Item: Nathan's Knife Kit Lockback (item 1032)
Rating: 4.6
Author: Greg

CRKT Nathan's Knife Kit Lockback Review — The $17 Wooden Folder That Teaches a Kid How a Lockback Actually Works

Our Rating

4.6 / 5 ★★★★☆

Current Price

$17.00 USD

Buy on CRKT →

Model: Nathan's Knife Kit Lockback — item 1032
Designer: Glenn Klecker with his son Nathan
Blade material: Beech wood
Handle material: Beech wood

Pros

A genuinely working lockback — the lock bar, the spring dowel and the pivot are all real mechanisms, so a child assembling it learns how the lock on a real folder engages and releases
No tools required and no cutting edge anywhere on the kit — every wooden part arrives shaped with soft rounded edges, so the build itself carries no risk
Ships with the 'My FIRST Knife' safety booklet, which is a properly written parent-and-child guide rather than a legal disclaimer
Beech wood takes paint, stain and pen — the finished knife is meant to be decorated, so the project does not end when the assembly does
$17.00 for something that occupies an afternoon and leaves a keepsake behind

Cons

The dowel pins are small and fiddly — a seven-year-old at the bottom of the recommended age range will want an adult's hands nearby for the pin work
It is a display and teaching object, not a functioning knife; the beech 'blade' cannot cut and is not meant to
The exploded assembly diagram is printed on the back of the card, so you have to keep the packaging rather than throw it away
Beech is soft — the pinned joints and the blade tip will mark and dent with rough handling

Every knife review on this site eventually runs into the same problem: at some point a young person is going to be handed a real one. The Buck 284 Bantam ships with a card from CJ Buck that opens “if this is your first Buck Knife, welcome aboard.” The question that card does not answer is what happens in the years before that — how a child learns what a lock is, why a blade closes on fingers, and what respect for a tool actually looks like in practice.

CRKT’s answer costs seventeen dollars and is made entirely of beech. Nathan’s Knife Kit Lockback is a folding knife you build yourself, with a real pivot, a real lock bar and a real spring — and no cutting edge anywhere on it. It was designed by CRKT designer Glenn Klecker together with his son Nathan, and CRKT sells it as a teaching tool rather than a knife. This review looks at what is actually in the packet, how the mechanism is put together, and whether a seventeen-dollar box of wood earns the claim on the front of the card.

The finished beech-wood folding knife held open in a hand, blade extending left with the CRKT mark burned into it — The finished kit, assembled and open in the hand. Every part of it is beech — blade, scales, lock bar, pins and the dowel that acts as the spring. It locks, it unlocks, and it cannot cut anything.

At a glance

Item1032 · Lockback

MaterialBeech wood throughout

Blade length3.25 in

Overall length8.00 in

Closed length4.63 in

Weight1.80 oz (51 g)

Tools neededNone

Recommended age7 and up

MSRP$17.00

In the Box

It arrives as a hanging card in a clear blister — a flat packet you could post in an envelope. The front is the same forest green CRKT uses across the accessory line, with a photograph of the finished knife and, beside it, a black-and-white photo of a boy and a man working on one together.

The green CRKT Nathan's Knife Kit package lying on a pale wooden bench with a laser-engraved wooden plaque behind it — The packet as it arrives. Three claims run down the left side of the card — **WOOD KNIFE KIT**, **TEACH KNIFE SAFETY**, **GREAT FAMILY CRAFT PROJECT** — and an EVERYDAY category badge sits below them.

Close-up of the card front reading CRKT Nathan's Knife Kit, designed by Nathan and Glenn Klecker, with a photograph of the finished wooden knife — **NATHAN'S KNIFE KIT**, and under it in small type: *DESIGNED BY NATHAN AND GLENN KLECKER*. The photograph at the lower right is of the two of them — a father and son with a wooden knife, which is the entire premise of the product in one image.

The blister pack angled so the shaped beech parts are visible through the clear plastic against the green card — Through the blister you can already see what you are getting: two long handle scales, a shaped blade, a small block, and a bag. Nothing in the packet is a surprise, which is part of why it works as a project — a child can see the whole job before starting it.

The back of the card is where the kit earns its keep, because CRKT prints the exploded assembly diagram and the full specification there rather than burying them in a leaflet.

Text on the back of the card explaining that Nathan's Knife Kit was developed by designer Glenn Klecker and his son Nathan as a family crafts project — The story printed on the back: "Award winning designer Glenn Klecker, and his son Nathan, developed this wood knife kit as a family crafts project that not only is a great engineering lesson in how a folding knife works, but also a creative woodworking project that can be painted, stained, or drawn on for fun."

