Let’s put my cards on the table: I’m an Oregon native. I grew up in Portland, and my appreciation for the slightly weird yet homegrown vibe that this state puts out has never left me—especially when it comes to knives.
Maybe it’s the rain-soaked forests, logging culture, and some of the best public, state, and national parks that make Oregonians this way, but we’re a little obsessed with gear that can take a beating and keep going in the outdoors. So, yes, when I heard CRKT—one of Portland’s proudest exports—was scaling up the famous Razel into something that straddled the line between knife and axe, I was already half in love when I saw one in person during a tour of CRKT’s facility right here in Portland, Oregon.
But love doesn’t mean I’m blind, and the CRKT Razel Nax is a tool that has earned both my admiration and critique in equal measure. Today, I’ll give you a few of my thoughts on this odd mating of blade styles.
Knife Center of Excellence: Portland’s Blade Legacy
Before diving into the Nax itself, this review deserves a pause for some much-needed context. For those outside of town, it might be news that Portland isn’t just the land of beer festivals, weird doughnuts, and stupid politics—it’s the knife capital of the country. CRKT, Benchmade, Gerber, Leatherman, now the all-American Steelport: these are titans of the knife world, and together they’ve recently founded the Portland Knife Center of Excellence (PKCoE) to push and encourage innovation, craftsmanship, and—let’s be honest—a certain friendly rivalry. Over half the quality knives sold in the U.S. are made in the metro area, and we’ve quietly built a culture where making a good blade is just what’s expected in the Rose City.
CRKT’s origin story is pure Portland: founded in 1994 in nearby Tualatin, it’s the classic tale of two knife industry vets, Rod Bremer and Paul Gillespi, leaving the corporate world to stubbornly do things their own way. Within a few years, they’d introduced one of the best-selling folders in memory and never slowed down from there. Today, innovation and pushing boundaries are what I think CRKT does best by working with some of the best and most well-renowned bladesmiths in the knife world. The Nax is a nod to the late Jon Graham, designer of the original Razel.
First Impressions: The “Axe Knife”
Pulling the Razel Nax from its Kydex sheath, you get immediate “serious tool” vibes – it’s freaking heavy. Picture an 11-inch slab of 1075 carbon steel dressed up with resin-infused fiber handles that want to be micarta when they grow up.
As I said earlier, the blade is a scaled-up take on Jon Graham’s classic Razel design. As odd as it looks, I think it perfectly fuses the hard edges of a chisel with enough sweeping belly and mass to hint at axe-level chopping power – you can’t help but want to chop things when you hold it in your hand.
However, as they often say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and from the few people I’ve talked to about the Nax, I have had pretty conflicting opinions about it. You either see a tool for a thousand jobs, or you see a Frankenstein’s monster. For someone who likes to put knives through hell: prying, scraping, digging into soil —it was an instant invitation to test its limits.
While the original finish is cool enough on its own, I think it looks even better after it’s been abused a bit. The already somewhat distressed look it comes with from the factory just does a great job of blending in with actual use, rather than ruining the “curb appeal” some knives typically lose after use.
Design, Steel, and Construction
The business end is over 4.25 inches of chisel-tipped edge, flat ground from 1075 carbon steel. CRKT rightly points out that 1075 doesn’t hold an edge quite as long as something like D2 or 1095, but what you give up in edge retention, you make up for in pure resilience.
This is a steel that lets you beat on it, bend it to jobs that would laugh at more brittle blades, and then sharpen it back to fighting shape with minimal fuss – especially if you’ve got a Ken Onion Worksharp Sharpener nearby or even one of their handy field sharpeners.
The full-tang handle delivers the right mix of security and balance, with pronounced jimping and contours that keep your hand where it belongs—even when things get muddy, bloody, or just plain ugly. The handle material is billed as “resin-infused fiber,” which is CRKT’s marketing way of saying micarta-esque. Whatever you call it, the stuff feels warm and grippy, not plasticky.
In the Field: Real World Use
In a word? Versatile. The Nax just laughs at jobs that most fixed blades wouldn’t approach. Chopping branches, notching logs, scraping almost any surface that isn’t concrete, splitting kindling, and hacking through everything from cardboard to raw meat—the Razel Nax can do just about everything except fold up small in your pocket. Did I mention this thing is almost a foot long?
That brings up one of its biggest problems: this is a big, heavy tool (over 11 ounces), and it’s not the first thing you grab for light EDC. You strap it on your backpack, truck bed gear bin, or stuff it in a tool roll when you’re heading out to do real work.
The Kydex sheath is robust, but—here comes my biggest gripe—the retention strap from the factory is pretty stiff and needs a fair amount of use to become easy to reattach with just one hand. You could also probably soak it in warm water and then re-stretch the strap that way, but for me, it took a few days of snapping and unsnapping the strap to get it to a reasonable balance between retention and ease of use.
The Razel Nax, at least for me, carves (pun intended) a niche for itself by being not quite a bushcraft knife, and not quite a hatchet, but pretty credible as both. The chisel tip shaves fire starters, pries painted-over hardware, and hacks at material that would leave lesser blades in need of a eulogy.
Chopping power is decent, but don’t expect to rival an actual hatchet for speed when processing lots of kindling. On finer slices—think food prep or scraping out the cast iron—the flat grind and forward tip let you choke up and work detail with surprising precision with a decent amount of tool behind it too.
This is the rare tool you reach for on purpose, not because you forgot the right one. If you understand that, the slight awkwardness in some grip positions and weight distribution makes sense.
It’s a Jack-of-all-trades, and honestly, sometimes a master of none—but in a pinch, that versatility is itself a kind of mastery, and it does it at a sub $100 price, which I also like. I like bullet points to..well.. make my points clear, so here we go with the “pros and cons” part of the article:
What CRKT Gets Right
- Chisel/Knife Hybrid: Great for scraping, prying, and chopping—jobs that usually demand multiple tools.
- Robust Construction: The toughness of 1075 is confidence-inspiring. Beat on it, abuse it, laugh.
- Handle Ergonomics: Actually feels great in the hand, even through long jobs, wet or dry.
Where It Misses the Mark
- Sheath Carry Options: The belt loop is finicky, and for something you’ll want at the ready, this feels like a lazy oversight.
- Weight/Size: No getting around it, this is a heavy, fairly bulky knife. Don’t make it your only blade for a lightweight backpacking trip.
Final Thoughts: For the Right Person, Nearly Perfect
Is the CRKT Razel Nax for everyone? Absolutely not. Just like the state and City it comes from, it’s kinda weird and likely won’t appeal to everyone, even if they’re a “knife person.” But for someone who wants a single fixed blade that handles a dozen tasks and serves as the perfect addition to any outdoor chef’s kit, it’s hard not to recommend. It’s not a collector’s queen, and it’s not a svelte EDC, but it is a purpose-built tool for the reality of real work in the outdoors. Just go in eyes open about the weight and sheath, and you’ll probably end up loving it as much as I do.
Oregon pride aside, CRKT’s commitment to experimentation and collaboration (with legends like the late Jon Graham, designer of the original Razel) is what keeps them at the front of the pack. The Nax shows what’s possible when tradition gets thrown in a blender with function and a dash of Northwest stubbornness. On that note, if you need a tool that doesn’t know when to quit, this one is absolutely worth a look.
Where To Buy
Read the full article here