Overview & First Impressions
Eddy Martinez grew up in Chile, moved to the United States at twenty one, and spent years designing websites before he started designing knives. You can see the transition in the Dako: it has the clean proportions of somebody who thinks in layout, and the hardware of somebody who has handled a lot of production knives. The headline is the lock. A crossbar sits under your thumb and index finger, ambidextrous by default, and it turns a flipper into something you can open and close without ever changing your grip.
Materials & Construction
The blade is CPM-S35VN with a satin finish and a high flat grind that leaves a thin edge behind the apex. S35VN at this geometry sharpens quickly on a ceramic rod and holds well enough that most owners will strop rather than stone. The handle is titanium with a shred carbon fibre inlay, which is not the usual twill: chopped fibre is suspended in resin so the pattern looks more like scattered static than a weave, and no two inlays are identical. The V1 uses silver-toned shred, the V2 uses copper, and that is the whole difference.
Design & Details
The crossbar lock is a spring-loaded bar that drops into a notch in the blade tang. Pull it back and the blade falls; release it and the bar snaps home. It is the most left-hand friendly lock in common production use, and on the Dako it is tuned light enough to work with one finger. The flipper tab is a low nub, the pivot runs on bearings, and the handle has a gentle curve that puts the blade in line with your forearm. Weight stays under four ounces despite full titanium slabs.
Real-World Use
Crossbar folding knives are the ones people actually fidget with, and the Dako earns that. Open and close it two hundred times in an evening and the action only gets smoother as the parts seat. Day to day it handles tape, cardboard, rope, cable jacket and the plastic clamshell that everything arrives in. The shred carbon inlay is smooth enough not to shred a pocket and textured enough not to slip when your hands are damp. It is a good winter knife for that reason alone.
Ownership Notes
Keep the crossbar springs dry. Water in the bar channel is the one thing that will make a crossbar feel gritty, and compressed air plus a drop of dry lubricant fixes it in a minute. Do not over-tighten the pivot when the action feels loose; adjust a quarter turn at a time and let the lock-in seat. Shred carbon is resin-bonded, so avoid solvents and avoid dropping the knife on its corner, where the resin can chip and leave a white mark.
Who Is This For?
Buy it if you are left handed, if you like a lock you can operate without looking, or if you have been curious about crossbar mechanisms and want a titanium version rather than a plastic one. It suits the daily carrier who opens a knife twenty times a day and the collector who wants one Martinez design. Skip it if you prefer a frame lock you can tighten by hand, or if you dislike inlays on principle.
Final Verdict
The Dako is the most left-hand friendly knife in this batch and one of the better crossbar production folders at the price. Kansept knives executed the inlay work properly, which is harder than it looks on a curved titanium surface. EdcMall lists both the silver shred V1 and the copper shred V2, so the choice really is down to which static pattern you prefer.
