded into the soul of Swedish culture. And over the last decade or so, the rest of the world has begun...

Today we will review three knives by a Swedish brand that oddly enough is little known to the common Swede, but which is a proper success story of a company that enjoys great respect for their high quality knives, by professionals and civilians alike, worldwide. The company has a somewhat odd name, Fällkniven (Folding Knife) given that their greatest successes, and the very foundation of their existance, is fixed blade knives. Regardless, like so many other of the very best knife makers in the world, Fällkniven still remains very much a family business and as a result, they put great care into both their products and their customer relations,...

ESEE Knives, formerly R.A.T Cutlery is one of the most well-regarded cutlers in the USA, a cutler with a strong reputation for quality, and with the owners Jeff Randall and Mike Perrin standing by their products no matter what. Their personal integrity is renowned, highly respected and never disputed. Despite having looked I have yet to find a single complaint against them. Quite the contrary, I can find nothing but praise for this company. Why is that? The answer to that question probably comes down to two very important components. First of all, the no-nonsense attitude towards utility and quality, based on extensive experience of...

Before we look at the knife in question for this review we have to step back in time a bit and look at where it comes from; i.e. the works of Col. Rex Applegate & Lt.Col. W.E. Fairbairn. Parts of these roots have already been described in the article The KA-BAR and the Fairbairn-Sykes: two fighting children of different philosophies. Col. Rex Applegate (1914-1998) Col. Rex Applegate was an American military officer who worked for the OSS, teaching and developing close quarters combat to commandos at Camp B (now Camp David) and at Camp X, in Ontario, Canada. Applegate would later also become friends with...

  Today we are going to look closer at a fairly new modern Italian-design combat knife that not so many have heard of yet, a knife that due to its design, quality and price certainly deserves more attention. This is the Tinea Kombat Knife, designed by M° Danilo Rossi Lajolo di Cossano and Frank Beltrame of the famous Italian cuttler town Maniago. Background Fratelli Beltrame F&C Beltrame Cutlers was founded after WW2 by Vittorio Beltrame in Maniago, Italy. His father too was a blacksmith and had made sailor and multi-purpose knives, commissioned by various companies. Vittorio had a son in 1941 and...