907Knives ADAK, 2.3" 14C28N Fixed Blade, Richlite with Copper Pins, Dark Green Topo Kydex - Made in USA (ADAK-RICHLITE-DKGREEN-COPPER)

Alaskan handmade, named for an island at the end of the Aleutians. One of one, and the only knife in this drop with copper pins.

The ADAK is a compact handmade fixed blade from 907Knives, built by Will Lower in a backyard shop outside Anchorage. This one pairs a Richlite handle on copper pins with a dark green topo Kydex sheath, over a 14C28N blade right around 2.3 inches.

Note from Lone Star Knife and Supply: There is a second dark green topo Richlite in this drop. This is the one with copper pins, and it is the only copper on any knife in the batch. If you are choosing between the two, this is the one that will not look the same in a year.

Specifications

• Maker: Will Lower, 907Knives
• Model: ADAK
• Blade Length: Approximately 2.3"
• Overall Length: Approximately 5.5"
• Blade Steel: Sandvik 14C28N, cryo treated
• Handle Material: Richlite
• Pins: Copper
• Sheath: Kydex, dark green topographic pattern
• Features: Lanyard hole
• Country of Origin: Made in USA (Alaska), handmade

The Copper Pins

Pins are usually the part of a handle nobody thinks about, because they are stainless and they stay the color they arrived. Copper does not.

It darkens with handling, and on a pin the darkening concentrates exactly where your fingers sit. Two small spots on the handle end up recording how you hold the knife, which is a detail you only get on a handmade piece where the maker chose the hardware rather than ordering it by the thousand.

14C28N, Not AEB-L

Earlier ADAK drops ran AEB-L. This batch is Sandvik 14C28N, which is the closest thing to a sibling that steel has.

Both are fine grained stainless steels built around taking a very keen edge and coming back fast on a stone rather than chasing edge retention numbers. 14C28N adds nitrogen to the mix, which buys a little more corrosion resistance. Will cryo treats either one in liquid nitrogen a friend supplies him.

Richlite

Richlite is paper and resin compressed into a solid sheet. It machines clean, it does not move with humidity the way wood does, and it has a slightly warm, dry feel in the hand that neither G10 nor micarta quite matches.

It is also the right background for copper. A busier handle material would swallow two small pins. Richlite lets them read.

The Topo Sheath

Topographic lines pressed into dark green Kydex. Of the three topo sheaths in this batch it is the one that reads as terrain rather than as pattern. It carries a lanyard hole and is set up to take a clip if you want to add one.

Why It Is Called the ADAK

Adak is an island at the far end of the Aleutians. It is small, it is mountainous enough to run from coastline to a two thousand foot peak in no distance at all, and the sign at the airport reads birthplace of the wind.

Caribou live there and they are not native. They were brought in after World War II to feed the people stationed on the island. The base is long gone. The caribou stayed.

Will picked the name because a small island that packs that much punch suited a knife this size. Pronounced A-Dak.

How This Knife Came About

The ADAK exists because we asked for it. We wanted a small fixed blade in the same footprint as the TRM TAGALONG, which has been one of our best selling fixed blades, and we kept sending Will back to make it smaller.

What came back has a thicker handle than the TAGALONG. With a lanyard on it you get a full grip. Without one you get two fingers and your third wrapped around the end.

About 907Knives

Will Lower is retired Army, twenty years in. The service sent him to Alaska in 2013 and he found a way to stay. He still works in support of the Army as a civilian, and 907 is Alaska's own area code.

He started making knives a little over a year ago, after a long winter and a YouTube video he watched in an airport on the way to Las Vegas. His first knife was so dull he calls it the letter opener, and his son still has it. He has sold more than a hundred since.

Everything happens in his shop. He stabilizes his own wood, including birch he harvests in Alaska. He has been approached about having his designs made overseas and turned it down, in his words because it is all about the love of the game.

We Toured the Shop

Alaska is a long way from Texas, so the Great American Knife Tour™ did this one over video. Will walked us through all of it, a twelve by sixteen foot shop a friend built in his backyard after the metal shavings got him evicted from the garage.

He also tells the story behind the ADAK name and shows off petrified coral a friend harvests out of Alaskan salt water.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/aGeIwN9iT7c

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