In 2019, CRKT collaborated with former Green Beret Michael Rodriguez on a knife design for the brand’s Forged by War program, an ongoing partnership between CRKT and veterans that benefits service member-focused charities.
Called the Xolotl, the Aztec god-inspired knife was a slender, flipper reimagining of a classic switchblade. Then, at the tail end of 2024, the brand and Roriguez teamed up again for a fixed-blade take on that same knife.
Now, they’ve come together once more on perhaps the speediest, most accessible and most convenient interpretation of that knife, the CRKT Xolotl Automatic.
Aztec auto
As its name suggests, this take on the Xolotl is an automatic knife. More specifically, it’s an OTF (out-the-front), meaning the blade doesn’t fold, but rather “slides” in and out of the handle.
To manage deployment, a spine-mounted slider controls the handle’s internal spring-loaded mechanism — push up to deploy the blade and pull down to retract it. Not only does this make the knife incredibly speedy, but it also makes it more accessible and convenient to use, as it requires only a single hand to operate and can be easily operated even with gloved hands.