I review a lot of knives, and after a while you get at least somewhat familiar with most of the companies out there. Civilware wasn’t one of them. When the Striker showed up for review, I really didn’t know anything about the company or the knife.
My first impression was pretty positive, though. The Striker is a simple, practical fixed blade, which is exactly the sort of knife I tend to gravitate toward. It’s made in the USA from CPM Cru-Wear, has a comfortable handle and comes with a Kydex sheath. There isn’t anything particularly flashy about it, and that’s fine by me.
Then I saw the $295 price tag. That’s a fair bit of money for a relatively basic fixed blade, especially one from a company I wasn’t familiar with. The materials and US manufacture certainly helped explain the price, but I still wanted to know a little more about Civilware and what exactly I was getting for my money.
As it turns out, there’s quite a bit of story behind this otherwise straightforward-looking knife.
From Skateboards to Hunting Knives
Civilware was founded in 2013 by Geoff Rowley. If you’re more familiar with the skateboarding world than I am — a low bar — that name may mean something to you. Rowley had a long career as a professional skateboarder before becoming increasingly involved with hunting and conservation. He’s also worked as a hunting guide.
The Striker grew out of Rowley’s own experiences in the field. According to Civilware, Rowley was on a mountain lion hunt in Colorado when he left his firearm behind because he wasn’t the hunter that day. Two yearling mountain lions unexpectedly came crashing through the brush near him. Nothing came of the encounter, but it got him thinking about what sort of substantial fixed blade he’d want available as a last ditch backup.
Another piece of the design came from a much older source. Rowley later read The Ben Lilly Legend and became interested in Lilly and the knives he carried. Lilly was a legendary hunter and houndsman from the late 19th and early 20th centuries who spent much of his life hunting bears and mountain lions. Lilly’s knives were working tools, reportedly made from things like old files and scrap steel, and some had distinctive curved or “wavy” blade profiles. Those knives helped inspire the recurved profile of what became the Striker.
Civilware says the first production Strikers were made with Charlie Davis at Anza Knives in California. The initial batch consisted of just 40 knives priced at $150 each and they sold out in less than 48 hours. The Striker went on to become one of Civilware’s main designs, although the current version has come a long way from that original $150 knife.
The Current Striker
Civilware is now part of Toor Corporation, and the Striker is manufactured in the United States by Toor Knives for Civilware. The Striker has a 4-inch CPM Cru-Wear blade and a 4.5-inch handle, giving you a package that’s large enough for serious work without being unwieldy. My knife has the OD green and black treatment and comes with a Kydex sheath.
CPM Cru-Wear is a good fit for this type of knife. It’s a powder metallurgy tool steel known for combining good toughness with substantial wear resistance. That makes sense on a field knife that’s likely to encounter wood, bone and other materials that can be tough on an edge.
Since Cru-Wear isn’t a stainless steel, Civilware also protects the blade with a KG Gun-Kote finish. Gun-Kote is a thin, baked-on coating intended to provide corrosion protection as well as resistance to abrasion, impact and chemicals. That additional corrosion protection makes sense on a field knife that’s likely to see moisture, sweat and less than ideal conditions in the woods.
The handle is similarly straightforward. There’s nothing particularly exotic going on with its shape. That’s probably a good thing. Civilware describes it as a neutral handle intended to accommodate different grips and cutting positions, and after actually using the Striker I’d say that’s dead-on.
A Working Edge
One of the first things I noticed about the Striker was its edge. It came sharp enough to work, but it wasn’t the kind of screaming sharp factory edge you sometimes get on a new knife. There’s a reason for that. Toor tends to put a relatively stout 20 to 22 degree edge on its field knives, with the idea being durability rather than maximum slicing performance. A heavier edge should stand up better when the knife is being used around wood, bone and other hard materials.
Initially I wasn’t sure how much I liked that choice. For basic camp and utility chores, the Striker worked perfectly well. I used it for opening boxes and packages and roughing out tent stakes, among other everyday cutting chores. Where I was less convinced was its potential as a hunting knife. If I were going to use the Striker primarily for dressing and processing game, I’d prefer a finer edge.
