If there’s one thing you can say about CRKT, it’s that they certainly let their designers fly their freak flags high. Their name has crossed our desks many times already with a whole array of the abstract and the absurd, several of which we’ve looked at previously.

There are gentlemen’s knives in the world, and then again there’s this. Here’s the Michael Walker designed Model 4200 “Bladelock,” an article for which no one seems to have been able to think up a snappier name.

Mr. Walker’s résumé famously includes the invention of “over 50” blade locking mechanisms. This includes, apparently, the liner lock with which we are all familiar and has gone on to dominate the world. I imagine he could have stopped there, really, and in light of such boundless ongoing creativity I don’t know if anyone’s been around to check lately if he’s possibly been inadvertently stapled to his drafting table and is thus unable to escape, or what. Regardless, this is a production item in a long line of CRKT produced Walker Bladelockers which I am given to understand originally sprang forth from a couple of custom knives built by the man himself, about which I can find scant information online. That is aside from e.g. this listing for one astonishing example, which can evidently be yours for the mere trifling sum of $38,500. (Screen shot saved here, by the way, in case this listing ever goes dark in the future.)

Has, uh, anyone got a line on what those guys who did the Louvre job are up to these days? I might have some work for them. Asking for a friend.

Meanwhile this Model 4200 variant is a production item and freely available, not to mention attainable by mere mortals. But even so, there’s no denying it’s a veritable work of art. The level of unnecessary details encrusting it are so confidently flagrant that the effect goes straight through gaudy and bursts out the other side, emerging as elegance instead. Take, for instance, the fact that lightly textured G-10 scales are not only so densely machined, but also retained on the forward end by four screws all in neat row like this.

Why four when one certainly would have sufficed? Because fuck you, that’s why.

The pivot screw is encircled by exquisitely machined gear-tooth disks which serve no purpose whatsoever and exist only to look cool, and because Mr. Walker is flouting that he can. Look carefully at the heel of the blade when it’s open and you’ll see a section of matching texture, cut to a radius that precisely matches the round tips of the liners with apparently subatomic precision.

You’ll also note the distinct lack of a liner lock in there, regardless of whether or not Mike Walker invented the damn thing.

The name probably tipped you off that this sports one of his other inventions instead. The 4200 is indeed packing the “Bladelock” mechanism, which is a clever arrangement that combines the locking and unlocking button with the thumb stud. When at rest the blade is locked in place with the same precision as the breech on Jesus’ very own 1911 and with no apparent way to make it open. To unlock it, you press the thumb stud down into the blade slightly, at which point it can be pivoted to glide open in near silence.

Closing it is the same, but I find that the action of opening it is more intuitive and feels a lot less awkward. Due to the unusual spot you have to put pressure on given the location of the stud when the blade is out, it takes some effort and practice to smoothly shut the 4200 and this requires a specific manner of grip. Your natural inclination if you’re not paying attention is virtually guaranteed to be a hand-jive that ultimately involves shutting it on your fingers until you figure it out.

I now know two things about Mr. Walker, only one of which is that he invented the liner lock. The other one is that he’s right handed, and I know this because the 4200 is the most right handed knife in the world. There is a traditionally constructed pocket clip living on one side, and only one side. Like everything on this knife it’s obsessively styled, and has an asymmetrical design. This precludes putting it on the other side which is just as well, because nobody was uncouth enough to sully the opposite side with a bunch of unused screw holes just for the off chance that someone would be uncool enough to show up and be left handed.

The second clue is that because of how the mechanism works, there’s only a single thumb stud on the right hand side of the knife. That’s not reversible either, although mechanically speaking there really isn’t much in the way of designing it such that it would have been, which we’ll see in a little bit. Opening this with your left hand is thusly not technically impossible, if you roll a natural 20 on your dexterity all the time and you think you use your index finger rather than your thumb, but functionally it may as well be.

If you are a subscriber Jurassic Park Binoculars Object Density Luxury Index, the 4200 is likely to make you very pleased indeed. Despite being an eminently EDC-able 7" long overall when open and 4-1/16" closed, it’s deceptively dense at 116.5 grams (4.11 ounces). It feels solid and chunky in the hand with its 0.540" thickness (13.75mm) which isn’t hipster levels of thin’n’light, exactly, but also isn’t too out of the ordinary in thickness compared with plenty of other knives.

