CIVIVI Moves the Crossbar Lock Onto the Spine With the Zygon

CIVIVI's newest folder is called the Zygon, and the mechanical idea is the reason to look twice: it uses a crossbar lock, but the crossbar sits on the spine of the knife rather than in the pivot region of the scales. KnifeNews covered the release on September 30. It is a small relocation of an existing mechanism and it changes how the knife feels in use.

Crossbar locks are popular because they are ambidextrous, easy to operate with cold or gloved hands, and self-adjusting as the interface wears. Moving the bar to the spine keeps all of that. What it changes is the geometry of the unlock. On a standard crossbar the bar is at the pivot end, so your thumb works close to the blade; on the Zygon it sits along the spine, which puts the unlock motion further back toward the pocket and, according to KnifeNews, allows a wrist flick in conjunction with the bar to send the blade open. That makes the Zygon an unusually fidgety CIVIVI, which is clearly the intent.

The blade is a broad, flat-ground 3.24-inch drop point in Nitro-V, which is a well-established budget steel: tough, corrosion resistant enough for daily carry, and notably easy to sharpen compared with D2. It is not a supersteel and will not hold an edge like S35VN, but the ease of sharpening is the trade most buyers actually want. Overall weight is 3.37 ounces, with a swappable deep-carry loop-over clip on either side and a handle built from straight lines with a large trapezoidal finger cutout under the guard.

The material options are where CIVIVI has fun. There is a natural G-10 variant in blue glow-in-the-dark, a black G-10 model with a white G-10 bolster, a damascus version with grey G-10 and a carbon fibre overlay bolster, and an orange-and-black vortex micarta model. Store pricing runs from about $79.70 for the natural G-10 up to $99.70 for the damascus. Set against a standard crossbar CIVIVI at the same money, the Zygon costs a little more for the relocated lock and the fidget factor.

Verdict: buy the Zygon if the spine-mounted crossbar appeals and you want a Nitro-V user you can sharpen on a kitchen stone. Shop CIVIVI →