Well, guys. I said I was gonna.

I do’ed it.

The Cold Steel AD-15 is a big fuck-off shiny knife that looks like it could skin a crocodile. It is available in a variety of guises, and I of course was contractually obligated to get the green one which looks like a crocodile, too.

The “AD” is referring to this knife’s designer, Andrew Demko. I am fairly certain, but not 100% positive, that the “AD-15” moniker is also a not-so-subtle reference to the AR-15. But I can’t prove it. And every time I mention the AR-15 on lemmy this weird high-pitched screech starts up, so we’ll say no more about it and move on.

The AD-15 is up my alley – of course – because it has a weird locking mechanism. It’s Andrew Demko’s “Scorpion Lock.”

It’s not entirely dissimilar to a lockback mechanism, but it’s exposed and and works by way of dropping a fat pin in the knife’s backspacer into a big notch on the heel of the blade. It’s visible above, and locks home like so:

It’s certainly novel. Cold Steel, meanwhile, have this to say about the AD-15:

The AD-15 might be the most comfortable, user friendly, sub 4 inch tactical folder we’ve ever made! Modeled after Andrew Demko’s patented original, it offers ambidextrous operation and opens and closes with one hand.

Uh. So, about that.

Let me start with the size, because I’m not entirely sure why anyone would call this knife “sub” anything. It’s fuckin’ massive. 8-1/2" long overall open, 5-1/8" closed, with a 3-5/8" drop pointed blade that’s a frankly ridiculous 0.145" thick and made of S35VN steel. But that’s only part of the story. It’s a full and complete 1-1/2" in breadth when it’s closed which I believe makes it the widest-when-closed folding knife I own or have ever owned. Or possibly ever will own.

It has a zooty aluminum backspacer/lock, of course, but it also has full steel liners and the entire knife weighs 182.2 grams or 6.43 ounces. It is a very, very beefy 0.652" thick not even including the clip.

So suffice to say it’s big. Discreet urban EDC carry: Completely off the table.

I’m not sure where “comfortable” and “user friendly” come into it, either. This is possibly the most difficult to open folding knife I’ve ever encountered.

That’s not because it’s tricky, mind you. The locking mechanism is deceptively simple and, dare I even suggest it, kind of elegant. But it necessitates the lock pin pressing against the heel of the blade with an absurd amount of spring force, all the time. Both the pin and the blade are polished smooth, but they still drag against each other throughout the entire opening process. And not only that, but you have to overcome the full sum total of the spring’s tension whenever you try to open the knife as the cammed ramp on the back of the blade pushes the pin and thus the backspacer bar thingamabob up and away.

Here’s the spring:

The net result is that an incredible shove against the thumb studs is required to even get the blade to begin to budge from its closed position, let alone fully rotate it out and open. Yes, you “can” open it with one hand – if you have hands like an orangutan, which luckily I do. If you don’t, well, tough. Most people will probably be forced to open it with two hands.

And closing it with one hand is right out. For anybody.

An ordinary lockback knife has either a hump on the spine or a cutout in the handles to provide you a spot to press, levering the other end of the lock bar out of its home and unlocking the blade. This doesn’t. There’s a knurled part of the backspacer/lock bar, but that spot absolutely is not for pressing. You’re welcome to try, but good luck with that. You have to hold the textured G-10 scales with one hand and manually grab the lock bar with your other hand to lift it up. It’s got grip ridges machined into it for this purpose.

You can almost kinda-sorta wedge the tips of your fingers in the gap between the scales and lock bar and try to finagle it out of its slot, but this is very fiddly and mildly painful, and both looks and feels ridiculous. So no, this knife essentially can’t be closed with one hand.

The AD-15’s clip is fairly traditional, and is drilled to match the lanyard hole on the tail end. It’s not deep carry, but that’s probably academic anyway. It is reversible. As it is, the clip is fairly nice if a bit tight, but drawing this knife from your pocket is also made much more difficult than it might appear at first glance because the scales are so damn grippy.

Normally that’s a good thing, right? When you’re wrestling alligators in the mud in the bayou, or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing with this knife, you don’t want it squirting out of your hand. But the grabby scale texture also rakes against your pocket hems and makes this knife singularly difficult to draw without giving yourself an atomic wedgie in the process. It just will not let the hell go from your trousers.

We’ve methodically debunked pretty much every claim in Cold Steel’s blurb by now. So… What’s it actually good for?

Not self defense, that’s for damn sure. If you plan to be accosted by ruffians, you’d better make an appointment with them first so you can spend the requisite half hour getting your knife out and opening it in advance. You could probably split coconuts with it if you wanted to, though. Or maybe cut down a tree. It is monstrously stout and I have no doubt the lock is fantastically strong. The S35VN steel is a very tough alloy and, combined with the absurd blade thickness, should be able to withstand careless use easily.

Overall I like the shape of the AD-15 and once it’s actually open it feels great and very confidence inspiring in the hand. The blade is machined well and is a very neutral utilitarian shape that presents a wide belly for cutting tasks as well as a stout and close to centered point for stabbing. To assist in either of the above, your grip on the lock bar serves to clamp the blade even more firmly into the locked position so you can be pretty sure it’s not ever going to fold up on you.

It has the aforementioned grippy scales, plus extremely chunky jimping on the back of the blade as well as the tail. You’re probably not dropping it.

The blade is just about mirror polished and looks quite nice, too. Well, it will until you actually start using it for abusive outdoor tasks, anyway. It picks up fingerprints like a sonofabitch and I suspect scuffs and scratches will also be highly visible. That may eventually harsh your vibe.

Surprisingly for such a chunky and humongous knife, the AD-15 is actually only held together with two screws that are very easy to remove. It has one pivot screw in the front and another one just like it holding it together at the tail, around which the lock bar pivots. The two screws are also identical – totally interchangeable.

Inside is the aforementioned spring, and the hollow pin that serves as its endstop is also the lanyard hole. The design is simple, and just tarnished slightly by how godawful difficult it is to use.

The size comparison speaks for itself, really. It’s a big boy, no doubt about it.

The Inevitable Conclusion

While fiddling with this knife I tried to think of various ways in which it could be improved in the action department. I did try my hand at polishing the ramp on the back of the blade and it improved matters slightly, enough to make the thing at least possible to use, but still not pleasant. I thought about other hypothetical mechanical changes like a lighter spring, or adding a hump to the backspacer, or relocating the pivot point, and ultimately I decided the hell with it: The best way to improve this knife would be to keep it shaped just like it is, but make it a fixed blade.

And really, that’s what the AD-15 is. It’s a fixed blade masquerading as a folder. It’d be better if it dropped the act.

That kind of thing has been tried many times before and honestly it never quite seems to work. You can tilt the scale one way or the other, and make no mistake that the AD-15 tilts it pretty damn far, but making a fixed blade fold or a folder as strong a fixed blade always seems to require making sacrifices that wind up defeating the purpose.

And that’s a crying shame, because I really want to like the AD-15. In some senses, I do. It’s just too bad it’s impossible to bloody use.

Maybe I’ll just make a Kydex sheath for it and call it a day.