Key Takeaways
- A small knife with a large, solid grip
- The sheath has a rotating clip that mounts to either side
- Great edge, but the steel and geometry prioritize toughness over edge retention
- Easy to draw, carries heavy for the size, overall a great hiking and hunting knife.
What Is This? A Tactical Nessmuk?
This is a small variation (and I think improvement) on Off Grid’s Backcountry design, which is possibly one of the best survival knives in Off Grid’s line up. The handle on the SideKick is the same overall shape (with the angle of the curve and the flared out top doubling as a slight hand guard), but a little smaller and with the front line totally smoothed out.
There’s also a slight scallop shaped into the top to make it a little more comfortable to pinch the blade, and even though I didn’t find myself using that scallop much (the blade is tall enough for my thumb to pinch higher up), it’s a good visual cue that the SideKick was designed with a collage of grips in mind.
It’s one of the most comfortable knives I’ve handled from Off Grid so far, and deploys out of the sheath so quickly into a usable, full grip that when the inevitable bright-eyed comment starting with “you know what this knife would be good for” as images of Rambo, the Hunted, and John Wick start glowing from a thought bubble over their head finally comes my way, I’ll have to admit that, yeah, actually it could be great for that.
It was kind of designed to be an EDC fixed blade, and I like it as a camping knife, mostly, but that other thing works too.
Specifications
| Overall Length: | 7.75” |
| Blade Length: | 3.5” |
| Blade Steel: | Sandvik 14C28N (59 HRC) |
| Hardness: | 59 HRC |
| Blade Thickness: | 3.5 mm |
| Blade Shape: | Nessmuk |
| Blade Grind: | Sabre |
| Handle Length: | 4.25” |
| Handle Material: | G10 |
| Sheath: | Taco Kydex w/ rotating clip |
| Weight: | 5.1 oz (without sheath) |
| Designer: | Carey Orifice |
| Made in: | Taiwan |
| What I Liked | What I Didn’t Like |
|---|---|
| Overall ergos match my hand almost perfectly | Recurve edges make carving and maintenance trickier |
| Tough steel with a hair popping edge | Rides way too high as a vertical hip carry |
| Rotating belt clip has a great ambidextrous design executed well | A little bulky on the belt. |
Handle and Ergos
Whatever else might have been wrong about this knife, the handle would have compensated for it.
It has a solid grip with rounded corners with just enough angle left in them to provide blade control. The handle size is just long enough for my hand to get a comfortable full grip. My pinky does ride right on the edge of the pommel, but this should be plenty comfortable for the average handed.
Once in hand, the SideKick doesn’t feel like it’ll budge out of my grip, and nothing has started biting or turned into a hotspot over extended use, with the exception of the spine jimping. And as far as the jimping goes, it could possibly benefit from being a little less aggressive but it’s close enough to the Goldilocks zone of comfort and added grip security to make it not worth complaining about.
The jimping and curve of the spine facilitate a wonderfully easy filipino grip. The knife as a whole feels like it melts into the curvature of my hand.
It reminds me of the CRKT Ramadi with the way it nestles and indexes so quickly in my hand. It shouldn’t surprise me since I have so much experience with the Backcountry design it’s based on, but sizing the concept down has brought out the best in it, I think. It’s like Off Grid has cooked down a sauce to its critical point: now that some of the material has been simmered off, I can really taste the comfort in the design.
… Not sure if I’m proud of that analogy or not, but it feels right, so we’re sticking with it.
The Blade
The blade comes razor sharp, of course. Off Grid always takes its pains with edge geometry and it always pays off when it comes to cutting.
It’s pretty good for caving if you don’t mind working with a recurve. I made some nice, thin shavings with the top belly of the blade. It felt a little harder to get a smooth curl in the well of the edge, especially after I’d been using the knife for a while. I wish I had a good explanation as to why beyond that it just felt grittier.
But even though I’ve come to prefer the SideKick more has a cutter than a carver, it performs campground tasks like a champ. It’ll process wood and make fires in a pinch.
