A Small Blade

Christmass happened, and my son dreams about knives. He’s growing up, and borrowing one of my Laguiole or my Victorinox will no longer do. He wants his own blades. It took some reading and more talking to feed his dreams while saving him from the survivalist gimmicks according to which the perfect knife would be a pound of 1095 steel suitably shaped to pop open a Sherman tank. Eventually he came to common sense, assessed his needs and looked at the right knives. Something elegant and stealthy, silly sharp and really easy to carry in a pocket. A gentleman’s folder.

Now look at what we’ve found: a small wonder coming from the noble tradition of Scandinavian knifemaking: the Fällkniven U2.

Fällkniven is a prominent Swedish knife maker: beautiful steels, very pure knives, and an accolade as Purveyors to His Majesty the King of Sweden. They also make te F1, a noted survival tool for the Swedish Navy. Most of what they do is simple, uncompromisingly modern in design and materials.

What we have here is 42g of sheer efficiency. Because, after all, a real EDC is a blade that you’ll always have handy, and that’s exactly what the Fällkniven U2 will give you. The synthetic handle is made of black Zytel, a high end Dupont polymer , nicely textured and ultralight, understated and minimal, just like the lockback. You’ll just forget you have it on you, up to when a pack, some string or some jerky will give you a reason to take it out. Then you’ll have a very nice small knife in hand, with a comfortable 3 fingers grip.

The blade is a streamlined drop point design. It’s made of a 3 layers laminated made in Japan by Takefu. The edge is made of SGPS, a high end powder high Chromium steel, with a very hard heat treatment (HRC 62) and quite a good retention. The SGPS is sandwiched between layers of 420J2, a sotfer steel with good corrosion resistance. All in all, it’s quite the same concept as a katana blade: a hard edge protected by softer steels. You can actually see along the U2 edge’s curve the limit between the steels. And boy it is sharp, out of the box. My son, who watches too much videos, shaved half his right calf.

The U2 is the perfect knife for anyone who wants to have something very sharp at hand without carrying the weight. UL backpackers, fly fishermen with an already overcrowded vest, downtown Paul Smith clad yuppies. Maybe one could regret that one can’t open the knife with one hand, but then the son managed to get there by loosening just a wee tad the main screw. So he will indeed single handedly deploy his Fällkniven to cut open the cereal box… He’s growing up. And now, he dreams of bushcraft…