eller

Today's "shitty knife" is one I bought a long time ago but never posted about it because I wasn't entirely sure whether I should call it a shitty knife or not. It's one of those extremely rare cases where it's actually quite well made, with only very minor production flaws, and the whole shittiness is in the design. It's also a cross-cultural clusterfuck. (Let's not even think about concepts like "cultural appropriation"; it will only give you headaches.)

So, uh, what do we have here? It's a knife that's made in Ukraine (it took a few months to reach me, but I'm not going to blame the seller for that, at least; blame the inconvenient war) and was sold as a "small Yakut knife", though that's clearly not quite what it is. I'd describe it as "crossover knife with Yakutian-type blade design but puukko proportions, made by someone who culturally understands neither puukkot nor Yakut knives" - and if that sounds like a phenomenally bad idea... that's because it is.

( Full review and pictures behind the cut. )

When do you need this knife-shaped object? Ah, yes. Imagine you're stuck somewhere in northern Siberia, and the mango you brought for lunch is (predictably) frozen solid, but you need to peel it anyway. (Who doesn't know this unfortunate situation...) You'll be very grateful for this amazing tool!

tl;dr: This is amazing craft, but, at the same time, so badly designed it's really fucking useless.