If you’ve watched any of Discovery Channel’s many survival shows, then you know the value of a simple piece of cord. You can use it to build a shelter, make a trap or construct an elaborate water filtration system. It’s no wonder, then, that knife companies make survival-oriented blades with paracord-wrapped handles: think Gerber’s fixed-blade collaboration with Bear Grylls. Pretty much all paracord knives use the fixed-blade design, but in its first batch of 2020 knives, CRKT revealed a folding paracord model called the Parascale.
There are plenty of reasons why we haven’t seen a paracord folder before. Folding knives require mechanisms to pivot and lock, which get in the way of a skeletonized handle design. The blade also needs an open channel to fold into, which can’t be blocked by loops of cord.
Designer TJ Schwarz found a solution in CRKT’s simple Deadbolt lock and a weave pattern that has the cord zig-zagging back and forth across the back of a handle with carved channels. The result is a unique folder with a 3.2-inch drop-point blade and roughly four feet of cord that’ll come in handy should you find yourself in a horrendous, Naked and Afraid-style predicament. Or, you know, if your bootlace breaks on a hiking trip.
