Another night, as I was browsing the net to find more information for this site, I fall upon a web site, where I first saw a knife which totally departed from my until-that-time likings.

That was Greg Lightfoot 458 Magnum Millenium Tanto folder, which effectively became a dream, the moment I laid my eyes on it. The knife had a 3.25" hollow ground, drop point blade 5/32" thick, made of satin finished BG-42 steel. The handles were carbon fiber, while both the bolsters and the two liners are made of blasted titanium. As an added bonus, it has a pocket clip, which allow tip-up carrying, when closed. Total weight 113 gr.

If you are so inclined, Greg is also making this knife, with a tanto blade. However, I think that this knife looks best with the drop-point one. I do not know why, maybe it is the shape of the blade, the way the wide blade blends into the straight-shaped handles, or maybe the simplicity of the design, the uniform thickness of the knife, from the tip to the rear end. Whatever it is, I just love this knife, and I want one badly.

One question I have here: If you compare the model that Greg Lightfoot calls "458 Magnum Tanto" and the model that he calls "458 Magnum", you will notice that ... the one called Tanto has a blade which looks like a drop-point, while the plain one has a ... Tanto blade. Why? I do not know. Maybe because the knife on the last link above, has an "Americanized" tanto blade, while the one on the left is the real thing?

Well, as I said, it was an instant love affair, so I had to have this knife. I contacted Greg Lightfoot for information, and the lead time was five (5) months. I just could not wait that long to have my baby. Thanks to Internet search engines, I located one such knife at True North Knives.

I immediately contacted them to order the knife. The owner and president of that firm, Neil Ostroff, was getting ready to attend a knife show, so after a brief exchange of e-mails, he agreed to hold the knife for me, for a few days, until payment was arranged. To his credit, Neil didn't ask for any downpayment. When Neil returned from the show, everything was arranged, and the knife was purchased. Doing business with his company was (and still is) a pleasure. The knife arrived at my home in Greece, in less than a week.

I teared the packaging apart, to see my new folder. After removing all the layers of packing material in which the knife was packed, I found a black leather, zippered pouch.

I opened it and found my pride and joy! The first impression is that the knife is quite small, at less than 11 cm (4.5") total length when closed. With its stainless steel blade opened it is just 19.5 cm (7.5") long. Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying this is too small, it is only that lately I've been carrying around the Cold Steel Voyager 29LT, which is a huge folder, so the 458 Magnum looked too small next to it. See the picture below:

After the first impression, I did some close examination of the knife. The blade seems to be very strong and it is razor sharp. When the blade is switched open, there is absolutely no play, either along the axle or laterally. The titanium bolsters and the carbon fiber handles are smooth and the fit between them is impecable. All screws used are torx and I noticed that the one holding the ambi thumb stud is not fitting flash with the stud. It is protruding a tiny bit. I know this is nothing serious, but on a 575 US$ knife, you do expect perfection.

On the right hand side of the knife, there is a pocket clip, installed in the right way (i.e. allowing tip-up carrying, when the knife is closed), which is secured to the liner of the knife with three torx scews (very strong mounting). The clip could have been mounted a bit more towards the knife end, so that the folder becomes more concealable when inserted in one's pocket, but again, this is not a problem I cannot live with. Along the back of the knife, I noticed that there is no backspine, which makes cleaning the knife much easier, although aesthetically I would have prefered a closed back. Also, at the rear-most part of the blade, on its back, there is a serrated area for your thumb to index on. Finally, right below and to the left of the left side thumb stud, you can find the Lightfoot's logo, the well-known shark, etched in black, in strong contrast with the stainless color of the blade.

One thing I noticed, and which bothered me a bit, was that the linerlock blade, can be pushed a bit upwards. Altough it locks the blade fine, if you push it a little towards the back of the knife, it moves a little bit. This usually happens when you grab the knife upside-down, and your thumb presses on the linerlock. At that instance, you can feel (and hear) a click, as the lock moves towards the back of the knife. I would expect such an expensive custom knife not to have such problems.

A couple more things that I would like to have on such a handmade knife are (a) a small indent, cut on the left hand bolster, to facilitate hitting the liner, when one wants to close the blade, and two, the liner itself to have some sort of serrations, at that area, so that it is more easily pressed, when releasing the lock. Oh well, as I read in a forum, there is no such a thing as a perfect knife.

Well, these were my first impressions of this knife. I'll be adding more information about it, as I use it. From its looks alone, it seems as if I have found the perfect dress folder. Small enough to be unobtrusive, but strong enough for serious usage. I guess that another dream is no dream anymore.

Update (August 8th, 2002) :

After using and carrying the 458 for a few days, there are a couple of things I do not like about this knife.

