Boker Direkt by Chad Los Banos

Reviewed 10/31/2013 by AmbuBadger

-Price Paid: $25.00
-Used for Every Day Carry
-Owned for Greater than 1 year

Comments:

I'm not a knife snob by any means, so when Boker came out with their Plus lineup-- knives outsourced to Taiwan and, eventually, China-- I was more than willing to give it a shot. I was happy with the imported Kershaw knives, and the first three Boker Plus models from the CLB lineup were impressive; I had the SubCom, ResCom, and Trance, and all three were well-made. They were from Taiwan, the fit and finish was very good, and all three sported AUS6 steel blades. When the Direkt came out, I immediately decided I was going to get one (I've had mine since 2008). The look of the knife really appealed to me. So what went wrong? Read on...

Pros: cheap, thin and easy to carry despite the large size, flipper is awesome and gets the blade out quick. The G10 scales are a pleasant surprise on a knife this cheap. The liner lock engages well with no play front to back.

Con: cheap. I know I said that in the "pros" section, but Boker switched to a Chinese factory and with it, cheaper steel. It is rated at 440, and I notice it dulls quickly. Sure, I can put an edge on it fast, but it doesn't last. The liner does lock the blade in place, but there's too much side to side play and the lock isn't engaging the blade as much as I would like it to. The thumb stud is so-so, but I used e flipper 99% of the time anyways. I stripped down the knife to clean her, and saw rust on the liners. Cheap steel. On top of that, one of the holes in the liner that was tapped for the G10 scales was off-center so badly that there was no liner material for about 20% of the hole!

I wanted to love this knife, badly. But there's too many flaws that I can't fix and, therefore, can't overlook. Even if the QC was as good as the earlier CLB knives, the blade and liner material are too poor to warrant taking a chance with. It stays in my lockbox now, no longer in my EDC rotation...