Scissors?

Scissors?

You thought this was a knife show and now I'm telling you I made you wait an entire week with no update and I'm showing you scissors?

You're damn skippy I am. Just wait until you get a load of this thing. These? These things.

Look, these are the "C5 Dismantling Chicken Bone Scissors." They're straight from China. The gods alone know who the hell the actual manufacturer is, but you can find similar things all over the Chinese market because apparently people over there are very keen on being able to dejoint chicken parts. I suspect, but can't prove, that the Chinese are probably the largest bloc of poultry consumers on the planet. This is Serious Business, so every pair of shears you see for sale from the Mainland makes a big deal about being able to cut up chicken bones.

But these aren't quite just like every other pair of random Chinese scissors.

Because you can break them apart into a bottle-opening-fish-scaly thing and...

...Yes, a knife.

"Big deal," you say. "My Faberware kitchen shears from Target come apart, too. That doesn't make 'em a knife."

Well, that's true for your common-or-garden loppers. One thing people don't realize until they try to use one as a letter opener is that your typical pair of shears has an edge on it that's not exactly sharp, per se, in the sense you're expecting. Scissors cut by way of having edges that are extremely square, usually shaped with a very steep angle in the order of 75 or 80 degrees. But you need two of those to tango — Without both halves coming together you're not cutting diddly squat.

So, uh, yeah. That's not how it works here.

One half of these shears has an honest to goodness knife edge ground onto it that's got an apex on it of exactly 30 degrees. I know this figure because that edge is so wide I'm actually able to firmly stick my Harbor Freight magnetic angle gauge doohickey to it, which is a feat you can't manage on most other cutlery.

It has a flat ground taper, too, albeit one that's extremely roughly machined. As is the edge.

Verily, it is capable of chopping things all on its lonesome without the aid of its other half. Although to be fair, this is far from a surgical slicer. Perish the thought of shaving tomatoes into paper-thin wafers. You're not shaving with this, either, at least without a significant effort in honing it. It's more for whacking indelicate foodstuffs into rough chunks. Or possibly chopping down a tree, in a pinch. It didn't quite make it cleanly through this Post-It, for instance, but it made a pretty respectable attempt nevertheless.

The blade is of course chisel ground by necessity, since its reverse side has to meet up squarely with the scissor edge on the other half, which has the typical 80-or-so degree steep and square angle on it. If you manage to ding up the knife edge this is also likely to adversely impact the scissoring performance dramatically, so try not to do that. The back side is dead flat, and you'll want to keep it that way as much as possible.

It doesn't come included with a sheath and its box is obviously designed for shipping and not for storage. The scissor handles are spring loaded and when not in use you can hold the ensemble shut with this little latch. The latch is spring loaded, too, and only the barest squeeze is required to make the thing pop open. Thus, handling the shears in the closed position is kind of annoying. Before just tossing them in your kitchen junk drawer all willy-nilly you might be advised to put a rubber band around the handles or something. Otherwise they'll be prone to pop open at random unexpectedly. Here's the latch action:

This is a complete multipurpose Ninja kitchen accessory. Thus, it has various tools and functions festooned all over.

For instance, there's this prybar end in the tip of one of the handles. The artwork on the box shows this being used for levering open clams, but it'd probably do a dandy job of opening a paint can or, if you whacked him smartly with the pommel, permanently embossing the enemy's forehead.

There's a lanyard hole in the other handle too for some reason.

You can dismount the halves by pressing on this little spring loaded pawl which allows the pivot to rotate beyond its usual endstop. Then, the knife portion and the fish scaler portion just slide apart from each other and you're ready for battle.

A torsion spring resides on the fish scaler side and is thankfully captive.

The scaler itself is very thick and does not posses any real edge anywhere on it. Cutting anything with it is out of the question.

I had something like this on one of my Swiss Army knives when I was a kid, too, and I've never successfully managed to descale anything with it. I'm not entirely certain anyone ever has, to be honest with you. All I ever managed to accomplish with the thing was debarking sticks, so maybe you could use this for a similar purpose if you could find somewhere to fit it within your culinary repertoire.

Never mind that, though. Because having both halves in hand lets you go all JTHM, thoroughly announcing to any passers-by that you are the goddamned boss motherfucker of this kitchen, thank you very much.

Not a single thing within your reach will go unstabbed, unpried, or unsnipped.

Special mention is due to the box.

Mine arrived just slightly crushed from its long trip from China. The front just shows off the article through a clear film window, but rear is considerably more interesting.

These are available in two colors, silver and "gray," the latter being notable as a color which this absolutely isn't. The handle scales are anodized aluminum and are really sort of mauve. It's not a trick of the light; they really are that color.

Note also the "scraping fish scale area," and that the knife can be separated... separately.

The feature list also calls out the slot in the back of the blade as a "peeler." And lo, on the spine of the box is depicted a bloke apparently using it just as such:

And a close inspection reveals that there is indeed an edge ground into the slot; here's yet another hidden function.

A hook on the ricasso of the fish scaler component also serves as a bottle opener. I tried the bottle opener and it works great. I can't speak for the efficacy of the peeler because I couldn't find an apple on short notice.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is easily the best-worst kitchen gizmo I've ever owned. You've heard of a combat knife? Never that, these are combat scissors.

For when you have to chop the carrots at 5:00 and fend off Triad goons at 5:30, just make sure you've got a pair of these tucked into your apron pocket.