As the old saying goes, “Two is one and one is none.”
In trying to keep with that, I went looking for a knife to throw on my keychain and stumbled across the Kershaw Pub. I, of course, bought it and now here we are.
After having used it for a good while now, I think I can give a decently good answer to the question, “Is it any good?”
Specs
First off, let’s get the technical specs out of the way…
| Blade Steel | 8Cr13MoV |
| Blade Length | 1.6 inches (4.1 cm) |
| Blade Thickness | 0.121 inches (3mm) |
| Handle Thickness | 0.29 inches (7.5 mm) |
| Overall Length | 4.5 inches (11.4 cm) |
| Closed Length | 3.1 inches (7.9 cm) |
| Weight | 1.9 oz (53.9 g) |
Basically, the Pub is small, lightweight, and fits well on a keychain.
Design & Functionality
The design of the Pub is fairly unassuming: It’s basically a small rectangle you put on your keychain. It looks like some kind of trinket you put on your keychain to embellish it, with perhaps some added features like a bottle opener. The shiny aluminum plate further sells this.
It’s not until you open it that it becomes clear that it’s a knife.
The knife was designed by Dmitry Sinkevich and it includes a modified sheepsfoot, plain-edge blade, a bottle opener, and a flat screwdriver tip (which may or may not be able to double as a pry bar depending on the task). And, of course, a carabiner clip so you can put it on your keychain.
It’s technically a slipjoint, but it does have a little tab at the back that helps to semi-lock it in place. The tab has a little metal dome that fits into slots worked into the pivot, helping to add some friction to the opening and closing process. It doesn’t completely lock open or closed, but it does add some extra security from it accidentally opening or closing on you.
Overall, it’s an unassuming (in a good way) little keychain knife with multiple functions.
Real-World Use
Now, then, we can talk theory all we want, but how does this knife function in the real world? How does it hold up?
The Blade
Out of the box, the blade came pretty sharp. It wasn’t the sharpest blade I’ve ever handled, but it certainly wasn’t bad.
In terms of how that edge held up, I think it’s fairly unsurprising when I say that I haven’t had to put it through anything crazy–like chopping down a tree. Instead, it’s mainly just been used for those moments when I need a knife for a small task (like opening a box), but didn’t have my regular EDC on hand–or just had my Pub in easier reach.
Since the tasks that I put the Pub through were fairly small and easy, it didn’t really do much to the blade. It dulled it a little bit, but it’s pretty easy to sharpen because of the steel. (8Cr13MoV is a budget steel that, while it doesn’t hold an edge for too long, is easy to sharpen–and it’s cheap.)
The shape of the blade lent itself well to those smaller tasks like cutting open boxes. The point on the modified sheepsfoot blade allows you to easily dig in and get to cutting.
Basically, the blade will hold up nice for those small tasks that it’s meant for.
The Handle
It should be fairly obvious from the pictures that the handle of the Pub isn’t exactly the most comfortable. But again, the knife is meant as a backup or quick little tool to have on hand on your keychain.
The handle has two plates: One is a colored aluminum and the other is a stainless steel backplate. The colored plate is what helps disguise it as a little trinket rather than an actual knife.
There’s also a little groove/notch in the handle which appears to be there to help you get some leverage to open the knife one-handed. The groove gets covered up by the carabiner when the knife is open and gets replaced by jimping. When the knife is closed, it just sits there, but it does cause your fingers to gravitate towards it. When you open it one-handed (which is a little tricky, but can be done), the groove helps you to get some extra leverage to open it easier.
Again, it’s not exactly the most comfortable to hold–or even the easiest–but it’s supposed to be used as a keychain knife, so it’s not meant for long periods of use.
If you have bigger hands, you’ll probably find that the Pub only gets held by about 2-3 fingers. The jimping on the carabiner (which turns into the spine of the knife) does help you to grip it more, though. If you’re just doing light tasks like cutting open boxes, you probably won’t have to worry about it slipping from your grip.
Overall, the handle is sufficient for the tasks you’re going to be doing with the Pub.
The Action
As I said earlier, the Pub is a slipjoint knife–meaning it doesn’t lock. There is a little tab at the back of the knife that drops into notches in the joint, helping to add a little bit of friction to the opening and closing process, but that’s about as far as it goes. It helps a little bit with accidental opens or closes, but it’s by no means foolproof.
Opening it is pretty easy: You just apply some pressure to the jimping on the carabiner and keep pushing it until you feel it click open.
Closing it is similarly easy: Push on the back of the spine of the blade and keep going until it clicks closed.
If you have it on your keychain, you’re probably not going to be able to get it off the keychain (without dropping it) and open it one-handed. It’s doable, but not very practical. Opening it one-handed without it attached to anything takes a little practice, but is pretty easy when you get the hang of it.
The opening is mainly just unique compared to other knives. But once you get past that and get it figured out, it works just fine and opens and closes nice and smoothly. It’s not something you’re going to be able to open super quickly and easily, but again, it’s meant to be used as a keychain knife.
Other Tools
Both of the tools work pretty well. I suppose you could potentially declare the carabiner as a tool, but for the purposes of this, that’s just a way to attach the knife to something–not the other way around (but for the record, doing that works just fine so long as you don’t overload it, even if it does impede opening and closing it a bit).
The bottle opener… works… I don’t know if there’s really any other way to qualify a bottle opener. Because it’s a little on the thin side, it sometimes takes an extra pry or two on the bottle cap, but it does pop it off.
The flat screwdriver tip is a little on the big side. It doesn’t work very well for smaller screws, but it kind of needs to be big, otherwise the bottle opener wouldn’t work because it would just puncture the top of the cap instead of allowing you to open it.
On the bright side, the fact that it’s a bigger flat screwdriver tip means that it can (potentially) double as a pry bar, depending on what you’re prying open (i.e. how big it is).
The screwdriver tip just overall runs into this issue of being too small to be used practically as a pry bar, but just a little too big to be used for most flat screws you’ll run into. If you can find those (somewhat) rare instances where you can use it as a screwdriver or a pry bar, then great. Otherwise, it’s just kind of… there. That’s, at least, what I ran into.
How It Sits in Your Pocket (and Keychain)
Seeing that it has a carabiner, I don’t think there will be very many instances you’ll just slip it into your pocket all by itself (without being attached to a keychain, that is), but in the event that you do, the Pub is almost imperceptible. It’s small enough and light enough that it pretty much just disappears into your pocket. Of course, mileage may vary depending on how big you/your pockets are.
On your keychain, though, it works pretty dang well. When you slip the carabiner onto a keychain, the keychain can impede it opening and closing (the carabiner needs to be completely clear in order for the knife to open all the way), but you’re unlikely to need to open this thing in a flash.
The Pub also will sometimes get a little scuffed depending how much it rubs against everything else on your keychain. The blue scale on my Pub got a little bit scuffed up (especially around the edges), but that doesn’t affect the functionality at all; just the look.
Conclusion
The Kershaw Pub is a great little keychain knife to use for small cutting tasks. It’s got multiple tools and a sharp knife that’s great for the small tasks it’s built for. If you’re looking for a cool, small (even unassuming) keychain knife, I’d recommend the Pub.
You can get the Kershaw Pub here (Amazon).
If you’re interested in checking out some other knife reviews and learning more about knives, we’ve got a bunch of articles you can check out here.