Exploded line diagram of the wooden knife on the black card back, with a specifications block listing blade 3.25 inches, beech wood, overall 8 inches, weight 1.80 oz — The exploded diagram, drawn as a white line illustration with every pin shown in its hole — and the spec block beside it: blade **3.25" (82.55 mm)**, material **Beech Wood**, overall **8.00" (203.20 mm)**, weight **1.80 oz (51.03 g)**. Also printed: *"All needed wood parts shaped with soft rounded edges. No tools needed for assembly."*

Opened up, the kit is nine pieces and a bag.

All the beech parts of the kit laid out on a wooden bench: two handle scales, the blade, the lock bar, a small spacer block, plus a bag of dowels and sandpaper and the safety booklet — Everything, out of the packet. Two handle scales, the blade, the lock bar, a small spacer block, the bag of dowel stock and sandpaper, and the folded *My FIRST Knife* booklet at the back left.

A small sealed plastic bag containing a square of grey sandpaper and several lengths of wooden dowel — The bag: a square of sandpaper and lengths of dowel stock. The dowels become the pivot, the handle pins and the spring — the same dowel does all three jobs, cut to different lengths.

The My FIRST Knife booklet standing open on a bench, showing a Message to Parents on the left page and an Introduction plus numbered safety rules on the right — The *My FIRST Knife* booklet, open. The left page is headed **Message to Parents**: *"Your children will encounter knives throughout their lives. They should be taught the safe use of these tools as early as possible."* The right page runs numbered rules — among them *"The sharp edge and point of the blade should always be pointed in a safe direction"* and *"Do not take knives anywhere they are prohibited such as schools, school functions, or anywhere else they might not be allowed."* It is a real booklet, not a disclaimer.

Design and Build

The parts are already finished

The single most important thing about this kit, and the thing that makes it appropriate for a seven-year-old, is that no shaping is required. The blade is already cut to its drop-point profile with a bevel ground into the flat. The scales are already contoured. Every edge has been broken and rounded.

The CRKT mark burned into the flat of the blade — where the tang stamp sits on a steel folder. The speckled figuring across the surface is the natural ray fleck of beech.

Two beech handle scales on a bench showing the drilled pin holes and the softly rounded edges along their length — Two scales, side by side. Look along the top edge: it is rounded, not square. The holes are drilled clean with no tear-out around the rims.

The pivot end of a scale, held up. Two holes: one takes the pivot the blade turns on, the other takes the pin the lock bar pivots on. The whole mechanism is these two points plus a spring.

The blade in the hand, and the detail worth pointing at: the notch cut into the spine near the tang. That notch is what the lock bar drops into when the blade opens. It is the same feature, in the same place, as the notch on a steel lockback.

Several short lengths of wooden dowel cut and lying on a bench beside the blade and a scale, with a small green paper square nearby — Dowel cut to length and waiting. This is the fiddliest part of the build and the point at which a younger child will want a second pair of hands — the pins are short, round and easy to lose on a workshop floor.

Why beech, and what that means for the finished thing

Beech is an unglamorous hardwood and it is the correct choice here for reasons that have nothing to do with looks. It is close-grained and even, so it machines cleanly at small scale — the drilled pin holes in this kit have no tear-out around their rims, which matters when a friction-fit dowel has to hold a mechanism together without glue. It is hard enough to hold a pinned joint but soft enough that a child can push a dowel home with thumb pressure. It has no strong grain runout to split along, which is why a 3.25-inch blade profile can be cut in it without the tip snapping off in the packet. And it takes finish readily, which is the point of a project CRKT explicitly designs to be painted, stained or drawn on.

The trade is that beech is soft. The finished knife will pick up dents at the tip and around the pivot with rough handling, and the pin holes will loosen slightly if the knife is taken apart and rebuilt repeatedly. Neither matters for what this is, but a parent expecting an heirloom should recalibrate — this is a project, and its value is in the building.

The designer, and why it isn’t a novelty

It is easy to read a $17 wooden knife as a gift-shop item. The provenance says otherwise. Glenn Klecker is an engineer and knife designer from Silverton, Oregon, a former US Marine Corps captain who led a Marine detachment during Operation Desert Storm. At CRKT he is the designer behind the NIRK Tighe and the Graphite, and the originator of the Klecker Lock, a proprietary locking mechanism that appears on several CRKT production models.

In other words, the man who designed this teaching toy is someone whose actual professional speciality is how knives lock. That shows up in the kit as the decision to build a working lockback rather than a friction folder — the harder engineering problem, in wood, at a price point where nobody would have objected to the easy version.

