The Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas is the place where knife and gun companies unveil their new products, hoping to leave with more orders this year than they booked last year. In 2018, the biggest change we’ve noticed is the show floor is much busier. That comes as no surprise, given the good health of the industry but it does make navigating the SHOT Show venue, which measures in at an enormous 630,000 square feet (that’s over twelve miles of ground to cover) a greater challenge. Visit our SHOT Show 2018 Knives Newsfeed for up-to-the-minute coverage of all the new knives.
The biggest news to come out of the first day of SHOT Show 2018 came at the Spyderco booth. Those who speculated that their 2018 catalog wasn’t painting the whole picture were right. Spyderco unveiled no less than six never-before-seen folders. First among them is the Smock, a collaboration with knifemaker Kevin Smock, who caught Spyderco’s attention with his button-operated compression lock folder. The Spyderco Smock, based on Kevin Smock’s custom SK23 model, will be entering the company’s production queue. And, like it has for so many others, a collaboration with Spyderco will catapult the Smock name into the knife making mainstream.
The company also revealed the Techno 2, a sheepsfoot blade riff on the original micro-sized Marcin Slysz collaboration; the Mantra 3, a line extension of Spyderco’s signature flipper knives with carbon fiber and a compression lock; and the Brouwer, an elegant, modestly sized titanium framelock. These, along with the rest of their new catalog should give Spyderco fans plenty to chew on in 2018.
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