Review: Smith&Wesson - Tanto Neck Knife

This pretty piece of steel was un cadeau for one of my partners, given by the main organiser of an event she was helping to run last week. She was good enough to loan it to me to play with for the blog. This is the Smith&Wesson - Tanto Neck Knife

As far as "thanks for helping out" gifts go, I must say, this is one of the prettier I've seen.

The skeltonised knine is full-tang constructed, with zytel scale sidings and a kydex sheath . The blade locks into the sheath with a friction clasp, and is both light at 100g all up, and dainty in the hand, at 18cm (7") over all, with an 8cm (3 1/8") blade.

Light and lively it suited the  spirit of the gift well, as a neck-knife to affix to the ID lanyards worn at organisers and officials this particular event, for safety needs as they might arise. 

The kydex sheath has two lanyard holes, for cord or chain to loop through, to wear in its "neck knife" configuration, as well as a drainage hole at the knife tip end. It also features a built in whistle, which I can tell you is VERY  shrill. It is placed such that you can use the whistle, AND draw the knife if that fails to have the desired effect. 

The blade is 2.5mm thick, and according to the internet has a Rockwell Hardness of57Hrc. That's pretty good for a 440 steel.

The blade itself is also skeltonised, with two cutouts, further reducing wight around your neck.

The thumb and index finger notches are aggressively crenelated grips, but not so much as to chew up finger and thumb. Without any guard, these crenelations act to lock your hand in tight and off the edge.

The edge is interesting as well, with a "tanto" tip, the main line of the blade is in face concave, with a subtle but significant bowing. This is pretty, but makes me wonder about keeping the blade sharp. I use  DMT diamond sharpening stones and I am unsure if i could get a good mating of stone to steel.

The factory may have had the same problem, as the blade ships only "supermarket-sharp", so I'm a little disappointed by this, especially on a chisel-ground blade. Hopefully I can do some good work with this, maybe a stropping will fix it.