Hey folks, it's your old pal 12-Gauge Chimp bringing you a new knife review.
I know it has been awhile since I last updated the site and I have a good reason for that. The reason of that is that I literally had nothing to review. So I just took a break for a bit, but now I'm back with some new things to review and a quick update for y'all.
As you all might remember, I've been giving knives and other stuff my 12-Gauge Chimp Seal of Approval rather easily over the years. Well, starting today, that all ends. Effective immediately, I will no longer be handing out my approval on a product without actually doing a lengthy test on said product. I got burned big time by my Ka-Bar Agama pocket knife and it had me rethinking my whole review system. So with that in mind, new products will now be used by me for a period of no less than six months. After the six months is up, I will then decide to either give the product my seal of approval or not.
Getting back to the topic of this review special, it's been awhile since I've purchased a new knife. The last knife I purchased was the Kershaw Nerve that I reviewed a couple months back. The new addition to my Kershaw collection is the recently released Kershaw Shuffle.
The Kershaw Shuffle sports a 2 3/8 inch blade with a total length of about 3 1/4" inches closed and about 5 5/8" inches when open. The blade is made of 3Cr13MOV steel with a bead blasted finish, which makes it a perfect little companion knife to the Kershaw Nerve. The handle is made from glass filled nylon with a "K" textured grip. Its other features include a bottle opener and a lanyard ring that doubles as a light duty prybar and a flat screwdriver (I have actually used it to tighten the grips on my 1911). It's got a pocket clip that's adjustable for right or left pocket carry with the tip up only.
Now, I've got gorilla sized hands which makes using smaller knives kind of a pain, but the Kershaw Shuffle's size isn't too bad. Yeah, it's a bit smaller than I'm used to, but this is not a knife I'm going to go all Johnny Tactical with. Come to think of it, I'm not going to do that with any of my knives for that matter. For me, the Kershaw Shuffle is purely a utility blade and it does a pretty good job at simple tasks. Its size makes it perfect for places where you can't carry a knife over a certain size (like some states here in the US). It's also perfect for those of us who don't want to carry a bulky knife everyday.
All in all, I'd say grab one of these while you can. For less than 20 bucks (in some places it's a lot cheaper), the Kershaw Shuffle is probably one of the best values of 2013.
Well, that'll do it for this review. Keep an eye open for my next review and an upcoming special review of a blade I am extremely happy to be able to review.
As always, this is 12-Gauge Chimp signing off.
