I have some nice new knives in 2016, some of them were my birthday presents, and another was a custom knife. After using them for few months, i decided to make a review. the first one is the Bastinelli Diagnostic Karambit which is one of my birthday present (yay!)

Bastinelli Diagnostic is a small knife made by a french knifemaker Bastien Coves and made by Fox Knives in Italy.

Specs:

• Blade Length: 3.81 cm
• Cutting Edge: 3.81 cm
• Overall Length: 9.525 cm
• Blade Thickness: 0.381 cm
• Blade Material: N690C Stainless Steel
• Blade Style: Karambit
• Blade Grind: Chisel
• Blade Finish: black
• Handle Thickness: 0.381 cm

The karambit shape of the blade shows that it’s a knife meant for self defense. you can do 2 types of grips with this knife, a normal grip, where the blade sits next to your index finger and your middle finger goes into the ring, and the reverse grip, where your ring finger goes into the ring and your pinky sits next to the blade. for me, I feel more comfortable with the normal grip as i can hold it stronger than the reverse grip.

with the chisel grind and karambit blade, it is not a very good paper slicer if you slice from the middle of the blade, but once you use the point to the blade, it can easily puncture and slice through a paper, cardboard, or throat.

as far as the material goes, the N690C steel is nice and have a good edge retention. it is said to be a similar steel to VG10, which is still a premium steel. the Chromium content is 16-17,3 which makes this steel is pretty resistant to rust.

Overall, this is a great little self defense knife that you can easily hang on your neck and forget about it because it is so light.

the sheath is a good kydex with good retention.

with the small size of this knife, you can unsheath it and hold it in your hand without no one will ever notice.

so far I’m really satisfied with this knife as a self defense knife. it is very sharp right out of the box, and its small size makes this knife a very lethal knife if unnoticed.