I got the Manu through the Kickstarter, and I'm glad that I did. Ken Onion Jr.'s design is top-notch, balancing deceptively simple elegance with impressively pragmatic functionality. The signature stonewashed titanium is comfortable on both the hand and the eye. I like the blade shape/geometry, especially the subtle drop and swedge to reinforce the tip. The blade came sharp with an even edge bevel, which wasn't surprising but is always appreciated. I love the choice of S90V for the blade steel, though I haven't put it through its paces or sharpened it yet to get a feel for the quality of the heat treatment. The action on the washers is glassy-smooth after breaking them in, and it's satisfying to the point that I haven't once considered switching the washers out for the bearings. Disassembly and maintenance are extremely easy with only two screws to worry about.
It's a good thing that disassembly is so easy, because my knife came with some assembly and tuning issues from the factory. The first issue is that the washer on the lock side was not seated properly relative to the milled dog-ear tabs. I noticed immediately because the blade was exceptionally off-center out of the box and the action felt worse than expected, even for new washers that weren't broken in yet. Thankfully, this took almost no effort to fix with a quick disassembly, reseating, and reassembly. Unfortunately, the blade is still off-center no matter how much I tune the pivot, but now it's only by a hair and barely noticeable, and it does not affect the function or action. I broke in the washers by flipping open the knife a few dozen times, but this revealed another problem. The second issue is that deploying the blade repeatedly caused the knife to quickly develop lock rock, with some vertical movement when locked open. This was likely because the lock bar was not tuned to have enough tension to push the ceramic detent ball fully into the lock face after wearing in enough of a groove. Thankfully, this also took almost no effort to fix with a quick disassembly to (carefully) push against the lock bar and add some more spring tension. Unfortunately, the groove is now already worn 75% across the lock face despite the knife being new, making me worry about its longevity.
The knife still gets 5 stars because the design and materials are great, and the issues were minor and easy to resolve specifically because of how easy it is to take apart. The two-screw assembly was designed with maintenance in mind, and while I would have preferred not to need to disassemble the knife twice already, I greatly appreciate the feature given that I did. The quality control might need a bit of improvement, but the knife itself shines through in aesthetics, function, and overall design philosophy.
