The Vixen is a sub-3″ angled hilt fixed blade fighter, made by the awesome Xavier Knox of Echo Delta Charlie Knives and Tools.
The Vixen is the bastard child, combining best of breed elements of its spiritual inspirations: the kukuri, the Fairbarn-Sykes, the pesh-kabz, and the Cold Steel Desperado.
It provides penetrating stabbing, slashing and cutting power that is disproportionate to its size.
This was achieved in a number of ways:
- the geometry of the blade/grip
- the geometry of the handle
- the geometry of the blade
- the geometry of the blade grind
The geometry of the blade/grip is angled to provide a neutral wrist position for stabbing in forward and reverse grip.
The geometry of the grip swells from the blade to the middle and tapering to the end in two dimensions.
This allows it to sit in the hand, fully wrapped in the palm. It makes it impossible for your hand to slip when stabbing or for it to twist or wrench when cutting or slashing.
I designed it to be used in hammer grip in forward and reverse grip, my favorite, as I think it provides the most secure hold, but the spine above the false back edge allows for a saber grip as well.
The geometry of the blade is such to provide an angle of the tip along the full length of the blade to cut and slice into the target when stabbing, and, when cutting or slashing, to present the knife’s edge always at an angle to the material being cut.
The geometry of the blade itself is a four-way hollow grind.
These combine into a very aggressive stabbing and cutting capability, as shown in the cutting test below. In the test the knifemaker Xavier Knox, who makes the Vixens through his company Echo Delta Charlie Knives and Tools, simply extends his hand with the Vixen in forward grip, and after stabbing it fully, turns and cuts back out. No speed, no force, simply the blade’s geometries doing al the work stabbing and cutting:
The Vixen is designed as a fighter. If you carry a knife to better protect yourself, you must learn how to use it. How to draw it under assault (to quote my brother Terry, you must fight for your draw). To learn to do that, you must have a trainer, a trainer that has the same shape, size, grip, balance, sheath, and carry system as your real knife.
Xavier makes the Vixen, then makes a trainer to match, then makes the same sheath for each individually:
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