Victorinox Cadet Alox

As you can see, this is not your typical Swiss Army Knife. Just looking at it you can tell that it is special; it is not fat like a typical SAK that has side scales made of Cellidor (plastic) as the Cadet is shielded in black Alox (aluminium) that is not only much better looking, but very thin as well. With an overall thickness of 5/16 of an inch, the Cadet is a tool that can be easily slipped into the pocket and forgotten about until its services are needed.

In the picture above, you will see the four tools that come on the Cadet. First lets talk about the nail file found pointing to the right in the picture. While most SAKs possess a second, smaller blade, the Cadet replaces that secondary blade with a nail file that works well on nails as well as on plastic. As an added bonus, this tool doubles not only as a light duty prying tool but the tip is a number 1 Phillips head screwdriver.

The next tool going in a clockwise order from the last is the bottle opener. there is no beer bottle that has been left un-opened from this opener! Nothing more is really needed to be said about that. This tool is also packed with a secondary and tertiary feature to shove as much usefulness into a small package. The first would be the tip which makes a very solid slotted screwdriver and heavy-er duty pry tool. There is a notch towards the base of the tool and that is the third function of the bottle opener; a wire stripper. I have heard complaints stating that this tool is useless and does not work... but my experience says otherwise. In order to use it properly, you need to cut the wire insulation around its circumference and then bend it over the stripper section and the waste pulls right off.

Now comes the can opener. It is simple yet effective... very effective. On the tip is a small slotted screwdriver that doubles as a number 2 Phillips head screwdriver.

Onto the blade. It is 2.5 inches in length with an edge length of 2.125 inches. It came hair shaving sharp out of the box and has still not needed to be sharpened (I have been using it for about 2 months now). For those that either do not want to carry a locking knife on them or don't want to pull it out every time they need to deal with a small cutting task, the Cadet is both non-locking and unintimidating to the non-knife carrying sheep of the world.

The length of the Cadet while closed is 3.25 inches and it only weighs 0.7 ounces! There is a lanyard ring on it and there is an engraving panel on the backside Alox scale for a little personalization. I will be leaving mine blank as I do not want to gnarf up my Cadet.