Over the summer of 2020, Colombia River Knife and Tool tapped renowned Japanese custom knife maker and designer Dew Hara to pen a top-shelf titanium-framed folder for the brand. Taking inspiration from Hara’s childhood love for science fiction and spaceships, the knife was known as the Hirin (Japanese for “flying ring”) and featured a unique partially skeletonized handle and an equally idiosyncratic take on a flipper-deployed dagger-style blade. And after the success of the original Hirin, CRKT has now linked up with Hara once again, this time to deliver an even more premium take on the original Hirin design that gains a custom Damascus blade — among other crucial tweaks and upgrades.
Far more than merely an existing knife bestowed with a Damascus steel blade upgrade, this new version of the Hirin boasts a slew of wildly impressive details that collectively speak to the knife’s objectively top-shelf nature and absolutely stellar attention to detail. The Hirin is crafted around an anodized titanium handle that features a liner locking mechanism. The handle has also been upgraded via new bead-blasted stainless steel set screws, an anodized bronze back-spacer, and a reversible tip-up pocket clip made from Super Dense Twist-pattern Damasteel.
In place of the original Hirin knife’s already premium Böhler M390 item is a 3.39” (0.12” thick) single-edge dagger blade that’s composed of ultra-high-end Super Dense Twist-pattern Damascus — a proprietary type of powder metallurgy Damascus steel from Swedish outfit Damasteel. Deployed via a symmetrical flipper tab setup and guided by CRKT’s signature IKBS ball-bearing pivot, the blade features a special acid-etched finish. Just like other limited edition top-shelf releases from CRKT, this limited edition Hirin is crafted by hand in Italy, meticulously manufactured by boutique knife brand LionSteel. Spanning 8.69” overall, the Damasteel version of the Hirin tips the scales at 5.9oz.
Limited to only 300 units worldwide, the CRKT Hirin Damasteel Limited Edition Folder is available for order now, with pricing set at $500 — literally double the price of the original Hirin knife (which was limited to 500 units).
