If you've been paying attention to the changes we've been making to the Vector Air website, you may have noticed that we've been quietly adding a few things that aren't technically airguns.
We briefly touched on it in our recent catalogue changes and website redesign article, where we talked about rebuilding the way the website is organised and making it easier to find products based on what you actually want to do with them. Well, that little project has now grown another arm, because Vector Air has officially launched its new Knives & Tools section.
And yes, we sell knives now.
Before anyone panics, we haven't suddenly abandoned airguns and opened a cutlery shop. The idea is actually fairly simple. Over the years, we've increasingly found ourselves supplying customers who aren't just interested in the rifle itself. They're looking at optics, mounts, bipods, bags, tools, shooting equipment and everything else that goes along with spending time outdoors.
Knives seemed like a fairly obvious addition.
Helle Polaris - A compact outdoors knife
But rather than filling a category with hundreds of vaguely similar black folding knives and hoping you pick one at random, we've tried to build the section in the same way we've approached the rest of the website: give you useful ways to find the thing you actually need.
Find the Knife You Actually Want
One of the problems with buying a knife is that you can very quickly end up down a rabbit hole of terminology.
Liner lock. Frame lock. Lockback. Slipjoint. Full tang. N690. D2. MagnaCut. Drop point. Tanto. Harpoon.
And that's before someone starts telling you about edge geometry.
If you already know exactly what you're looking for, our filters let you narrow things down by the specification. You can look for folding or fixed blades, filter by locking mechanism, choose different tang constructions for fixed blades and narrow the selection by blade steel.
The section can be filtered by intended use, including bushcraft, camping, outdoor utility and general purpose, as well as EDC options.
So, for example, if you know you want a folding knife with a liner lock for general utility use, you can filter the catalogue around those requirements rather than scrolling through every knife we've got and trying to work out which one looks the part.
Dachs Knives Sulis EVO - A premium gentlemans folding knife
That's really what the new section is about. You can start with the technical specification if you know what you want, or start with the job you need it to do if you don't.
So, What Exactly Is an EDC Knife?
You'll see the term EDC quite a lot when looking at knives.
UK knife law is something you should understand before carrying any knife in public. There is a general exception for a folding pocketknife with a non-locking blade and a cutting edge of no more than 3 inches (7.62cm). Other knives can require a legitimate reason or lawful authority to carry in public, with specific exemptions and circumstances applying.
EDC stands for Everyday Carry, and broadly describes an item designed to be carried and used as part of your everyday kit. That could mean opening packaging, cutting cord, dealing with small jobs around the house, or simply having a useful tool with you when you need it.
For us, EDC is primarily a description of how the knife is intended to be used, not a statement that it is legal to carry everywhere.
Opinel NEO6 - One of the most popular EDC knives availble thanks to its affordable price
Folding or Fixed?
The next obvious question is whether you want a folding knife or a fixed blade.
A folding knife has the obvious advantage of being compact. When folded, the blade is protected within the handle and the overall package is considerably easier to store and carry. That makes folding knives particularly useful for everyday utility and situations where keeping things compact matters.
Then there are fixed blades.
A fixed blade doesn't have hinges, pivots or locking mechanisms. The blade and handle form a much more straightforward construction, which is one reason fixed blades are so popular for outdoor work and bushcraft.
Helle Utvær - a heavy duty outdoors knife with amazing craftsmanship
With fixed blades, you'll also start seeing terminology such as full tang. That refers to the way the blade steel extends through the handle rather than simply being attached to it at the front. Again, it's not a magic phrase that automatically makes one knife better than another, but it is an important part of understanding how a particular knife has been constructed.
Our filters let you find these differences without needing to memorise the entire dictionary of knife terminology first.
And Then There's the Steel
Knife steel is where things can get properly nerdy.
Different steels are designed around different combinations of properties, including edge retention, toughness, corrosion resistance and ease of sharpening. There isn't one magical steel that is automatically the best at everything, despite what the internet may occasionally suggest.
Within the Vector Air range, you'll find everything from practical tool steels through to some seriously premium options, including CPM MagnaCut.
And this is another reason we wanted the filtering system in place. If you're particularly interested in a certain steel, you can search for it. If you're not bothered and simply want a knife suitable for camping, you can forget the metallurgy completely and start with the intended use.
Both approaches work.
Why Dachs Knives?
This brings us neatly to the first knife brand we've chosen to import ourselves.
Dachs Knives.
There is a fairly obvious reason we chose them. They're very good at what they do.
But there is another reason that matters to us just as much.
We like companies that produce quality products while remaining relatively small themselves. A lot of the brands we've chosen to work with over the years have that same characteristic. Vector Air is a family-run business with a handful of employees, and we've never been particularly interested in trying to look like a massive corporate operation.
We're quite happy being a bit different.
Sometimes people like that.
Sometimes they really don't.
Dachs has a similar feel. They're not some enormous commercial knife manufacturer churning out endless variations to fill every conceivable price point. They're a comparatively small Czech company producing knives with a level of attention to detail that is very difficult to ignore once you've handled them.
And being Czech immediately caught our attention for another reason.
We've spent a lot of time over the years looking at Czech manufacturing through the airgun industry, and we've seen first-hand what the country's manufacturers are capable of when it comes to engineering, machining and precision manufacturing.
