Kizer has been running the Original through every material it can find — copper, carbon fibre, an XL frame — and the V3605E3 is the least dramatic version of that exercise: the same knife, now with grey aluminium scales, for $42.
Specification sheet: 6.85 inches overall, 2.98-inch drop point in 154CM at 0.11 inch stock, 3.87-inch handle, button lock, deep-carry pocket clip, 2.61 ounces. That is a 74-gram folder with a three-inch blade, which puts it in the same weight class as a small Swiss Army knife and considerably below most of what gets called a lightweight EDC these days.
Aluminium is the interesting choice here because it changes the character of the knife more than the spec sheet suggests. Compared with micarta or G10, aluminium is stiffer and colder in the hand, it transmits vibration, and it scratches instead of scuffing. What it buys you is thinness: aluminium scales can be machined to a fraction of the thickness of a micarta slab and still hold their shape, which is where the 2.61 ounces comes from. The trade is grip — bare aluminium is slicker than textured micarta when your hands are wet, and this handle has no heavy texturing to compensate.
The button lock is doing real work at this weight. A frame lock or liner lock on a 74-gram knife tends to feel compromised, because the whole lock is a leaf of the same thin material. A button lock separates the detent and the release from the frame stiffness, so a light knife can still have a crisp action. Kizer's version on the Original has been in production long enough that the tuning is settled.
Verdict: at $42 this is one of the better sub-three-ounce folders you can buy without resorting to plastic. Buy it as an office or dress-carry knife that happens to cut. Do not buy it expecting the grip of micarta or the durability of titanium, because aluminium gives you neither — it gives you thin, stiff and light, and that is the whole point.
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