Coordinal Camo

This Belarusian knifemaker is well-known for designing production knives for companies such as Zero Tolerance, Kershaw, Spyderco, Pro-Tech, and Shirogorov, and he also makes a handful of full custom knives from his own machine shop. This Coordinal Camo is a custom version of the ZT 0452, of which only 5 were made. This custom Coordinal Camo, numbered 3 of 4 (zero-indexed), was won by me at an auction for ███████. Included but not pictured is a leather case with a camouflage pattern.

Blade

The blade is Damasteel DS93X in the Björkmans Twist pattern, with a hand-rubbed satin finish. It is a composite of two steels, RWL34 and PMC27, but unlike most Damascus-patterned steel, it is produced via a process called gas atomization, which eliminates impurities and air pockets from traditional pattern-welded steels.

The blade has a swedge along its spine, reducing weight at a small cost of rigidity. It's overall shape is a drop-point, and is fairly thin at around 3 millimeters.

Handle

The obvious attraction of the handle is its camouflage pattern, which is actually separate materials fitted together by hand, in a process called marquetry. The material is canvas micarta, a hard composite of resin and canvas cloth. There is one large body shape for the pattern, and the other pieces are slotted in.

The backspace is made of zirconium, and also features a luminous material that absorbs UV light and glows green. The clip, pivot screw, and body screws are anodized to a golden color. The scales feature extensive internal milling to reduce weight.

The pivot uses a multi-row bearing system, or "MRBS" for short. This one features a brass cage, which keeps the steel ball bearings in place. It is secured by a custom pivot, which requires a custom bit to disassemble.

Disassembly

Disassembly requires a custom bit for the pivot, and the body screws just use standard Torx. For a custom knife, it is fairly forgiving on assembly and disassembly, and doesn't take too much effort to put it back together with the blade perfectly centered.