IS OK? YES?

IS ARE SURE?

Yes, today is more faceless made-in-China garbage. Straight from Aliexpress again this time. This one drew my eye because it explicitly bills itself as "mechanical" in its product description which is, in full: "Stainless Steel Mechanical Folding Knife EDC Mini Paring Knife Keychain Portable Emergency Self-Defense Knife Express Cutter Too." (Presumably the L fell off, unless in Lionel Hutz tradition it's actually, "Cutter, too!")

"Um, actually, surely all folding knives are inherently mechanical, by their very definition," comes the inevitable comment from some clever individual. Yes, Melvin, we are aware. But plugging that into your search query is often an shortcut to finding the weird stuff.

And the other reason I clicked on this is because its "brand," insofar as any of these types of things may actually have one, is listed as "YESISOK." Perhaps ironically.

I am not making this up.

Behold such tremendous features as:

• Sharp Blade: Yes
• Blade Material: Stainless Steel Trowel
• is_customized: No

Truly, we are living in the future.

The Yesisok is also fantastically small. If you had a bit of creativity you could probably just about employ it as the tab on a zipper pull on your bag or jacket, and you'd probably get away with it unnoticed in a number of places.

Maybe forget I said that last part.

It's just 2-3/8" long when closed and the slightest hair under 3-5/8" long open with a teensy little 1-3/8" blade. That's 6.0325, 9.2075, and 3.4925 centimeters en metrique, so at least we can say one thing on the spec sheet is actually accurate.

In its blurb it claims to be made of 4Cr13 steel which is feasible, given that this alloy is both very cheap and very Chinese. It's straight backed with an upswept tip, and at 0.079" thick but only 0.288" across it must be said that its bevel is very steep.

Steep enough that if you are habitual jig sharpener it may actually give you some trouble, since the primary bevel is close to 35 degrees. The actual apex is even steeper still, as close as I can figure to a full 40 degrees per side, coming out to a combined 80 which is very nearly square.

So this will never be a chopper or surgical slicer, but despite all expectations it does come out of the box reasonably sharp enough to serve as a dinky little package opener, envelope cutter, and fingernail picker. The little blighter only weighs 0.6 ounces or 17 grams precisely (also accurate on its spec sheet) so you could just stash it around your desk or just about anywhere else, really.

Of course I wouldn't have been drawn to the Yesisok at all if its mechanism weren't weird.

There's actually a whole litany of these types of little knives on the Chinese wholesale market, all with the same action which could basically be described as, "Like a balisong, but with only one pivot."

I also have to imagine having only the one significantly reduces the cost.

Both halves of the Yesiok's handle swing out 180 degrees, in opposite directions, and come back around to meet up on the other end leaving the knife open in the process.

There is no latch, but there is a detent ball on the little spacer on the tail end which clicks in both the open and closed positions. There is no mechanism other than this; The sheer flexibility in the presumably laser or waterjet cut handle plates plus the inherent lash in the pivot is the only thing that allows the detent ball to clear its pocket at all.

The pivot is plain, equipped only with a brass washer beneath and even then, curiously only on one side. This is the side with it. You can see the opposite side further up the page, there, which reveals the conspicuous absence of its twin. I have no idea if it's supposed to be this way, or what. Maybe it's to provide more spacing for the detent ball to clear, who knows. Omitting one washer likely removed a whole two or three cents from the total bill of materials cost.

Two pins are pressed through holes in the blade opposite each other, and these are what serve as the endstops for the mechanism's travel.

As you would expect these are none too precise nor is the track they ride in, so the blade can rock and roll noticeably even when it's ostensibly locked open.

The whole process works like this:

It's also worth mentioning that you can only open the knife one way, so if you try to shove from the wrong side not much will happen. There's just enough imprecision in everything that you can push one of the handles a couple of degrees past the closed position, but that's it. Of course there's no tactile indication of which way you ought to try to push, though, so you'd better just get used to how the thing works. From closed, the handle without the spacer screwed to it swings away from the edge, i.e. push it towards you if you're looking at the spine of the blade. It can also be assembled such that the opposite is true, and given that there is no mechanical impetus to choose one versus the other I would not be at all surprised to learn that half of these left the factory with the blade facing in one direction and the other half facing the other.

