Weird Knife Wednesday: Unsolicited Bali-Carrot

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17217315

Nyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, what's up, Doc?

This, er, "knife" is nearly unique in that it's one of only two in my collection that I received without actually wanting it. Now there's a fuckin' sterling endorsement. No, wait. The opposite of that. Indictment. Yeah, that was the word I was looking for.

These things are all over the internet, as anyone who is even peripherally interested in either knives or cheap Chinese import crap is undoubtedly aware. And if you draw a Venn diagram of those two things I am as you know standing directly in the center with geometric precision. There's no official brand or model designation for this, of course, but they're thick on the ground under all kinds of word-salad search-robot product titles. I have even occasionally seen punters with the chutzpah to hawk them claiming to be a "Squiddy" product, which they most certainly aren't.

It is fairly easy to wind up with one of these things for free. I suspect the reason being that China cranked out a metric buttload of units, but the "carrot" fad flashed in the pan even faster than Pogs, light up shoelace pucks, fidget spinners, or jelly bands. All the TikTok clips and Shein banners and whatever other social media nonsense have surely categorically failed to generate sufficient hype to make anyone rich selling this dreck, so now whoever-it-is is stuck trying to figure out what the hell to do with a warehouse full of cheaply injection molded plastic bali-carrots.

So, I ordered two other knives I actually did want, and this showed up in the box along with them. Completely unsolicited.

Gee, thanks.

Anyway, this is after a fashion some kind of balisong, so I think I'm obligated to look at it. It exists somewhere on the graph in between a blunt trainer knife and a fidget toy. There are toddler sized versions of these I've seen as well, but not this one. It is every bit of 7" long, closed, which puts it in the same sort of size category as a full sized traditional balisong. But it has no edge, and the "blade," such as it is, is not only plastic and completely rounded over including the point, but also appears to be hollow inside. It should therefore be thoroughly impossible for even the most uncoordinated of wielders to injure themselves or anybody with this, and even if you managed to stab anything hard enough with it to entertain the possibility of dealing damage it would probably just break instead.

Here's the scoop; There's no way around it. It is, even by the metrics of low-end trainer knives, crap. Just absolutely atrocious.

The Bali-Carrot is of course made via a simple injection molding process. It's thus a channel "milled" design, but milled is precisely the wrong word for it. The construction is extremely simple, consisting only of both handles which are single unitary pieces, the blade, and two screws. There are no bushings or washers or anything. And forget about a pocket clip or a latch.

These are pretty clearly just assembled from parts taken straight out of the mold. Nobody spent any time or money on finishing work, and even the injection job is a poor one. Mine has a distinctly recycled-park-bench air about it, particularly in the tail ends of the handles.

It's assembled by way of two commodity machine screws just chunked into the plastic. The holes for them obviously weren't even threaded to begin with; this is just a sheer friction fit obtained by force. I know whoever is assembling these just uses whatever cheap screws are lying around, too, because I've seen many pictures of these online from many shady purveyors, but the screw heads are often visibly different between them.

Mine are round headed screws, but I imagine one of these could show up with anything in there. At least I got a matched pair.

To positively ensure fitment, I imagine, the openings in the handles are significantly wider than the "blade" is thick. Possibly the original intent was meant to include some washers in there which have since been omitted to cut costs, but I can't say. The upshot is that there are huge gaps left between the handles and blade, which results in an enormous amount of play.

I mean, just look at it.

And if you try to mitigate this by cranking the screws down, the tips of the handles bend inwards alarmingly. This is a lost cause, and I've already stopped caring.

All of the above notwithstanding, the Bali-Carrot almost does fulfill its function as a usable flipping toy or trainer. It has the disadvantage of being incredibly light -- just 46.3 grams in total or 1.63 ounces -- due to being just plastic. But I'm not really one to talk on that front, if we're honest. And it does pivot freely, at least, albeit by way of having huge gaps and tolerances everywhere.

But.

The design is nonsensical. One thing every balisong knife in the world definitely does have is either a pair of kicker pins or a tang pin, or "Zen" pins in the handles. That is to say, by hook or by crook they all have some way to prevent blade overtravel so once the handle(s) are swung around to the open position they stop at the 180 degree mark or near to it.

Except this one. There's a mystery hole there, which looks as if maybe at some point in history someone intended a pin to go in there. But there is no matching interface on the handles even if so, and where it winds up is too close to being in between the pivots for it to ever have been useful anyway.

So the end result of all that is this.

Heh. Nyeh heh heh. Bwaha ha... ha. It's garbage.

Yes, this commits the one cardinal sin, the unforgivable apostasy of a balisong, the singular true heresy: The blade can travel past the open position. It's only stopped by ultimately hitting the back edge of the opposite handle on either side, but it makes the whole thing feel distinctly weird and in my opinion, balisong fixated knife snob that I am, wholly unsuitable for actual practice use. At least if you're ultimately planning to use it to build skills and then graduate to a real balisong knife.

I want to make it clear here that I'm already not going into it with high expectations. Certainly not for a piece of Chinese drop shipped junk that's probably worth less than the packaging it arrives in. But this particular design shortcoming makes the Bali-Carrot feel uncannily wrong on the rebounds if you try to employ anything beyond a simple roll of the wrist and gravity to open it. Rather than rebounding normally the entire length of the handles clack against each other, dead flat, and it's like hitting a very small wet sack of potatoes. This could have been solved in about 2 seconds for no additional cost, too, by just molding some endstop humps in the handles, and then a little protrusion on the heel of the blade. All the parts could still be one piece.

But that's not how it is. When all we get is the above, I guess it's silly to expect to be able to ask for anything more.

The Inevitable Conclusion

If this hasn't been driven into the ground already, it's no surprise that whoever is pushing these now has to resort to giving them away. And even if you get it for free it's still kind of a bad deal.

There is, perhaps, some merit to the fidget toy aspect of it if you don't mind the comically awful fit and finish, and you don't mind the berk you'll look if anyone actually sees you waving a plastic umbellifer around. So the carrot hype remains completely nonsensical to me. Is this what the cool kids are actually into, now? I hope not. If so, maybe this is a sign of being old, and of not getting it -- whatever it is.

But on reflection, I think I'm good. I don't need to get it after all.