An inbound Civivi piece is resurrecting a piece of martial blade history in folding knife format. The Estoc takes its name – and general look – from a centuries-old French fighting sword.
Are there sword hipsters out there? If there are, you gotta imagine that one of the “you’ve probably never heard of it” choices for that crowd is the estoc. It was quite literally built different, with no live edge at all, but rather a thickened rod-like blade with a sharpened point only, designed to pierce through plate mail that would baffle traditionally-ground longswords. Estoc specimens from the 14th – 17th centuries, when the weapon was in circulation, vary in size and design, but another common characteristic amongst them is an extra large handle and a simple crossguard.
The Civivi Estoc takes the general lines of the sword, but with an eye towards creating something that can be carried day-to-day by those of us not engaging in mortal combat with plate armor-clad adversaries. The blade is a long one, measuring 4.1 inches and, unlike its linear, edgeless inspiration, sports a traditional cutting edge and a drop point profile. The blade in the prototypes is Nitro-X7, a higher performance variant of Nitro-V, and its opens via a flipper tab that is shaped to look like the guard of a traditional Estoc sword.
The Civivi Estoc’s straight-running and spacious handle is another clear nod to the OG. The two prototypes we’ve seen each have a different pairing of materials, with one serving as a bolster, and the other the main scale. The pocket clip is loop-over, deep carry, and reversible, resulting in a knife that is mostly lefty-friendly – the only right-hand-favoring element is the liner lock. The slender Estocian aesthetic here helps keep the weight down too: even with a 4-inch blade, the Civivi Estoc weighs just 3.58 oz.
It is available now.
Knife in Featured Image: Civivi Estoc
Read the full article here