Knife Review: The Liberation 229
“Effortless cool…”
The Chaves Liberation 229 is a production version of a custom knife designed by Ramon Chaves. It was a grail knife for me, despite being significantly cheaper than other “grails” — Peter Rassenti I’m looking at you — and I have to say up front that I’m going to gush like a thirteen-year-old girl at a Beatles concert in 1965.
I don’t own Chaves customs and this is a Reate-made production model so it’s difficult to separate their production decisions from his own. What absolutely can be separated out on its own is the sheer impact of design. The design is absolutely, unconditionally the dominating feature of this knife.
This is the Día de los Muertos of knives. This is the low-rider of knives. This knife is Steve McQueen in Bullitt if Steve McQueen had sugar skull tattoos. It’s severe and louche at the same time and yet nothing feels out of place. From the squared off handle to the beautiful, brutal blade, to the signature clip and the understated Chaves logo on the blade, everything combines to give the knife physical presence. Amazingly, every design choice is consistent with every other: the entire package is coherent, which is much harder to do than it sounds.
None of which is to ignore the build quality. Reate, as everyone knows by now, is streets ahead of other production houses and they did a crazy good job here. I got an MBK Rosalinda on the same day this arrived and had them out on the table together, grinning like an idiot. The Rosalinda is renowned for its action but this knife matches it step for step. The action is phenomenal.
It deploys with dual sided thumb studs, and, like all frame and liner-lock knives, left-handed deployment is a little more difficult than right, because right-handed benefits from the lock bar cutout and more space around the stud. That’s a minor quibble, though, and unavoidable with frame and liner locks. Détente is — to my mind — perfect for the deployment, and stronger than average which I think is the right way to do it. Your mileage may vary, but many knives seem to compensate for slipshod design by making the détente weaker, rather than balancing blade weight, length, thumb stud placement and so on. Not this one. This one deploys with force, snap, and zero chance of failure, and drops shut on command.
The blade is a gorgeous drop-point with a high, flat (hollow?) grind and there’s more than enough runway to both entertain a thicker blade stock and still drop to a very fine cutting edge. They did exactly that. It’s razor sharp. Interestingly, it’s listed everywhere as a compound grind, but the tanto version is actually the compound grind. (I think Reate or Chaves just sent out one sheet of marketing copy that got used for all the 229s.) Whatever the claimed grind, the blade has a wonderful belt satin finish with visible grind lines that contrast beautifully with the horizontal flats and also break up the uniformity of the mottled stone wash on the handle scales. To get this much texture and variance on a knife that is basically silver-grey titanium and steel is nuts. It’s like finding a girl on Tinder who looks pretty and wholesome, and who turns out in person to be a combination of Jennifer Lawrence and Liv Tyler. The pictures totally don’t do it justice, basically.
It’s also surprisingly practical. In the hand, despite all the edges and the square lines, it’s both natural and comfortable. This easiness, combined with the lovely drop point blade, lethal grind, balance, and weight make it a hell of a user. It’s not a particularly small knife, but it never feels outlandish or unbalanced. It feels substantial, but in a way that translates immediately into confidence. And, of course, it’s effortlessly cool.
As with anything, there are some hitches.
First, the action became gritty, briefly, after a week. That was probably pocket debris getting into the bearings and a little KPL dripped into the mechanism made it vanish. Second, while the handle scales are beautifully done, where they transition from one plane to another — at the bolster, the cutout, and the butt of the blade — they created noticeably sharp edges. (Online reviewers reported the same, so it’s not just this particular knife.) I never decided whether Reate had simply not deburred those points or whether they were being faithful to the Chaves design. In the end, I took a little micro-mesh and rubbed them down and the edges vanished. Lastly, the knife comes with an alternative clip in case the skull clip is too much for you. I considered swapping but one of the clip screws is set tight, so rather than risk stripping it I left it as the standard clip doesn’t bother me at all. Fair warning, though. Loctite has been liberally used, something that’s useful to know if you’re planning on disassembly and maintenance.
Honestly, those are the only (miniscule) things I could find to bitch about. I adore this knife. It’s not “cheap” but, relative to the world of higher end knives, it’s a steal. The idiosyncratic Microtech Anax is also a frame lock, also in M390, and falls into a similar custom-to-production-run bracket, but it’s close to twice the price for less immediate utility. Though I love the Anax, this is a better knife in every conceivable way.
Hereafter the obligatory caveats. I have no affiliation with any of the retailers, stores, websites, or knifemakers listed, linked, or discussed in this article, other than as a customer. They have, in large part, never heard of me and likely never will. (Nor has anyone else who might be linked.)
The knife discussed is my own, it was bought with my own money — though my bank would dispute that — and that money was earned through my own unwilling wage-slavery. There are no gifts or suggested incentives that would otherwise be inexplicable. Links are provided throughout to allow you, the reader, to read further.
The tattooed pictures are by the brilliant Cheyenne Randall. I first came across his work years ago on a now-defunct blog called Effortless Cool. If you like it, support him. As with the knife makers, retailers, and sundry others, I have no affiliation.