First, whatever keeps the blade in its closed position, is not doing a great job. The blade is easily opened, too easily for my taste. If you rub the flat side of the closed knife on a piece of cloth, which is somewhat coarse, the blade opens up. On at least two occasions, the blade of the knife was open, as I was pulling it out of my pocket, pretending a fast draw. At the moment, I thought this was due to the ambi thumb stud, which is standard on this knife. I thought that the right thumb stud was getting entangled with the seam of my jean's pocket, so I made a note to convert the thumb stud to a left-side-only one. However, my feeling is that this behaviour is due to the above-mentioned problem. The blade is not held strongly in its closed position. Tightening the blade pivot screw a bit, will make it stay closed under these circumstances, but it will also make opening the blade more difficult, this is not what I want.

The second thing that bothers me, is maybe a personal preference, but I've heard other people who like this feature. What I am talking about, is that I like my folder's blade to snap to its closed position, by itself, as you are swinging it towards that position. In other words, I like the folder's blade to snap back to its closed position, during the last few degrees of its travel, by itself. Not on the 458 Magnum. The blade needs to be returned to its closed position by you.

Somehow, I think these two problems are inter-related, i.e. they are due to the same reason, poor pressure on the blade, as it approached its fully closed position. OK, there is no such a thing as a perfect knife (or anything else for that matter) but on an expensive custom knife, you would expect to find no such problems.

At least Mr. Greg Lightfoot is helpful enough to send me the required screw, to convert the ambi thumb stud to a left-side-only one. Let's hope that this will at least make drawing the knife a little safer (I love my fingers, so my idea of the knife coming out of my pocket with its blade semi-opened does not sound appealing to me). With the screws and thumb studs that Mr. Lightfoot provided, I was able to rectify the above-mentioned problem. See the pictures below:

I've been carrying the knife with this thumb stud for about one week now, and sure enough the blade stays closed when I pull it out of my pocket. Nothing to grab on the pocket seam. The stud I used still provides ample of pushing surface, to allow swift and quick opening of the blade. At least one of the problems was corrected.

As for the other problem, making the blade snap back to its closed position, this seems to be an unsolvable one. I contacted Mr. Lightfoot for assistance, and he suggested that I take the knife apart and bend the liner lock a bit more, to add a little more pressure to the ball detend. I am not sure how this will affect the locking of the knife though, so I am not very eager to do it.

Update (September 23th, 2002) :

Finally, this morning I took a deep breath and took the 458 apart, to try and rectify the linerlock moving issue, by benting the linerlock a bit more. To tell you the truth, it didn't had any effect, so I just reassembled the knife and left it as it is. Mr. Lightfoot suggested that I return the knife to him for repairs (which is commentable), but I decided against it. This knife has already cost me a fortune, I do not want to spend another 100+ US$ for Fedex etc. to ship it back and forth.

I am so disappointed with this knife. It was my first, real custom knife, and a really expensive one for that matter, and I was expecting it to be flawless. Instead, it proves to be no better than other knives I have. It gets an A+ in the looks and aesthetics department (it is indeed the most beautiful knife I have), but in the operational aspects it leaves something to be desired (at least for this user). I'll keep it in my collection, just because I do not want to spend more money on it, especially when the results cannot be guaranteed.

Update (March 15th, 2003) :

The last few days, I've been carrying the 458 as my daily knife. I didn't get to use it for any serious chores, opening some envelopes was the most I did with it, but I certainly played a lot with it. Today, I noticed one thing. As I grabbed the open knife, I put my thumb on the serrations found on the top of the rear part of the blade and pressed a bit. Horror of horrors, the blade gave up a bit. Upon closer examination, I found that the liner lock slipped a bit from its locked position. Thank God it does not slip enough to disengage the lock, but it does slip enough to allow the blade to move down a bit from its opened, lock position. If you look carefully at the spot where the lock touches the rear of the blade, when this last one is open, you can see that at that exact point, the blade's metal is polished a bit. I guess this is the result of the titanium lock slipping on that part of the blade. Maybe it is that polishing that causes the lock to slip? I do not know, I guess it is time to write to Mr. Lightfoot again.

Of course, the knife was withdrawn from "active duty" until this problem is solved, I do love my fingers and I would hate the lock to give, at some inappropriate time. Finally, the knife was shipped to Greg, and I am now awaiting its return.

Update (December 28th, 2003) :

As said above, the 458 was shipped to Greg Lightfoot, sometime in October 2003. Within 15 days, Greg had the knife fixed and returned to a friend of mine in US, who by his turn shipped it to me around December. It arrived to me, right after Christmas and boy, this time it is perfect. No more slipping of the linerlock, no more nothing. Also, it looks as if Greg addressed the issue of the blade returning to the closed position too, now the last few degrees of the blade's travel are done automagically. Nice! The knife works as it was supposed to be and I am a happy camper. While the knife was at Greg's, he also did some cosmetic work on it, to make it look like new again. Thanks Greg, I appreciate it. I have my... dress knife again.

Purchased from : True North Knives
Overall impression : Excellent now, after a trip back to Mr. Lightfoot.

Back to John's folding knives collection page

Back to Folders-R-Us.ORG introductory page