Shop Kershaw Knives
This is the Kershaw knife wall: 143 knife SKUs in stock in our Woodlawn, Virginia warehouse, running from $5.99 to $182.25. It is the single biggest block of Kershaw inventory in the building and the reason most people arrive at the brand in the first place.
The median price here is $41.99, which tells you where the weight of the range sits. There is real depth above and below that number, though, and the difference between a $30 Kershaw and a $150 Kershaw is not marketing. It is a different steel, a different lock, and in most cases a different country of manufacture.
Kershaw splits cleanly into three tiers once you have handled a few.
The value tier runs from $5.99 to roughly $40 and is made overseas. Soft stainless, simple liner and frame locks, and prices low enough that losing one is annoying rather than expensive. The Arise and Inverse fixed blades at $5.99 anchor the bottom.
The working tier covers $40 to $130 and is where most buyers land. This is D2 tool steel territory and the home of the assisted-opening folders that the catalog labels A/O.
The Oregon tier starts around $130. The Leek, the Blur, the Dividend and the Lucha are all built in Kershaw's Tualatin, Oregon plant, and their spec lines say Made in USA. These are the knives people keep.
Four families do most of the work at the top of this catalog.
Across these 143 knives, five steels cover almost everything, and the price you pay tracks the steel more closely than anything else on the spec sheet.
Most of this catalog is split between linerlocks and framelocks, with a few lockbacks in the fixed and traditional corners. The Bel Air models in Gear & Outdoors use Kershaw's DuraLock instead.
A linerlock uses a sprung leaf inside the handle that snaps behind the blade tang. A framelock does the same job with a cut section of the handle slab itself, which makes it stiffer and usually stronger. Neither is fragile, and for the cutting most people do the difference is preference rather than performance.
The A/O in a product name means assisted opening: you start the blade with a thumb stud or flipper and a spring finishes the motion. It is not the same thing as a knife that opens at the press of a button, and none of those are sold here by standing store policy. Assisted models are legal to own in most of the country, but knife law is set state by state and sometimes city by city, so check where you live before you carry anything.
It is easy to write off the cheap end of a big catalog, but the sub-$15 Kershaw knives exist for real reasons.
The Arise Fixed Blade and Inverse Fixed Blade are both $5.99, with 4.25 inch and 2.63 inch blades respectively and no pivot to fail. A fixed blade at that price is not a lifetime tool, but it is the right thing to leave in a toolbox, a boat locker or a camp kit where a knife is going to be borrowed and forgotten.
The Ration Utensil at $7.43 is a mess-kit item rather than a knife. The Single Knife Pouch at $10.13 is worth knowing about for a different reason: it is the correct way to store a folder you are not carrying, out of a leather sheath and out of a drawer where it rubs against other steel.
Below $20 in the closeouts bin there is usually a rotating stack of Cinder, Pub and Rhetoric models between $10.80 and $14.99. Those are genuine knives at gift-drawer prices, and they are the answer when somebody keeps borrowing yours.
Every knife on this page carries Kershaw's Limited Lifetime Warranty: defects in materials and construction, for the life of the product, for the original owner only. It does not transfer if you sell or gift the knife.
Excluded are normal wear, rust, improper use or maintenance, accidents, loss and theft. In practice that means a blade that will not center or a lock that never engaged properly is a warranty conversation, and a chipped edge from prying is not.
The soft stainless models come back with a few passes on almost any stone or pull-through. D2 and MagnaCut are a different job and reward diamond or ceramic. Whatever you use, work at a consistent angle and stop before the edge gets shiny at the apex.
Pivots collect pocket lint and it is the most common cause of a folder that feels gritty. A drop of oil on a clean pivot fixes most complaints; we stock Kershaw Knife Oil at $7.43 on the Kershaw care page. Browse the full knives category to compare these against every other brand in the building.
