Most of the knives have a clear purpose: The portly but well appointed Swiss Champ, too robust for pants pockets, is my every-day utility desk knife, although I note with dismay that its emergency ballpoint pen has run dry. I take the Minichamp to a local lunch spot and use it to open otherwise impenetrable hot sauce packets. The Hobo Trapper, which splits into a fork and knife, is useful for at-work mealtimes. The Spydercos look badass.
But I’m still struggling to come up with uses for the last two, the skeletonized, no-handle, no-liner, satin finished K.I.S.S. and Les 22 Grammes. The K.I.S.S. knife is mine; I got it years ago, and I brought it in to compare it to the 22 Grammes, which is a new prizewinner from a European outdoor show earlier this year, and is the least useful of this sample.
moreIt’s three very thin pieces of steel: A skeletonized handle, a blade and a pocket clip, attached at the hinge with a single bolt that penetrates all three; a separate screw secures the clip to the handle. The handle, which tapers from a maximum breadth of about 1.8 cm to about .5 cm, according to my plastic Missile Defense Agency ruler, looks like it belongs to a knife whose real handle fell off. It also violates what I think should be a golden rule of knife design — the handle is only about 2 mm longer than the blade, which, on top of the thin skeleton design, makes this knife very difficult to control. A knife should always give your hand plenty of purchase, unless, like the Minichamp, it’s designed for use with your fingertips.
Les 22 Grammes arrived with a borderline dull blade and struggled to open envelopes or do other detailed, white-collar indoor work — and do not even bother to take this knife outdoors. Unlike the K.S.S.S., which has a thumb stud to help open it and enough handle to make you feel you can use it safely, with Les Grammes you always have to watch that your finger doesn’t slip above the non-existent choil onto the cutting edge. The K.I.S.S. also has a much more solid lock, and although I’m not crazy about its tanto-style blade pattern, I trust it more with cutting jobs than the 22 Grammes, which feels like it could become a hand surgeon’s payday.
The knife’s pocket clip is so small and thin it’s very difficult to use; when I’ve carried it, I’ve just slipped it into a pocket. That doesn’t mean the Les 22 Grammes is good as what we used to call “a gentleman’s knife,” though; it’s much too Spartan — I’d rather carry one of my bone-handle Case folders or my rosewood Buck lock-back, for that touch of sophistication.
Balade’s purposes with “Les 22 Grammes” seems to have been to make a skeletonized design even slimmer than the K.I.S.S. — at that, it’s a success. It also proves that it’s possible to make a knife so light and so thin it’s not worth carrying. The $30 you’d spend on “Les 22 Grammes” can get you much more in the camping isle at Target, where you can pick up any number of slightly heavier, slightly bigger Swiss Army Knives with much more usefulness.
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