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James Brand Turns out First Integral Knife

May 6, 2021

James Brand has just released the Barnes, a new folding knife design that marks the new high end point of their catalog. The Barnes is the first integral knife design from James, and also marks a few other firsts for the company.

James has been working with titanium since the very beginning, but this is the first time they’ve tried their hand an integral. The Barnes’s entire handle is made from a single, seamless piece of titanium; and with no need to hold two separate scales together, there is a major reduction in necessary hardware and visual clutter here, even by James’s minimalist standards. But style is a key part of the James Brand ethos, so they stepped up the knife’s aesthetic in another way, with a triangular pattern reminiscent of the James clovis logo milled into the scales.

Beyond that visual flourish, the handle profile itself is dead simple: there’s a finger guard, but no grooves, no cuts, no muss, and no fuss. On the off side, we can see that the frame lock is capped by a steel interface, much like the second gen Chapter, and an overtravel stop is situated around the pivot screw. The pocket clip, also sculpted from titanium, also contains an integrated lanyard loop; all in all, the Barnes weighs 4.6 oz.

The lanyard and pocket clip setup on the Barnes

The integral construction will be the main selling point, of course, but it isn’t the only thing the Barnes does differently than its stablemates. It is officially the biggest folder in James’s lineup, with a blade length of 3.5 inches. The added length may help to expand the Barnes’s capabilities in outdoors or hard EDC roles. James is bringing M390 blade steel into their lineup for the first time as well – it may not be the newest of the new anymore, but this European powder metallurgy steel turns in impressive performance across the board. James maintains its zero flipper policy with the Barnes too, which opens only with a thumb stud.

Currently, the Barnes is only available with a satin finished blade, but you can get it with either a plain or black-coated handle. The black coated model has silver thumb studs, while the plain model has the bright green ones we first saw all the way back in 2014 on the original Chapter. A James Brand collectible coin is included with the Barnes.

Knife in Featured Image: James Brand Barnes

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