Blade Show West 2025 Wrap-up

Blade Show West continued to be the scrappy underdog of the trade show world. 

One thing that kept coming up from regulars to the show was that this year was a lot smaller. There were fewer presenters, and while there were the typical brick walls of crowds, there didn’t seem to be the same volume of lines.

That did leave a little more room for us to find people and things we might not have otherwise, which is really the biggest reason to go to any Blade Show. And as soon as the whiskey fog we made the day before driving out of Nevada cleared enough for us to interact with other humans, we found some great booths we probably would have missed otherwise.

Cool New People/Things We Found

First some things that were either new to the industry, new to us, or just weren’t the kinds of things we typically cover (see: the waxed canvas wonders from PNW Bushcraft).

Orbital: New and Moving Fast

The owners Eddy and Luke started Orbital back in late 2024 with the Callisto. They came to Blade Show West with their new premium folder, the Fornax.

The elevator pitch on Orbital, more or less, is that it’s a knife company started by two guys who decided to start a business after getting trapped working together in a broom closet office for a year. Their goal was to offer well-made affordable knives.

Eddy Martinez is the designer of the Kansept Dako. He had been behind the scenes in the knife industry for a while, but working on his own design inspired him to start his own company, so he roped in his friend Luke, and they’ve been hustling since 2024.

They came to the show with four knives:

• The Callisto
• A larger version of the Callisto,
• The Kansept Dako,
• And their first premium knife, the Fornax.

It’s technically a small offering, but it exhibits a dynamic design language that we’re interested to watch develop as the company moves forward. For now, though, they’re off to a strong start.

Head on over to the Orbital Knives site to pick one up, so you can say you were into them before anyone knew who they were.

Tekto: Back and Almost All American

Tekto is a newer family company (if 2016 still counts as new) that’s just coming out of a restructure.

At their start, they were mostly an R&D team for OTF knives and leveraging a lot of overseas manufacturing. They’ve spent a lot of the last ten years shifting their materials sourcing around and now they’re a mostly made-in-America brand in the process of expanding their in-house operations, while still putting out a steadily increasing catalogue of designs that all felt pretty solid to us.

Of course, not being auto or OTF people, we gravitated toward their manual folders. Here’s what stood out to us there:

• EOTech editions of their F1 and F2 folders with black G10 and bronze accents,
• The F2 Bravo folder itself, which kind of felt like a CRKT CEO with a wider handle,
• And the F3 Charlie does button-lock placement right.

There was a small fixed blade with a fantastically thin blade on their table too, but we’ll be damned if we can remember what the name was, and they haven’t released any info on it anyway, so stay tuned, I guess.

But after handling a lot of the knives on their table we came away with the impression that these guys are really good at designing handles. Everything felt great in the hand in spite of the hard-angled tactical look some of the designs have.

Check out the Tekto site to learn more about Maine’s newest knife brand.

N.U.M.B. Knives: A New Lock from a Cool Dude with a Wild Brain

Probably one of the most interesting mechanisms we encountered was at the N.U.M.B knives booth. The owner Nick Palizzi designed a new lock that feels sort of like a cross between a compression lock and a button lock.

There were two knives on his table: the N1 Cornerstone, which is the first NUMB knife design, and the N7 Cantilever, which was actually still in the prototype stage. Both knives have S90V steel, hollow grinds, and titanium in the handles.

N.U.M.B. stands for “Nick’s Unhinged Mechanical Brain” which is actually a pretty good indicator of Nick’s own brand of eccentric humility. So was the line of N1 prototypes taking center stage on his table. He was quick to clarify that these were not examples of great manufacturing, but he wanted people to see the different stages of the design as he workshopped the shaping and the lock.

Nick’s story is one of the more dramatic we’ve encountered in a long time, and we encourage you to visit their site to read a bit more. The short version is that Nick has been a restaurant owner, a graphic designer, and an architect, and he came up with the idea for the Pinch Lock while sitting in a doctor’s office during his wife’s battle with cancer.

His wife beat cancer, and he came out with a new company making some pretty fascinating knives with Reate.

Gary DeKorte and a Historically Accurate Kephart Knife

Gary DeKorte is a custom maker who retired from law enforcement and immediately threw himself into knife making.

This deceptively unassuming man was at the show with a historically accurate Kephart knife. Historical knives are a passion of DeKorte’s. The knife was made from the leaf spring of an 1800’s American buggy, and to exact specifications that DeKorte could find from advertisements, articles, and Kephart’s own book.

Historical knives are a passion for DeKorte. Last year he made a Ka Bar style bowie to be given as an award for best display at the Oregon Knife Collector’s show. The year before that he donated a recreation of a Seax knife, made to similarly exacting standards.

