flipping knife

A knife flips well or badly for reasons that have nothing to do with how it photographs. Three things decide it: where the weight sits, how freely the pivots turn, and whether the handles close flat against the blade instead of rattling. Get those right and a heavy knife feels quick. Get them wrong and a light one fights you the whole way round.

Thirty-two knives here, $173.25 to $549.45. Twenty-one are D2 tool steel, eleven are hand-forged Damascus, and twenty-three carry brass at the bolsters, which keeps the mass near the pivot where it actually does some work.

Now the unpopular advice. Every knife on this page is sharpened, and you should not learn on a sharpened knife. Get a blunt trainer first, spend a few weeks on it, and learn your rollovers while the worst outcome is a bruised knuckle. Not because we think you are careless, but because flinching is what stalls people, and you cannot flinch at an edge that is not there.

Then pick one of these up. If the balance is close to what you trained on, it will feel like the same knife.