It's the hip new show where I buy every knife again, but worse. So cerebral, because i r smert!

I've got a bit of a history with these two. Well, we have a history with the CRKT Provoke Zap, in any case. That's because it's the very second weird knife I ever posted here. That was two years, one month, and seven days ago. I know this because Lemmy tells me so.

The good times, don't they just roll.

All of that was back when I was just taking happy snaps of stuff at my desk on my mousepad. That didn't last long, but at least the upshot is that I didn't have to creatively name the folder for all the photography for this one, since I didn't bother to save the originals. Swings and roundabouts, and little silver linings.

The Provoke is a Joe Caswell design and not the H. R. Giger nightmare you may have expected at first glance. It and its inevitable myriad knockoffs are mostly folding karambits, although there's now an "EDC" version with a more normal blade on it. And of course how they fold is deeply weird, because I wouldn't have it any other way. CRKT and indeed probably Mr. Caswell himself describe the Provoke as having a "Kinematic(R) morphing" action, and the long and short of it is that the blade doesn't pivot on an axis, per se, but rather slews up, forward, then down on a pair of swinging arms.

Like this.

They bill it as staying "neatly tucked away in transit and comes to life when there’s trouble afoot." As a karambit the blade is distinctly hawkbilled and you're presumably meant to hold it in a reverse grip like this. It's a Special Purpose Operator's Tactical Device, and therefore more or less designed with doing unto fools in mind, thus probably not the best choice in the world for a general purpose utility knife. This particular Grivory/FRN version is the budget model so it's the cheapest. Apparently its color is literally named "Zap," or maybe the model itself is, depending on who you ask. The current aluminum bodied incarnations can get excitingly expensive these days, but I think I paid around $80 for this way back when. Obviously the neon yellow flavor is indeed the correct choice, as was rightly observed at the time, because no one can see this and later claim you were trying to sneak around with it.

But its clone and I also have quite a history, because I've tried and failed to order one of these three times. This time it finally took.

I actually tried to buy one of these from Wish many years ago, long before I ever got my genuine Zap, and it never arrived. I ordered it again and I got something else in its stead which wasn't even a knife, plus a refund. I tried again on Alibaba some years later and my order was inexplicably cancelled. And not one of those fun inexplicable cancellations where your thing shows up in the mail anyhow months later and for free. This was probably the universe giving me every chance there is to doge a bullet, but as usual I wouldn't listen.

So I gave up, held my nose, and ordered this one from Amazon since they seem to have finally turned up for sale there. It showed up in two days. Go figure.

This is the "Promithi Folding Morphing Knife, Retractable Pocket Outdoor Jungle Hunting Camping Survival Working Knife, EDC Multi-Function Tool, with Bottle Opener and Glass Breaker." Verily, it is possibly several of those things. What it's not, unlike our last outing, is an outright counterfeit of the Provoke.

This has actually been sloshing around my knife drawer for several months while I slept on writing this. The Provoke and its "Promithi" twin are satisfactorily mechanically absurd, but I'm sorry that I must report to you that the clone version is crap. One of these will only run you about $18 at the time of writing, but don't bother. I think one of the fancier combo meals from Taco Bell would be a better value, and would probably last you longer in the bargain. If you want one of these, there's no substitute. Dig deep in those couch cushions, muster the extra dough to buy the real thing, and that's our job done.

Except it isn't, because we still need to look at both of these. One of them in a manner quite askance. And the former of which because we've been handed a golden opportunity to do so again.

It's no wonder all of the marketing literature and website product shots invariably depict the Provoke in its open position. When it's folded it's just a hunchbacked little goblin, grinning at you licentiously. Your guess is as good as mine as to how you're supposed to measure it, but I peg it at about 2-5/8" wide when it's closed, which proportionally is a bit like having an entire flattened lemon in your pocket.

