Dirk Pinkerton Creates Kukri-style Kami for Artisan

Artisan Cutlery and Dirk Pinkerton continue to work their collaborative magic, with another new folding knife hitting shelves. The Kami is a big knife with the materials and design specifications to live up to its imposing style.

Anyone who follows Pinkerton’s work will know his penchant for the wild and wonderful when it comes to blade shapes. You don’t even have to look outside of the Artisan corral to see it, in fact: at the tail end of July we wrote about the Banjaraa, another recent Artisan collaboration with a trailing point blade; going deeper into the Artisan catalog you’ll find other ones like the Arroyo and the Proponent that showcase equally striking profiles.

The Micarta/S35VN model

Which brings us to the Kami, which has a recurved, almost kukri-esque blade. It measures a sizable 3.74 inches and is fashioned from either S90V or S35VN steel depending on which model you choose, so you know this one is capable of powering through the bigger cutting jobs as a hard use or large EDC knife. Pinkerton provided two different opening methods for this imposing piece of powder metallurgy steel: there’s a spine side flipper for the fidget fiends, and an ambidextrous thumb disk as a second option.

The Kami’s big, bracket-style handle ensures that users can get a “handle” on that blade in use. The two titanium slabs that comprise the scales on the S90V model have a textured chamfer all around the circumference; the S35VN comes with a show side scale made from Micarta; both have the expected but not unwelcome steel-capped frame lock bar on the off-side scale. Also visible on the off-side is a sculpted clip – timascus on the S90V flavor, and regular ti on the S35VN model.

Both Kami models are available now.

Knife in Featured Image: Artisan Cutlery Kami


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