This one is getting in under the wire—and you'll be glad it did. Meet the Deadline, from Kershaw and Matt Diskin.

It's got a lot of special features between its two-toned stainless steel handles. First, there's the opening system. The Deadline opens with Kershaw’s KVT ball-bearing system. But a manual system like that has to have detent—often strong detent—to keep the blade in the handle until the user opens it. When the blade is fully closed, a depression in the blade is engaged by a ball partially embedded in the liner or handle. The interaction of ball and depression keeps the blade closed. The problem with that is that sometimes the detent is too strong to make opening the knife comfortable. The answer is our new Tuned Detent System (TDS)™.

TDS puts the detent ball on the front scale of the knife in an inset steel plate. This plate enables us to “fine tune” the detent so that it’s perfect—not too heavy, not too light. With TDS, opening a manual flipper knife like this is as easy as opening any other flipper.

Both blade and handle feature our two-toned finish. In this case, we used titanium carbo-nitride coating in the grinds and hollows and a satin finish on the flats. The result is a knife with a very distinctive look that walks the line between classy and tactical.

The 8Cr13MoV blade is a modified Wharncliffe with a top swedge. The handles are two-tone-finished steel with cold-forged handle texture for a solid grip. A strong frame lock secures the blade open during use. We also added a decorative glass-filled nylon backspacer in matte black and a moveable steel filler tab so the look is nicely detailed and neatly finished. The pocketclip is Kershaw’s deep-carry pocketclip so that the knife rides comfortably low in your pocket.

    KVT ball-bearing opening
    Flipper
    Inset liner lock
    Tuned Detent System (TDS)
    Reversible deep-carry pocketclip (left/right, tip-up)
    Steel: 8Cr13MoV, titanium carbo-nitride coating with satin flats
    Handle: Steel, titanium carbo-nitride coating with satin flats
    Blade Length: 3.25 in. (8.3 cm)
    Closed Length: 4.25 in. (10.8 cm)
    Overall Length: 7.5 in. (19.1 cm)
    Weight: 4.6 oz. (133 g)