This one may be a bit late for Halloween, but it certainly has the color scheme! This is actually the second knife in the Wilderness series, the first being all black- black tools, black scales and black liners, but there seems to be some problem with the mail that has kept it from arriving before this article was written, so for now we’ll have to make do with pictures of just this one!
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Like the Black Edition, the Orange Edition has a black coated blade, wood saw and pruning blade as well as black coated liners. Unlike the Black Edition, the Orange Edition has, as its name implies, orange scales, identical to the previous orange SAKs we’ve seen, like the Pioneer and Farmer.
And, like the recent Woodsman Reissue, the Orange Wilderness has more outdoorsy/survival oriented compliment, with a wood saw and hawksbill type pruning blade in addition to the standard main blade. Of course while it is theoretically user oriented, I would imagine the cost and rarity of these knives (again a very limited run) likely means that the most use it will see is the occasional trip outside it’s box for fondling purposes, or perhaps to be put on display.
There have been very few forays into black coatings in the SAK world in the past- for the most part it’s been kept to the SwissTool and Spirit line, and even then very selective. There was also a brief attempt a few years ago at creating some black bladed One Handed Trekker models, but in actual practice the black coating was not very durable. There is some evidence to show that Victorinox was doing a significant amount of experimenting at the time, as some were better than others, with some of the worst being the 2006 SOSAK Knife Of The Year models. However, as collectibles the durability of the coating wasn’t a significant issue. Of course these models didn’t have black coated liners- other than the blade, everything else was standard.
The only other black coated multipurpose knife I have is the Richartz model that I reported on a couple of months ago- the coating seems quite decent on it, although with as many better alternative knives as I have, I see no reason to carry it and test it out. Still, at the time I couldn’t help but appreciate the difference, and wished we would see more SAKs like it. It looks like I got my wish, and sooner than I expected!
So what else can I say? Keep in touch with your local Cat Man for special runs like these in the future- you won’t be sorry!