EF124 Fixed Blade Knife

This Eafengrow knife is a great product. 14c28N stainless is also a pretty decent knife steel. The quality, fit, and finish is exceptional for the price! The knife is full-tang and comes with nicely finished G10 handle scales. I did find that the handle was a tad small, but still allowed me decent purchase for handling. The blade sharpness was serviceable but did require a slight retouch on my diamond stones and strop to get the edge just right for my liking. The knife also comes with a Kydex sheath, which fit the knife like a glove and with no knife rattle. For just under $40, this knife is a great deal!

For $40 you can’t beat this knife. Good steel, good fit and finish and just a nice looking knife. It is what I consider a fairly heavy knife, but it’s not too heavy. Also comes with a very nice Kydex sheath and is in no danger of falling out. A lot of knives claim to be shaving sharp out of the box, this one actually is shaving sharp. Great knife for the cost.

I've owned and used fixed-blades for decades, ranging in price from several hundreds of dollars to less than $10. And while I expect a high degree of quality from expensive knives, I have occasionally been very surprised by the quality of less expensive, and even "cheap" fixed-blades. I liked the design of this knife, so I decided to give it a try. This is my initial out-of-the-box review of the knife, I haven't used it yet. General Info: The knife is very well made. The fit and finish are excellent. Looking at the knife in person one would not expect that it cost only $40. The knife is reasonably lightweight. The Blade- The Good: the blade is well ground. It's "sharp" out of the box, but not "hair-shaving sharp. After a few strokes on a fine hone it easily shaves swaths of hair from my arm. It has a wide flat grind with crisp, even grind lines, and the sharpened edge is consistent from end to end. I was concerned that with the wide flat grind that the tip would be ground paper thin, and while it is on the thin side, it's not too thin for me. This isn't a knife for chiseling through cinder block walls. The blade stock is thicker than advertised. It measures over 4mm, just a fraction under 5mm. The Not-So-Good the blade is shorter than advertised. From the foremost tip of the handle to the tip of the blade the measurement is 4 and 11/16ths of an inch, 5/16ths short of an even 5" (see photo). The Handle- The Good: The handle is real G10, as advertised. It's very well made. Very grippy. No gaps between handles and tang. And they are securely attached by three sets of screws and threaded tubes. The Not-So-Good: The handle is rather small. If you have large hands you're not going to like this knife. If you have medium hands you might not like this knife. I have smallish hands, and my hand just barely fits with all 4 of my fingers wrapped around the handle. It's just enough to be acceptable to me, but even I would prefer the handle to be a little longer. The Sheath- The sheath is awesome. It's one of the best kydex sheaths I've ever received with any fixed-blade. It holds the knife securely and TIGHT, and has no slack or rattle. It's very well made. No cracks, no badly set eyelets, nothing sharp. And the belt fastener works great. I was not a fan of the original "tek-locks" but I like this push-button design. Because the sheath holds the knife so tightly, it requires a really firm pull to draw the knife, and a hard push to re-sheath it, but that's the compromise you have to accept to have a sheath that holds the knife so dependably secure. I wanted a knife that I could carry inverted (tip-up), and between the light weight of this knife, and how securely the sheath holds the knife, I could easily carry this knife inverted with no fear of it falling out of the sheath. I tried to force the knife to fall out by shaking it upside down as hard as I could and the knife didn't budge. The quality of the sheath alone make the $40 price a great deal. More General Info- The Tang: As you can see from the picture, the tang is skeletonized. Some may not like that, they might think it makes the knife weaker, but I strongly disagree. Those cut-outs give the knife a reasonable weight, without them, not only would the handle be several times heavier than the blade, but the overall knife would be excessively heavy for it's size. I'm very glad the manufacturer bothered to make those cut-outs. The balance point for this knife is about 1/4" below the top handle screw. Disassembly: Although this knife can be disassembled, it's a little tricky. There are three flat-head screws on each side of the handle that thread into threaded tubes running through the knife. To disassemble the knife, loosen all three screws on one side of the handle until they are just about to fall out, then tap them in with something plastic or wood (I used the plastic handle of the screwdriver). Tap them all the way in to push the threaded tubes out from the handle scale you are removing. The tolerances between the tubes and the tang and handle scales are tight, so you won't be able to just lift the handles off after removing the screws. The screws had no threadlocker and came out easy. In fact, they were a little loose. So not only should you tighten them when you receive the knife, but a little threadlocker might not be a bad idea. The tang was coated with oil under the handle scales, as was the rest of the blade. The Orange Handle "Liners": I thought that I might make black G10 liners to replace the orange ones, but the orange portions of the handles are not liners, the handles, both black and orange, are one piece of G10. The orange cannot be separated from the black. I'm not really bothered by the orange, if people really don't like them they can always use RIT dye and blacken them. So that's it. My overall verdict is that I will be keeping this knife. It's not perfect, but I like it, and it has enough going for it to make it a keeper. If a smallish knife will serve your needs, this one is a great deal for $40.

Another great knife from Eafengrow. Great blade steel, comfortable in the hand. Good balance. Very pleased as always.

If you like full tang knives you will enjoy this. A very good buy. I like the feel, weight, and grip. Highly recommended.

Likes: very sharp, good materials nice sheath. Dislikes: Handle is too short, knife weighs way too much.

Good knife - not too heavy. 5.2” 14c28n Swedish Sanvick blade. Not top of line, but extremely functional steel.

Can't vouch for the 14c28n steel as I don't have a spectrometer. The knife blade is .2 inches thick (5.2mm) and feels very solid in the hand. The balance is noticeably handle-heavy which may or may not appeal to people. I originally intended to use it as a general camp knife, maybe bushcrafting until I realized the the entire tang and spine of the blade is beveled which will make it very hard to use with a ferro-rod. The beveled portion also sticks out from between the handle scales by about 2mm and feels annoying enough that I may take it apart and run it through a belt sander or dremel. To note: Though the blade came fairly sharp, the edge grind came hilariously uneven and required an hour to re-edge the blade. The sheathe is very nice. The plastic? Kydex? material fits well and has one of the removable/movable belt clip systems you see on holsters. Conclusion: The Eafengrow EF125 is good, but it's overly "processed" for appearances sake. The relief cut on the back of the blade, the beveling all around the tang and back of blade are completely unnecessary extra steps in the manufacturing process that actually hurt the functionality and ergonomics of the knife.