BOKER PLUS Little DVALIN Black Tanto in D2 Titanium coated

BOKER PLUS Little DVALIN Black Tanto in D2 Titanium coated.

Preview by BCT

Presentation box (magnetic catch on the lid), is quite nice and this would make for a good gift (for the nephew niece etc etc), just add your own wrapping paper and anyone will like such a little present I think. Plus one can custom make their own handles (see below).

Two small pamphlets are included, one in Deutsche the other English. These are simply marketing blurbs about the product, an excuse of why German's have to manufacture in Asia to stay competitive. (heck just about all countries are saying the same) but with a caveat and that is the Asians are mainly using high tech robotic mechanised methods of manufacture and not that painstaking handmade touch we have come to know about German craftsmanship (a dying art for sure). However, if "we want cheap" or "inexpensive" ie 安い in Japanese (please no jokes about the kanji), then that's how it is.

Does inexpensive have to mean garbage? Of course not.

Böker is such a well-known company. In fact just for a bit of trivia, it was the first knife brand I ever came across as a kid of about 7 years old. I found in my mother's sewing room, she had from her mother a Böker folder, ebony scales with brass bolsters, two blades. The blade steel was amazing but the poor knife had been used like no tomorrow and the axels for both baldes was shot and worn out and hence the baldes wobbled a bit on taking them in and out but boy of boy, could those baldes hold an edge! They were of some carbon steel and bore the infamous Böker mark at their bases. 

So all trivial history aside, Böker has been around for a great many years and as such has a reputation. This reputation can not afford to be marred by producing crap products, whether made in Germany or made in China or elsewhere.

Now let's come to the Böker Little Dvalin made in D2, a type of finger knife.

In fact as a "finger knife" it actually has a pretty damn good handle/grip and can accommodate a decent sized hand of around size 8.5! believe it or not.

The grip also sports a palm swell as well.

The Kydex sheath fits the knife very well and the retention is secure as! To reduce the pricing the belt clip is not like a "Tek Loc" but rather a simple belt clip (it works just fine) and one can tailor fit it to a wide belt width range.

Lanyard hole of course!

The blade of the Little Dvalin has been LASER engraved with the designer's mark (Midgards Messer) and has also according to Böker been coated in Titanium. On this latter point they do not elaborate on what kind of Titanium coating this is as there like a bazillion types of PVD of Titanium etc etc. Clearly it is not a TiN as it would be a different color. Maybe it is simply a straight out and out Titanium metal coating because then it would be just gray or silver in color.

There appears to be a serial number or batch number of some sort on the very thick spine.

The handle scales are made from G10 and strangely, Böker even offer for some small fee, one can download a file to enable one to 3D print a set of your own colored handle scales! Ok fair enough, for that designer look!?

The under surface has "grip" in all the right places and the butt end actually slightly tapers for a good ergonomic fit considering the small handle.

I carefully examined  the grind, because at the end of the day, if the knife comes cheap but one needs to resharpen it then the knife wasn't cheap at all. in this case, the grinds were well executed and the knife deadly sharp out of the box.

The upper gimping is great, both for resting the thumb and also the forefinger.

The Böker plus mark, I can not fault this Little Dvalin knife  so far. 

Stay tuned for some serious testing of this little beast in the field!

As a final note:

These smaller knives are becoming very popular and i think especially across Europe as the Europeans seem to be forever tightening their knife laws, with some exceptions, notably Bulgaria, where the knife laws are similar to the USA however knife crime in Bulgaria, despite it being legal to basically carry any type of knife you wants is practically zero! Compare this to a population the size of say the UK which is about ten times that of Bulgaria and where the knife laws are extremely vague but at the same time extremely draconian; (as in basically illegal to carry anything), the knife crime is reported as high! (ok seriously folks, most of the stabbings within the Uk are from improvised weapons, not 200 buck hunting knives).