I've always wanted a CRKT Bear Claw since I saw it long ago. I was into knives and martial weapons since I was a kid, but when I saw a hawkbill blade somewhere and then eventually learned of the Bear Claws and then the Karambit, i knew I wanted one of each.

But what happened was I skipped the Bear Claw as I couldn't find any here in the Philippines. I was able to find a Karambit quickly enough, A Mantis Cinq3, then I found a decent hawkbill blade, a knockoff knife that has Smith & Wesson markings on it. But the Bear Claw came as a surprise, it was on the "sale bin" when I went to interview a fellow knife collector, Nino Lopez of X. O. Knives and that is where I got it from, as a gift from Nino.

Doing further research on the CRKT Bear Claw, Russ Kommer said in his video about his knife that you can remove the scales to clean it. So I thought why not. I rummaged around the net to try and find a video or pictures of said disassembly, and though I found tons of people who have bought and used this knife, no one has really recorded the process of the cleaning. Thus the question of what is under the scales was left unanswered.

So I bought myself the right torx screw driver and voila!

i was a bit surprised and also disappointed to find that the tang was not skeletonized. so a paracord wrapped crkt bear claw was not gonna happen unless i drill the holes myself. the design is top notch though as instead of being lazy and having the opposite screws in one threaded hole, they were askew by a millimeter so. thus each torx was in its own hole. i also was happy that the bead blasting covered all the metal <except for the edge of course>. funny thing is it rattled in its plastic moulded sheath when the scales were removed but was solid with them in.

over all, though my dreams of a paracord wrapped, skeletonized bear claw have been flushed down the drain, I am happy still with my CRKT bear claw. its my first and definitely won't be the last.