The Bel Air is a manual pocket knife with a three-inch reverse tanto blade (or modified wharncliffe for the purists) that’s fresh out of the factory this week.
Here are the quick specs:
| Overall Length: | 7.125″ |
| Blade Length: | 3.125″ |
| Blade Steel: | CPM Magnacut |
| Lock System: | Duralock (crossbar) |
| Handle Material: | Aluminum |
| Carry System: | Deep-carry clip |
| Made in: | USA |
With a flat grind and a blade width on par with the Kershaw Leek, the Bel Air looks optimized to be a high-functioning slicer. The Duralock system gives some promising ambidextrous qualities, and it’s running on KVT ball bearings, so the action should be plenty smooth.
This is the first new manual design to come out of Kershaw’s US factory in a while. Last year saw a nice continuation of the Launch series, and they flipped the whole knife world on its head for a couple months following the release of the Livewire (to say nothing of the ZT-9 update on the Zero Tolerance side of things).
The Bel Air looks to be something approaching a humbler set of use cases, with a much more approachable price tag, and it definitely has a more knife-laws-friendly deployment method.
The Bel Air is available now from Kershaw’s website and the other usual suspects.
Kershaw seems to be stepping up their American made knife production lately, and the popularity of the US made knives seems to justify the added expense. Hopefully this Kershaw trend continues.
