It al­ways amazes me how many of our cus­tomers can’t sharp­en a knife. When we get ques­tions re­gard­ing the best way to re-sharp­en our broad­heads, my ini­tial re­ply is, “if you can sharp­en a knife, you can sharp­en our broad­heads”. Well, ap­par­ent­ly a lot of peo­ple can’t sharp­en a knife, and so­lu­tions for that prob­lem need to be de­veloped.

     Over the years I’ve skinned lots of white­tails and hogs with a sim­ple two blade trap­per style fold­ing knife. When one blade dulls, I’d just switch over to the oth­er blade. Once home I’d sit down and quick­ly sharp­en the two blades and it was ready for ser­vice again when need­ed.

     In the ear­ly nineties, when I start­ed west­ern hunt­ing, I quick­ly re­al­ized that there was a big dif­fer­ence be­tween a white­tail and an elk or a moose. My two blade trap­per was not at all what I need­ed, and I had to learn that the hard way.

     So many fac­tors con­tribute to the re­quire­ments of a field knife and how it needs to per­form. Here are what I con­sid­er some of the most im­por­tant;

     The Achilles heel of all knives is edge re­ten­tion. Whether it be the qual­i­ty of the steel and its abil­i­ty to re­tain an edge on a fixed blade knife or how of­ten you have to change out the cheap blades on the re­place­able blade knives, keep­ing a sharp blade is every­thing.

     Hand fa­tigue or com­fort is not some­thing most think about un­til they’re half way through an elk for the first time, but it’s a se­ri­ous con­cern. As men­tioned ear­li­er, this was a ma­jor les­son learned the hard way on my first elk in 1991. The lit­tle hard cor­ners and edges on a knife that don’t reg­is­ter while hold­ing a knife for short du­ra­tions become ex­cru­ci­at­ing af­ter a few hours in on big game. With para­cord wrapped han­dles be­ing the craze, it’s ob­vi­ous to me that most peo­ple are not ac­tu­al­ly us­ing these knives.

     While list­ed third here, safe­ty is prob­a­bly the most im­por­tant fac­tor for a field knife. Over the years I’ve seen and ex­pe­ri­enced some se­ri­ous in­juries re­sult­ing from fixed, fold­ing and re­place­able blade knives alike and all could have been avoid­ed if the chance of fail­ure was elim­i­nat­ed be­fore the knife was even made. The two most com­mon safe­ty fail­ures are the lock­ing mech­a­nism on a fold­er fail­ing dur­ing use and of course the thin blades break­ing on a re­place­able blade knife. At one point I would use a box blade to do all the skin­ning as the han­dle was ac­tu­al­ly quite com­fort­able and the short ra­zor blade was ac­tu­al­ly very durable. I would then use a cus­tom fixed blade to work through the quar­ter­ing process and re­mov­ing meat from the bone. Hav­ing to have both com­bined with hav­ing not only change out the ra­zor blades but then dis­pose of them was more trou­ble than it was worth.

     Size and weight seems to have risen to the fore­front of im­por­tance for most gear, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to knives. Com­pa­nies that pro­duce “hunt­ing” knives are loving it be­cause it is ex­treme­ly cheap to make the one piece, ul­tra-light “frame” knives that have be­come en vogue and is in the ma­jor­i­ty of hunters packs re­gard­less of the ex­or­bi­tant price tags of said knives. Wrap $2 worth of para­cord around the frame and it’s been up­grad­ed to “cus­tom” sta­tus.

     As with all things Day Six, our prod­ucts stem from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences and frustra­tions us­ing the prod­ucts avail­able from the hunt­ing in­dus­try prop­er. Most of the time I was led to source a true cus­tom made or hy­bridized prod­uct to have what I re­ally need­ed in the field but of course that was al­ways at a pre­mi­um price. If I had a Sudbury big nick­el for every time I heard “where’d you get that?”.....well, do the math.

     So here we are over 30 years lat­er from my first ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing up an elk and I’m as­ton­ished at what is be­ing sold to and ac­cept­ed by the hunt­ing com­mu­ni­ty as prop­er field knives. How has there been such lit­tle ad­vance­ment in de­sign, ma­te­ri­als, etc I of­ten won­der, but it seems to be the modus operan­di of the hunt­ing in­dustry......sell them what’s the most prof­itable, not what’s ac­tu­al­ly need­ed.

     We are not a mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny that hap­pens to pro­duce gear.....rather, we are a gear com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures prod­ucts to solve prob­lems.....that hap­pens to suck at mar­ket­ing.

     So how can we im­prove on an age old tool like the knife you ask? Well we heard the same ex­act ques­tion when we set out to im­prove the ar­row and broad­head that’s also been around for­ev­er......well that worked out pret­ty good so far.

     Here’s our so­lu­tion, the Drag­on­fly.

     Fea­tur­ing a patent pend­ing dual blade sys­tem uti­liz­ing Ma­gna­cut, the un­de­ni­able king of cus­tom knife steels, the dura­bil­i­ty and edge re­ten­tion is un­matched so it’s the best of both worlds be­tween a fixed and re­place­able blade knife.

     At a mere 1.8 ounces, the Drag­on­fly is built with a re­mov­able car­bon fiber han­dle that en­cap­su­lates the aux­il­iary blade while in use. Slots or “keys” are placed at ex­act lo­ca­tions to en­sure zero blade move­ment while in use.

     The er­gonom­ics of the han­dle have been metic­u­lous­ly de­signed, test­ed, and
then changed mul­ti­ple times to pro­vide the most com­fort­able grip pos­si­ble with­out any com­pro­mise to elim­i­nate hand fa­tigue.

     For field proof op­er­a­tion, the ti­ta­ni­um hard­ware is “cap­tive” so there’s no risk of los­ing any­thing. With the hard­ware key em­bed­ded in the Ky­dex sheath, an ex­tra tool in the field to swap the blade over is not need­ed.

     I be­lieve that for the ten per­cent who ac­tu­al­ly use their knives the Drag­on­fly will
be the an­swer to their prayers and will be the last knife they ever buy.

     As al­ways, thanks for your sup­port of this lit­tle com­pa­ny and we prom­ise to keep in­no­vat­ing.

SPECS:
Bla­de length - 3.25”
Over­all length - 6.75”
Weight - 1.8 oz
Bla­de ma­te­ri­al - Mag­na­cut
Hard­ware ma­teriel - Grade IV Ti­ta­ni­um
Han­dle ma­te­r­i­al - Car­bon Fiber
Patent Pend­ing