CIVIVI Marks 12 Years with a FatCarbon Crossbar Elementum
Anniversary knives usually mean engraving and a price bump. CIVIVI's 12th-anniversary Elementum is a little more considered: a crossbar-lock version of the knife that built the brand, dressed in Nebula FatCarbon with a black stonewashed CPM S35VN blade, limited to 2014 pieces and individually serialized with a signed certificate.
The number 2014 is the year CIVIVI launched, and the knife is a decent summary of how far the company has come. Twelve years ago the Elementum was a budget liner lock in G10 and D2. This version has a crossbar lock, titanium hardware, a powder-metallurgy blade steel, and a handle material that is normally reserved for mid-tech knives.
FatCarbon's Nebula pattern is a layered carbon composite with colored resin, so the black, red, blue and white figure is structural rather than printed, and it looks different depending on how the light hits it. The 6AL4V titanium clip is left-right reversible, which is the one area where this knife is genuinely more flexible than the standard Elementum's right-hand-only clip.
Specs stay compact: 6.99 inches overall, a 2.96-inch blade at 58 to 60 HRC, hollow ground, 2.9 ounces, and a 0.45-inch handle that is thinner than the aluminum models. S35VN at this size is a reasonable choice, tough enough for a thin hollow grind and stainless enough to ignore daily carry.
At $108.53 it is the most expensive Elementum in the current catalog and squarely in mid-tech territory, where it competes with limited-run knives from WE and Kizer rather than with budget folders. Verdict: a fair buy for a collector who wants the last version of the shape, and an easy skip for anyone who just wants a good small knife, because the base Elementum does 90 percent of this for half the money.
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