All this adds up to making the Yesisok maddeningly fiddly to use. Part of its description implies "self defense" as one of its applications, but needless to say you can forget that. Opening it is tricky and ideally requires both hands, is tough to do quickly, and even once done the end result is unlikely to impress ruffians of any stripe.

It's well and truly comically tiny. But not, it must be said, the smallest folding knife I currently own.

It's got a loop on the tail that's built into the spacer which you can use to turn this into a keyring knife, or possibly attempt the aforementioned zipper pull strategy. You're on your own figuring out how, though. For nearly five bucks, the manufacturer didn't even bother to include a dinky split keyring. Nor even a box. Mine just came in a plastic baggie with a sticker on it, the truly traditional harbinger of top flight Chinese cutlery.

There's not much inside to look at. Note, however, the lonely and singular brass washer. The spacer screw is a T6 head and I think the pivot screws are meant to be T8, but I found a T9 driver actually fit better. You'll need a driver in each side if you care enough to disassemble this, because...

...While the pivot screw does indeed have an anti-rotation flat on it...

...The holes in both handle plates are just round.

This makes me wonder if all the pieces of hardware in this are commodity parts.

The tail spacer is the most interesting part of the entire knife, if you ask me. It's got the detent ball mounted there, and is also prevented from rotating by having yet another pin pressed into it. Based on the texture around the edges plus the lack of telltale machine marks, I think it's actually a casting. It is steel though. The entire knife is, actually, sans the washer. A magnet sticks to all of its components.

I took a picture of the blade separately, but I already said most of what needs to be said about it so I'm not sure what's to illustrate. I'm going to show it to you anyway, though, because I went through the effort to take the snap and process it, so you're going to look at it at least once.

Unsurprisingly it's had no polish or finishing work done to it at all after grinding, but the flat is pretty smooth and shiny. I imagine that's because the raw bar stock it was made out of was pre-polished.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There's very nearly something resembling a valid use case for the Yesisok and others of its ilk, but only barely. If you're in an environment where a big traditional and dare I say "real" pocket knife clipped to your pants is frowned upon, this could stand in as a very cheap and at least reasonably serviceable substitute. Moreso if you are in a locale with insane blade length requirements, or one of those places where one handed opening knives are forbidden. Since you'd have to be a damn wizard to get this thing open with one hand.

But otherwise its main appeal is as a fidget toy, since its mechanical design is deeply silly.

It's OK.

I guess.

All aboard, and Welcome to the Wondrous Weird Knife Wednesday Weaboo Wagon.

I am fully aware it's Thursday in most time zones. Never mind that. Get a load of this thing.

For anyone in your life with a custom body pillowcase, a hatchback covered with ahegao stickers, and an imposing DVD collection, here's the perfect accessory.

This is the "New Animation Game Genshin Impact Butterfly Knife Toy Unsharped Metal Weapon Wolf's Last Road Stick Cyno Weapon Model Gift," which I received for a whole 99 US cents from Aliexpress as an "introductory offer" item. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of things. I am positive that even though I knew exactly what I was getting into when I ordered it I still got ripped off. But the grist mill of Content hungers evermore; I've got to feed something into the damn thing or else I won't have anything to write about. And hey, it was still only a buck.

This is... Look, we have to down a whole damn rabbit hole for me to explain it to you. Obviously the moniker tipped you off that this is ostensibly a piece of cynical tie-in merchandise for the exasperatingly popular video game, Genshin Impact. There were a whole range of these things apparently replicating a variety of "signature weapons" from the game, but for some inexplicable reason they're all balisong shaped which is of course right in my tree. But also hard to make much heads or tails of, since they're all described with inscrutable titles in transliterated Chinese.

I picked the absolute silliest looking one of the bunch, which is named "Tian Kon."

The fact that its frilly and overwrought decorative trappings also have a distinctly Zelda-eque vibe probably also contributed.

