Kershaw GTC Hops Thoughts

The Kershaw GTC Hops is an interesting, little knife. It's an okay knife overall, but I don't recommend it unless you're really in love with the design. 

I've had several issues with Kershaw's quality over the years, but this blade is perfect quality wise. It's a budget blade coming in at $25, so I was pleasantly surprised there were no issues. 

Design wise, I think you really have to love the design to appreciate this as a knife. I've never heard much of GTC, whom Kershaw collaborated with on this blade. I would assume a lot of their knives are reminiscent of this. The dual tone metal handle is not really my cup of tea. I saw various photos online that looked a lot better than it does in person. It's not the ugliest knife in the world, and I wouldn't say it's the prettiest either. It does function adequately for EDC though.

Blade wise, this is what you'd expect from a budget Kershaw. The steel is 8Cr13MoV, which isn't anything fancy obviously. It's been perfectly fine for my usage The blade is just under 2", so that's cool. 

As far as the handle goes, the ergos are decent to bad. I've had better ergos on other small knives. This is a three finger knife, which I'm not typically fond of. It does work out well enough on this knife. The worst part of the ergos is where the lock is cut out. Right above the finger groove, there's a jagged piece that digs uncomfortably into my hand all the time. I don't know if that's the way it is on all of them, or if it's just the way mine was cut. The clip also seems to dig into my hand quite a bit as well. If you have bigger hands, I don't think this knife would feel good in your hands at all. The finger groove is pretty small, so I can only see it fitting well in smaller hands. 

I absolutely hate how the handles are made of metal. The metal helps contribute to the poor ergos, since they're pretty squared off throughout the handle. The handles also make this knife extremely heavy. This knife is too heavy considering how small it is. The various cutouts honestly look stupid and don't contribute any extra grip. There's no jimping anywhere on this blade. I don't mind that at all.

To cover a few other things, the pocket clip looks cool, yet it's too tight to be practical. I'm sure I could get it looser over time. I like that Kershaw made it blue for a nice splash of color. The framelock is fine. There's no issues with lockup. There may be a tiny bit of play, but nothing that makes the knife unusable. 

I will say I didn't think I'd like the spring assisted action, but it's pretty neat on this particular knife. With a blade this small, there's less distance for it to travel upon opening, so it seems to whip out much faster than all the other spring assisted knives I've tried. The flipper is easy to use, but I wish it didn't have the weird cutout. Kershaw intended it to function as a bottle opener too. I can't say how well it works, since I never need to open bottles. It just seems like a waste of effort. 

For $25, this is exactly what I'd expect. It's an unremarkable knife. I don't really recommend it. As an EDC knife, it'd suck. It's too heavy, and the ergos suck. The Spyderco Ladybug is a much better alternative for $5 to $10 more. I like that Kershaw is trying to do more small knives, but this one was a waste of their time. Do not pick this blade up. Thanks for looking!