This is Sandvik steel, which means it has Sandvik-steel-like edge retention, which means it will lose that edge fairly quickly. I cut up a dozen or so small boxes before the edge started to tear on paper tests. Normally I would say this isn’t a big deal because this steel shapes up so easily, but the steep recurve of the blade does complicate maintenance a little.
At least it did for me, because I primarily used the well of the edge to cut, and that’s a hard spot to get right touch up at the exact right angles with conventional strops and sharpening stones. Honing rods have always been the easiest solution to this for me, although I did finally hit on the right angle to clean it up on the Tormek T-4 grinder, after some trial and error.
The Sheath and Rotating Clip
One of the main reasons to be here is the mountain solution for this knife.I’ve dealt with a few different rotating clip designs at this point. They’re getting more popular as companies are catching on that people wear fixed blades about a dozen different ways now.
This is easily one of the best.
- Clip retention is super tight, and shaped in a way that makes it pretty damn hard to be pulled off accidentally.
- Rotation is rigid enough to keep in place, but still smooth to adjust when it’s on the belt.
- It can mount to either side of the sheath.
It does ride a little heavy for the size of knife it is, and the clip is pretty wide, so it tends to jostle around when I just mount it straight onto a plain belt.
After a few minutes of working and hiking I stopped noticing the bit of motion, but I also mostly had it as an appendix carry tucked tight against a belt loop.
I didn’t like it so much in a standard hip formation even with the ability to rotate the knife before I draw, because it rides pretty high (a problem as old as knife sheaths, I think), and because something about the hip carry position makes the knife move a lot more. I don’t know if that’s a problem specific to me, though.
The Sidekick is almost too big for comfortable horizontal carry, but it I found this was my preferred way to carry it.
Drawing
I’ll tell you this, though: Wherever I mount the knife, it feels a lot easier to draw and sheath than usual.
It leaves a lot of handle sticking out f the sheath, and the curve makes it easy to catch on with a good grip at speed.
Plus, Off Grid has workshopped their Kydex sheaths to have big mouths with generous thumb ramps that still manage to have tight retention. I put this near the CRKT Ramadi for being one my favorite knives to draw.
Comparison and Alternatives
In pint-sized nessmuk territory, the MKM Pocket Tango ought to be the first place you look. That’s a lot smaller and more EDC / pocket jewelry, but the size does make it more legal-friendly in most places, and the look is a lot less threatening.
If you want something a little more geared to woodcraft, check out the BPS Finn Lite. That’s an excellent carver. The only issues are that the round handle makes it harder to keep the blade from turning, and the sheath doesn’t have any kind of clip.
The Condor Mountaineer Trail Wingman is a good hunting and trail companion with a warmer handle. It’s smaller (like the Pocket Tango), and not as versatile to carry, but it rides like a dream on the belt in a leather sheath.
I mentioned the CRKT Ramadi earlier in the article as having similar lock-into-the-hand-quickly ergos. I think I prefer the SideKick’s sheath and blade edge, but the Ramadi’s worth a look if you want to go a little bigger.
Finally, this wouldn’t be a complete small-fixed-blade review without mentioning the Bradford Guardian 3. Same blade length, but a smaller handle so the knife as a whole is more compact. It’s also much more expensive, but Bradford’s manufacturing practices make a good argument for the price.
Basically a Hunting Knife with a Tactical Handle
It has a handle with a firm grip, a sheath that can mount ambidextrously, and a tough steel that takes a sharp, easy edge. I dislike overusing the classification, but Off Grid lends itself to tactical use.
It’s an odd knife that basically took one of Off Grid’s most popular tactical and/or survival knives (depending on where you’re standing), shrunk it down and put an iconic hunting knife shape on it. The result still feels more tactical than camping or hunting to me, but maybe that’s just the aesthetic. The important takeaway for me is that going smaller feels like a huge ergonomic improvement on Off Grid’s Backcountry design.
They like to go big, and I don’t blame them. Big knives are fun. But in all of Off Grid’s fixed-blade offerings, this is one of the most pleasant I’ve used.