I have to admit I don't know a whole heck of a lot about Genshin nor do I really care to, although that's not to say I have no experience. I did try it out very briefly back in its early days, when the consensus about it on the internet was still in its initial phase of howling about how it was superficially a Breath of the Wild ripoff, just to see what all the hubbub was about. I concluded that while it had a veneer of this, it was overlaid on a bedrock core of Gacha Waifu Slot Machine Harem Simulator For Whales, a genre in which I have no interest.

I slept on this writeup for a few weeks longer than I should have, as well, since this specific product and all of the others in its range have vanished from the face of the Internet entirely in the meantime. It's useless for me to link you to the item anymore even if you did want one of these yourself for whatever reason. It's just gone, although the Chinese knockoff sphere is still absolutely packed to the gills with junk in a broadly similar vein. The top search result if I try to look for what I've got verbatim is now this, which I'm pretty sure is made in the same factory that used to be making the thing I've got. (In case interested future historians click on this eight, maybe nine minutes into the future when this page has likewise inevitably disappeared, I also saved a screenshot.) This contains such hits as "Fo Nu Huo Lang," and "Mo Dao Zhu Shi," and "Qi Sha." You see what I mean.

I think my "Tian Kon" is supposed to be a hack representation of Genshin's Skyward Pride. (Not the Skyward Blade, which was my initial thought based on the translation.) "Tian Kon" is likely actually a bastardization of "Tiānkōng", which is broadly speaking "sky." No points for guessing (or looking it up on the wiki) that the Skyward Pride's Chinese name is Tiānkōng zhī Ào. (And the Blade, Tiānkōng zhī Rèn.)

Case closed. That was entirely more research into this 99 cent piece of junk than should be undertaken by anyone, and now if you'll excuse me I think I'm going to go wash my hands.

One thing I sure didn't expect was for this to show up on a full color hang card. I was predicting the usual nondescript plastic baggie in a bubble mailer with a smudged and barely legible sticker on it printed in Chinese. If you found this hanging on a peg in FYE or Hot Topic it'd probably run you twenty bucks.

Let it not be said that I've completely slandered Genshin Impact by calling it a mere Waifu simulator. To its credit, it contains a couple of token himbos as well. The bloke depicted here is Diluc, a fire elemental guy who you can obtain fairly early on. He has absolutely nothing to do with the Skyward Pride, so it beats me why he's on the packaging. Maybe he's on the packaging for all of these. Maybe he's not, and it's random. I'll probably never know.

In case anyone cares, the back of the card is thus. I am particularly fond of "wyth," and "under 12 vrars old." Not that I'm any better at Chinese, mind you. I butcher their language, they butcher mine. We're even Steven.

The Chinese on the rear at least reveals that this is (allegedly) manufactured by Jinjiang Animation Hardware Factory, of Fujian Province. So now we know who to blame.

Because this is crap.

No, I did not put 99 cents down on this with high expectations. But as usual for Chinese knockoff goods, much effort has been spent meticulously touching up the photos of the product in its online listing to make it look more attractive than it actually is, and very little on the actual manufacture of the thing itself.

Obviously this isn't a "real" knife in that it's not sharp. But calling it a balisong trainer is really a bit of a stretch. It's entirely made of cast zinc, sans the screws, at least if the packaging is to be believed. That seems plausible to me since zinc (or its myriad alloys) is cheap and braindead simple to cast in a die. A magnet doesn't stick to any of it, it's clearly not aluminum, nor dense enough to be lead.

The finish is airbrushed on.

And, it must be said, not very well. The base color is some kind of metal flake enamel in a color that is precisely that of the Oldsmobile Allero your great aunt bought in 2002. The blue details are sprayed overtop presumably with the aid of some kind of mask, but as you can see on the blade especially the factory, er... missed.

It's also all a façade anyway because it's only finished and fully detailed on one side. The reverse side of the handles are flat with none of the bass relief and no spraypaint job. Here you can see the commodity Phillips (or possibly knockoff JIS) screws holding it together. Don't cry that you've been misled -- You got exactly what was offered, since the product photos religiously depict the knife from only one side. Remember: 能骗就骗.

