Big Idea Design’s Pocket Friendly Fixed Blade is a Masterwork of Space Efficiency.
It’s always nice to see a task done by someone who is especially competent at that particular task.
A lot of companies are making fixed blade EDCs right now. Some are doing it better than others, but the Lookout is probably a gold standard they should be measured by.
It has a sturdy blade, and a handle that’s slim but shaped in a way that makes it easy to secure a three-finger grip. I ended up using it quite a bit in the yard in part because I realized the clip point blade could be abused to high function, but mainly because I found it so comfortable to carry in the pocket.
It does have a couple of drawbacks: the price is probably the most inhibitive factor overall, but I felt it was also lacking in texture, and the handle rides too high above the pocket for full EDC comfort. These are compromising elements, though, that have their own justifications.
Specifications
| Overall Length: | 6.2” |
| Blade Length: | 2.5” (2.2” cutting edge) |
| Blade Steel: | Nitro-V |
| Hardness: | 61 – 62 HRc |
| Carry System: | Taco-style Kydex w/ pocket clip |
| Blade Thickness: | 3 mm (0.12”) |
| Blade Shape: | Clip point |
| Blade Grind: | Flat (25° sharpening angle) |
| Handle Length: | 3.7” |
| Handle Material: | Micarta scales |
| Weight: | 48 g/1.73 oz (69g/2.43 oz w/ sheath) |
| Designer: | Mak Kelsay |
| Made in: | Chattanooga, TN |
| What I Liked | What I Didn’t Like |
|---|---|
| Fantastic pocket space economy | Sheath is difficult to disengage with the pocket (partially a good thing) |
| Great edge with tough-but-slicey geometry | Smooth siding on Micarta scales |
| A lot of handle space for such a small knife | Tapering pommel makes a four-finger grip a little weird |
| Great sheath and pocket clip design | The handle rides a little too high out of the pocket |
From People Who Know How to Make Neat Things
Big I Design is not exclusively a knife company. They make all kinds of EDC gear that is often more complicated than it looks: pens, multitools, bit drivers, watches, and more and almost all of it has some little piece of engineering that makes the tool better suited to a certain situation. They have a bit driver tool that can fold out to have an offset handle, a folding knife with only two screws in the scales, and they helped design a pen with Knafs that could be loaded with Bic Crystal ink chamber.
For the Lookout, it’s the Kydex sheath molded to house the pocket clip, so it rides in the pocket better. It feels incredibly well executed, which, the more I look at their other products, the less I realize this should surprise me. The folks at Big i have a knack for focused engineering.
EDC Elements: Easy Drawing with an Economic Sheath
The way the Lookout draws and carries make it nearly seamless as an EDC.
The sheath has a solid and satisfying retention that still allows for easy drawing. You can draw this with a two-finger grip on the pommel. No interaction with the sheath necessary (although for whatever reason I still draw it from the base of the sheath and use the clip as a bracing point. That isn’t remotely necessary, it’s just… How I am).
It takes up very little space in the pocket. Not only is the knife itself small, but the taco-style Kydex sheath looks like it was made as slim as possible. It’s less than an inch-and-a-half at its widest. It lives comfortably side by side with my phone in the front pocket.
The clip and sheath shaping here are fantastic. Of all the EDC fixed blades I’ve carried, I’m not sure I’ve had one that felt so set into my pocket. The clip has a high retention, and it feels like the dimensions have been carefully thought out so the deep-carry length puts it just deep enough to anchor it into the pocket without letting the clip rise so high that it gets in the way too much when trying to draw the knife.
The Drawbacks
The high retention in the clip makes it tricky to take the knife out of the pocket. This isn’t such a big deal since you’ll typically only have to do it once a day (assuming you carry the Lookout every day). Early on in carrying this knife my finger slipped off the clip while trying to take the sheath out and I ended up drawing the knife instead. My recommendation to avoid that is to hook your index finger around the molded protrusion that clip is mounted on and pull from there. It’s smoother and safer that way (but I still think the clip is a little too tight).
One more nitpick is that even with the deep-carry clip, the handle rides high out of the pocket. The pommel sits about two inches up, and I feel it poke at my hip sometimes when crouching or sitting down. I’m not really sure there’s anything that could have been done in the design to help this. They clearly made the knife ride as deeply as it could without interfering with how the user can draw it. It’s maybe one of the limitations of Kydex sheaths. A leather sheath can just ride deep as a pouch, but Kydex has to be formed to grip around the top of the handle.
It’s the nature of the beast. All things considered, Big i handled this issue pretty well.