The blade is 3" long (CRKT call it “2.93”) and 0.139" thick (3.55mm) which ought to slot this neatly in to the legal EDC category in most places. It’s 14C28N, so while not terribly fancy by today’s standards it ought to hold a good edge and stand up to typical daily tasks of the sort you’ll find in civilized society. I imagine the marginally increased thickness is necessary in order to fit the locking mechanism in there, but that also winds up having the next effect if making it seem a lot more stout than your typical EDC whatsamajig.

Just when you thought it was safe to forget about the CQC-6K, it’s back.

The 4200 rides about the same and is a little shorter, but feels beefier somehow even though it plainly isn’t. Believe it or not, it draws pretty cleanly as well despite the byzantine texture cut into the scales. It’s got a nice balance of grab and release on the clip with the right amount of springiness, which for once this this damn fool world means that somebody probably actually put some thought into that for a change. Given everything else I can’t say as I’m too surprised.

And, of course, no exploration of a funky knife is complete without a thorough warranty voiding in order to learn of its secrets.

I will say this about that. I own precisely zero non-ridiculous CRKT folders and as far as normal knives of theirs go I’ve only ever taken apart one Model M16, so my field of comparison may as well be nonexistent. But damned if this thing doesn’t go together like a friggin’ Swiss watch. No part of the disassembly overtly fought me in that none of the screws refused to come out, but all the parts fit together with a stubborn interference fit that is equal parts impressive and mildly aggravating. Not just the Bauhaus exposed cross pin between the liners and the broach for the main screw, but even the scales themselves which envelop and encapsulate the liners are ground with such precision that I literally had to pry them off with a guitar pick.

Every bit of the inside of this thing must be Mr. Walker having us on. The gear-tooth disks, for instance, look like maybe they ought to spin around like a fidget toy. And on a lesser knife they might, and forever be rattly and noisy as a result. That would be lack refinement, so in this case it’s not how it works. There were also a dozen other easier ways they could have been retained. Broaching them for the same anti-rotation flat as is already found on the pivot screw would be favorite. But where would be the skill in that? So instead Mr. Walker decided to press a shiny steel detent ball into both handle liners, positioned exactly just so, which interfaces with just one of the holes drilled in each of the disks. Any of them; it doesn’t matter which one when you’re putting it back together.

This is a lunatic solution to what ought to be a trivial engineering detail. No one who is specifically dedicated enough to wrestle this thing apart would ever notice. It’s pure, unadulterated showing off.

The 4200’s action is so smooth because it’s a ball bearing opener. As usual CRKT utterly neglect to mention this anywhere in the blurb. Here you can also see the two pockets into which the lock bar falls for both the open and closed positions, and some cruft I failed to adequately clean away.

The backspacer is screwed through on one side and the other side is press fit. The interference here was so tight that I couldn’t get this pair to budge, so I left them as is. This is all you get.

Here are the real goods. The Bladelock system consists of a machined and presumably hardened steel bar with a little coil spring hidden under it, which seesaws on a pin which you can just see here has been driven into the spine of the blade and ground flush. This is permanent, and there’s no matching reveal on the other side. Thus the bar can’t be dismounted without enacting significant violence, which I’m not about to try. Without this, say if the bar were retained by a small screw driven into the same location, the locking system could have theoretically been made reversible by punching the requisite cuts into both liners rather than just one, and allowing the bar to be removed and flipped over. That’s not the universe we’re living in, though.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The 4200 Walker Bladelock may very well be a stylistic tour-de-force and a masterclass in elegance. Just not if you happen to be left handed.

This must be what the youngsters these days are calling drip. I really want to like this thing, and everything about it screams quality, luxury, and competence.

There’s just no getting around the fact that ergonomically speaking the Bladelock mechanism is just a bit naff. It doesn’t take much effort to press in the stud, objectively speaking, but the force it does take is still slightly too much. Locating where to put that force and not causing the thing to mousetrap shut on your fingers in the process results in a knife that you have to think about a trifle too hard in order to use which is, yes, not elegant.

I am fully aware that this gripe is pretty rich coming from a chump who deliberately carries a balisong knife on a daily basis. Quiet, you.

But despite somehow being less than the sum of its parts there’s still so much left about it that calls to me, sings to me, whispers to me not to put it down. And what can I say? I’m still listening.