Not to be all clickbaity or anything, but I honestly don’t know what to call this knife because it has no name or model descriptor that I can find anywhere. So we have no choice but to fall back on the venerable old chestnut of, You Won’t Believe “This” Crazy Thing.

The manufacturer (if they even are the actual manufacturer) describes it as: “HUAAO Manual Folding Knife D2 Blade T6 Aluminum Handle Edc Self Defense Hunting Knives Camping Survival Multifunction Knife Portable Folding Flipper Knife.”

So, yeah. It’s one of those. I’ve also seen it billed as an “Atropos Knife Trapper” sporadically, which is something it categorically isn’t. We’ve looked at the Trapper before, so we know what it looks like. I.e.: not this, funky though it may be. They sure do have a similar aesthetic vibe to each other, though.

We have, of course, also inspected another “HUAAO” knife recently. Based on that, and given that every single other thing on their web site appears to be a counterfeit of some other brand’s knife, I have to conclude that this is a knockoff of something, too. But I’ll be damned if I know what. (And yes, they run the domain knifesfactory-dot-com. Not “knives.” Much classy. Wow. Very legit.)

Anyway, what you get is this rectangular aluminum clad object that looks like it might be a minimalist-punk Scandinavian cigarette lighter or something. It has no markings and presents no visible latch, button, catch, or even a fingernail nick, nor any other controls. I’ll bet you won’t guess how it opens. Go on, give it a try.

If you get a grip on the grey part and give it a considerable nudge to overcome the friction, it will swing away.

And then…

Oh.

No, no, no, no, nope. That’s not how knives work. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.

We’ve seen our fair share of knives with two pivots, and one with three, and even a couple that have transverse pivots that go the wrong way. But with one limited exception all the pivots on all the knives are at least on the same axis.

But not on this one. It’s a combination of all of the above. Perpendicular is in, baby. Two dimensional knives are so last season.

Once you fiddle the whole thing into position what you wind up with is a roughly 7-1/2" long knife with a 3-1/4" long blade with a very straight spine on it. The blade is fully flat ground, and is 0.173" thick at the spine.

It is alleged to be made of D2 steel which may or may not be bullshit, and is unverifiable at the lengths I’m willing to go to find out. It does, however, have a rather nice tumbled stonewash finish on it.

It’s about 4-3/8" long closed, and 1-5/16" across including its little finger guard stub. The whole thing weighs 119.3 grams or 4.21 ounces, the vast majority of which is the blade and its surrounding tray. The handle really doesn’t weigh much at all.

For once, HUAAO actually put their own name on this knife and haven’t ripped off another maker’s mark, nor left it brandless. There still isn’t any model designation anywhere on it, though, and the only other marking is a lonely “D2” on the opposite side of the blade.

It actually doesn’t feel too bad in the hand despite being so square. The matte finish on the handle is pretty nice and all the edges are chamfered at 45 degree angles. The lockup is actually surprisingly solid, but then you’d expect it to be given how much all the parts rub against each other when you slot them home. The visible parts of the machinework are excellent, but mine is already showing noticeable rub marks where the surfaces slide across each other.

You may think you’ve heard of a friction folder before, but friction isn’t enough to describe this thing’s action. Deploying it is an incredible faff, and thoroughly impossible to do with one hand. (This may actually be of some perverse benefit if you live in a locale where one-handed opening knives are illegal.)

There are no protuberances whatsoever except for that very tiny and perfunctory nub at the heel of the blade that’s probably meant to serve as a finger guard. Otherwise there is no clip, and in fact no provision for carrying at all. Not even a lanyard hole or someplace to put a keyring. Eschew all material and functional aspirations – When we say minimalist, we’re not fucking around. It didn’t even come with a sheath.

The knife is ruler straight and actually rather thin in cross section, only 0.380" thick across the handle. It’s held together with only two pieces of hardware: A large screw in the tail that comprises one pivot (T8 Torx) and what appears to be a cross pin through the heel of the blade that comprises the other. I tried briefly to get either to budge and quickly gave up. The tail screw in particular is either torqued to hell and back or glued. Or possibly both, since my example came pre-stripped from the factory. No user serviceable parts inside.

Despite this, it’s not overly large and if you applied sufficient hipster dedication you could carry this knife in a pocket easily. Too bad it’s probably a bit too long to go in the Zippo pocket in your skinny jeans.

What’s more questionable is how it would stand up to the rigors of actual daily use. Would the pivots wear to the point of becoming irrevocably flaccid? Would it be a bad thing even if they did?

As far as I can tell there is no real detent in the mechanism. The only thing keeping it from flopping open is sheer friction, which probably won’t last forever because the steel blade is much harder than the aluminum handle. The design is such that the blade is held captive and none of the edge is exposed until its little tray is swung out fully, but you still wouldn’t want it clacking around loose in your pocket if it came down to it.

I also wonder how well it would stand up to twisting force, and just how much it would take to permanently spread that aluminum handle. The heel of the blade can act directly against it using its own pivot as a fulcrum.

Also, if you don’t put it away very carefully the tip of the blade tends to hit the inner edge of the handle which will A) probably slowly round it off, and B) permanently mar the chic, understated finish and allow a tiny sliver of bare aluminum to show through. Which will annoy you forever.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is another one of those knives that’s long on style but short on practicality. There are a lot of things that could potentially be done to improve the design, and anyone suitably motivated could probably play woulda-coulda-shoulda with the details all day. But me, I’d leave it as it is. My wish list for this knife actually only has two entries on it: I wish I knew what to call it, and I wish I knew where the hell the design was ripped off from.