The Informant By Greg Wesley Is Another Quality Fixed-Blade EDC. But Just How Good Is This Small Custom Knife?

The trend for smaller EDC knives is still going strong. Set up with a leather sheath for belt or pocket carry, the Informant from Wesley Custom Knives fits the bill perfectly. Greg Wesley grinds them all by hand. This one is lean and mean. 

Testing The Wesley Informant

I started with a piece of dense foam I use for making my Kydex sheaths. Manipulated with push and pull cuts, the knife started biting, slicing cleanly and quickly. It was easy to control the width of cuts, all of which were straight without bending the foam. Very nice.

One of my favorite tests,the 20-pound bond copy paper slice, provided little resistance. It puts a smile on my face when I hear every cut. I used a pull motion to shred the paper. The Informant came razor sharp. The balance of the blade made for a very quick test.

The knife had no challenges cutting through double-walled cardboard. I got carried away and pushed the blade too far into the cardboard, hitting the choil area and messing up the cut. The Informant is just fun to use. Cuts were mostly straight unless I took too big of a bite and the cardboard pinched the blade and slowed it down.

Plastic board was easy for the knife. It cut the plastic very quickly and I barely felt any resistance. Once I had the rhythm slicing, it was finished. This is a sharp little knife. Cuts were very controllable.

Pushing the Wesley Informant

I grabbed some 8-ounce leather for skiving (thin, tapered slices). With a louder crunching sound, the Informant bit quickly. The thinness of the knife made controlling the skiving simple—I just had to move my fingers faster to keep from losing DNA. The edge remained just as sharp as when I started.

I had to whittle to get a better feel of the little fixed blade. The cuts in the wood were extremely smooth. The Informant peeled large curly-cues one after another. The blade spine was somewhat sharp on my thumb but not too bad. The handle was a great fit to my hand—no hot spots at all. Nice job, Greg.

The Informant crunched its way to 188 cuts of sisal rope before the edge started to slide a bit. Impressive! The handle was still comfortable with the extra power added for the high number of cuts. The knife’s light weight didn’t impact its cutting ability.

The last test is a little destructive at times: the antler chop. I gave a whitetail antler 20 hard chops with the Informant. I rolled a thin wire edge in a few places but the blade was still very sharp, so the heat treatment is good.

Final Thoughts

I would soften the blade spine a tad more and maybe round the scales a bit, though that’s being picky. The Informant is a small, high-performing utility tool that can handle most any knife chore. It’s a great EDC choice.

Informant By Greg Wesley Knife Specs

Informant By Greg Wesley Knife Specs
Blade length: 3.63 inches
Blade material: 1095 carbon steel
Blade grind: Flat
Blade width: .75 inches
Blade thickness at ricasso: .13 inches
Handle: Canvas Micarta®
Handle thickness throughout: .44 inches
Hardware: Micarta pins, stainless thong hole
Weight: 3 ounces.
Overall length: 7.5 inches
Sheath: 10-ounce. tooled leather pouch w/belt loop
Weight of sheathed knife: 5.5 ounces
Maker’s price: $200

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