BLADE Magazine

• Purchase Price: $7
• Maker: Unknown
• Blade Length: 14 1/8″
• Blade Material: Hardened carbon steel
• Handle: Hand-carved wood
• Handle Design: Dropped at butt
• Collar: Aluminum conduit
• Knife to Know: Blade has a forged distal taper; handle butt flared to enhance purchase
• Weight: 12 ozs.
• Overall Length: 20″
• Sheath: Wood with handcarved details
• Sheath Weight: 3 ozs.

I received a bolo made in the Philippines from my friend, Mike Key, as a gift a couple of years ago. He went on a three-day search for good bolos made from carbon steel in villages, not the souvenir type. He was successful in his quest.

I ran a triangle file down the edge and it skated off, an indication the blade is hardened steel for sure. The forged blade has a smooth distal taper, starting around 3/16-inch thick down to 0 inches at the tip. The knife sports hidden-tang construction. The wood for the sheath and handle are from a local shop in the Philippines. Of course, a blade must cut no matter where it’s made.

Cutting Tests

Up first: the paper slice. Despite a coarse edge, the bolo still managed to give clean slices in 20-pound bond paper. Normally, a bigger blade is cumbersome slicing paper, but the bolo has a perfect balance due to its distal taper.

A pool noodle was next on the test menu. The bolo was very aggressive on the plastic foam. I held the pool noodle suspended in air with one hand and sliced it. The knife is very controllable and the handle is indexed perfectly.

Next up: chopping into a hard cardboard tube with the noodle inserted to prevent wall collapse. It worked on the first two chops, but then I hit too close to the previous pair of chops and the tube crushed under the force of the blows. Still, the blade made it halfway through the tube.

When you have trees encroaching on your property, you have to take steps to keep your yard clear. One such branch had scraped me for the last time while I was mowing the lawn. Its 2.5-inch diameter was a breeze for the bolo. Five whacks and the branch was down.

I dragged it away from the fence to whack it into smaller pieces. This is what the bolo was designed to do. One chop per branch and it was in pieces quickly. Just a wrist snap carried the blade halfway through a 1.5-inch-diameter branch. The bolo is a very fast chopper.

A note on the wooden sheath: It’s flat on one side for resting against your body and slightly rounded on the other. The maker even added some hand-carved detail into the wood. Excellent workmanship!

A big thank you goes out to Mike Key for finding this gem of a bolo for me.

Changes

On a blade this long, I would like to see a pin in the handle for a mechanical connection.

Final Results

The bolo is a very balanced working model. You can use it all day without wearing your hand or arm out. It exhibits great workmanship in the forging and the woodwork!

There’s never a bad time for outside fun, but the COVID era provided a serious force multiplier for fresh air. For instance, golf surged in popularity in the United States since the start of the pandemic, adding 500,000 new sand trap junkies to the sport.

From the perspective of the knife world, that begs a question: what blade is in your pocket when you’re working on that birdie?

Enter Golphers, a company turning out everyday carry (EDC) knives worthy of a PGA tour.

EDC Knives for Golfers

It was nearly guaranteed that the push in recent years toward urban EDCs—high-performance folders that don’t raise eyebrows—would yield knives tailored to sports and hobbies. Golphers got out ahead of the curve with its catalog of blades purpose-built for the putting green.

In addition to being tidy EDC designs, the three knives that make up the core of Golphers—the Ace, the Scottsdale and the Wichita—feature a bottle opener, a fold-out divot tool and a detachable ball marker.

How Not to Lose Your Ball Marker while Golfing

The built-in marker is a stroke of genius I didn’t fully appreciate until talking with a few golf enthusiasts. These small discs constantly get lost or misplaced through nine or 18 holes.

Attaching the marker to something with presence clipped into a pocket, like one of these Golphers knives, solves that problem with style.

Even better, Golphers will customize your ball marker for you. This would be great for gifts or just as something cool to have.

Divot Tools for Golf

The Ace, Scottsdale and Wichita come with fold-out divot tools, the lemonade to the iced tea of these knives. Some designs are smarter by half when it comes to multitools, but this addition is entirely necessary and baked in seamlessly between the frame and the handle scale.

A person could start to feel spoiled by the time and attention spent on these designs. But how do they actually perform? 

How Do They Perform? The Ace

Golphers sent in three knives for this review. I’ll tackle each one at a time.

The Ace is an Eric Ochs-designed flipper with a three-inch S35VN blade, available with a variety of handle materials. I received the blue carbon fiber version, much to my enjoyment. The Ace includes a bottle opener, ball marker and divot tool.

Three-inch blades are the right size for EDC, and this flipper snaps into place with a crisp “click.” It’s infinitely fidget-able (not a technical term, but close enough), which isn’t to be discounted while waiting for the duffers up ahead to finish.

When I showed off the knife, the divot tool always surprised and delighted. It waits inside the Ace for a sneak attack. It’s a simple thing, sure, but this divot tool could’ve easily been bungled in the design. Simple is hard to do.

Honestly, the Ace would be a respectable EDC on or off the course. I’d be happy to include this in my regular rotation.

That said, I wish the design allowed my index finger to choke up on the blade a bit more. I’m missing a little jimping, too. That’s my personal preference, though, and certainly not a knock on the knife itself.

