The Tenacious (3.39" blade) is certainly a great looking knife. It is part of Spyderco's Value Folder series of knives (produced in China with a lifetime warranty) along with the smaller Ambitious (2.31" blade) and Persistence (2.77" blade), and the massive Resilience (4.2" blade). All of the value folders feature the lower cost bladesteel (only available in black on the Tenacious model) and textured G-10 handle scales that provide excellent traction. They all have skeletonized stainless steel frames with liner locks that have about a 60% lockup (as seen in the next picture) and they all come with a four-way positional pocket clip for optimal modularity... or five way if you include taking it off altogether! There is a lanyard hole that is large enough to get one line of 550 cord through but that is about it. Once I got mine in the mail, the tension on the blade was a little tight, keeping me from opening it quickly... one 1/4 turn from a T9 torx bit was all it needed to be super quick and smooth.
There is great jimping on both the thumb ramp behind the thumb hole used to open the blade and on the choil as you can see in the above picture. Surprisingly for the price point is the inclusion of phosphor-bronze bushings which lead to a glass smooth action and a lightning fast opening of the knife. After a few months of everyday use, and I mean everyday use (not just riding in the pocket all day), my bushings developed a bit of a squeak that sounded like I was choking a squirrel every time I opened my Tenacious... a cleaning and a few well placed drops of gun oil through the holes that mount the pocket clip over the blade tensioner, and my squirrel was never heard from again.
One thing that I really like about the black blade coating is the nice contrast that it gives in relation to the blade edge and the laser-etched text and graphics as well as the Spyderco emblem on the pocket clip. This brings us to the pocket clip itself and yet another reason why I went with the tacti-black version of the Tenacious; a black pocket clip.
The other knives in this lineup as well as the non-black Tenacious all have shiny metallic pocket clips... and I hate shiny metallic pocket clips. They draw attention and scream, "I am carrying a knife" to everyone who sees them. Granted, I live in Texas and I see more people that have a knife sticking out of their pocket than those that don't, but in other, less fortunate states, I can see this being a bad thing.
Here it is about a year after purchasing this great little knife and the only issue I have had is the squirrel squeak. The finish on the clip and on the blade itself are showing a little wear but that was to be expected from cutting many boxes down on a daily basis. Besides, the Bobba Fett look is really cool! The edge on it is still almost as sharp as when I first unboxed it so this really is a tank of a knife as far as I am concerned. Here are some pictures that show the wear on the blade (good shot of the jimping too);
And on the clip;
All it needed was a few drops of oil and a blowing-out with some air to get the pocket lint out about once a month.
No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post!
