Chicago Knife Works – The ExhaustNotes Blog

By Joe Berk

I haven’t done a knife story in awhile, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been buying. Some of these online knife stores’ websites are addictive, and the Chicago Knife Works site certainly falls into that category. It’s fun just perusing their offerings. Sometimes, I’ll see something that piques my interest and then I’ll search on a feature that a particular knife has. That occurred recently when I saw a folder I likes with bone handles (or scales, to use knife aficionado terminology).

Bone as a scale material is intriguing to me, partly because I like the way it looks, partly because it looks like ivory, and partly because of a recent visit to the fabled Colt Custom Shop in West Hartford, Connecticut. When I saw an artist crafting custom grips on a Colt 1873 Single Action Army, I asked about the material (knowing that ivory was no longer available). The answer, as good friend and Colt factory guide Tim told me, was bone. Giraffe bone, to be specific. I would never have imagined.

Anyway, to get back to the main attraction, I saw a Marbles folding knife with white bone scales on the Chicago Knife Works site and I liked it, so I searched on all Marbles folders with bone scales. What the site’s search returned was intriguing.

I liked every one of the knives I saw, and Chicago Knife Works‘ prices are so reasonable I pulled the trigger on all of them. Cheap fun, and they looked good on the Chicago Knife Works site. They arrived a few days later (all the above, with shipping, was only about $50), and I can tell you they look even better in person.

All the knives are appealing, and I like the white bone appearance. The canoe style is one I’ve written about before, and in my opinion, it is about the perfect-sized pocketknife for pocket carry. It has two blades and both are razor sharp. The work knife (also known as a sodbuster) is a single-bladed knife and its name comes from the fact that it is designed to be used by a working man (like a farmer). The trapper knife (as you might have guessed) is the design preferred by trappers. It has two blades: One with a clip point and the other with a spey blade (we’ve mentioned those before; my Case Stockman knife also has a spey blade). And finally, there’s that gorgeous two-bladed sunfish knife, which is a big knife. It gets its name from its sunfish-like shape.

The Sunfish is a physically big knife, as the following photos show:

I can’t say which of the above knives I like the best, so I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that I like them all. So much so, I continued the quest for knives with white bone scales.

Most recently, I purchased a large folder (the Rough Ryder Deer Slayer) from another knife supplier only because Chicago Knife Works didn’t have it in stock. I’ve written about it before.

I like the look and size of the Deer Slayer so much that I started poking around to see if that knife was available with white bone scales. It was. The manufacturer this time is Hen and Rooster, and I was able to order it from Chicago Knife Works.

I guess I should say the importer, not the manufacturer, as I suspect the same manufacturer makes knives for several importers with slight differences to meet the importers’ marketing strategies. I don’t have the Hen and Rooster knife yet, but when I get it, I’ll post a few photos in a future blog.

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By Joe Berk

Sue and I were in Reno last month to visit the National Automobile Museum. Like most places, Reno isn’t what it used to be. The downtown area is a bit sketchy and I didn’t feel comfortable at all walking around. That said, we had a good time at the Auto Museum and a good time in Reno. As is my habit, I checked online to see if there were any interesting gunstores in town, and the online info for one in particular caught my eye: Willey Brothers Firearms. Unlike the others, Willey’s ad emphasized the kind of guns I’m interested in (blue steel and walnut, not the black plastic tactical junk one mostly sees in gun stores these days). Willey Brothers lived up to its ad: The firearms were interesting, including the used guns.

The old Imperial Kamp King knife I bought at a gun store in Reno, Nevada. It has a combination bottle opener/scredriver, an awl for punching holes and undoing knots, a can opener, and a main blade. This one is about 50 years old, and it is in great shape.

Nothing in the gun offerings was interesting enough, though, to make me want to go to the bother of shipping it to the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia, but I noticed the store had a few used pocketknives for sale. One in particular caught my eye: An old Imperial Kamp King that was in nice shape. I was interested in it because it has the same four-bladed configuration as my old Cub Scout knife. At $25, it looked like a good deal, so I paid the asking price and Sue and I were on our way. When I got home, I cleaned it up with a bit of Kroil penetrating oil and 0000 steel wool. I think it was made in the 1950s or 1960s (that’s a guess on my part, although if I studied the video included below, I’d probably be able to narrow it down more).

The new Rough Rider Kamp King, with the same blades as the original. This is a very high-quality knife, and I can tell you that the main blade is razor sharp (don’t ask me how I found out).

That got me thinking. There’s a company called Rough Rider (not the condom company) that makes a current version of the Kamp King. I recalled seeing that knife when scrolling through the offerings from Chicago Knife Works (which is actually located in Marion, Virginia). The CKW Kamp King was only $16.94, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to have it (admittedly, the thought process did not take long). Move to cart, buy now, and in went my credit card number.

Chicago Knife Works has great prices and terrible shipping. It takes 10 to 12 days from the time I’ve placed orders with these guys until whatever I order actually ships. I don’t mean until it gets here; I mean until it actually leaves the CKW facility. I don’t know if that’s because CKW is just pokey, or if they don’t keep much in stock and they order their knives from China when I place an order. I suspect it’s the former, as every time it’s taken an inordinate amount of time to ship and I send them an email to complain (I did that every time I’ve ordered anything from them). Then I’ll get an automated response from Chicago Knife Works telling me they’re sorry (which I already knew) and they have so many orders they just can’t get to them all in a reasonable amount of time. And every time when I wrote to complain about taking to long to ship, well, CKW ships my order the very next day. I should get smart and complain about the shipping delay as soon as I place an order, I guess.

My new Rough Rider Kamp King arrived a few days ago and I’m impressed. It is a really nice knife that dimensionally is pretty true to the older ones that were manufactured in America. The quality on the new Chinese Kamp King is really good. The fit and finish are superb, and it just doesn’t look or feel like a cheap knife.

The old Kamp King (top), and the newer one (bottom). The dimensions are the same. For $16.94, the new one is a great buy.

The other reason I ordered the new Kamp King is that I wanted to compare it to a Marbles Scout King I had purchased from Chicago Knife Works about six months ago. I thought it might be the same knife as the Marbles, but it is not. The Marbles knife is a bigger, heftier version of the Kamp King. I suspect they are both manufactured by the same knife company in China, but I don’t know this. The appearance of the two new knives (even though the dimensions and the scales are different) is so similar that I’d bet both come out of the same factory somewhere in the Peoples’ Republic (and I’m talking about China now, not Kalifornia).

The original Kamp King was manufactured by Imperial in Providence, Rhode Island. The new one is produced somewhere in China; most likely in Yangjiang City, China’s knife-making capital.

I Googled the topic and although I couldn’t find the specific Chinese company that makes these knives, I learned that China’s primary knife-manufacturing region is Yangjiang City in Guangdong Province. It’s been China’s knife-making center for more than 1,400 years and is home to several knife companies. I’d sure like to visit that area someday. I’ve been to Providence, Rhode Island (where the original Kamp Kings were manufactured). A visit to Yangjiang City would be interesting. I’d probably come home with a suitcase full of interesting and inexpensive knives.