The hawkbill blade is about 3-7/8" long in total if you measure the entire slug of metal it's made out of, but once you lock it out the effective portion is only 2-11/16" and the sharpened part is 2-5/8" if you measure it all in a straight line. The Provoke Zap version has a fiber reinforced Nylon handle and the armature widgets are the same, but there are metal reinforcement plates hidden on the back sides here presumably to add rigidity and prevent the whole thing from being a wet noodle.

There's a small but noticeable amount of rattle present in the armatures when you have the blade only partially deployed, but somehow once it's locked out it's as resolute as Gibraltar. Don't ask me how; it just is.

How it locks is nearly as bizarre as how it opens. It's via this sliding thingy towards the rear, which clicks towards the spine of the handle and takes a rather heroic effort to get to move. It makes it near as I can figure impossible to close this with one hand, even though opening it is so easy.

Apparently this version is made of 4116 stainless like a kitchen knife or an old Swiss Army. The others are made of D2. I like D2 better, but I like the price of this one more.

Even though it's altogether too clever, I really like the Provoke's clip. Despite how it may appear there totally is one, which is flush fitting and concealed on the back of the handle. When you press the textured part of it down, the whole thing flexes and the tip pops up. The back of it is utterly flat and thus snag free, and the Provoke draws effortlessly off of pretty much any fabric as far as I can tell, with your index finger falling naturally into the thumb hole.

So you actually could EDC the Provoke and occasionally I do, just for the perversity of it all. Never mind the slick draw and satisfying deployment, because all that winds up with you holding a reverse-grip karambit in a posture that leaves you no choice but to attempt to open boxes and mail by lashing out at them like an emu kicking a dingo in the face. To soften it up first, you should probably screech like a casuariiform at it, too.

Nobody's going to say anything about it. You're the one holding the knife.

Anyway, some part of the Provoke's lock also serves as a strong and clicky detent that keeps the blade from worming itself open in your pocket.

Let's start right there with the Promithi clone, because it hasn't got one of those. At all. Just put your finger in and your elbow out, and it falls right open if you wave it all about.

This is despite the lockup action being what amounts to an ordinary liner lock, with what appears to be a detent ball in the end and everything. Just, forget about it. It doesn't work. So never mind the clone's horrid and completely pedestrian clip, if you carry this and do anything other than sit stock still at a desk you'd better also make sure you're wearing your chainmail underpants.

The Promithi's clip is neither flush fitting nor clever, nor is it positioned very well. It leaves a lot of the knife including the entirety of the finger ring sticking up above the hem of your trousers, whereas the real deal discreetly rides almost completely concealed. True to its specs, though, there is indeed what's ostensibly a glass breaker point down at the end which also doubles as a lanyard hole.

I have no idea what would happen if you actually tried to use it as such. It's just possible that the glass may win.

There's a bottle opener hook down below the nose, too. That bullet point wasn't a lie, either.

Unlike the genuine article, the Promithi version is all steel. The handle, the armatures, and presumably even the blade. All of it. So it's heavier than the real thing: 152.8 grams (5.4 ounces) vs. 135.8 (4.79 ounces). It feels denser because it's quite a bit thinner, but otherwise the proportions are all pretty similar.

What the blade is made out of is anyone's guess. "Stainless steel," it says, and is otherwise silent on the matter. The online listing is just as nonsensical as ever, listing the blade profile as "clip point," the height as "0.01 inches," and claiming that it's "reusable." Okay, the last one I may begrudgingly grant them. But only just.

It has this gearsy vibe going on (no, definitely not her) which does it no good at all, sonny me lad, because it's all fake. The gear "teeth," such as they are, are simply inexpertly carved into the surfaces of the armature and don't turn or engage with anything.

It gets worse.

Once you add up the lash in all four pivots, there's more than enough rattle to allow the edge of the blade to clash with the handle if you're not careful when you're closing it. It's actually more easy to do so than not, since the liner lock is constantly pressing up on the rear arm all the time and making the blade want to obstinately cant in that direction.

