The hottest custom knifemakers’ hottest knives, a field test of four of the latest factory fixed blades sold for under $50 each, and how factory knife companies and custom makers arrive at collaboration knives are but a sample of the stories in the new BLADE®, on newsstands now!

Factory/custom collaboration knives go back at least as far as BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Blackie Collins’s collaborations with Smith & Wesson’s knife line in the late 1960s. However, the explosion in such knives occurred circa 1990 with the C15 collaboration between Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bob Terzuola and Spyderco. Since then, collaborations have come by the train load. How has the process evolved and how have collaborations changed in terms of how they are viewed by both sides in the collaboration equation? Find out in “Deal Makers & Heartbreakers” by BLADE field editor Mike Haskew.

To fulfill reader requests for the best in economy knife buys, the new BLADE introduces “Budget Knife Buyer,” the first in a regular series of stories on quality knives obtainable from one or more retailers for $50 or less. First up are utility fixed blades. Join Abe Elias as he puts the CRKT Sting 3B, Condor Tool & Knife Tarpon, Gerber Ghostrike and Puma USA Badlands through the paces.

Twice each year, BLADE canvasses leading custom knife purveyors for the hottest custom makers’ hottest knives. The latest rendition of “What’s Hottest” features some of the world’s leading makers’ best recent efforts. Many of the makers’ names remain the same but the knives are hotter than ever. Check out which ones are sizzlin’ in “Sharp Studies in Standout Steel” by BLADE editor Steve Shackleford.

Also this issue: Join Michael Janich as he visits his friend, Fred Perrin, perhaps the most revered maker of tactical knives in France, in “Blademaker of Burgundy”; ABS master smith Larry Fuegen details his one-of-a-kind forged scroll folder in “Mad About Max”; the latest in straight razors and the secrets to keeping them sharp in Pat Covert’s “Razor Blades by a Whisker”; Zoe Crist’s hot stainless san mai steel and the knives that have it; James Morgan Ayres’s field test of four of the latest tactical folders, including this issue’s cover knife, the Browning Vanquish Pocket Deploy, in “Tactical Folder Field-Test Fest”;  and much more, all in the latest issue of the World’s No. 1 Knife Publication, BLADE.