Proelia TD003SL 8.86" Fixed G10 D2 Plain Tool Knives, Silver

First of all, this is the same knife as the Defcon "Hydra" series TD003SL. You might save a few bucks by buying it under this name instead, like I did.The knife arrives in its plain black box with a shipping label slapped on. The blade resides in a kydex sheath with a Teklok-like attachment. The clip attaches with two screws and is extremely secure. I still haven't been convinced of the virtues of a Teklok over basic dangler hardware. It has a lock, so it's probably not going to come unlocked unless something pushes the button pretty hard (that said, a simple loop of nylon webbing never comes unlocked). It's easy enough to lash to my backpack through the five unused eyelets, or you can remove the clip and use your own hardware; the sheath has 1.5 inch eyelet spacing.The blade "wobbles" a bit inside the sheath. When the blade is fully sheathed, it has very little side-to-side play but a great deal of play vertically, meaning the edge could potentially be smacking the inside of the sheath as it moves back and forth and slowly becoming dull. Besides that, blade retention is great, and it almost has a two-stage feel to extraction and re-sheathing. On the way back in, the sheath softly clicks past a grab point, and then positively clicks in completely when you apply more force. As with all kydex sheaths, using your thumb to pop the blade out past those two "detent" grab points is pretty much required to draw it one-handed.The blade itself is a beast. The tang is 6mm thick and so is the spine until slightly past where the jimping ends. An unsharpened false edge helps reduce a bit of weight. It's still around 1 pound, so it's hefty for sure. The point of balance is somewhere in between the front of the handle and the finger recession. There's a choil which, when paired with the jimping, makes fine work and wood shaving easy. Don't try chopping in sabre grip with your thumb on the jimping though. I didn't think it would work either, but I tested out a few swings anyway, and my thumb was sore for a while. The jimping is too large for anything but detail work. The handle is generously sized, I can fit both hands sans one finger if I use the choil. That means that a wide variety of grips is possible. You can put all four fingers below the finger recession for maximum leverage for chopping. The G10 handle feels nice, and the flint-knapped pattern is very comfortable and versatile. The scales have torx-bit screws for removal.The blade has a flat spine, but the edge is slightly recurved which can be hard to see in some pictures. As a result it has a large sweet spot for chopping. The edge is not particularly sharp out of the box, but after chopping both soft wood and rock hard deadwood, the edge was unaffected. D2 is supposedly quite decent for edge retention. It appears to have a flat or very slightly convex grind. One issue with the blade is that the edge grind was slightly taller on one side than the other towards the tip, making the point appear slightly off-center if you examine it closely. That said, the tip is extremely stout and should handle occasional prying with no issues. It's still a bit too small and light to chop and baton old deadwood. It will bite, but it won't create giant cleaving cuts like a dedicated 10" chopper. I'd call it a light-duty chopper if such a thing exists. After my testing I have plenty of confidence in the blade.These are made in China, so the issues I've mentioned are to be expected. They don't affect performance, and the big payoff is the low price. Maybe wait if it's unavailable at less than the $80 list, but for the $65 I paid for it, it's an awesome deal, so long as you're willing to overlook some less-than-stellar manufacturing tolerances and see through to the practicality of the finished product.

While the catalog name is different this is in fact the Defcon Hydra model TD003SL. I can't give enough praise as it's brutally strong, solid, and I got it stropped to razor sharp.