MachineWise's $905 Sonora Is a Balisong Maker's Folder

The interesting thing about a folder designed by a balisong company is what it chooses to keep. MachineWise's Sonora 2424 keeps the pivots, the tolerance discipline, and the obsession with action feel, and drops the flipping handles. The result is a 3.35-inch CPM-S90V blade in anodized Grade 5 titanium, 3.5 ounces, 7.95 inches overall, $905.

The lock is a plunge lock, which is MachineWise's answer to the button-lock era: a plunger engages the tang and releases with a press, giving one-handed open and close with no liner flex. The flipper tab is the only deployment method, the clip is deep carry and ambidextrous, and the handle is 4.40 inches of machined titanium with an anodized finish. The knife ships in a custom biscuit-tin box with a COA, a maintenance card, and a sample of the company's lubricant.

S90V is the high-wear choice in Crucible's lineup, with about 9 percent vanadium and a reputation for holding an edge through abrasive work at the cost of toughness and sharpening effort. In a 3.35-inch blade at a thin grind it makes a knife that stays sharp for months of cardboard and rope, provided you never drop it on a tile floor or use it as a scraper.

Compared with the Mojave, the Sonora is smaller, slightly lighter, and shorter in the handle, and it costs $25 less. Compared with a Chris Reeve Small Sebenza, the Sonora is more expensive, more exotic, and much harder to find, with a lock that is faster but less proven over decades. Compared with a WE or Reate production titanium folder at a third of the price, you are paying for American small-shop machining and the action tuning.

Verdict: a beautifully made small-batch folder with a steel that rewards clean cutting. Buy it if you want something almost nobody else at your table owns; otherwise a $300 production folder will do 90 percent of the same job.