Mini CQC-7: The Strange Knife
Aug 7, 2016 11:26:53 GMT -8
CoRnhOlio, HunterHype, and 4 more like this
Post by Shorttime on Aug 7, 2016 11:26:53 GMT -8
About a mile north of my house is a little scratch-and-dent grocery store that holds a flea market in it's parking lot every Sunday morning during the warm months.
And most every Sunday, there is a fella selling knives.
Most of his wares are the kind of thing you would expect. So when I saw an Emerson Mini-CQC-7, I was more than a little
surprised.
I picked it up, gave it the usual consideration, while listening to the guy telling me things I already knew. "Huh. So that's an Emerson. Okay."
Predictably, it sat in his inventory for over a year, unnoticed and unappreciated by the Zombie Hunters who frequent such places.
I forgot about that knife for a long time, until early this summer, when I saw it again. There was something compelling about that little black knife, and I decided that if I was ever able to come up with the money, I would buy it.
I have no idea why. I'm not a fan of tanto blades or serrations. I'm not totally sold on the "wave opening feature", and I have a good plenty of liner- and frame-lock knives, already. All in all, there was nothing particular about it that caught my eye.
The Internet is good at quantity, often at the expense of quality. Search a little and you'll find the usual stuff about Emerson: martial arts instructor and all around hard core dude, "Famous in The Worst Places", and so on. Search more and you'll learn about "Kool-Aid".
I've always been uncomfortable with this. There are people who market their knives as being intended to do dirty work in unpleasant situations, often implied in a military context. And there are people who dismiss this kind of marketing, and the knives it markets, as "Kool-Aid": that the marketing is a smoke screen intended to get people to pay more for a product that has no special attributes over anything else: "it's kool bc it's tactical!"
A recent bonus at work allowed me to buy the Mini-CQC-7. Now, I understand: it's more like "Gatorade", than "Kool-Aid"!
I still don't buy the "tactical marketing haze" that some people accuse Emerson of creating around his knives. But the knives themselves are a combination of well-chosen features.
The G-10 scales are very grippy, and the smooth head on the clip side of the pivot makes it easier to get the knife in and out of your pocket.
The clip, though. The clip, in combination with the scales, makes the knife feel as if it is bolted to your pocket.
This is good. I like pocket clips that will retain a knife through something that would kill me!
I didn't appreciate the qualities of the liner lock until I read an article about the design and engineering behind it.
I'm a knuckle-dragger and more than a little bit of a Demko fanboi. Still, a properly-designed liner will take a surprising amount of abuse, and it will fail "locked", if you push it to that point.
No assist. I like manual-open blades, and tend to remove springs from my knives. The assist is something else that can get dirty, or fail.
The thumb disk is a well-chosen feature. I like disks better than any other opening aid.
The wave feature is something I'm ambivalent about, but I understand it's function. I've had knives that were fiddly to open with gloves, and the wave gets the job done. It's easy to learn, and fast into action.
Serrations have their place. Cutting fibrous materials like rope or cardboard quickly dulls even the best steel. A serrated blade can keep cutting after it's fine-edge counterparts have given up. It's not the nicest cut in the world, and it's not a substitute for proper maintenance, but it works.
I like the pivot. I don't need to adjust my knives too often, but it's nice to know I don't have to bust out the Torx drivers to do this one.
Tanto blades also have their place, too. I like the secondary tip being down low, because it works like a wharncliffe. The tanto-style tip is a good choice for piercing, offering a better balance between penetration and tip strength than the standard spear-point or drop-point blades.
I even like the chisel grind.
Blades like this tend to "push", causing a long cut to curve toward the flat side of the blade, because the two sides experience unequal amounts of pressure from the material you're trying to cut. But especially with serrations, a chisel ground knife is easier to sharpen: work your burr from the bevel side, strop the flat side, and you're done.
The primary and secondary bevels are flat, by the way.
I'll have to watch that, because I tend to convex my bevels if I'm not careful about sharpening, and I want to keep this one minty, at least for a while.
