Here’s another one of those knife-esqe, but not-a-knife objects.

This is the Artisan Cutlery Kinetic Tool, and it’s a balisong trainer sporting a bottle opener instead of an edge, along the lines of the various BBarfly models and Squid Industries Mako. So it’s perfect for safely practicing balisong flip tricks and similar, while still providing a modicum of functionality over a normal trainer knife.

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This is the Artisan Cutlery Kinetic Tool, and it’s a world-legal “switchblade” because, as you can see, it’s not actually a blade. Instead, it’s got an unsharpened bottle opener that provides a modicum of functionality while not really being a knife. Therefore, despite its automatic opening action it ought to remain legal just about –

…?

Hang on just a damn minute.

There’s some kind of Mandela effect shit going on, here. Is the Kinetic Tool a balisong knife or is it a switchblade?

Well, it’s both. And it’s neither.

You see, down at the tail end it has a mildly unusual but otherwise mechanically familiar balisong T latch. It hooks over the spacer pin on that end of the knife rather than the typical method of engaging with either of the handles, but otherwise works as you’d expect and you can flick it undone easily enough to find that the Kinetic Tool functions as a serviceable, if a bit heavy, unsharpened balisong trainer knife.

And on the other end is a conspicuous shiny button that, when pressed, sends the unsharpened “blade” rocketing out exactly as you’d expect from a side opening automatic.

This is, needless to say, mechanically bizarre. The question of “why,” of course, is a stupid one. If we sat around here asking why all day we’d never get anything done.

But either way, you can’t exactly call it a knife.

Artisan actually make a small range of these things in a few different variants, including one under their cheaper CJRB brand. Various handle and tool blade styles are available, but this is the original one with the rearward mounted bottle opener, slotted screwdriver tip nose, and the typical perfunctory but otherwise useless hex nut “wrench” cutouts in the middle. It comes in a few versions wherein the G-10 scales are swapped for different colors but this olive drab green one is as usual the superior choice.

So the Kinetic Tool’s headline feature is that is does indeed function as both a balisong and an automatic, all in the same package. And it works. Although this involves some compromises and inherently engenders some weirdness.

I mean, beyond the obvious one in just how strange the idea is on its face.

For a start, as a knife with two opening mechanisms it thusly has two open states. And then it follows that it has two closed states as well, of course. If you compare the image above you’ll see the handles are in a different position than in the headline photo at the beginning of this post, despite the tool self-evidently being open in both pictures. You’ll wind up with the handles reversed relative to each other if you open it in balisong mode rather than in switchblade mode. You can latch it open or shut in either position.

Both mechanisms are also always in play, so to speak. So there’s nothing stopping you from opening the tool as a switchblade, and then closing it as a balisong. Or the opposite of opening it as a balisong, and then pressing the switchblade button afterwards. And then…

…What happens is this.

Yes, the Kinetic Tool can switchblade itself closed if you already have it open. Only once, of course, until you manually reload it against its spring – Artisan unfortunately haven’t figured out how to violate the laws of thermodynamics. But in light of that, this may have something to do with why it isn’t sharpened. By default, what it would whack you with in this case would be the “spine” of the blade anyway, but being able to snap the thing shut on your own fingers accidentally is still a bit disconcerting.

But this means you can combine either opening or closing method as you see fit. Another wrinkle caused by this is that when you open it normally in balisong mode, the blade is “backwards”, so to speak, and presents you with the edge containing the bottle opener against the safe handle and not the straight spine. That’s because it opens in the expected orientation from this position when you open it in switchblade mode, but since the pivot direction of either method is reversed from the other, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

The Kinetic Tool’s latch also doesn’t have any endstops.

In addition to adding another element of Fiddle Factor to the proceedings, it also means you can with some dexterity spin the latch around backwards and latch the tool together from the inside.

This has the amusing side effect of making the Kinetic Tool one of the few physical objects I can think of that’s capable of softlocking itself.

Really. Watch this.

Did you catch it? Here’s what you do: Open the Kinetic Tool in balisong mode, then flip the latch around to latch it from the inside. Then press the switchblade button to make it close itself.

Since you engaged the latch backwards it is not in the path of the blade’s closing travel. But you can’t undo the latch, because the tip of the blade is in the way, and the blade is already at the end of its travel. You can’t use the latch to push the blade out of the way, and you can’t use the blade to undo the latch. And you can’t undo the latch through the blade. And so on, and so forth; it’s a mechanical catch-22.

Thankfully this conundrum isn’t permanent, since you can use a suitable poking object to pivot the blade out and reset the switchblade mechanism, and then undo the latch. But it’d be great for one of those, “I’ll bet you a dollar you can’t open this knife in 30 seconds” sorts of bar bets.

What all of this adds up to is that the Kinetic Tool is a fantastic deskside fidget toy despite – or perhaps because of – all of these oddities. It’s just shame it isn’t actually useful for much else.

