The Barnes

At The James Brand we’re dedicated to making the very best knives and tools and to always pushing the boundaries of what is possible. In that spirit, we are proud to introduce the Barnes. The Barnes is a titanium framelock, and it's our very first integral design. The Barnes is CNC-machined from one solid billet of 6AL4V titanium, which means fewer parts, less maintenance and the ability to do things with the form that you cannot do in standard knife construction. The Barnes was named after one of the oldest projectile points found in North America, dating back more than 11,000 years. We are here, still trying to perfect the function and the form.

The Barnes is built around a 3.5 inch Bohler M390 stainless steel blade; this is our first knife with M390, which is widely regarded as the singular best overall blade steel. The blade runs on a stainless steel pivot and ceramic bearings, and the clip is CNC-machined titanium as well. The Barnes comes with our very first coin design, as it's bad luck to give a knife as a gift without exchanging the coin, and comes with a paracord lanyard. It's finest and most most technically advanced knife we've ever made.

Honoring the point of an integral—simplicity and less moving parts—The Barnes has fewer pieces than a standard folding knife. With an integral design you eliminate the backspacer and the two seams that come with it. You can also eliminate extra hardware, making the integral design as clean as possible.

But fewer parts tell only half of The Barnes's story; the other half of the tale is found in the precision of its 6AL-4V titanium body of the knife. Like hollowing out a canoe from a singular log, machining an integral out of a single billet of titanium is a very difficult task, both from the standpoint of both design and manufacturing. It's taken us years of work to get to this point where we could bring The Barnes to market, but we are not in a hurry to be first. We always strive to be best, and make sure that our designs live up to our values, and that process always takes a long time.

With its overall larger form (with a 3.5" blade) the Barnes is designed to fit full-size hands and the titanium scales' CNC-machined grippy texture lets you have total control of the knife at all times. The machined titanium clip is a deep-carry design, with no visible hardware. The Barnes also comes complete with a paracord lanyard.

The backbone of The Barnes might be its titanium integral design, but its heart is the Bohler M390 stainless steel blade. Revered as the best all-around knife steel, Bohler M390 is known for its excellent edge retention, corrosion resistance, and superior toughness. Together, the 6AL-4V titanium body and premium Bohler M390 mean that we have spared no expense to make The Barnes exceptional in both performance and aesthetics.

In an attempt to honor tradition and avoid superstitious lousy luck, each Barnes comes with a die cast double-sided TJB coin. This is our first coin design, and it represents the evolution of the Clovis point which we use as our brand mark, and that fact that knives are in fact one of our very first tools, and are still just as useful today. We firmly believe that analog experiences matter, and the coin serves as a reminders to do real things, in real time, to try and properly counter-balance our overly-digitized existences.

History tells us that gifting a knife risked the possibility of "cutting ties between friends." To prevent affable bonds from being severed, real or imagined, the tradition of including a coin when gifting a knife was born. When a knife was given, a coin, typically a penny (for good luck), was attached to the blade. The receiver of the gift would simply return the coin to the giver, thus "paying" for the knife and ensuring that the relationship remained intact (and the knife remained out of anyone's back).

We find value in the critical pieces of culture that tradition represents. Something as simple as gifting a coin with a knife can add meaning, creates a story and leaves a mark in the memory bank. So, when you present The Barnes with a TJB coin as a gift, you turn an exchange into into memory.