As a fan of the Beretta 92F handgun, I’ve owned two
Beretta-badged knives that were product tie-ins to this knife. The first was
small to medium-sized folder with a styled 9mm bullet badge in the handle, which
was so sharp it badly cut a friend of mine in college (he lost so much blood
that he was pale when we found him, and we tracked him across campus based on
that blood trail). I sold that knife (and later regretted that decision) but,
years later, decided once more to purchase a Beretta 92 tie-in blade. The knife
you see here was the result of that search.

This version of the Beretta
92 knife is a surprisingly heavy-weight linerlock with a stylized,
Americanized-tanto blade of Seki City AUS-8 steel. The black coating on the
blade covers only the unbeveled portion of this broad piece of steel; the rest
is polished and deeply ground to meet the [different] angle of the cutting edge
(which is ground on both sides). The blade is roughly three and a half inches
long, while overall length is roughly eight inches. The handle is Zytel
(plastic).

The knife
was extremely sharp out of the box, cut well, penetrated reasonably well (the
blade exhibits a distal taper thanks to the broad, uncoated secondary grind),
and didn’t do too badly in slashing and cutting a variety of test media (ranging
from cardboard to cloth) despite the fact that there is no true “belly” to the
knife. This is because, while it is an Americanized tanto, the point between the
two edges is not as severe as on some. It is less useful for scoring, as a
result, but better for cutting through the sweep of the edge.

The blade
opens smoothly and locks open positively. There is no blade play. A single
removable, graduated thumb stud is affixed to the blade with a small
Phillips-head screw. The liner engages the blade tang fully and to the left of
the tang, leaving some room for wear.

The
handle, stylized to look like the grip of a Beretta 92F, is comfortably textured
and ergonomically curved. It provides a good grip despite the fact that the
spine and its obverse are somewhat smooth. The shape of the handle forms a very
brief integral guard of sorts. The sweep of the handle on top, just aft of the
blade, forms a natural thumb ramp. I wish this had thumb grooves. There is also
a lanyard hole in the handle.

The metal
pocket clip is broad but skeletonized. It had good tension out of the box and is
removable (Torx fasteners hold it to the handle). It is suitable for right-hand,
tip-down use only.

This
knife occupies a niche somewhere between “novelty blade” and “tactical knife,”
must closer to the latter than to the former. It is solid, hefty, and exhibits
good fit and finish, with a businesslike look that is shared by the handgun for
which it is named. Unless you’re a fan of the Beretta 92F pistol I suppose I
don’t really see why you’d need this
knife, but I could readily see why you might want one regardless.>>