Thanks for the compliment, and I'm glad you enjoyed it and found it useful!

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I appreciate the compliment!

Thanks for the compliment, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for the insight, particularly on lock wear over the life of the knife. I hadn't considered that. I appreciate your compliment as well!

Tomislav Rataj good thinking but that only means your great great great grandchild will just have to send in the knife for warranty service of the old old family air loom 👍👍🖖

Thanks!

I am probably going to get a Lynch clip to try out sometime this summer. I will have some things to say about the angled clip on the 31 in my next video when I share my impressions on the 31 after four months of ownership. When I do get and try out a Lynch clip, I will most likely do a short video about it after I've used it for a while. Stay tuned, and thanks for your question, and for commenting!

@@storiesfromthestudy669 Here's a vid in case you want to look now: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/p8eCiqiXnZjNeXU.html

Thanks for the compliment, and for your thoughts on 21 vs. 31. I'll reserve my ideas on that until my follow up video. :)

While I have not yet tried a 31 I just feel more wedded to the 21 as it is truly Chris' design. That said he did design the 25 with basically the same ball so in a sense the 31 is still his design, but sort of a blend of 21 and 25/Inkosi features. Still partial to things designed when he still walked the floor at CRK every day.

Thanks for the compliment, and for making it through twice! As with anything produced by Chris Reeve they aim for perfection, so the screws "meet in the middle" of the stop pin, and have no issue with strength. However, I did once have one of the stop pin screws get loose after opening and shutting the knife a couple of thousand times. I also had it happen with the pivot screw once under the same circumstances. Since then, after assembling the knife I use 2 wrenches, one on each side, to give a final tightening push on the screws to ensure I've got them seated. There's no adjustment required, I just want the screw heads firm into the titanium handle. I haven't had the problem of a screw loosening since.

@@storiesfromthestudy669 Thank you for the reply. I presume because of the 2 screws for the stop pin the 31 is harder to assemble? Is the 25/Inkosi harder to assemble than a 21/31? Please let me know your sense of it. Kindest Regards, Mark

Hi@@BenTramer - As I note at the end of the video, assembling the 31 is the same as assembling the 21 once you screw the stop pin to the lock side handle. Aside from removing and replacing one more screw on the 31, there is really no difference in the process between the two. The 25 is much more fiddly to assemble... the washers have a tab that must sit in a hole in the handle to be aligned correctly. The stop pin must be "clocked" to face the right position or the knife won't open or close once you assemble it, - although this gets easier the more times you do it and get a fee for it. Finally, the pivot screws have to be adjusted (with loctite applied if you don't want the adjustment to slip over time) to get the right blade tension because there is no pivot bushing... too tight and it won't open, too loose and you'll have blade play. Plus on mine, no matter what I do I can't get the blade centred without the pivot being too tight to open the knife (although I assume that this varies knife to knife). I love the knife, but it's fiddly. I don't own an Inkosi (yet) nor have I handled one, but the stop pin does not need to be "clocked" when assembling. The washers are not circular so they must be positioned correctly, but they don't have a tab like on the 25. I would assume the pivot adjustment requires the same sort of fiddling as on a 25. The 25 is very comfortable in the hand because the handles are not as wide as on the 21/31. I would assume the Inkosi feels just as comfortable, but I would have to check out if the angled pocket clip digs into the hand like it does on the 31. I hope that covers what you wanted to know! :)

@@storiesfromthestudy669 Thank you for the clear answer. I watched the video again and was thinking about your excellent explanation of the interplay between the locking mechanisms, blade, and stop-pin/sleeve. It seems on the 21 the stop-sleeve would wear 1st (19Rc), 2nd the titanium lock-face (34Rc), and 3rd the blade (60Rc). On the 31 the stop-pin would wear 1st (45Rc), 2nd the blade (60Rc), and 3rd ceramic ball lock interface (97Rc). If this is correct, I would suppose the 31 has a better locking mechanism in terms of economics and replaceability. On the 21 you would have to eventually replace an entire handle scale (which seems more expensive and/or harder to come-by than the blade). On the 31 the 2 easiest to replace parts wear-down first: the stop-pin and the blade. I would be curious to know your thoughts on this. Also, what is your reference for the Rc hardness? Thank you.

Heya @@BenTramer Interesting thoughts! My reference for the hardness of the various parts is from a video posted by Tim Reeve in January 2020 explaining the decision to switch to the stepped stop pin design on the production 31s after they experienced the malleability issue using the sleeve design on the first 31s made for the 2019 Blade Show. The surfaces you mention (stop pin / blade tang / lock bar interface) wear in different ways. The stop pin does not really get much "friction" wear... it undergoes compression when hit by the blade. Metals under compression loads (or tension as well) will deform, but as they deform their strength increases, so they get harder to deform. To experience an example of this, try bending a wire hanger back and forth at the same point until it breaks. The wire takes more and more force to bend at that spot, although it also grows less ductile (more brittle) until it breaks. (This is exactly how we were encouraged to experience and learn about this in our first year classes in Metallurgical Engineering.) I think now that they've adjusted the 31's stop pin design, compressing the stop pin (or sleeve) on both the 21 or 31 to the point where it needs replacement would be a rare occurrence and would take decades. Your thoughts on blade vs lock bar wear make sense ... those ceramic balls basically don't wear at all next to the steel on the 31s. On the 21s, due to the angled surfaces of the blade tang that comes in contact with the lock bar, the friction wear gets harder and harder over the life of the knife. However, even if the "softer than the blade" lock bar got worn to a point where the lock was no longer functioning, the handle slab would not necessarily need to be replaced. At the Chris Reeve workshop when they made a new 21 they tuned the lockup by working on the blade tang rather than the lock bar. I would imagine if a lock could no longer function due to wear on a 21, the workshop solution would be to replace the blade with a new one where the tang meets the lock bar at about 50% lockup. I've seen many videos and read many online discussions about the theoretical wearing-out of the lock on a 21, but never heard once of anyone that has owned and used one long enough to produce that much wear. I feel it would take many many decades... particularly because of that angle on the tang of the blade. The good news is that under normal use this is all covered by the CRK Guarantee. Even though you can no longer purchase 21 blades to do blade swaps or as a spare, they do have plenty of inventory to cover warranty repairs well into the future.

The ceramic has grown on me. It's different but I like it. That said, I would the incredibly unhappy if they had got rid of the pivot bushing. That's a big part of what makes them feel so special to me.

They were available in 2019 from Chris Reeve Knives and dealers, and sold out quickly.

Please watch the second video - I give a correction at the beginning. In old fashioned measurement the blade thicknesses are both listed as 0.12". In metric they are 3.04 mm thick for the small, and 3.07 mm thick for the large - a difference of 0.03 mm or 0.0012" in old fashioned measurements. :)

They were available in 2019 from Chris Reeve Knives and dealers, and sold out quickly.

No, much smaller on the small

Yes, I did mention that in the video. I have now learned why it remains on Sebenza 31s with inlays... it's so they can push out the inlay from behind if they need to make repairs. On handles for Sebenza 21s with inlays, they add additional small holes behind them for the same purpose.

During the pandemic there was a boom in knife collecting and in Chris Reeve Knives' sales... and a corresponding increase in KZfaq videos about them, so I felt there was so much out there, that my videos would get lost in the sea, or wouldn't have much to add. I may come back to it at some point if I feel there is something useful i can add. Thanks for asking!