Along the same lines, a three-inch blade may be overkill for the golf course. This feels to me more like a knife that plays to the culture of golf, like a T-shirt with a logo on it, than something to be used for its stated purpose.

Again, that’s a personal preference. If three inches is your style, you won’t be disappointed with the Ace.

If not, Golphers still has you covered.

The Scottsdale

The Scottsdale is the 2.5-inch blade version of the Ace. It sports the same golf-friendly features, but in a more compact package. For me, this is the sweet spot, and it made the Scottsdale my favorite of the three.

Golphers wisely went with framelocks on each of their knives, and the Scottsdale I received made it clear why that’s the right choice. The blade locked up nicely each time, maintaining its sturdiness for each task I put it through.

The detent arrived hard out of the box, too, which is always a plus for staying secure in the pocket.

Other than the blade length, the key difference between the Ace and the Scottsdale is the flipper tab. The Ace has it, while the Scottsdale doesn’t. This isn’t necessarily good or bad. It’s a preference thing, and it’s worth keeping in mind in case thumb studs alone won’t do.

And if you don’t want thumb studs at all, Golphers didn’t stop at the Scottsdale.

The Wichita

Like the Scottsdale, the Wichita also wields a 2.5-inch blade. However, the belly on the Wichita’s blade is a bit beefier, and a thumb hole is in place of the studs.

Golphers calls the Wichita the “holy grail” of its knives, and it’s hard to disagree. The Wichita is the most classed up of the trio, ready for an experienced caddy to open with two gloved hands. Of course, the Wichita can be opened with one hand, too, but this is the picture it paints in my mind.

To the point, the Wichita is only offered with G10 handles in swatches that shout “urban EDC.” Were this knife to pop up on TV during the Masters, I doubt anyone would find it out of place.

That’s saying something for a knife that retails a hair under $100, as of this writing.

The Verdict

The Scottsdale takes the cake as the best of Golphers’ three knives, but that’s just me. Golfers will find at least one Golphers knife to suit their tastes. 

Golphers shows why there’s so much vitality in the knife industry. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, along comes another wave of innovation and creativity. Golphers is good news for every knife enthusiast, whether they golf or not. 

If you do hit the links, you seriously need to consider getting one of these knives. They may not stop you from pulling too hard to the left on your drive, but they will make your time on the green more enjoyable.

And isn’t that what it’s all about anyway?

See more on the Golphers website.

Harry Archer is no stranger to fans of BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame® members Bob Loveless and A.G. Russell, as well as followers of Steve Johnson, Bob Dozier and other inhabitants of the custom knife scene. A larger-than life “operator” for the CIA, among others, Archer designed the chute knife, a fixed blade that got its name for use when a parachutist landed in a tree or in some other sticky situation and needed to cut the shroud lines to free himself.

Archer fell in love with Loveless knives and designed a chute knife that Bob made. In the process, Archer and Loveless became close friends and the chute one of Bob’s best-known knives, one reproduced today by scores of custom makers.

A.G. and Loveless had a special relationship, so it should come as no surprise that A.G. became friends with Archer as well—and neither should it come as a revelation that A.G. saw the potential for reproducing a chute knife. In fact, as it turns out, A.G. Russell Knives wound up ordering three different chute repros.

There are great similarities between A.G.’s chute knives and those by Loveless, but also differences. For one, A.G. included a hole in each end of the double guard. Loveless did not. A.G.’s early A.G. Russell and Morseth chutes used narrow-tang construction with distinctly shaped, solid handles. Loveless’s were full tang with applied scales.

Dozier was the maker behind the first A.G. Russell and Morseth chute knives. Aside from a few changes, the Dozier design is much like the Loveless, including no holes in the guard, full-tang construction and the Loveless signature green Micarta® scales.

As A.G. wrote, “In the beginning, Loveless probably would have used A2 tool steel for the blade, and later 154CM and/or ATS-34 stainless. Dozier’s design uses Dozier’s signature D2 tool steel.” It also features one of Dozier’s solidly built leather sheaths.

From 2003-2007, A.G. offered a chute knife designed in collaboration with award-winning German knifemaker Dietmar Kressler.

Russell took Archer’s basic chute and “added as much elegance” as he could manage, “using the talents of that most talented maker [i.e., Kressler]. Dietmar is the master of integral hilt-and-butt [aka hilt-and-cap] hunting and combat knives,” A.G. wrote. “He has taken my design and executed it beautifully.”

Just 75 were made and the last one sold for $2,195. ”They are available today on the secondary market only.

After that, A.G. began work on a more economical drop-forged version of the chute. It took 10 years to get the tooling finished in Taiwan and the knives made. From the blade tip to the end of the pommel, the entire knife is drop forged of 440C stainless steel and has a “very tapered” tang.

“The standard model has ebony Rucarta® scales. Blade and overall lengths: 5.5 and 9.5 inches. MSRP: $245. With ironwood scales the MSRP is $295.

As Russell wrote, “Harry Archer could well have been the pattern for Mr. Clark, the ubiquitous CIA problem solver in Tom Clancy’s novels … He spent a lot of time in the jungle teaching jungle combat and survival to American soldiers and soldiers of other countries as well … He loved knives, well made knives. In his lifetime he was probably Loveless’s #2 or #3 customer. He was a strong influence on the design of custom combat knives and his design for the chute knife is classic.”