Mine also showed up slightly bent. It was worse right out of the package, to the extent that the inner face of one of the handles would rub on the blade. I suspect it got crushed in transit somehow, and since it's only made of potmetal in any case it's not especially rigid. No big deal, though. I just took it apart and bent it back before I took my pictures.

The blade has a hole in it and also a split, running all the way down to its tip, which puts one in mind of a fountain pen nib. This makes it look cool, though once again it's probably a good thing that this can't hold an edge. You could try dipping it in ink and writing with it, but I'll bet you that wouldn't work too well, either.

It's not tough to take apart, which is especially beneficial if you find yourself having to smash any of its parts back into being flat. Just to throw a pure hypothetical out there.

The "blade" itself is quite a detailed casting, and it is so on both sides unlike the handles. I have no doubt that the majority of the pennies that were spent on producing this were spent here. What I don't have any idea of is what the runes down the fuller are supposed to mean. Initially I thought they may have been an outright fabrication, or possibly lifted (or mutated) from some other script, but apparently they do indeed appear on the original digital blade if you peer closely enough. So there's dedication to detail. If you're the type of turbo-nerd who can read Genshin runes, do let us know.

As part of its no doubt ruthlessly cost-cut industrial design, the Tian Kon's pivots are cast into the back sides of the handles. There are no female screws at all, just these escutcheons which have a hole drilled and tapped into them. On the bright side that means there are no screw heads on the decorative side of the knife.

Conversely, though, this means that the pivot clearances are hilariously awful. There's probably a full millimeter of rattle in the pivots, and they are by necessity tapered. Otherwise the part wouldn't come out of its mould, but that probably doesn't help matters from a precision standpoint.

So don't expect any. The Wiggle Test with the handles in the closed position reveals the Tian Kon's continued proud tradition of cheating, looking better than it is at first blush only because the raised portions of the blade hit the inner surfaces of the handles down around the pivot area where it's tough to see and prevent the handles from wiggling further.

With the handles in the open position you can see just how dire matters really are. The Tian Kon wins the coveted Ching Chow award, being one of two (2) balisongs I now own that are so awful that you can cause the latch to miss the opposite handle entirely. It's fabulously awful.

In spite of all expectations, the Tian Kon is actually functional. For suitably small values of "functional," anyway. The pivots work, and you can swing the handles and blade around.

But because all of the contact surfaces are zinc-on-zinc, it squeaks incessantly while in operation. Because of this it is in at least one sense also now the loudest balisong I own. I'm not sure that's a compliment, exactly, but it is damned hilarious. It's also guaranteed to annoy the hell out of anyone else in the room with you.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is still probably cheaper in a real world sense than a round of gacha pulls and at the end of the day, probably leaves you holding exactly as much value.

That's got to count for something, but I'll be damned if I know what.

Two honklers, afloat.

I presume this is a female on the left and a male on the right, but it's hard to tell with Canada geese because they exhibit no notable sexual dimorphism except that the males are slightly larger, and some of the noises they make are different. These two were uncharacteristically silent. It must be a Bird Fact that they can tell each other apart somehow, though, otherwise they wouldn't be able keep making more geese.

This is the best out of the bunch of several that I took, and was a great example of why your camera's autofocus is oftentimes annoying. Because mine kept insisting that the leaves in the background were more interesting than the bird directly in the center of the shot. I eventually resorted to manually focusing using the inbuilt magnifier function which I remembered I'd bound to one of the random buttons on my R10's body several days prior.

The red tailed hawk; no points awarded for guessing why it's called that. I imagine this is the Eastern variety, based on my location. I do like the way the sunlight is shining through the feathers here.

I should have probably bumped the exposure compensation up a bit for this but I was taking pictures of ducks on the ground at the time and was not expecting this hawk to fly right overhead. I got what I got. Canon R10, ƒ/8, a mere 1/8000 sec, ISO 640. Believe it or not, not the entire length of the lens -- only 325mm.