There's a frankly disgusting amount of wiggle allowed in the blade. Hey, maybe that's another feature! It's not just a knife and a glass breaker and a bottle opener, but in a pinch you can use it as a pair of castanets.

Nevertheless, the action does work in a broad sort of sense.

If you were wishing this were some appreciable fraction of the quality of a real Provoke just to try it out, though, forget it.

As you've already guessed what with it being a cheap knife with a single sided handle and all, the Promithi's edge is chisel ground. It's cheap, it's nasty, it's 'orrible. It's likely to be dulled significantly towards its root as well, thanks to being routinely bashed into its own handle. It's not even remotely straight. Just look at it.

The real Provoke's blade actually isn't chisel ground, surprisingly enough, as evidenced with this back side shot showing off the rest of the markings. It, too, isn't really genuinely sharp from right out of the box but it's at least able to fairly reliably chop a Post-it in half whereas you'd have better luck whacking your stationery with a spoon than trying it with the Promithi.

One other point of order I should mention is that the genuine Provoke can't do the thing where its blade hits the handle. There's a small but unerringly enforced gap between the blade and the inner surface of the handle at all times, and no amount of twisting or cajoling seems to be able to cause the blade to crash into it regardless. Even if it did the blade is steel and the handle is just fancy plastic, so it's unlikely you'd deal any damage to the edge.

Let's rip this stupid clone to shreds the rest of the way.

Getting the Promithi apart wouldn't be an especially onerous task except the screw heads are All Weird (a technical knifemaking term) with some of them coming filled with paint, some accepting a T9 Torx bit, and others a T8 with no apparent rhyme or reason to it.

Inside are bar none the cheapest, flimsiest, most bullshit plastic pivot washers I've seen in my life. I'll bet they'd wish you think they're Teflon, but I'm positive they're not.

The Promithi's thickness is created by building it out of three distinct slabs of steel, shown here in their full and unctuous as-delivered glory with the gaps in between soaked in some manner of slimy lubricant. I threw caution to the wind and cleaned this off prior to the rest of the photography and didn't replace it with anything. Perhaps my Promithi will rust from within over the coming years as a result, but just see if I care if it does.

One of 'em has got the lock finger thingy on it. Calling it a "liner" seems wrong, since all that does is discredit the rest of the liner lockers in the world by association.

Here's the sum total of the mechanical components. Note the detent ball on the end of the lock finger which accomplishes nothing, and the fake gears engraved into the ends of the armatures.

The full kit and caboodle. Getting the Promithi apart in its entirety revealed at least one cause of its wonkiness: The lower pivot hole in the rear armature is drilled crooked, and causes the screw to kick off at an angle when it's installed. The pivots are all plain Chicago screws with those plastic washers as the only bearing surfaces. The ones in the upper pivots (in the blade, rather than the handle) are thinner than the other two for some reason.

The screws have no anti-rotation flats (although I'm not quite sure how it would work if they did) and the upper and lower ones are different lengths from each other.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Over the years there have been myriad attempts at compacting a karambit into some manner of folder, some more clever than others. The CRKT Provoke is one of the clever options.

Promithi... Isn't. For once I'm at a loss for words. Me, of all people. I know, right?

It's awful. All the nicks and gouges you see in it are exactly as it was delivered to me. I certainly didn't do anything with this knife to get it all banged up like this and it's uncertain if anyone else in history actually has. It takes everything pleasant about the Provoke and twists it until it's incomprehensible. The action is terrible. It's self-dulling. It's probably more dangerous to carry than it is to use.

I think the most interesting thing I can come up with to say about it at this point is that it won't sit flat on its rear surface, so in several of these photos I propped it up using this tiny knife as a kickstand, and even it is infinitely more competent and certainly more usable than the Promithi clone. So to this I award zero points, condemn it to straight back to whatever hell from whence it came, and may the gods have mercy on the soul of each and every asshole who assisted in its manufacture.

If you want a Provoke, buy a Provoke. There's no cheating it this time.