So when we came across another Czech manufacturer producing high-quality products and thought, why wouldn't we want to import these?, the answer was fairly obvious.
From a Small Czech Village to Serious Bladesmithing
Dachs Knives comes from the small Czech village of Jílovice, around 17 kilometres northeast of Hradec Králové.
It isn't exactly the place you'd immediately expect to find a workshop producing high-end knives and traditionally made Japanese-style swords.
Brothers Radim and Kamil Dachs developed much of their knowledge through self-teaching, working from available literature, advice from experienced craftsmen and, inevitably, a considerable amount of trial and error.
That eventually took them into some very specialised work, including Japanese-style sword making.
Their work became sufficiently respected that Japanese specialists advised them to mark their swords because the quality could potentially be mistaken for Japanese-made examples. That led to the Tanuki branding used on some of their work.
Tanuki refers to the Japanese raccoon dog, while Dachs is German for badger. It's an unusual combination, but it reflects the slightly unusual route that has taken the Dachs brothers from a small Czech workshop into highly specialised bladesmithing.
And that background matters when you handle their knives.
You can see the years of experimentation in the details.
Trial, Error and an Exceptionally Good Folding Action
One of the first things we noticed with the Dachs folding knives wasn't a particular steel or even the blade shape.
There is a smoothness and immediacy to the opening system that we've found particularly satisfying. It feels deliberate rather than simply functional, and it's one of those things that's difficult to explain properly until you've actually handled one.
That's probably no coincidence.
Dachs' bladesmithing has developed through a lot of experimentation, and trial and error is often where genuinely good design comes from. You try something, discover what doesn't work, change it, try again and eventually end up with something that feels very obvious in hindsight.
Their folding knives are a good example of that approach.
N690, D2 and More
Dachs primarily use N690 for many of their premium blades, and it's a steel we've been particularly impressed with in the knives we've handled.
They also use steels including D2 and GU10 across some of their more commercially focused models, giving the range a useful spread rather than trying to force every knife into the same specification.
That's important because not everyone needs a £200-plus premium knife.
Sometimes you need something small, practical and relatively inexpensive that you won't be afraid to actually use.
And that's where the Dachs range becomes particularly interesting.
A Range That's Hard to Put in One Box
The first Dachs knife we want to highlight is the Sulis EVO.
It's a beautifully finished gentleman's-style folding knife with a drop-point blade and N690 steel. It's compact, refined and, thanks to that opening system, exceptionally satisfying to use.
The Charon Mini combines a folding drop-point blade in N690 with a glass breaker, giving it a more purposeful emergency and utility role while retaining the premium construction you'd expect from Dachs.
It's a minimalist, skeletonised full-tang tanto knife in N690. There isn't much unnecessary material here. It's essentially a very compact fixed blade stripped back to the fundamentals.
And then there's the Howed EVO, which is probably the point where you realise Dachs aren't particularly interested in making everything look like the knife sitting in the display cabinet next door.
The harpoon blade gives it a distinctive profile, while the folding design and D2 steel make it a very different proposition from something like the GNOM or Sulis.
That's the thing we like about the range.
It isn't simply the same knife copied twenty times with different handle scales.
It's Not All Knives
Although knives are the main attraction of the new section, we haven't completely forgotten about tools.
The Gunpany Torque Screwdriver has already proved extremely popular. It comes with a 10-piece bit set and is exactly the sort of thing that makes sense alongside shooting equipment.
We're not entirely sure whether that's a compliment to the popularity of the product or an indictment of everyone's shooting technique, but either way, we're keeping them in stock.
There are small EDC options around the £25 mark, including the lovely little Opinel knives, right through to much more serious premium options.
That matters to us.
Not everyone wants to spend hundreds of pounds on a knife, and not everyone should. If you want something inexpensive that you can use without worrying about scratching it, we've got options for that. If you're interested in premium steel, specialist construction and something you'll probably spend far too long admiring before actually using, we've got those too.
And somewhere in the middle you'll find plenty of genuinely useful knives for camping, outdoor work, general utility and everything else that happens when you spend time away from the sofa.
This Is Just the Start
Dachs is the first knife brand we've chosen to import ourselves, and based on what we've seen so far, they may have made it rather difficult for anyone else to convince us we need another.
That's not because we don't want the section to grow.
It's because we'd rather have a smaller range of genuinely interesting products than fill the website with knives simply because we can.
That's broadly how we've approached Vector Air from the beginning.
We'd rather find something different, test it, use it, understand it and then decide whether we actually want to put our name behind it.
Dachs fits that approach rather nicely.
Small company. Czech manufacturing. Proper bladesmithing heritage. Interesting designs. Excellent materials. And knives that feel like someone actually cared about how they worked rather than simply how they looked in a catalogue.
So, yes, Vector Air sells knives now.
We've also got tools.
And if you block your rifle, apparently we've got you covered there too.
The new Vector Air Knives & Tools section is live now, with filters for knife type, locking mechanism, tang construction, steel and intended use.
Whether you're looking for an everyday carry knife, folding utility knife, camping blade, bushcraft knife, fixed blade or something made from premium steel, start with what you actually need and let the filters do some of the work.
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What led Vector Air to include intended-use FNF filters like bushcraft and camping alongside technical filters such as blade steel and locking mechanism?
What led Vector Air to include intended-use FNF filters like bushcraft and camping alongside technical filters such as blade steel and locking mechanism?