The Ruike Knives P852-B folder is a nice chunky knife that’s more suited to doing a bit of hard work rather than sitting lightly in the pocket of your sweatpants without even knowing it’s there. This is a solid folder with some girth in the handle that fills the hand, so you’ll feel it in the pocket if you’re going to carry it.
I asked my friend and fellow knife nut to tell me what he thinks of the P852 from Ruike and he said it’s too chunky, heavy and it has a recurve blade but that’s because he only thinks about everyday carry and only buys knives that are small and featherweight. I told him to forget about his very specific requirements for EDC and just tell me what he thinks about the knife for what it is. He then started warming to the knife, talking about fit and finish, the nice flipping action, good materials and value for money.
Blade Grind, Shape, and 14C28N Steel
The most obvious thing you’ll notice when you pick up the Ruike P852-B is the recurve blade. This will turn a lot of people off straight away as some people just don’t like recurve blades. I’m not one of those people as I love recurves. I love curvy women and curvy knives.
Sure the recurve is not as easy to sharpen but 14C28N keeps a decent edge and is a pretty easy steel to sharpen. I haven’t sharpened my 852 model yet but I have sharpened other Ruike knives with the same Sandvik steel like the P801 flipper and it sharpens nicely. The sharpening choil is always appreciated too.
The brushed satin drop point blade is about 3.5mm thick and it’s 3.50 inches or 8.9cm in length. A nice swedge runs down almost the entire spine of the blade which gives it a more aerodynamic, stabby look.
I like how Ruike keeps their blade signage to a minimum. On the show side of the blade is the RUIKE logo and on the back side is the model number (P852-B), blade steel (14C28N) and a serial number (FD73QV00587). The text is kept as small as possible too which is good.
Knife Handle, Lock and Ergonomics
The Ruike Knives P852-B has sculpted black G-10 scales with stainless steel liners. Vertical grooves down the rounded G-10 scales help with a little bit of extra traction and they’re also aesthetically pleasing. There’s no hard edges, no gaps and everything is well machined and put together.
As far as ergonomics goes the P852 locks the hand into place nicely. Probably too nicely if you’re thinking about different sized hands as the hard drop down of the handle butt forces you to have either four fingers locked into the grooves if you have medium hands or three fingers locked in and one hanging over the back if you have large hands. It still works for all hand sizes but I think it could have worked better if the butt wasn’t so pronounced.
Lock up is nice and secure with the Michael Walker liner lock. There’s some nice grabby jimping included to make for easy disengagement of the lock which works perfectly.
The added safety lock is unnecessary in my opinion. I’ll talk about that more when I mention the knife opening action below.
Knife Opening Action
The opening action on the Ruike P852 is really nice. It runs on ball bearings and flips open every time with ease. When you disengage the lock the blade will drop straight back into the handle. With the weight of the blade and the ball bearings it almost drops back in too easily.
My only complaint with the Ruike Knives P852-B also involves the flipping action. I know I just told you how buttery smooth it is while opening and closing, but I didn’t tell you about the Ruike “ThumbUp” safety lock located on the top, front of the handle.
So when you flip the blade open your pointer finger then lands on that lock which has some harsh jimping on it as it’s needed to engage the safety lock once open. If your finger is calloused and hard from flipping knives all day like mine then it’s fine, but if you don’t use knives everyday it’ll probably hurt when your finger lands on the jimping.
It’s not a deal breaker for me but I would just rather they didn’t use the extra safety locks at all. I’ve never used a safety lock on a folding knife by any company that I have liked. I wish all knife makers would just stop doing them as they’re not necessary and usually very annoying.
If the standard liner lock, frame lock or back lock isn’t enough then you should be using a fixed blade knife for the job.
Safety lock rant over. This is a working knife and the Ruike safety lock does work very well, so I can understand why they would use it, but I would like the knife at least 15% more if it didn’t have the lock.
Knife Technical Specs
Ruike Knives P852 with G-10 Handle / Brushed satin blade model: P852-B (Black)
- Blade steel: Sandvik 14C28N
- Sculpted G-10 scales front and back with Stainless steel liners
- Ball bearings
- Manual opening with Flipper tab
- Liner lock
- Right handed carry clip, tip up
- Blade length: 3.50 inches (8.9 cm)
- Handle length: 4.6 inches (11.7 cm)
- Overall length: 8.11 inches (20.6 cm)
- Blade thickness: 3.5mm
- Weight: 5.64 oz. (160 grams)
- Made in China
The Verdict
The Ruike P852 is a very well built folder and it does what it’s meant to. It’s not the lightest knife in the world so it won’t be replacing my ZT0450CF as an EDC knife anytime soon but it’ll be working with me in the garden, cutting rope and doing a little pruning if required.
I’m not a fan of any extra safety locks on folding knives as I think they’re completely unnecessary but that’s just a personal preference of mine. Many people like the added knife security, I’m not one of those people. So if I had to suggest an area where the Ruike Knives P852-B could be improved I would just say, take the safety lock off.
Directness.com Rating 6.5/10 (Pretty good)
My rating is a very subjective score out of 10 for the type of knife it is. So I see the the Ruike Knives P852-B with the 14C28N blade as a budget friendly production folder that’s medium to large in size, more utility or work focused than just EDC friendly, uses decent materials, and is capable of some harder use work tasks. It’s how I see it ranking in the style/category/use that it was made for. I want to rate a fish for how well it swims rather than how well it flies (a bird shouldn’t be rated for how well it swims).
Let me know in the comments what you think of the Ruike Knives P 852 flipper if you own one. Would you recommend it to a friend?
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