Other than its thin handle scales, it’s constructed entirely of steel of one kind or another. So for a balisong, it’s actually kind of heavy: 158.8 grams or 5.6 ounces. A lot of compromises had to be made with the pivots, essentially shrinking them down to dollhouse size, to accommodate also stuffing the entire switchblade mechanism in between them. Thus the pivot feel is serviceable but not great, and then it also likes to hook your finger with the bottle opener notch while you’re manipulating it which is obviously suboptimal. Relocating the bottle opener to the tip would have solved this at the expense of making it much harder to use to actually open bottles. Pick your battles, I guess.

It’s not terribly useful as any other tool, either. The aforementioned bottle opener will probably be the most often used feature for most people. For instance, I don’t think anyone in the history of mankind has actually undone a bolt in such a manner that resulted in meaningful work being done with one of those stupid stairstepped hex notch thingies. This despite their popularity in showing up on those dumb wallet cards and oodles of other gifts-for-dad sort of tripe, seemingly just so another bullet point could be put on the package. I guess you could use the screwdriver tip as advertised, although only on rather large slotted screws, and only those that are not down any kind of blind hole. Artisan claim the tip can be also used as a prybar, but do so at your own peril due to how thin the pivots are. I think putting any real amount of torsion on the mechanism would probably tear the tips right off of the handles. There’s a slot in the blade, too, but I have no idea what that’s for. You can fit a piece of 1" webbing through it, but towards what end I can’t fathom.

Oh, and in deference to tradition it has the totally expected but largely useless ruler markings along the back edge. There are no numbers but the little tick marks are indeed fractional inches: Halves, quarters, and eighths.

The front shows Artisan’s logo, and the reverse has the model number of the variant in question as well as Artisan’s “patent pending.” Nowhere is it mentioned where it’s made; not on the article itself or in the blurb. If I had to guess, I’d say China or Taiwain. And nor is the blade steel specified on the tool itself, but Artisan’s web page claims it is made of 8Cr13MoV which might actually be useful to know if it had, you know, an edge.

Inherent dangers aside, it’d probably be slightly more useful if it did. But then it’d surely be double illegal in most locales, so the fidget toy version is what we got.

Actually, they did once make a sharpened version – sort of. Model 1823PO is a similar scheme to this, but it included the ability to insert a standard utility knife blade. (That seems kind of familiar, come to think of it.) It’s now discontinued, though, and jury’s out on whether or not that was due to hordes of owners complaining about shaving their knuckles off with it. Either way you can’t buy it anymore and I’ve never been able to lay my hands on one.

Oh well.

Artisan call the flipping action “silky smooth,” which is a bit optimistic. The Kinetic Tool’s balisong pivots are, as mentioned, tiny. They do ride of brass washers but they’re not especially refined, and leave a fair amount of slop in the mechanism as pictured here. They don’t feel particularly robust.

You can see the washers plainly by looking at it down the edge:

It does spin freely enough but once again, just like the Mantis knife we looked at last week, it suffers from the problem of the “blade” being heavier than either of the handles individually which necessitates the flipping action to be a bit slow.

You can see the teeny tiny pivots and their attendant washers here. I did not bother to take the switchblade mechanism apart because I know how annoying it’ll be to put back together. I know what we’d see in there anyway: A torsion spring, a hole for it in the heel of the blade, and a machined mushroom shaped lock button. I’d doubt there are too many other surprises.

One unusual point of note is that the Kinetic Tool’s G-10 scales are screwed to the liners from the inside. I’m not sure why, though, because if the intent was to not have exposed screw heads there are still the four screws at the tail end that go through and hold the spacers on, which are visible right there and bold as brass on the scales at the tail end of the knife.

I guess one other oddity is that the two pivots for the balisong handles are actually constructed slightly differently, and use different screws from each other. That’s because one of them also serves as the endstop for the blade’s travel in switchblade mode, whereas the blade has to be able to pass through the other. So one pivot is a full length threaded barrel with a screw in each end, and the other is comprised of two escutcheons machined into the puck around the switchblade mechanism with a gap in between. None of the barrels or spacers have anti-rotation mechanisms on them so to fully undo everything you’ll have to grab them with pliers or something.

Its forward kicker pins are permanently machined in place into that same puck around the switchblade mechanism. A raised boss around the button acts as one massive rear kicker pin, which is kind of clever.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The Kinetic Tool certainly does one thing it sets out to do, which is to be a really strange Knifelike Object with two fully functional opening mechanisms all in the same package. Obviously I think the “tool” aspect of it is highly dubious and I think it’d have been better off as an actual knife.

Its design results in some mechanical oddities that are thus far exclusive to Artisan’s/CJRB’s range, so if you want something like that just so you can say you have it, it’s in a field with no competitors other than itself and its siblings. If I were you I might try the cheaper CJRB version, since it’s bound to be no more or less useful but has the same mechanism, is sure to retain all of the same quirks, but costs half as much.

And then, there probably aren’t many fidget toys in the world with the possibility of leaving your onlookers wondering if they walked away in the same timeline they arrived in. Surely that thing you’re playing with was a butterfly knife just a minute ago.

…Wasn’t it?