Rockhopper 3D Printed Balisong

Your utility knife is boring and too easy to use. Bust boxes in serious style with the Rockhopper instead — a fully 3D printed balisong utility knife designed from the ground up by yours truly and now made available to you without the need to own a 3D printer!

Here we go, another chump who bought a 3D printer and thinks it's going to be his ticket to striking it rich.

Truth be told, this all started as just a bit of tomfoolery. I did indeed buy a 3D printer many moons ago, and there are really only so many Darth Vader busts and low poly Pikachus a bird can print before you really start getting a hankering to do something actually useful with it for a change. Balisong nerd, 3D printer owner; the conclusion here was really inevitable. I set about making a fully functional yet fully printable balisong.

This turned out to be harder than it appeared.

My initial effort was, not to put to fine a point on it, crap. I called this the Harrier — I was not yet pathologically naming things after penguins and was open to considering other birds — and posted it to the Internet anyway. You can read about it here if you like, but I'd advise against bothering to print one. While this was broadly functional there were a few design deficiencies, starting and mostly ending with the 3D printed screws.

But this isn't a missive about that old thing; It's an enticement to get you to blow twenty bucks on the new and much improved Rockhopper instead. Trust me, it's much better. I started off by designing a functional 3D printable screw that's not inherently wont to shred itself under any kind of load. That resulted in my M6 "impossible" screw, which is not so much impossible in and of itself but merely appears to be. It's headless, so no amount of overtorque will case it to snap in half. Instead, it'll simply pop out the other side. The secret behind this, which I predict will now be stolen by every punter on Thingiverse and Printables as soon as they read this, is to tediously and meticulously tap the entire assembly with the same single continuous thread that engages the screw along its entire length.

Then I did everything my way. For the right kind of shrink, the Rockhopper would probably serve as an easy Rorschach test to determine whatever twisted pathos drives me to like the features that I do in an EDC knife, and a balisong in particular. Thus for a start the Rockhopper has a genuine squeeze-to-release spring loaded latch just like a Benchmade Morpho, which is constructed completely of plastic and therefore clearly impossible.

Nevertheless the latch action is, if you ask me, deeply satisfying.

Since it's made mostly from plastic it weighs practically nothing. Just 30.3 grams or 1.07 ounces, not including a blade. For the purposes of backpacking or possibly being launched into space, these may be important figures for you.

There is a reversible deep carry pocket clip which resides on the bite handle, and unlike every clip-equipped production balisong I've ever owned it will also arrive preinstalled on the correct side of the handle, i.e. the one that resides closest to your pocket seam if you are a right handed user. Because I said so, gods damn it.

Lefties can swap this over to the other side easily. And those who have not read my litany of various balisong reviews aren't part of the reference pool who will understand what I'm complaining about, here.

Plastic being a material famous for being rotten at retaining an edge, the Rockhopper actually hasn't got one as such. Instead it's designed to accept standard Stanley style trapezoid utility knife blades, or any of the myriad stand-ins for the same such as those carpet cutting hooked blades, or even the zooty purportedly "forever sharp" ceramic ones you can find online. This means you'll have to feed it occasionally, but also that you'll never need to sharpen it. It's an eminently capable boxcutter and will make you the rockstar of the stock room at work, certainly.

It used to be that I didn't provide these with a blade included because I thought it would make my payment processor angry with me. Well, they got angry with me anyway so a pox upon them; the new outfit doesn't seem to care so your Rockhopper will come with one (1) of the finest cheapest off-brand utility knife blades I can get my hands on preinstalled.

But if you live happen to live in an area where live balisong knives are outlawed, or are a neophyte to the whole balisong thing, a blunt plastic trainer "blade" is also provided in the kit. You can use it to practice your skills and show off to all your friends without nicking your fingers all the time. It may also make your boss slightly less angry if you show up with this at work and it's got the trainer installed rather than a sharp blade. But even so, do us all a favor and don't take this to school or an airport or anything, even if you've only got the dummy blade in it. I'd really not be the focus of any 11 o'clock news scare pieces this week, thanks.

Thanks to having bushing pivots, the Rockhopper's action rules. It's certainly way better than it has any right to be for being utterly constructed of plastic, if you ask me. If you're used to real steel knives there's a bit of a learning curve, because even though as-is the balance is pretty spot on, the Rockhopper weighs practically nothing by comparison and you'll probably have a short period of acclimation.

There's not a stunt yet I've found that I haven't been able to pull off with mine, although a couple of them required rewiring the old muscle memory a little bit.

Your Rockhopper ships in a stylish storage/collector's box that is, of course, also 3D printed. This securely contains the article itself, has a storage slot that accommodates either the trainer blade or utility blade insert depending on whichever you're rocking at the moment, and becase I'm a generous guy (and also understand the reality of the situation, alas) also includes six replacement screws and four replacement bushings. One of the screws is also the longer size required for the clip.

I don't necessarily present you the Rockhopper as an ordinary commercial product. With the best will in the world, it is likely that spending $20 on a commercially produced knife from an actual brand (or even, ye gods forbid, some faceless Chinese manufacturer) will net you a knife that's at least slightly more durable and probably less of an ironic apology on behalf of itself. Mostly largely due to, you know, being made out of actual steel and stuff. But that's not the point of this. Instead, I offer you this as a means to support me and my tomfoolery and my silly quest to do whatever it is I do, kind of like a Patreon pledge but where you actually get something tangible in return.

So go ahead, become the raddest bird on the entire iceberg. You know you want to.