The mechanism — a lockback, honestly built

CRKT could have made this a friction folder and nobody would have complained. They did not. The kit builds a real mid-lockback, and watching it go together is the closest thing to a cutaway diagram a child will ever hold.

One handle scale lying flat with the shaped lock bar and a long dowel positioned inside it, pins standing upright, and the blade attached at the pivot — The mechanism laid out in one scale, mid-build. The wavy piece running down the middle is the **lock bar**; the long dowel behind it is the **spring**. Pins stand upright out of the scale waiting for the second half. This one photograph explains a lockback better than a paragraph does.

Close-up of the tail end of the lock bar with the dowel spring resting against it inside the handle scale — Close on the tail of the lock bar with the dowel bearing against it. Press the bar down at the rear and the front lifts out of the blade notch — exactly the motion your thumb makes on the spine of a steel folder.

Two dowel pins standing upright out of a beech handle scale with the lock bar seated between them — Pins standing proud of the scale, lock bar seated. Everything is dry-fitted at this stage — nothing is glued, which means the whole thing can be taken apart again and rebuilt, and that is worth knowing before you reach for the wood glue.

Building It

The assembly is the product. There are no tools, no glue in the packet and no fasteners — the pins are a friction fit into drilled holes, and the two scales sandwich the works between them.

A child in a blue jumper leaning over a pale wooden workbench working on the kit, with a Hunt and Live engraved plaque propped behind — At the bench. The kit was assembled here start to finish without a tool being picked up.

Two hands lining a beech handle scale up over the standing pins of the part-built knife on a workbench — Lining the second scale up over the pins. Three holes have to find three pins at once, which is the part of the build that takes patience rather than strength.

Hands pressing the second beech scale down onto the pins of the part-assembled knife — Pressing it home. The fit is snug enough that the pins hold without glue and loose enough that a child can seat them with thumb pressure alone.

The part-assembled wooden knife on a bench with the blade swung out to the side, a hand steadying the handle — Half together, blade swung out. From this point the knife opens and closes — the mechanism works before the build is even finished, which is a good moment in a project for a seven-year-old.

The finished wooden folding knife held closed in a hand, showing the seam where the blade sits down inside the handle — Closed and finished. The blade sits down into the channel between the scales with a visible seam and no rattle. At **4.63 inches** shut it is a full-size folder in the hand, not a miniature.

The Finished Knife

The open beech blade seen close, showing the ground bevel running along its length and the CRKT mark — The bevel, ground into the beech along the full length of the blade the way it would be on steel. It comes to a line, not an edge — there is nothing here that will cut.

The reverse of the beech blade with NATHAN'S KNIFE and KLECKER DESIGN printed on the flat — The reverse of the blade carries **NATHAN'S KNIFE** over **KLECKER DESIGN**. A designer's name on a seventeen-dollar wooden toy is not something you see often.

The wooden knife held with the blade open at roughly ninety degrees to the handle — Blade at ninety degrees, held between the fingers. The action is smooth through the whole arc with no catch — beech on beech, running dry.

Two hands closing the wooden knife, one pressing the lock bar while the other guides the blade — Closing it — one hand on the lock bar, the other guiding the blade. This is precisely the two-handed motion a real lockback demands, and learning it here costs nothing.

Looking down the spine of the closed wooden knife into the dark channel between the two scales — Sighting down the spine into the channel. The gap between the scales is even end to end, which is the tell for whether the pins went in square.

The wooden blade tip held up in front of a blurred laser-engraved Hunt and Live wooden sign — The tip. Rounded, blunt, and about as dangerous as a pencil.

What It Actually Teaches

How a lock works. The lesson here is mechanical and it lands because the child builds it. Once you have seated a lock bar on a pin and felt a dowel push it into a notch, the spine press on a real folder stops being a magic button and becomes a thing you understand. The Buck 284 Bantam and the Buck 110 Folding Hunter both use a mid-lockback — the same mechanism, in steel.

That a folding knife closes on fingers. No amount of telling teaches this as well as ten minutes of opening and closing a wooden one. The blade in the kit swings shut on the same arc as a real one and lands in the same place.

That knives have rules. The booklet does the work here, and CRKT wrote it properly. It addresses parents first, then the child, then lists the rules plainly — where a blade points, where a knife may and may not be taken.

That a tool can be yours. Beech takes paint, stain and pen, and CRKT says outright that decorating it is part of the project. That step is what turns an assembled object into a possession, which is the actual point.

A computer screen showing the CRKT website product page for Nathan's Knife Kit Lockback, item 1032, priced at $17.00 with a five-star rating from 19 reviews — The listing on CRKT's own site: **item 1032**, **$17.00**, five stars from 19 reviews. Worth noting that CRKT sells two versions — this is the *Lockback*; the plain kit builds a friction folder with no lock. The lock is the whole lesson, so it is the one to buy.

