Key Takeaways
- The Maximal was successfully designed to be a good knife for anyone to use for EDC.
- It’s budget friendly,, ambidextrous, and has a legally convenient blade size.
- It’s especially good for people with large hands who still want to carry a smaller knife.
This is a Big Handed EDC that Anyone Would Be Happy to Carry
The Maximal is a great little knife with a lot of focus on good handle design.
It was designed by David C Anderson (a man synonymous with knife recommendations among knife enthusiasts even casually addicted to YouTube) to be a universal-recommendation knife. It was supposed to be something he felt good using to answer the question “what kind of knife should I get” to anyone he might meet.
Specifications
| Overall Length: | 6.89” |
| Blade Length: | 2.95” |
| Blade Steel: | AR-RPM9 (59 – 61 HRC) |
| Open System: | Thumb stud |
| Blade Thickness: | 2.5 mm (0.098”) |
| Blade Shape: | Drop point |
| Blade Grind: | Flat |
| Handle Material: | Micarta |
| Lock Type: | Crossbar |
| Weight: | 2.82 oz (80 g) |
| Designer: | David C Anderson |
| Made in: | China |
| What I Liked | What I Didn’t Like |
|---|---|
| Great for larger hands | Slight recurve in the edge makes sharpening a little trickier |
| Fantastic edge that holds up to hard use | Still not a fan of crossbar locks |
| Pocket clip has great retention and doesn’t show up in my grip |
Successes in Making a Knife Anyone Could Like
DCA had some clear ideas about what would make a knife fit that bill: Ambidexterous; budget and legal friendly; Low maintenance; Neutral blade shape; and small enough for anyone to handle, but large enough to grip for hard cuts (You can listen to him explain as much in this little video, which is, at this point the only video on DCA’s YouTube channel).
I’ll take those one by one:
Ambidextrous
A crossbar lock, two-sided thumb stud open, and a clip that can screw into both sides of the handle. Yep. It would be hard to make this anymore ambi-friendly. I won’t get too much into why I personally don’t like crossbar locks. For this knife, it was set in with a clear purpose, and it works.
Budget and legal friendly
With a blade right under three inches and an average price tag of $50, I’d say he just about nailed that. He could have leaned even more legal friendly by taking the blade down another half inch. That certainly would have made the knife look a lot friendlier to any law enforcement that might be eye balling the thing, but I don’t think I would like the blade quite as much.
With low maintenance steel
At this point, Artisan’s AR-RPM9 spray form steel is pretty well established as a worthy stainless steel with good edge retention and corrosion resistance for the price. It maintains decent toughness at higher hardness, and this one sits around 60 HRC, which is pretty high for a budget EDC. Plus it likes to take a polished edge (another rare thing on a budget blade).
In a fairly neutral blade shape
I’d say a drop point that leans toward clip point-ish formation with that angular drop low on the spine makes it oddly neutral. I wouldn’t say it’s as neutral as something like what’s on a Benchmade Bugout or Knafs Lander, but no one will be confused about what direction this thing cuts.
Small enough, but large enough
This seems like it was probably the tricky one. A lot of pressure is on the handle to do a lot of work with a little bit of material, and ultimately we can’t know for sure that they hit the mark because handles feel so different for so many different people.
All I can say here with any confidence is that I never had trouble gripping this knife for hard-use tasks. No more trouble than any other knife this size, and it felt better than the majority of knives in its category.
So I’m calling this part a win, but mileage will vary, as DCA often says.
I’ll add on more thing: It’s great in the pocket.
The clip slips over the pocket easily without tearing at the lining. It has good retention, and it’s fairly long so there isn’t much risk of accidental catching, and it pulls easy.
The base of the clip does sit above the scales as there’s no indent for it to sit inside, but I haven’t found that it catches on the pocket at all. I couldn’t explain why, any it might depend on how the pants are, but for me the Maximal moved, sat, and pulled pretty smoothly all around.
The Real Perk: Fat Hand Ergonomics.
I am a chronically small person who has been cursed with homunculus proportions. Which is to say I’m short and skinny, but I have the hands of a beer-soaked truck driver.
Because of this, I have always appreciated the expert opinions of David C Anderson as he often makes a point of showing what knives look like in his larger-than-average mitts when slinging knives in his weekly Knife Center videos.
While I couldn’t exactly share gloves with the man, I can relate to the way he handles knives. I know he understands a nuance of handle shaping that I like to refer to as “fat hand ergonomics” (although I tend to only use that term in reference to myself since, again, I’m a small manl, and not at all prepared to face the consequences of other people in the knife industry misconstruing my use of the word “fat”).
My point is that with the Maximal’s taller-than-average handle, my hand doesn’t strain so much to tighten up on it like it sometimes does other EDC knives like the Civivi Elementum. There are other knives that manage this, but very few that do so while still being thin enough to ride well in the pocket.
Comparison and Alternatives
The Maximal beats out a lot of knives in bang-for-buck. Even in this golden age of budget folders, quality tends to drop off around the $75 mark. At $50 (as of this writing), the Maximal performs as well as knives that cost three times as much (is it bad form to mention the Bugout? Are we all tired of that comparison yet?).
When I look over my collection and pick out similarly priced knives that might equal the quality and joy of use, they tend to have big-name designers behind them like Lucas Burnley and Andrew Demko, which puts DCA in great company. That said, there are a lot of alternatives with their own unique perks, so I’ll run through my personal favorites quickly:
- Want to go smaller and aren’t too concerned about edge retention? The CRKT Squid.
- Want to go cheaper and have more clip positions? The OKC RAT II.
- Want something that’s good for camping? The Cold Steel Finn Wolf.
- You want something a little beefier? The Off Grid Badger.
- Finally, you want something even more neutral but maybe with some extra handle design options? It’s hard to go wrong with the Knafs Lander.
We talk about a lot of these knives in our article about hard use knives. But honestly I’d have a hard time recommending any of them over the Maximal without a specific context.
The Slightly Meatier Budget Knife Option
This is a good budget knife that does a lot of things good budget knives do, but what makes it stand out to me is the handle. This is somewhat rare as a modern, fidgety EDC with a tall handle that’s comfortable for a bigger hand to grip.
It’s in a price range where a lot of the best, most practical folders tend to lean thin and hard in the handle, so, for me, the soft, tall Micarta handle on the Maximal is a diamond in the rough.
