Quick Review Summary: An American-made parade of design and details.
Truth be told I was truly smitten with the original Torrent, a collaboration between TJ Schwarz and Millit Knives. I got a v1 knife when v2 came out. It lacked some of the upgrades of the v2 and it had a very, very fancy Damascus steel blade and skeletonized carbon fiber “covers”. It was almost, sort of, exactly but not quite what I wanted. What I wanted is the stuff liked about the v1 knife with the upgrades I appreciated in the v2 knife. Alas, I sold it and immediately regretted. Then I spent the better part of a decade trying and hoping that Millit would drop a v3. Eventually they did, but they were exceptionally hard to come by. After playing cat and mouse with drops that included only one or two knives, I finally got lucky and scored a v3 Torrent with EXACTLY the specs I wanted. It didn’t take as a long as I took me to grab a Leafstorm, but it was almost as long.
Boy was it worth the wait. This knife is a masterwork, a brillant, nuanced complex design that is unquestionably the product of a talented designer. This is married with truly next level machining, a step beyond what you will find at production companies like Reate and Chris Reeve. And, because this is 2024 and the knife market is truly insane, this knife was an exceptional value. My Torrent with non-skeletonized carbon fiber covers and S90V blade steel came in at $450. Given the small batch production and the incredible details here that is a very, very fair price. It was, in fact, cheaper than my original Torrent though that is a bit of apples and oranges because that was a fancier knife.
One thing that the Torrent made me think about is the nature of ultra small batch production knives. Are Grimsmos custom knives? What about makers that work one at a time but only use machines for things (until they get to grinding the edges), folks like Brian Tighe? When Nick and I went to TRM and got to see Les’s workshop (the knife knut equivalent to Santa’s Workshop), it was clear to me that the Comets they were working on were as fussed over as any custom. These ultra small batch productions blur the lines between custom and production in a way that is hard to account for with our community’s current lexicon. To throw a wrench into the works a bit more—what were things like Canal Street Cutlery where craftsmen used heirloom machines with a single computer or number or control to make knives according to a pattern one at time? My Boys Knife looks different from the handful of other examples I have seen online.
Sculimbrene doesn’t use superlatives lightly. Sounds like a great knife.
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