Kizer Built a Folding Knife Handle Out of a Real Circuit Board
Knife handles have been made from wood, bone, horn, micarta, carbon fiber, titanium and, more recently, a disturbing amount of resin. Kizer's C01C 2.9 BS PCB goes one step further: the handle is a fusion of clear resin and an actual printed circuit board, with real traces and nodes visible under the surface.
It is a gimmick, and it is a well-executed one. The board is not a printed graphic; it is a physical layer, which means the pattern has depth and catches light the way a real PCB does. Kizer leans into the framing, describing the handle as a frozen map of technology, and the copy is ridiculous in the way that only knife marketing can be. The knife underneath is more interesting than the pitch.
The blade is S35VN, a powder-metallurgy stainless that has been the default premium choice for a decade: good toughness, decent edge holding, and enough corrosion resistance for daily carry. It is a sheepfoot here, ground flat, with a black PVD coating. A sheepfoot on a small folder is a working choice, since the straight edge and low tip are easy to control and the shape is legal in more places than a dagger-ish profile.
At 2.9 inches the C01C is a fifth-pocket knife, and the Button Liner Lock keeps the show side free of a cutout. Kizer has used this lock across the Begleiter, Astur and Drop Bear lines now, which is a quiet vote of confidence in it. The trade-off is familiar: safer closing, less lefty-friendly, and an action that feels more like a mechanism than a fidget toy.
At $139 you are paying a premium for the handle, and that is the honest way to read the price. A functionally identical S35VN folder can be had for $80. Verdict: buy it if the circuit-board look is the point and you want a conversation piece that still cuts well; skip it if you want the most knife per dollar, because the resin is doing a lot of the work here.
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