The Best Knife YouTube Channels in 2026: Twelve Worth Your Time, Sorted by What They Teach

The Short List

The first version of this page, from 2022, picked four channels and crowned one. Two of the four are still worth your time and are still here. The rest of this list is built on a simple test: does the channel still post, does it show the knife doing work rather than sitting on a turntable, and does it teach you something you can use at the bench or in the store. We left out channels built on reselling clones of other makers' designs, and channels that review a knife without ever cutting anything with it. What is left splits into five jobs, because the channel that will tell you whether a lock is solid is rarely the one that will teach you to put an edge back on it.

Reviews You Can Trust

Nick Shabazz is where most people start, and ten years in he is still the reviewer other reviewers cite. The format has not changed: a knife on a mat, a close look at lockup, centering, action and fit, a disassembly when the knife deserves one, and a verdict that does not care who sent it. His April 1, 2026 video "announcing a new direction for the channel" is a joke, in case it worried you. The reviews continue. He also keeps a public list of the tools he uses for disassembly, which is the shopping list for anyone who wants to maintain their own knives. Metal Complex is the relaxed version of the same job: long, unhurried looks at quality folders, a monthly "Top 5 Most Carried" that is a better buying guide than most written ones, and a full collection walk-through each year that shows how a serious collector's taste moves. TheApostleP, Rob Bixby, has been reviewing knives for longer than almost anyone on the platform and sharpens professionally, so his reviews spend time on edge geometry and grind that others skip. His Thursday evening knife sales are a tradition of their own. Neeves Knives, Jerad Neeve, reviews everyday carry gear broadly, teaches sharpening on camera, and posts the kind of "most carried knives this year" video that tells you what survived a year in a pocket rather than what looked good on day one.

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Neeves Knives: My Most Carried Knives in 2026 So Far

Steel and Edge Testing

If you want to know whether a steel is worth the premium, Cedric & Ada Gear and Outdoors is the channel. Pete runs the same cut test on blade after blade, slicing cardboard or rope until the edge stops shaving, and logs the results in a playlist that is now past ninety steels and a public spreadsheet that the knife world treats as a reference. The method is not a laboratory and he says so. Its value is that every knife meets the same cardboard. It is the closest thing to independent data on edge retention that a buyer can get, and it is why words like "S35VN" and "MagnaCut" mean something on a spec sheet. Dutch Bushcraft Knives, a Dutch pair with a workshop and a forest, test the other end: fixed blades for bushcraft and survival, batoned, chopped and abused until something gives, with a running series on which knives are worth buying and which to walk past. They also design knives of their own and show the factories that make them, which is rare candor.

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Cedric & Ada: Ultimate Steel? New Edge Retention Champion

Sharpening

Outdoors55 is the sharpening channel. Alex started with an outdoors channel and turned it into the clearest explanation on the internet of what happens at the apex of an edge: burr formation, why a coarse stone finishes faster than a fine one for most knives, why strops help and why they hurt, and how to get a knife shaving sharp with one stone in a few minutes. His videos are long because he shows the work, with the edge under magnification so you can see the burr he is talking about. If you have never sharpened a knife, start with his one-stone method. If you have sharpened for years, his myth-busting videos will change at least one thing you do. For a second opinion from a reviewer rather than a sharpener, Nick Shabazz's sharpening tutorial covers guided systems, and Neeves Knives teaches freehand on camera. Our own sharpening guide sets a TEKTO blade at the 20-degree angle the factory uses and walks through stone, guided system and rod.

Knife Making

The first version of this page named Walter Sorrells the best knife channel on YouTube, and for anyone who wants to understand how a blade is made, that still holds. He is a working knifemaker who films the process with a teacher's patience: forging, grinding, heat treating, handle fitting, Damascus, Japanese-style blades, and the tools he builds for his own shop. His annual "Viewer Knives" video, a salute to the people who learned from his channel and sent in their work, is the best argument for the channel there is. Kyle Royer, a bladesmith from a bladesmithing family, films at the high end of the craft: multi-month builds of a single chef's knife or fighter, hand-finished to a level most people never see up close, with the mistakes and recoveries left in. Watching either of them for an hour will change how you look at the grind lines on a production knife, including ours.

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Walter Sorrells: Knife Making Channel Viewer Knives 2025

What Is New This Week

Two retailers run channels that are worth following even if you never buy from them. KnifeCenter posts new-arrivals rundowns, an annual awards video, and "KniFAQ," a long-running series that answers the questions people actually type into a search box, from lock types to steel choices to what makes a knife worth the money. Blade HQ does the same with a weekly "New Knives" episode and a shop-tour series that walks through the factories of American makers, which is a good education in what you are paying for on a $250 knife. Both are stores, so weigh the enthusiasm accordingly, but both employ people who know knives and let them talk. For the wider everyday-carry world, Best Damn EDC, Taylor Martin, covers lights, pens, wallets, bags and knives together, with Blade Show coverage each year and an honest habit of saying what he stopped carrying and why.

How to Watch a Knife Review

A few habits make an hour of YouTube worth more. Look for the knife being used: a review that never cuts cardboard, rope or food is a product tour. Watch the hands, not the words, when the reviewer tests lockup, centering and action. A wobble or an off-center blade shows on camera whether or not it gets mentioned. Note who paid. Most channels on this list say when a knife was sent by the maker, and the ones that do not are easy to spot. Treat a single cut test as one data point and a playlist of ninety as a pattern. Check the date, because a 2019 review of a model that has had two revisions since is a review of a different knife. And remember what a camera cannot do: it cannot tell you how a handle fits your hand or how a 3.5-ounce OTF rides in your pocket for a month. For that, read the spec sheet, look at the handle length, and if you can, hold one.

The TEKTO Knives Reviewers Ask About

Four of ours come up most when reviewers write in. The A5 Spry, a 3.50-inch OTF in S35VN or MagnaCut at 3.49 ounces, is the one they want to run through the Cedric and Ada test, and the steel choice is why. The F1 Alpha, a 3.10-inch D2 liner lock, is the folder that gets the Nick Shabazz treatment, pivot out, because it is the simplest knife we make and there is nowhere to hide. The A3 Delta is the side-opening automatic with a safety switch, which is the thing every reviewer tests first. And the X1 Atlas, a 3.30-inch MagnaCut fixed blade with a Kydex sheath, is the one that goes to the bushcraft channels, because a fixed blade is the only kind of knife they trust with a baton.