PNW Bushcraft: They Can Show You Where to Put Stuff

PNW Bushcraft is a wax canvas goods maker that you probably haven’t heard of before, but they’ve been bouncing around Blade Show West and Atlanta for a good chunk of time.

They’re a family business operating out of Washington. They’re all avid campers in the Pacific northwest area, and their products are results of that experience.

They make all kinds of waxed canvas goods like knife rolls, EDC travel trays, and a couple thousand different kinds of pouches. Most of it is weather proof, all of it has strong stitching, and all of it is useful for the right person.

This is far from their first Blade Show, and it doesn’t sound like it will be their last. We highly recommend visiting their table if you ever make it to a Blade Show. They make great stuff, and they’re usually good for an entertaining conversation.

Rotoselect: A Cooler Place to Put Stuff

Avid collectors of knives, pens, and watches should stop a minute to check out Roto Select. It’s basically a box with a window and a modular tray that can be rotated with an outside wheel. 

This was designed by Julian Secomb, who had a pretty strong history in manufacturing before jumping into this (and very recently sold his previous company to focus on Roto Select full time). The intent behind it is to create an upscale, uncluttered place to store and display your EDC gear. There are three different kinds of trays each specially slotted or shaped for knives, watches, or pens that can be mixed and matched.

A lot of the design inspiration came from 80’s German minimalism, especially the watches and radio receivers. The experience of turning the Roto Select is not unlike the experience of turning a big dial on an old receiver.

The Kickstarter officially ended just a few months before Blade Show West, and now the company is full steam ahead. In fact they already have a flat tray system for drawers in the works. So they’re moving fast with some pretty cool ideas. This is definitely a company worth keeping an eye on.

Updates on Old Names

Of course there were people we showed up with a plan to see. Our old friends at the Vosteed booth, the folks at Schwarz, and of course Knafs is always cooking up something interesting.

Knafs Brought the Party

Knafs brought the party to Blade Show West this year. Their shirts were everywhere, there was always a happy crowd knocking on their door, and near the end of the show they did a raffle event that had half the place cheering.

We don’t know what that was about, but we appreciate them for always being able to keep up the enthusiasm.

All versions of the Lander 4 were on full display. Their other knives were there too, obviously. But the Lander 4 was what we came to see.

Their Lander 5 folder actually had an interesting hiccup. We were curious about what the response to that particular venture into ultra budget knives would be. They told us people were asking about it, but they’re (very large) order of 5s was delayed. They should have that in stock in a few weeks, though.

The actual new thing at the booth was the OTC (Old College Try), the first design by long-time Knafs employee Matt Fitzgerald and the first button lock made under the Knafs umbrella. It’s a tidy little wharncliffe-bladed design with some neat details. It feels pretty good in hand for a small knife, but we probably can’t tell you more than Matt could in Knaf’s own interview.

Head on over to the Knafs Knives website to check out their new models and their old one. None of them are that old. These guys are just getting started.

Vosteed was Packed and Colorful

We tried getting to Vosteed’s new stuff but they were pretty much cleaned out before we got there, so we settled for a quick snap of what was left of the new scales for the Vombat.

We’re pretty sure the big new knife for them coming in was the Hedgehog. Or possibly the Parallel, or the Croc-Top liner lock or some new version of the Corgi. We’ve gotten really bad at keeping up with their models.

You should go check out their new stuff, though. The Vombat looks pretty great in the blue aluminum scales. The Micarta Psyop is pretty sweet too.

We spend a lot of time on Vosteed’s website trying to keep track of their new models.

TJ Schwarz: Reliably Making Knives You Didn’t Know You Needed

Schwarz Knives is not the kind of company that releases new stuff quickly, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that they didn’t have a brand new design at the table. They did have some new colorway options for their Richlite: Brown Point and Redstone. The Lost Trail 5 looked especially good in Redstone, but you’ll have to take our word for that since we couldn’t find the elbow room for a decent picture.

Instead we walked away with the Overland X, which is a cross between their Overland and Overland Sport designs, and which is probably about to show up around this website a lot more often. It’s been out for a minute, but we’ve been pining for that model ever since testing out the LT5 and slowly becoming obsessed with smaller, EDC fixed blades.

Head on over to the Schwarz Knives site to find your next favorite fixed blade.

There Was More, but We’re Drunken Messes

We missed out on visiting Mcnees Knives and Case, and only spent a brief moment at the Tactile booth before something else shiny made us stumble off like kittens who haven’t learned to walk yet, but are convinced they can catch the laser coaxing them toward the wall.

There were also awards, which we weren’t there to see, but are still worth checking out.

Thankfully Blade Magazine has those covered.

Point being, we shouldn’t be your last stop on Blade Show coverage. But you should stay tuned at the Nothing but Knives YouTube channel as we’ll be doing a round up video of everything we collected this weekend.