CRKT Outdoorsman Bundle

I really like my other CRKT items, so I’ll trust that I’ll like these as well. The Guppie interests me quite a bit as a carry in the center console kind of tool.

I just got the Mah-Chete and it’s one of my favorite CRKT products ever. It’s a super high quality knife that costs about $70 by itself. This is an insane deal. I also have the Guppie, it’s a little finicky and the workmanship isn’t as good, but it’s quite clever and the knife blade on it is actually very handy.

Yeah, the guppie gets awful reviews elsewhere pretty much for being cheaply made and falling apart. The folding knife in this trio is small but appears of average quality for its type. The machete would be the only piece that would interest me but I advise others to investigate what kind of steel it’s made from. Machetes need to be made from a certain type of steel as not to be too brittle or too soft and thus useless as machetes. Cold Steel machetes are much cheaper than this one and have an excellent reputation as a genuine bush tool.

Just looked up the machete. It’s 1075 high carbon steel. Holds a decent edge and great for chopping through jungle vegetation but brittle for hacking at anything with major substance(like a tree). So in conclusion; The machete in this deal is worth the cost aline but will be a worthwhile purchase only if used correctly. Head out into the back yard and try to hack away at an oak, the blades probably gonna snap. Just saying.

In for a set and hoping the machete loves blackberry bushes/vines. The blade as ‘carbon steel’ but I have no idea how they’ve treated it.

The knife looks fairly run of the mill.

The Guppie is quite frankly weird and will end up in my desk drawer at work. Plus it features a bottle opener - really? I have never wanted or looked for that in a tool as it diminishes some credibility as being it being serious for other purposes.

Update (now that the set has arrived) and overall this was an excellent deal!:

  • The “Mah Chete” is the real prize here, the style, blade, weight, sheath - everything is ‘just right’ with it.
  • The pocket knife is good but not the type I would buy on its own with its combination blade edge and two-step unlock. It’s a little ‘thick’ for (to me) for carrying clipped inside my pocket - this will end up in my trucks console.
  • The Guppie… still ‘weird’. It feels good to hold because of it’s shape but is too odd in my opinion to be a must-have tool. Yes it will still end up on my desk at work but probably for use as a fidget toy/conversation piece.

1075 steel is not brittle by any means… It’s a little softer than 1095 but is high-carbon so plenty resilient, and heat treated to around RC 57. In short, this will not snap!!

Also, as I own it and can talk about it with experience to back me up, it’s actually a very thick blade with a lot of heft behind it. It’s not for cutting grass! I’ve lopped off inch-thick alder limbs and used it to baton through dry fir. You could absolutely chop down a tree with this, it would just take awhile.

Find me a multi-tool that doesn’t have a bottle opener? Seriously. I have about half a dozen things with bottle openers, from high end Leatherman tools down to carabineers… They’re almost impossible to avoid, really.

I have lamented my personal lack of a bottle opener since selling my 1984 Toyota 4WD long bed pickup. The door latch on that one was a perfect bottle opener…and the truck had one on each side.
But I agree that it could easily end up in a drawer at work. The interchangeable driver bits are a nice idea, and the led light is a welcome addition. But it’s just…weird. I’m not sure if it is ahead of its time, or an alien device, adapted for use by homo sapiens. But not perfectly. Sort of the way the moving lips don’t perfectly match the sound track in a Chinese kung fu movie.
I am going to give this little guppy to my 12 year old son. He will think it is very cool (and he has a radio controlled, BB8 droid.) For me, however, it falls just a tad short of being useful enough to carry with me at all times. Why? Listen up, CRKT, here’s some free advice for your next multi-tool. First off, change the name. Guppy? Are you kidding? Is this a subliminal attempt to have your target demographic read the name, and say, “I have to get one of these, because the name makes me think of my societal designation: Yuppie? A guppy for a yuppy?” Please. Gag me with a spoon. What should you call it? Like the decision made by Morticia and Gomez Addams, after considering a number of possibilities, there really was only one choice, because it was perfect. In their case, the name was Pubert. In the case of your multi-tool, so badly named, there, too, is only one choice. Tilapia. Its name is TILAPIA.
The Tilapia is a nifty tool, but it is lacking a few features that would make it truly indispensable: first, engineer it so it is a belt buckle. That way, it doesn’t take up valuable pocket space. Second, and this is all important, Bluetooth. Add Bluetooth. Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj concur: “Everything is better with Bluetooth.”