Hydra® Recurve Serrated Two Tone Blade, Heretic Camo Handle

The Button Safety

The Hydra arrived in 2015 and it is the knife that pioneered Heretic button safety mechanism. The firing button is textured, and it sits shielded beneath a sculpted titanium swivel cover -- swing the cover across and the button cannot be pressed.

That matters more on an out-the-front than on almost any other design. An OTF fires its blade forward under spring pressure, and a button that can be caught by a pocket seam is a button that can fire the knife. The cover is the answer to that, and on this knife it is also the best-looking part of it.

The Recurve Serrated MagnaCut Blade

3.625" of blade with a 3.40" cutting edge, 0.75" wide and 0.155" thick, flat ground in CPM MagnaCut and finished in two-tone Cerakote.

MagnaCut is the steel that stopped stainless being a compromise. Conventional stainless buys its corrosion resistance by binding chromium into chromium carbides, and those carbides are where a hard-used edge chips; MagnaCut is designed to keep the chromium in solution instead, so it is genuinely stainless and genuinely tough at the same time.

The recurve profile -- the inward curve along the edge -- pulls material into the belly of the blade instead of letting it slide off the point, so it bites on a draw cut. Add the serrations and it becomes very hard for rope, webbing or anything fibrous to escape it.

The Firing System

Behind the button sits a stainless steel charging handle and a carbon fibre charging plate, which is what gives the deployment its speed and force. The handle is deliberately weighty: the mass is what absorbs the firing energy rather than transmitting all of it into your hand.

The V3 Handle

This is the V3 revision. Heretic recontoured the handle for a more secure grip, and changed the blade-to-handle ratio so the knife carries a slimmer profile and balances better in the hand than the version before it. 5.30" long, 1.08" wide, 0.47" thick, in anodized aluminium finished in Heretic Camo -- silver, black and toxic green.

V3 also made the machined pocket clip standard rather than an accessory. It is tip-down.

Condition

Lightly used, with some minor wear on the pocket clip and otherwise in excellent condition. The photographs are the most accurate description of this exact knife.