Kerhsaw OSO Sweet Assisted Opening 3" Drop Point Blade Plain Edge - $19.99

Great knife for the money. The last one I had I gave to a young man who needed a decent, first, non-gas station knife. Budget 8Cr13MoV is an excellent value and Kershaw does a good heat treat on it. Takes a sharp edge and the thin blade makes this a great slicer. May not hold the edge forever, but is very easy to sharpen. Build quality, blade centering, assisted opening, design, fit and finish are all there in what you would expect out of a good quality $20-$25 Kershaw. It's big enough with the 3" blade but still easy to carry. The assisted opening action is excellent, flicks out and locks up well, and assisted opening hides any flaws in the action by doing all the work for you. Big plus, IMHO, is lack of thumb studs to scratch your hand when reaching in your pocket, plus the flipper tab is small and contoured enough to not be a pain when reaching into your pocket around the knife either. Point is rather stabby and not at all suited for any kind of prying, but if you are prying with your knife then shame on you. Scales are only glass-filled nylon, I like G10 better, but they have a scale pattern that makes them grippy while keeping the price and weight down.

Only problem I ever had with this knife was deploying the blade once while the rear end was pushed deep against the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb. The blade snicked out and the sharp point scratched my palm a bit on the way out. Not a design flaw, just user error. The blade to handle length ratio is pretty good on this knife, so there isn't a ton of extra handle keeping you safe if you make that mistake. There's just no need to put a 5" handle on a 3" blade, which Ken Onion didn't do when he designed the OSO Sweet and I appreciate that. Also, a four way reversible pocket clip is nice in this price range. Check your screws on occasion and use some thread locker if necessary. They are only screwed into GFN, after all.

This is the little budget Kershaw that is a lot of knife for the lunch money, IMHO. It's small, light and classy enough that even non-knife folks won't have trouble carrying it. But well built enough to do real knife work. Just don't use it as a prybar or screwdriver!

EDIT/RANT: It is dirt easy to run a shipping estimator on an e-commerce website so your customers will know the full price including shipping and tax before they are forced to give you their personal info to make a purchase. Unfortunately, like many other sites, Primary Arms has chosen to require customers give up their full name and email, or to create an account, before they'll let them know the final OTD price. This is a bad, lazy business practice, used by some sellers to hide inflated shipping charges. I don't know if that's what Primary Arms is actually doing, maybe they have very reasonable shipping, but I don't know that because I refuse to give up my data to find out. The info may even be buried somewhere else on the website, but it wasn't openly offered up front so I could make an informed buying decision. As customers we need to expect better from the folks we choose to do business with.