Knife Review: The GiantMouse Farley
“You had me at hello”
It’s just after Christmas and I thought I’d say something about a great knife that I originally didn’t pay much attention to. So, here it is: I literally carry this knife every day and it’s become essential. I still carry a larger knife alongside it but it’s always on me and, honestly, it usually comes out before the other when there’s a need for a knife.
That’s a huge surprise to me. It’s really small by comparison to others I have, with a 2.75 inch blade and 3.5 inch handle. It’s also a slipjoint, which I’ve always associated with elderly men tediously unfolding a knife in the time it takes to make a long coffee only to reveal an Okapi. I bought it on a whim, mostly because I was having a GiantMouse month at the time but I never really figured out what to do with it and it languished unused. A couple of months back, though, I started carrying it. Then I put an edge on it. Now I’m shopping for rings and nervously practising a speech in front of the mirror.
It’s a very attractive little M390 drop point with a steel leaf-spring, set in brass scales. The build quality is very, very good. I’m not a slip-joint expert — something that became overwhelmingly obvious to me when I first took it apart, then sat there for an hour going “huh?” — but the spring is excellent. The lock at half mast is just as good as fully open, and opening makes a very satisfying “thwock”. Once open, it’s very stable and you feel confident that the blade won’t close on you.
For such a small knife with so few moving parts, a tremendous amount of thought has been applied to it. The handle is surprisingly ergonomic with a bowed back and inner arch, the spine of the blade is beautifully continuous with the spring, both blade and handle are gently rounded and there’s a little jimping right at the base of the spring. At first I thought the last was an affectation, but it works nicely with the raised lip at the base of the handle to let you pinch-grip when taking the knife out, which is welcome. The clip is the standard GiantMouse wire clip and it is what it is: very functional and mostly anonymous. Lastly, the spring has a lanyard hole cutout that emerges at the base of the handle. While it makes no difference to function, this is, perhaps, the only flaw in the aesthetics. Without the hole this would have been at home any time in this or the last century.
It’s a three-finger grip, depending on the size of your hand. (You can get all four on if you’re choking up.) That normally bothers me, because I like more security in the grip rather than less, but here it doesn’t affect that. As with the brass Biblio, the heavier handle material moves the balance point well back into the handle and, unlike on bigger knives where handle weight can make the blade feel like it’s pulling back from the cut, it just seats this knife more securely in hand. In addition, because it’s a small knife, the extended blade remains so close to your hand that it functions in the same way that your finger functions as an extension of your palm. I’ve used it without any difficulty on various things, from boxes to wood to cable ties to branches. I laid a wider edge bevel on, and a more acute angle, but cutting performance was fine when I got it and you don’t need to do that unless you want to.
All this makes the Farley punch way above its class.
Dieter Rams is a godfather of design, one of very few in that pantheon. My guess is Anso and Vox, designers and founders of GiantMouse, are devotees. During his career Rams developed a set of design commandments, one of which is “good design is honest”. I always felt that was just a complicated way of saying don’t be flashy, but I kind of get it now. This is a really honest knife. There’s nothing here except what’s needed and everything that’s needed is purposeful and exceptionally delivered. It makes no pretence at being anything other than what it is: functional, tough, and designed for being in the hand in a way that makes it feel natural. It is also, unexpectedly, very, very attractive.
I started out writing a Christmas greeting to this little knife in the hope that, by doing so, I’d figure out how it became such a permanent attachment. I still haven’t. Whatever it is, it got me.
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.