The one I have lists for $185 on Emerson's website, and more in other places. IMO, you're paying about $40 extra because it's "Famous in The Worst Places".
if you're able to ignore the competing voices on the Internet, and you understand what you're buying, I think Emerson offers a combination of good features. It's not pretty, but it's not supposed to be. It just works.
And most every Sunday, there is a fella selling knives.
Most of his wares are the kind of thing you would expect. So when I saw an Emerson Mini-CQC-7, I was more than a little
surprised.
I picked it up, gave it the usual consideration, while listening to the guy telling me things I already knew. "Huh. So that's an Emerson. Okay."
Predictably, it sat in his inventory for over a year, unnoticed and unappreciated by the Zombie Hunters who frequent such places.
I forgot about that knife for a long time, until early this summer, when I saw it again. There was something compelling about that little black knife, and I decided that if I was ever able to come up with the money, I would buy it.
I have no idea why. I'm not a fan of tanto blades or serrations. I'm not totally sold on the "wave opening feature", and I have a good plenty of liner- and frame-lock knives, already. All in all, there was nothing particular about it that caught my eye.
The Internet is good at quantity, often at the expense of quality. Search a little and you'll find the usual stuff about Emerson: martial arts instructor and all around hard core dude, "Famous in The Worst Places", and so on. Search more and you'll learn about "Kool-Aid".
I've always been uncomfortable with this. There are people who market their knives as being intended to do dirty work in unpleasant situations, often implied in a military context. And there are people who dismiss this kind of marketing, and the knives it markets, as "Kool-Aid": that the marketing is a smoke screen intended to get people to pay more for a product that has no special attributes over anything else: "it's kool bc it's tactical!"
A recent bonus at work allowed me to buy the Mini-CQC-7. Now, I understand: it's more like "Gatorade", than "Kool-Aid"!
I still don't buy the "tactical marketing haze" that some people accuse Emerson of creating around his knives. But the knives themselves are a combination of well-chosen features.
The G-10 scales are very grippy, and the smooth head on the clip side of the pivot makes it easier to get the knife in and out of your pocket.
The clip, though. The clip, in combination with the scales, makes the knife feel as if it is bolted to your pocket.
This is good. I like pocket clips that will retain a knife through something that would kill me!
I didn't appreciate the qualities of the liner lock until I read an article about the design and engineering behind it.
I'm a knuckle-dragger and more than a little bit of a Demko fanboi. Still, a properly-designed liner will take a surprising amount of abuse, and it will fail "locked", if you push it to that point.
No assist. I like manual-open blades, and tend to remove springs from my knives. The assist is something else that can get dirty, or fail.
The thumb disk is a well-chosen feature. I like disks better than any other opening aid.
The wave feature is something I'm ambivalent about, but I understand it's function. I've had knives that were fiddly to open with gloves, and the wave gets the job done. It's easy to learn, and fast into action.
Serrations have their place. Cutting fibrous materials like rope or cardboard quickly dulls even the best steel. A serrated blade can keep cutting after it's fine-edge counterparts have given up. It's not the nicest cut in the world, and it's not a substitute for proper maintenance, but it works.
I like the pivot. I don't need to adjust my knives too often, but it's nice to know I don't have to bust out the Torx drivers to do this one.
Tanto blades also have their place, too. I like the secondary tip being down low, because it works like a wharncliffe. The tanto-style tip is a good choice for piercing, offering a better balance between penetration and tip strength than the standard spear-point or drop-point blades.
I even like the chisel grind.
Blades like this tend to "push", causing a long cut to curve toward the flat side of the blade, because the two sides experience unequal amounts of pressure from the material you're trying to cut. But especially with serrations, a chisel ground knife is easier to sharpen: work your burr from the bevel side, strop the flat side, and you're done.
The primary and secondary bevels are flat, by the way.
I'll have to watch that, because I tend to convex my bevels if I'm not careful about sharpening, and I want to keep this one minty, at least for a while.
The one I have lists for $185 on Emerson's website, and more in other places. IMO, you're paying about $40 extra because it's "Famous in The Worst Places".
if you're able to ignore the competing voices on the Internet, and you understand what you're buying, I think Emerson offers a combination of good features. It's not pretty, but it's not supposed to be. It just works.
