Lander 5 Pocket Knife - Black Stonewash - 8CR14MOV

THE Lander 5 (Black Stonewash)

The Lander 5 is meant to be a first knife. The perfect knife for smiley, 12 year-old kids like I was, that would inevitably lose the thing.

I spent my early teens in the Boy Scouts (I still have the scar on my thumb from a gnarly Swiss army knife cut my first day of scout camp as a 12-year-old). Pocket knives were always part of the landscape. In my 20s, I found myself volunteering with the Scouts again: campouts every month, merit badges, and hikes in the rain and sun. Those were good days.

I've now spent the better part of 15 years working with youth who love to camp, explore, and use pocket knives. We designed the Lander 5 for them and anyone else who needs a solid, affordable tool.

The young men I work with often wander into the Knafs shop (with their parents, eh?!!) with cash burning a hole in their pockets. The problem? The Lander 1 starts at $45 and the average price of a knife in our store is about $75. No bueno for anyone who is looking for an entry-level knife. Enter the Lander 5. The baseline price is $29. It's for the kid just learning to whittle. It's for your neighbor Larry who likes knives, but enthusiastically ruins them.

The design process on the Lander 5 wasn't straightforward. And I failed pretty hard core initially. See, I design for four different brands: Knafs, WE, Civivi, and MKM. There should be common design language between all my models, but they should not feel like copies of each other. Which became a pretty big problem in the middle of this project. When we received the first round of prototypes, I realized it was too much Baby Banter. So, Matt Fitz and I went back to cardboard to restart the process with a slimmer design and a thumb hole.

Where we landed is a knife that is delightfully different from my previous models. For one, it's my first thumb-hole opener. As a guy who loves a drop point and thumb stud, this is a big deal. It's also a frame lock -- a first for me. And it's my first sub-$40 knife. Plus, I'm perfectly pleased with how it turned out. And that's exactly what we wanted.