Heh heh. Huh huh.

“Pecker.”

Here’s something normal…ish for a change. This is one of those ultra-minimalist folding knives, the kinds that the beanie hat wearing through hiker crowd seems to like a lot (a demographic which I may occasionally represent myself). Except this one doesn’t suck.

It’s also really cheap. You can get one of these for just $16. Before I bought this I’d never even heard of Tekut, so I wasn’t super sure about what kind of quality I’d be getting. But the design was just goofy enough to get me to give it a shot and I have to say I rather like what you get for the price. Tekut is apparently a brand of “Nextorch Industries,” Guangdong, China. However, this stands in stark contrast to the usual flea market dreck you’re used to me prattling on about. It just goes to show, it’s possible to make a decent knife for cheap.

Tekut explicitly market this as an EDC knife. It has a semi-deep carry pocket clip on it (non-reversible) and it’s a reasonably svelte 42.3 grams (1.5 ounces). There is no fancypants titanium or any other wonder materials here; the entire thing is made of steel. So it could be made lighter, I guess, but also a lot more expensive if you tried. Instead, Tekut has made it lightweight by the simple expedient of ensuring as little as possible of it actually needs to be there.

The 7Cr17MoV blade is exactly 2-1/2" long as measured from the forward end of the handle. The usable edge length is about the same, with a teeny tiny ricasso right at the base. I dunno what the handle and other components are made out of, but they have a “black titanium nitride” finish. The blade has a nice drop point profile, very pointy, and I am just a teeny bit astounded to report to you that it does not have a chisel grind. These types of things often do, which is just nasty 'orrible, but this has a traditional double sided grind.

There’s a lot of noise in the marketing bumf about this knife’s “7-lock Locking Mechanism,” which offers Simple And Safe Operation. The packaging mentions it no less than twice. Well, it’s actually just a regular pushbutton lock with a plunger mechanism. I’m not sure where the 7 comes from.

What’s slick about this knife, though, is the sheer elegance in simplifying the mechanism. The spring action for the lock is provided by this long wire spring which goes through a slot in the base of the plunger…

…And extends through to the other side where it serves to protect the blade from coming into contact with things while it’s closed. Therefore the Pecker does not need any more than one handle scale, which can afford to be barely there in the first place, nor any spacers or liners, or any of their associated hardware.

As usual for these damn button lock folders, the manufacturer absolutely cannot help themselves from making the button lock the blade closed in addition to locking it open. This kind of thing usually just pisses in my campfire, since it’s a universal truth that you can’t friggin’ open a knife like that one handed. The Pecker doesn’t even include a thumb stud, so you can forget that option as well.

It took just the merest touch of a T8 torx driver on the pivot screw, though, to get my example to swing freely enough that you can flick it open with the button held down, and it’ll even swing just with gravity – without introducing any noticeable additional wiggle into the blade. So I’m a little bit less pissed off about it.

But still. If you’re a knife designer, just… don’t do that.

Here it is alongside the usual scale comparison objects. Get out your shot glass. The one on the right… I’m not going to say it. You already know if you know.

The ergonomics on this knife are a trifle strange mostly down to the barely-there handle. This isn’t a fighting knife. I wouldn’t treat it as a survival knife, either. It’s not super uncomfortable and surprisingly there are no rough edges or sawtooth machining marks left on it anywhere. The handle is just really slim, in both dimensions, so your grip on it is always a bit dainty. But all the edges are just ever so slightly chamfered and thus it doesn’t feel unpleasant in the hand.

I’m going to throw this at you, too. This is obviously a super budget knife, made in China, with not a whiff of premium aspirations. But the edge geometry is dead true, and spot on even. So this is what you could be getting with all your flea market mall ninja shit; your M-Techs, your Furys, your Tac Forces, Smith and Wessons and all the rest of them. But you’re not. They’re holding out on you. Doesn’t that just burn your biscuits?

This little bastard was actually remarkably difficult to take apart. The spring was the main thing. It’s in there good, and if you manage to pop it out it’s quite tricky to get back into its little notch where it passes from one side of the handle to the other. The other end of it is quite firmly press-fit into its hole, and I chickened out there and left it a lone. So as you might have guessed, it is generally inadvisable to disassemble your Pecker without professional assistance.

Just dismounting the blade is less tricky, and as you can see it rides on two nylon washers which were liberally greased from the factory. (I am absolutely not going to make a Pecker-lubrication joke here. I’m not! If you were waiting for it, you’ll just have to go away disappointed.)

The bill of materials on this knife is pretty damn short. There’s the handle, the blade, the lock plunger, the spring, one spacer, the front plate, and the pocket clip. That’s it. The entire thing is held together with only three screws. Just three! If it weren’t for the pocket clip, it could have been two.

It didn’t come in a box; it showed up in a blister pack on this hang card. I managed to slip the knife back in for display purposes here, but now that you all have seen it I can throw the packaging away.

The front and rear tell you pretty much all you need to know. For an inexpensive knife, I like it. Keeps the cost down, and I won’t have yet another knife box I’ll feel the pathological need to preserve for the collector’s value.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I actually really like this little knife, in case you couldn’t tell. For what it costs it has no business being as good as it is. It’s fairly well built, reasonably competently designed, looks slick, and it’s just got the right touch of weirdness that you all know is on brand for me. And it didn’t take a whole heck of a lot of fiddling with to get it working smoothly – at least in my case.

If you want a little knife to clip to your pack or toss in your glove box or even carry around with you every day I think you could spend a lot more and still wind up with a lot worse than the Tekut Pecker.

Heh. Pecker…