Where It Sits on the Path to a Real Knife

Most parents approach this as a single question — when do I give them a knife? — when it is really a sequence, and the useful thing about the CRKT kit is that it occupies a rung most people skip.

Step	Typical age	Edge involved	Price	What it teaches
Nathan's Knife Kit Lockback	7+	None	$17.00	How a lock engages and releases; that a blade closes on fingers; the rules
Plain Nathan's Knife Kit	7+	None	~$12	How a pivot works — but no lock, so the core lesson is missing
Whittling knife + basswood	9+	Yes, from day one	~$20	Cutting technique, grain, patience — a different and later skill
Buck 284 Bantam BBW	10+	Yes	~$21	Carrying and maintaining a real lockback in 420HC

Ages are CRKT's stated recommendation for the kits and our own editorial judgement for the rest — every child is different and this is a parent's call, not a spec sheet's. Prices are US street or MSRP at time of writing.

The kit is the only row in that table where a child handles a folding knife mechanism with zero risk attached, and it is the cheapest row. That combination is what makes it worth a full review rather than a footnote.

Running the Build

A note for anyone planning the afternoon, based on how this one went together.

Keep the packaging out and face-up — the exploded diagram on the back is the only assembly reference you get, and you will look at it more than once. Work on a surface where a dropped dowel stops rather than rolls; the pins are the one genuinely fiddly component and they are small enough to vanish into a floorboard gap. Dry-fit the whole knife before committing to any glue at all, because the friction fit is snug enough to hold on its own and a dry-built knife can be taken apart and rebuilt, which is worth more as a teaching object than a permanently bonded one.

Give the lock bar and spring dowel their own moment. That is the part of the build where the lesson lives, and it is worth stopping to work the mechanism by hand before the second scale goes on and hides it — once it is closed up, the child can never see the inside of a lockback again.

Pros and Cons (the Honest Version)

What it does exceptionally well. It makes an abstract mechanism physical. A child who builds this understands what the spine press on a folding knife is doing, and understood knowledge is what actually produces careful handling. That it costs $17, needs no tools and carries no cutting risk anywhere in the process is close to the ideal shape for a first knife experience.

Where it falls short. The dowel pins are small and easy to drop, and the bottom of the recommended age range will need help with them. Beech is soft, so the finished knife will pick up dents. And the assembly diagram lives on the back of the packaging, which means the packaging is not disposable — an odd choice on an otherwise well-made product.

How It Compares

vs. a real first folder like the Buck 284 Bantam (~$21). Not a competitor — a predecessor. The Bantam is a working knife in 420HC that a child eventually graduates to. The sensible sequence is this kit first, the steel one after, and the price of both together is under forty dollars.

vs. the plain Nathan’s Knife Kit (~$12). Same wood, same designer, no lock. It saves five dollars and loses the entire mechanical lesson. Buy the Lockback.

vs. a whittling knife and a block of basswood (~$20). The traditional route, and it teaches a different and also valuable thing — cutting technique, grain, patience. It also involves a sharp edge in a child’s hand on day one. The CRKT kit teaches mechanism and respect before any edge is involved, which makes it the earlier step rather than the alternative.

Who Should Buy It

Buy it if you have a child between roughly seven and twelve who is starting to ask about knives; if you want a structured way to introduce knife safety before handing over anything sharp; if you want a rainy-afternoon project that ends in a keepsake rather than a tidy-up; if you are the grandparent looking for the right thing to give and do not want to be the one who gave a seven-year-old a blade.

Don’t buy it if you want a functioning knife — this cuts nothing and is not meant to. And don’t buy it for a child much under seven; the pin work will frustrate them before the lesson lands.

Final Verdict

CRKT’s Nathan’s Knife Kit Lockback is the rare product where the price, the purpose and the execution all line up without compromise. It is seventeen dollars of shaped beech that teaches a child exactly how the lock on a real folding knife works, gives them an hour of careful work with an adult, ships with a safety booklet worth actually reading, and leaves behind something they made and can decorate. There is no edge anywhere in the process. Glenn Klecker designed it with his son and it shows — this is a product built by somebody who had thought hard about the moment a kid first asks for a knife.

Everything we would criticise is small: fiddly pins, soft wood, instructions printed on the packaging. Against a product that does its one job this cleanly, they do not amount to much.

Rating: 4.6/5 Stars

Brands sometimes provide samples for review. Hunt & Live writes its honest opinion either way — gear that doesn’t earn its keep doesn’t get a recommendation.

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