Bird fact: The noise that eagles make in movies is usually actually the cry of the red tailed hawk. This hawk made exactly that noise, which is what prompted me to look up. Eagles (or at least bald eagles, if experience is any judge) can make a similar noise, but often they make a range of rather different noises that don't carry as well.

Bonus picture of a red tailed hawks red hawk tail:

The Eastern bluebird, doing what bluebirds do.

Bird fact: All those poets and other swains are only so enthralled by birdsong because they don't know what it actually means.

Shot on my Canon R10, ƒ/8, 1/320, ISO 640, 400mm.

Canon R10, ƒ/7.1, 1/4000, ISO 640. This is the widest field of view my 100-400mm lens can capture.

That's tree swallow to you and me.

I had a productive day today. Rather than spam the photography community with pictures of birds, I'll spam the bird community with pictures of birds instead. Canon R10, ƒ/8, 1/1000 sec, ISO 640, 400mm using the Bird Lens (or the Poor Man's Bird Lens, anyhow).

Swallows in general and the tree swallow in particular are easy to identify when they're flying because of their distinctive two-pronged forked tail and very pointy wingtips, which are visible when they are in a dive. You'll see them spiraling and swooping and juking around like mad in the air because they eat insects and snatch them right out of the air while they're on the wing. If you see one sitting around, like this one, their bellies are ridiculously white and easy to spot. You'll find these all over most of North America.

Vulpes vulpes fulva, or the American red fox to be specific, padding around in the forest and being all photogenic.

This one may have been after the ducks floating in the pond nearby but certainly in vain. The ducks were having absolutely none of it; they wouldn't even quit swimming away from me and my camera so there's no chance they didn't see Basil here coming from a mile off.

This is at absolute maximum 400mm zoom for me. Foxy might have been mostly interested in ducks, but he or possibly she was on to us certainly wasn't coming any closer despite having no qualms about crossing over the footpath in broad daylight. Canon R10, ƒ/8, 1/400, ISO 640, 400mm.

Bonus fox pictures:

I've seen things, I've seen them with my eyes. I've seen things, they're often in disguise. Like:

• Carrots
• Ninjas
• Cheese
• Mermaids
• Russians
• Slingshots
• Spinners
• Choppers
• Sine Waves
• Antiques
• Chinese Knockoffs
• Monsters
• Warlocks
• Chinese Knockoffs

I realize that lately I've let this column get a little too long winded and boring and, dare I say, practical. Sorry about that.

Let's get this crazy train back on the tracks.

This snaggletoothed monstrosity is the Model CH0107 Tanto Blade Tactical Folding Pocket Knife W/ Belt Clip, sold by -- and I promise I am not making this up -- "CozyLiving Furniture Store." It is yours for really not much money at all from China. They have this to say about it:

Made from 440 stainless steel with a black anodized finish, this Killer is a much needed companion on your next hunt. Sporting a partially serrated tanto style sawback blade and a thumb stud to assist with opening, the knife has an extremely strong reinforced point that is very good for piercing and stabbing. The handle is made of a heavy duty green ABS that is textured for a firm grip and has a lock back release on top. Included on the handle is a belt clip so you can take your Tanto Blade Killer Pocket Knife with you when you are on the go.

"Killer?"

Oh, yeah. It says this on the other side of the blade:

I, meanwhile, have this to say about it: You think your knife is serrated? Your knife isn't even barely serrated. My knife is serrated.

This knife is so serrated, it passes beyond mere serration and emerges out the other side, into the brightly sunlit valley of pure cold insanity where the air is clear and still, so silent there isn't even birdsong.

The CH0107 is ostensibly a fairly normal lockback folder with a single piece injection molded plastic handle, and just so happens to have a blade profile with a rather... particular... aesthetic design. Perfectly normal in a maintaining-unwavering-eye-contact-through-its-greasy-forelocks sort of way, anyhow.

It is also very, extremely, flagrantly, unquestionably, eye-searingly green.

And covered in Chinese axle grease, so much so that every time you open and close it more gets on the blade and you have to vainly try to wipe it off before taking another picture.

