- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9725583
(dear gods… what have I done? )
Some of you may remember my Weird Knife Wednesday post from a few months ago about the 2022 Walmart crossbar lock (hilariously called “shaft lock”) knife. It was a first for Ozark Trail. Here’s a link: https://lemmy.world/post/5850196
That knife came out of nowhere and many of the budget-oriented knife communities took notice. If your local Walmart had them, it wasn’t for long because they were selling out. I bought 2 (and gave one away as a part of a white elephant gift).
Skip to 2023 and Walmart has released not one, not two, but three different crossbar locking knives for this holiday season. (more on that later).
For those who don’t know, Ozark Trail is the Walmart in-house brand (the Amazon Essentials of the brick and mortar world) for many, many things. Including knives.
For $5-6 US, these are knives built to a very specific price point and it shows.
Enough talk, time for some photos:
As mentioned these are 2 of the 3 released this year for the holidays. You’ll find these two, along with a few liner lock, frame lock, and fixed blades, in an end-cap or center-aisle display if your Walmart has them in.
The textured G10 (?) one at the top looks suspiciously like the Sencut Scepter (which, is par for the course for Ozark Trail “designers”). The second one, with the blue pivot ring does not look familiar but I’m assuming eagle-eyed readers know its inspiration.
It’s hard to see in these photos both knives have deep-carry clips that extend past the back of the scales. These are very deep carry indeed.
The action on these knives is really bad. As if straight out of the factory they decided to take them to the beach and bury them all in sand before shipping them off. The crossbar on both grinds against the back of the knife. The spring tension on the bar is not as strong as last years model but could still use some work. I’m sure that they will break in, even if it takes a year. You can’t really flip them open (without also throwing your wrist around wildly and looking like a lunatic) and you’re mostly going to have to 2-hand shut them.
On the other hand: these were $5 each. So if you have to slow-roll them open, maybe that’s not so bad?
I had mentioned a 3rd “shaft lock” knife that seems to be mostly available online, though I did find a few stores listing them as in stock (but I’m not driving further than I already have for these). It comes as a part of a 3-pack of knives and some other tools.
I’m blatantly lifting this image off the Walmart website:
I don’t think I’m going to buy the pack though because, while only $5 each, buying a couple of these gets me into “real” knife territory (the aforementioned Sencut Scepter being a great knife for the money) and I’d rather buy more of those than more of these.
Should you buy these Ozark Trail knives? I would hope not. I made this sacrifice for you. Don’t repeat my mistakes, learn from them.
Thanks for the quality review and personal sacrifice. I feel like if they made a $30 knife it would be decent. I only say this because my Ozark trail rotomold cooler is great and so is the insulated cup. But they also were not dirt cheap by any stretch. More like 30-50% the price of the equivalent yeti (etc).
I have an Ozark Trail insulated cup as well and it’s great! Not dirt cheap, I agree, but far better value than a Yeti for sure.
Oh look a bargain… /s
Ha! Indeed.
Hm might be worth it for the deep carry clip to transfer over to another knife
Ok that is something I had not at all considered. Very good idea.
We thank thee for thy sacrifice.
Anything for the knife community. 😄