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Great Eastern Cutlery Stainless Fruit Knife Releases in 440C

April 21, 2021

Great Eastern Cutlery’s latest model is the Stainless Fruit Knife, a single-bladed traditional built on their #89 pattern. The Stainless Fruit knife changes things up from other knives in the #89 family, and is the rare GEC slipjoint with a stainless steel blade.

The two previous #89 models were the Melon Tester and the Riverboat Gambler. As you could probably guess, the #89 was GEC’s take on the melon sampler genre. The idea behind a melon sampler is just that: details can vary, but it always has an unusually long main blade, meant for piercing deep into a melon or fruit in order to determine its quality. For most of today melon sampler owners, the knife s removed from that original purpose (are there even professional melon testers any more?), but the long blade serves capably in a more generalized food prep/picnic knife capacity or as an unusual EDC.

Unlike the Melon Tester and the Riverboat Gambler, the Stainless Fruit Knife is a single-bladed affair. This is a small change, and not a surprising one; after all, GEC likes to roll out different iterations of existing models with remixed blade shapes and counts.

More relevant to its possible roles, the Stainless Fruit Knife is made from 440C steel, making it one of relatively few stainless GEC folding knives. Compared to their carbon steel of choice, 1095, GEC’s 440C obviously offers significantly better corrosion resistance; but it does lose out to its carbon compeer in edge retention and toughness. We imagine that the relative performance merits and demerits will pale beside the fact that the Stainless Fruit Knife will be one of presumably few opportunities to get a stainless folding GEC model this year.

Onto the trim: a new GEC model means a new blade etching, and the company settled on a propellor-style shield for the show side. The Stainless Fruit Knife is being made with three different cover material options: the first batch is in a new-for-the-pattern Apples & Oranges acrylic; it will be followed by a glow in the dark acrylic version, and finally a model with chestnut wood covers.

GEC fans, you know the drill: these things will get snapped up quick after they hit dealers’ shelves – and that should be any time this week.

Knife in Featured Image: Great Eastern Cutlery #89 Stainless Fruit Knife

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