It's 7-13/16" long when open and 4-1/2" long with a 3-1/4" long tanto pointed blade that is, yes, serrated. And has a bunch of holes in, just because. The description also calls it "sawbacked" but this is not so, or at least not in the functional sense. While the spine of the blade does indeed have quite a mohawk on it, the points are not sharp enough to actually be useful for anything. Which is really just as well, because otherwise the main thing they'd be useful for is shredding your pants fabric if you actually carried this anyplace. If anybody cares it's 84.8 grams or 2.99 ounces. The blade alleges to be made of 440 series stainless, but which flavor is left unspecified.

Its entire construction is also a retro throwback, in case you needed a nostalgia trip back to those good old days of low-budget Chinese cutlery, only without the good and just rather long on the old. Revel in how good we have it with cheap knives now, because trust me -- it used to be a whole lot worse. There was a time when they were all like this.

Like how? Well, for one it's not screwed but rather riveted together, which makes taking it apart completely impossible. As to be expected there's a large amount of wiggle in the blade when it's locked open, and thanks to this low tech construction strategy there's precisely fuck all you can do about it.

The action is otherwise begrudgingly serviceable and it pivots open without much fuss, although as a cheap lockback you have to fight the rather stiff lock spring the entire time. You're aided in this with a thumb stud, but curiously only on one side. Left handed users get to dodge a bullet, here.

You may have also spotted that it has a pocket clip.

It does, for sure, and this is the only thing that's actually screwed together on the entire knife. Even so it's noticeably wiggly, and no amount of messing with the tension on all three (!) of the wood screws chunked into the plastic through it has any effect on that. Otherwise it's reasonably serviceable and quite springy, although mounted a bit far from the tail of the knife.

It's also extremely dull.

I've opined before that I don't care much about the factory sharpness on a knife provided the final grind is reasonably even, because any owner worth their salt is going to have to sharpen the thing eventually and thus the degree of sharpness out of the box is really only a temporary concern to begin with. But this thing is in a special category all on its own, because from new it is outright blunt.

Here's what its point looks like. This isn't a case of damage from packaging or shipping. The grind doesn't even go all the way out to the tip.

The tanto point portion is quite literally butter knife grade. It's physically impossible to cut anything with it, because the factory didn't actually manage to grind it far enough to create an edge. Here's what that looks like:

Its entire length is flat-spotted. The left side and the right side, nary in the middle do they meet.

The rest of it is not much better, but the primary edge could at least charitably hack through something as high grade as cardboard if, and only if, you sawed at it diligently enough.

The serrations aren't left out of this, either. Although surprisingly, they're not chisel ground; the edge (such as it is) is double sided for its entire length. But the points are rounded off and while they come closer to reaching sharpness than the portion near the tip does, they still don't actually manage to actually achieve it.

From the tail you can see that this is a one piece injection molding. Producing these in bulk for the manufacturer has got to be nearly free.

I'm not providing the usual disassembly photo because this would require drilling out the pivots, and I'm not doing that for no other reason than I can't be bothered.

The Inevitable Conclusion

There's really not much to conclude, here. Never mind zombies, the CH0107 is barely capable of opening your mail.

A knife like this really only has two functions: Looking mean, and getting confiscated from teenagers by the cops for the same reason. While we're at it, I'm sure the marquee on the side will look great on you in court.

Oh, and it has a third function, too: Appearing here, giving us a sterling opportunity to speculate just what, exactly, its designers were smoking.

...Possibly due to being pissed off about being rained on.

This is the common Grackle, looking quite a bit less iridescent than they can do thanks to it being grey and wet. If you see a thing that looks like a crow but is smaller and gives off the distinct impression of giving you The Eyeball, that's one of these.

Canon R10, ƒ/14, 1/640, ISO-1600, 400mm. I stepped up the exposure compensation a bit but maybe could have done with a little more. Oh well.

Bonus picture of this guy reevaluating his life choices:

Just look at him face.

Canon R10, ƒ/14 (are we noticing a pattern?), 1/640, ISO-2500 because I forgot to unset it from auto, 400mm.

No bonus picture this time. Instead, a bonus video of this noisy little bugger:

(Link if it doesn't load in your client.)