American-Made Superiority: The Toor Draper EDC Folder

Three hundred twenty-five dollars buys a lot of things these days. Well, less than five or six years ago, but still a lot. Groceries. Ammunition. A good red (or green) dot, Or a very respectable dinner for two with your significant other, including booze (just don’t order the wine the waiter recommends).

Three hundred twenty-five dollars will also buy you a Toor Draper. A folding knife that will last you far longer than any of the things mentioned above.

Sure, you can open Amazon boxes for far less. And if that’s the entirety of your knife duty needs, your shopping just got a lot easier. For others — those who want a beautifully-designed, American-made knife using first-rate materials — the Draper deserves a few minutes of your attention.

The Draper, which Toor introduced about a year ago, is sort of a hybrid. It’s an elegant mix of an EDC knife and a tactical folder, though not so tactical as to freak out the normals around you in the office or the UPS store.

It’s not small, and while it’s not heavy, it’s not a knife you’d call light, either. As that little girl who liked to steal food from those bears might have said, for most of us, it’s just right.

Like all of their knives, veteran-owned Toor makes the Draper right here in America (well, San Diego) by Americans. They build it with premium steel, a practical, useful Axis crossbar lock, and an almost mimimalist design that’s intended to earn it a place in your pocket on a daily basis. For the rest of your life.

Let’s start with that 3.5-inch blade. Toor chose CPM MagnaCut for the Draper in an eminently useful drop point profile. It’s heat-treated to 61 to 63 HRC. That means good edge retention, superior strength and top flight corrosion resistance.

Those are all very useful qualities in something you’ll not only use to slice open packages, but will also sweat on, use to gut a deer, cut a rope, or stab something with…and sometimes forget to wipe down afterwards.

Steel has become something of a competitive sport among knife knuts. Mention one and an entire chorus will immediately chime in to explain why whatever you chose was a bad idea and a different one would have been much, much better. Usually using a chart.

Fine. That’s the nature of the intertubes. But steel choice is just the beginning of the conversation. Heat treatment, edge geometry, and the job(s) you’re asking the knife to do matter just as much. A premium name on the blade doesn’t excuse a lousy knife design or execution job around it.

The Draper’s sweeping drop-point profile makes good practical sense. Its gently curved belly and pointed tip are ideally suited for all sorts of cutting and slicing duties you regularly need a knife for.

And then there’s the Draper’s gently curved handle. It’s made of a beautifully finished and contoured G-10 with an ergonomically excellent finger recess just aft of the phosphor bronze washer-powered pivot.

And that pivot is not only solid — there’s zero blade play here — as smooth as glass. Pull the crossbar lock back, give the knife the gentlest flick of your wrist, and it’s closed before you even realize it.

The Draper is smooth and ultra-comfortable in the hand with no hot spots at all. And while that smooth finish on the G-10 might look like it would be slippery when wet, I had no problem maintaining a solid grip after dunking it. That’s due in good part to the cleanly executed, agressive jimping on the forward end of the handle and the blade’s thumb ramp.

The Draper is conveniently big enough to be used easily while wearing gloves, too.

Then there’s the Draper’s thiccness. Toor lists that slab of MagnaCut at .156 inch and it’s feels like every bit of that. That’s a substantial piece of steel for a pocket folder. That alone doesn’t tell you how well a knife slices, however. The grind behind the edge has plenty to say about that as well and the Draper’s flat grind slices beautifully.

Still, that dimension tells you something about the design priorities here. This is a knife that’s made to stand up to hard use in tough conditions, moreso than most everyday carry folders.

With a closed length of just over 4¾ inches and a width of half an inch, this is a big a knife as I like to carry on an everyday basis.

But carry it, I have. It weights 3.9 ounces. That’s night light, but it’s not enough to weigh you down either, or feel like there’s an anchor in your pocket. And with its deep carry titanium clip, the Draper carries surprising well on a daily basis.

Toor likes to say that make knives for people who use knives. That certainly applies to the Draper. It’s not fancy or flashy. It won’t catch anyone’s eye or impress anyone (who isn’t sufficiently on the spectrum entirely recognize one when they see it).

But make no mistake, this is an unquestionably superior cutting tool. One that’s built to last you the rest of your life (and probably just as long for whoever inherits it). It’s designed with purpose and made with excellent materials. Here. In the US of A.

You’ll pay a pretty penny for that. Dropping $325 isn’t an impulse buy. But for a lot of people, everything that the Draper is and does is more than enough to justify that price tag.