Ontario Rat 1 First Impressions

I got this Ontario Rat 1 on loan from Logan at Hydra572HQ yesterday. If you've never heard of him before, he runs that YouTube channel and reached out to me about helping him out with a project. I'm not sure how much I should say about the project initially, but basically, he wants to help give some other knife YouTubers a chance to review some blades. Buying knives can get kind of expensive as we all know, so he's hoping to ease the pressure for other knife people and give them a chance to try new knives. I don't think I captured his whole idea for the project with just those sentences, so watch out on his channel for a sort of intro video for the project. I'm really excited to help him out with it, as his channel has always been one of my favorites to watch. Check out this link to see his channel! He posts tons of sweet reviews and testing videos of all sorts of different knives and gear. Anyways, let's jump into some of my first impressions of this knife.

This knife is insanely popular in the knife community, and honestly I can see why. Sometimes overhyped products can be a huge let down. I really do expect to like this one though. Upon first putting this knife in my hand, I noticed how crazy good the ergos are. These ergos remind me of the Spyderco Native 5 I had. This knife just feels so good in the hand. The edges of the handles are rounded off, so this knife almost melts into your hand without it ever digging into you uncomfortably (unlike the PM2 I had). I did a ton of cardboard cutting after I first got it, and it performed extremely well. I'm hoping to pick up a Rat 2 soon, so I can do a comparison of sorts between the two. This Rat 1 is just slightly too big for me for EDC. I do see myself picking one of these up for hiking and getting a Rat 2 for EDC. One other thing I'll mention is that I'm surprised at how smooth this knife is. The action is just amazing. It flicks out so flawlessly and smoothly. We'll see how my time carrying it goes, but I fully expect to say a lot of good things about this knife. I can always kinda tell how I'll dig a knife when I first get it, and I feel really positively about this one. I'm really glad Logan gave me a chance to try this out! Huge thank you to him! He's done some sick videos, so go check out his channel! Stay tuned for a post with my thoughts on it in the coming weeks! Thanks for looking!