There’s nothing flashy about it. The black G10 handle scales aren’t going to stop you in your tracks. There’s nothing crazy about the stonewashed full-flat-grind blade—no complex bevels or swedges. And Montana Knife Company’s newest knife—and the breakout company’s first folding knife—is built with a straightforward liner lock. Hell, Noah probably had one of those on his EDC knife.
But pick up the Montana, possibly the most anticipated new knife to come to the blade market in a decade, and what is special about this knife comes into focus. How the chamfered edges on the handle scales keep hotspots from forming whenever you use the knife hard. The blade is made of Magnacut steel, a premium pelletized steel known for edge retention, hardiness, and corrosion resistance. And the liner lock is more like liner lock 4.0. MKC redesigned the proven lock system with an overbuilt version that extends the full length of the handle, and is milled with bronze-cage bearings that ride on silicon nitride balls. All this and the knife weighs just under three ounces, which is a little insane. And it’s all made in the U.S.
The trick is picking one up. MFC is located in Missoula, Montana, and sells many of its knives in limited-edition drops announced on its website. In the drop of the first batch of the Montana, Smith says, “multiple thousands” sold in less than a minute. Twenty thousand people were trying to check out on the website when the last knife was spoken for. It’s a bit of business-as-usual for the company. When MKC launched its first knife, the Blackfoot, hundreds of the knives sold in minutes. Same with the ultralight Speedgoat. Ditto the Stonewall Skinner.
Smith was as surprised as anyone. The thirty-nine-year-old Montana native started making knives when he was eleven years old, and he became the youngest Master Bladesmith—the American Bladesmith Society’s highest designation—when he was nineteen. Soon thereafter he registered the name Montana Knife Company, but for the next nearly twenty years he worked full-time as a lineman. In June 2020 he took the leap to full-time knifemaker; he initially hoped to place his semi-custom knives in a few Montana hunting shops, but was universally turned down. “I heard it all,” he says. “Your knives are too expensive. You should get these made in China. Oh, yeah—and your boxes don’t have a barcode.”
SKU all that, he figured. He put his Blackfoot on the internet and has been running to keep up with demand ever since. Earlier this year, MKC opened a 51,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Missoula. The workforce has grown to some 130 employees with a monthly payroll of over a million dollars. He is as proud of those figures as he is of the knives they make. “I’m building careers while we’re building knives,” he says. “That is very important to me. Whether it’s a tiny town in Montana or a tiny town in Mississippi, the lesson is the same: You can start and grow an American brand in your garage, and you don’t have to be in Dallas to do it.”
Clear your calendar: Another batch of the Montana folding knife drops on July 30.
T. Edward Nickens is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun and cohost of The Wild South podcast. He’s also an editor at large for Field & Stream and a contributing editor for Ducks Unlimited. He splits time between Raleigh and Morehead City, North Carolina, with one wife, two dogs, a part-time cat, eleven fly rods, three canoes, two powerboats, and an indeterminate number of duck and goose decoys. Follow @enickens on Instagram.