I tried tuning the edge up with ceramic sticks and a loaded leather strop and didn’t have much luck. Cru-Wear contains hard vanadium carbides and is considerably more wear resistant than the simpler steels many of us grew up sharpening, and my relatively mild sharpening methods weren’t accomplishing much. I eventually moved to a Work Sharp powered sharpener and started making some progress.
It’s worth pointing out that Cru-Wear doesn’t actually require diamond stones to sharpen. Conventional abrasives can do it, but if you’re trying to remove enough steel to substantially change the edge geometry rather than simply touch up the existing edge, diamond or CBN stones are a better option. In hindsight, what I was really trying to do wasn’t so much sharpen the Striker as re-profile its intentionally stout factory edge.
After using the knife some more, though, I started wondering whether changing that factory edge was really what I wanted to do.
Putting the Striker to Work
The Striker made a lot more sense once I stopped looking at it as a general purpose hunting knife and started treating it as a hard-use field knife.
The G10 handle is extremely comfortable when you’re actually bearing down on the knife. I did a fair amount of notching and shaving wood, and the neutral handle gave me a secure grip without creating obvious hot spots when I put some pressure behind the blade.
Then I moved on to splitting kindling. I batoned the Striker through a pile of wood for my fire pit, including pieces with knots that made the job considerably tougher than splitting nice clean, straight grained wood. The hefty blade powered through everything without an issue, and more importantly, that stout factory edge held up extremely well.
The Gun-Kote showed some evidence that I’d been using the knife, too. Between the sharpening, general carving and especially the batoning, I started seeing wear on the finish. I didn’t have any issues with the coating chipping or flaking off. It was simply the sort of honest wear you’d expect from dragging and pounding a coated blade through wood. The coating may be abrasion resistant, but it isn’t abrasion proof, and I’d rather see wear on a field knife because it’s being used than worry about keeping the finish pristine.
The wood work also made me reconsider my initial reaction to the edge geometry. Could Civilware and Toor put a finer edge on the Striker and make it a better slicer? Sure, but they’d also be giving up some of the durability that makes the knife work so well at the heavier chores it was apparently designed to handle. Knowing that, I’m inclined to leave the edge pretty much the way Toor intended it.
For a trip into the woods, I’d be perfectly happy pairing the Striker with a smaller fixed blade or a good folder for finer cutting chores. Let the smaller knife handle the delicate work and use the Striker for notching, splitting kindling and the other jobs where having a substantial fixed blade pays off. Looked at that way, the Striker starts making considerably more sense.
Simple Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Cheap
That still leaves the $295 question. The Striker is a simple knife. There’s no complicated mechanism, exotic handle treatment or elaborate machining to immediately announce where your money went. What you’re paying for is a US-made fixed blade using a premium tool steel, solid construction and a design intended for hard field use.
Whether that’s enough to make a $295 fixed blade worthwhile is ultimately going to depend on what you expect from your knife. If your priority is slicing performance or you want one knife to handle everything from processing game to camp chores, the Striker’s heavy factory edge probably isn’t going to impress you right out of the box. You could re-profile it, but doing so starts working against one of the design decisions that makes the knife what it is.
If you’re looking for a rugged field knife and aren’t opposed to carrying a smaller blade for finer work, I think the Striker makes a much stronger argument for itself. I started this review looking at a pretty basic fixed blade from a company I’d never heard of and wondering why it cost almost $300. After learning the story behind it and putting the knife to work, I understand it a lot ,better.
The Civilware Striker isn’t trying to be a scalpel. It’s a stout working knife with an intentionally durable edge, comfortable handle and a blade that shrugged off the rough work I threw at it. The Ben Lilly influence and Geoff Rowley’s story make it more interesting, but ultimately the knife still has to stand on its own, and so far, I think it does.
At $295, the Striker certainly isn’t inexpensive, and there are plenty of capable fixed blades available for less money. But the combination of US manufacture, CPM Cru-Wear, solid construction and actual hard-use performance gives the Striker more substance than its simple appearance initially suggests. Sometimes simple is exactly what you want in a working knife.