Actually Using It
This knife punches far above its weight. It’s small, but I liked using it for pretty much everything. I picked up the Nitro-V version, which probably behaves pretty differently from the Magnacut Lookout. Most of the time I prefer a softer steel on knives I’m going to be using hard, and I used the Lookout all over the house and yard and even did some outdoor adventuring with it and had a good time with it pretty much everywhere.
Blade and Edge
The blade cuts like a dream. The clip point shape provides some easy puncturing ability, and the edge has a semi-toothy finish so I was able to use this to cut delicately, but I still felt like I could push through and abuse the blade a little bit.
This is thick for how small it is, though. The spine is 3 mm at its base, and there’s not much height, so even though the cutting edge seems to be somewhere under 25°, the blade expands pretty quickly behind that. In short, the blade is thick behind the edge, and can feel “gummy” on some materials.
Paradoxically, the edge retention actually seems to be pretty good. Don’t expect to carve out a set of wooden stakes and still be able to cut a clean line through paper, but I put the Lookout through an honest day’s work in the yard, and it still felt pretty easy to shred up junk mail with it at the end of the day.
Edge deformation does happen quickly, though. I love Nitro-V in part because I don’t mind putting my knives to a honing rod every few days, but that is definitely a requirement on the Lookout when it’s seeing regular hard use.
Holding It
The handle shape is great. There’s a good amount of material to grip. It’s easily a solid three-finger grip. I can never get my pinky to fully rest on the tapering handle, but the shape of the knife usually has me holding it in some kind of a pinch grip anyway.
In both full and pinch grips the “peak” that forms the bottom of the finger choil is great for giving my middle finger a base to tighten down on to control the blade. It can feel a little intrusive in a full grip, but I always found the shape to be useful
The only thing I don’t really like about the handle is that they’ve made the flat sides of the Micarta scales so smooth. This is a light, mostly delicate knife, and even though the handle is nice, I always feel like there’s a heightened risk of dropping the knife because it’s small, the pommel tapers dramatically, and there just isn’t a lot of texture on the knife.
But it does still have that coveted Micarta feature of getting grippier when it gets wet. I discovered this when trying to break down some cardboard outside after a rainstorm. Everything I touched was floppy and half damp and by the end my shirt looked like I had just waded through a muddy puddle, but the more I worked, the better the Lookout felt in hand.
Maybe it’s a lesson for me that the more actual work I do with the Lookout, the less slippery it feels.
Price and Comparisons
While I don’t actually think the Lookout is dramatically overpriced, that is a critical pressure point with the knife. As of the first writing of this review, the average price for the Micarta and Nitro-V version of the Lookout is a little over $200, generally capping around $230. That’s not an outrageous price for the level of effective design and engineering that went into this knife, but it is more than the knives that felt comparable from my own experience (with the exception of the Boker Burnley Barlow, which is now sadly discontinued).
The MKM Pocket Tango is the most obvious comparison to me. The Pocket Tango is a little bigger all around which gets you a more comfortable grip (in fact, testing the two side by side made me realize just how comfortable the Pocket Tango is), and a little more blade with arguably (and slightly) smoother cutting performance.
The important difference is in the carry style: The Pocket Tango comes in a leather sheath with a magnetic flap that looks and feels nice, but does take up a chunk more of pocket space. The Pocket Tango also runs around $170 for the base models, which is an okay bottle of whiskey cheaper than any version of the Lookout.
If you want to stay American made, you could actually go a little cheaper with the Bond’s Creek Badger. It’s about the same size as the Lookout, but has more of an outdoors aesthetic (and design intent) with a pancake Kydex sheath that comes stock with an Ulticlip. It doesn’t feel as pocket-friendly and might be a little harsher in the hand, but it does have a much more severe tip thanks to having a longer clip point shape. It’s probably the harshest feeling of all these options, but it’s still a compact knife with a great edge and highly functional design.
The Lookout Exceeds at Being Small
I think more than anything I appreciate the economy of this knife. Not in the price, obviously, but Big Idea Design has done an incredible job in two critical things:
- They made a fixed blade carry nearly as easily as a folding knife,
- And they made a small knife with a two-inch blade feel almost as capable as some knives that are twice the size.
The Lookout is smaller than a lot of my favorite folding knives, but it still manages to give me a decent four-finger grip and a high-functioning blade. And more importantly, I really, genuinely enjoy using it. This isn’t a barebones design that sacrificed all its comfort and personality to fit into a pocket. This is a nice knife. This is not an easy type of knife to make, and even though I personally felt like the smooth slides of the scales or how high the handle rides above the pocket, Big i is easily taking one of the top spots for EDC fixed blades right now.
