Cut a dramatic figure.

Two souls are at war inside every knife owner. One is the Handyman, who only cares about practicality. The only reason the Handyman carries a knife is to slice through the packing twine and apple skins of everyday life with a minimum of fuss. The Handyman is no more likely to carry a knife because of how it looks than to wear snowshoes in the swimming pool. If it’s not a tool for survival, the Handyman has no use for it.

Then there’s the Handyman’s mortal enemy. The Swashbuckler is only happy with a bad-ass piece of metal in hand. To the Swashbuckler, the knife is a tool for the imagination, a prop in a theatrical performance. A knife that simply cuts and slices without making a flamboyant declaration of the Swashbuckler’s daring isn’t worth wielding at all.

Efficiency! Adventure! Effective performance! Dramatic performance! You’re just a mall ninja! You’re just boring! It’s a good thing these two can’t actually take knives to each other. Is there anything they can agree on? Is there anything in the shared set of their Venn diagram? Can any knife pacify the warring souls raging inside the knife owner?

You probably see where we’re going with this.

Check out that bad-ass hawkbill blade on the SOG Contractor IV. It looks like it belongs to a street hoodlum in a karate movie. It’s the perfect exclamation point at the end of sentences like “The lady says she doesn’t care for your company” or “Unhand the Prime Minister.” Pure Swashbuckler-bait.

But then, as the Contractor name implies, it’s also really good for utterly boring necessities like stripping wire or cutting carpet. The hawkbill shape, it turns out, is more than just a stylish tailfin - it keeps rope and whatnot from slipping while it’s being cut. The Handyman would happily make room for it in his meticulously organized toolbox.

The SOG Contractor IV satisfies both halves of the knife enthusiast’s emotional dichotomy, bringing peace to the Handyman and the Swashbuckler. And the opposite of peace to wire coatings and kung fu gang members alike.