NRS Pilot Knife Review

I’ve recently gotten into kayaking in the past year, so I’m still acquiring equipment that goes along with any new activity.  Safe boating requires safety equipment.  I’m usually torn when it comes to purchasing safety equipment because 1) it usually looks and acts cool.  Knives are cool, flares are cool, etc.  But 2) you almost never actually get to use safety equipment.  It’s basically expensive insurance.

A good knife though, is more than safety insurance.  It actually is something that you can use outside of an emergency situation.  However, in an emergency, it can quite literally be a life saver.  Imagine capsizing and finding yourself underwater with a foot tangled in straps, rigging, or fishing gear.  Or maybe you’re fishing and you accidentally snag something large and toothy.  You’d want to quickly cut that line!

So in a recent shopping excursion at AustinKayak.com, I added the NRS Pilot Knife to my shopping cart.

NRS Pilot Knife in Sheath

I’m not sure how I feel about this knife.  It certainly looks nice, but it’s made in China out of some unspecified material.  I’m worried about corrosion in a marine environment.

The sheath that comes with the NRS Pilot is probably more important than the knife itself.  It is meant to provide two distinct benefits: 1) an absolutely secure attachment point out in the open, and 2) instant availability of the knife.  It’s a great idea, but it’s not executed with as much precision as is required.  The sheath fails to secure the knife with 100% perfection, leaving me with the strong desire to tether the knife, which seems like a bad idea for an emergency knife.

The sheath has two small, plastic, opposite-facing projections that push through a rectangular opening in the knife.  These projections are “spring loaded” by way of stressing plastic tabs inside the mechanism.  (I opened it up to take a look)  These aren’t as strong as they should be.  I wish this part of the sheath was made of precision metal.  Pushing the knife onto the sheath almost always produces tiny black plastic flakes, which means the plastic is wearing away with each reattachment.

I may be unfairly targeting the sheath when the attachment point on the knife may actually be at fault.  The rectangular opening on the knife is the weakest part of the whole package.  On mine, at least, it is quite rough on the inside with an almost unfinished look.  Also, the long sides of the rectangle are tapered.  This tapering alone appears to be the cause of the slightly insecure attachment.  If you wiggle the knife enough, or accidentally bump one of the disengagement buttons, one of the plastic projections can end up resting on the taper.  At this point, if you tug the knife it has a fair chance of popping off the sheath.

I can see at least two modifications that can be made to fix these potential problems.  First, you can file the inside of the attachment rectangle in order to smooth out the operation and prolong the life of the plastic projections.  Second, you could insert a small piece of spring steel into the release mechanism to improve the strength of the hold.  Finding two small pieces of steel to accomplish this would be the hard part.

I’ll post pictures if I do this.  Cheers.