DPx HIT Dagger Ti

The DPx HIT Dagger Ti (aka "Necker") is designed by RYP to be light and versatile. A tool you don’t even notice until you need it.

The DPx HIT Dagger is a compact, lightweight push dagger/neck knife.

Real-Use Narrative

The DPx HIT Dagger. A Light Blade for the Serious Journey

The train moved slow across the plain. You could feel every joint in the rails, every old repair. It was the kind of train that made a man think about the things he carried. Not the big things. The small ones. A train makes you friends, and you can also make enemies. Touts, light-fingered pickpockets, those who think exploring your pockets is a good idea. I learned a trick from a man who knows and shares many tricks. 

In my shirt pocket was the DPx HIT Dagger Ti. It was a small thing. Light. Three inches of good stonewashed M390 steel with a handle of ribbed titanium. You didn’t feel the weight of it—there was hardly any weight at all—but you knew it was there.

A man always knows when he carries something made well.

When you are concerned about lifters, you put the dagger in upside down, unsheathed, into a pack pocket. Anyone who dares explore your luggage without permission will shriek. Earning a nasty slice, his criminal intent on display. A mark left for others. 

I took it out sometimes and held it in my hand. The carriage was hot and the light was flat and hard and showed every flaw in a thing, if it had flaws. This one didn’t. Pelton had made it. Pelton was a big man—six foot three and heavy with the kind of muscle men get from living rough. It seemed strange that a man like that would make something this small and fine. But he had. A big man could make a delicate thing, if he knew the world and the use of things. Maybe that’s why it worked.

A tout came down the aisle selling phone cards and warm soda. He had quick eyes. The kind of eyes that weighed what you had and how easily it could be taken. I set the little dagger in my palm and let it rest there, quiet. Not showing it. Not hiding it. Just letting the man see I carried something. His eyes went soft, and he passed on. That was good. There was no need for trouble on a train.

I liked the clean feel of the blade.

• At a stop outside Naples I used it to trim a loose thread on my pack. 
• In Java, it opened a packet of coffee when the morning was already too hot and the water too weak. 
• On the coast in Baja it cut a knot from a length of line a fisherman had handed me. The thing worked.

A man did not need more from a tool than that.

The titanium ridges on the handle felt like the flutes on an oar. They fit the hand and did not slip. A tool should feel honest in the hand. This one did.

Many miles passed. Towns went by—brown towns with tin roofs and dusty streets, white towns with bright walls and women carrying baskets. The dagger rode against my chest in its little black sheath. I forgot it much of the time. But when the train lurched or the wind shifted through a broken window, I felt it tap once, like a friend reminding you he is there.

It was good to have something made well. Good to have something light and strong and simple. Travel is easier when you carry only what you need. And sometimes what you need is something small that does not fail you.

The train rolled on, and the land opened wide and empty. The dagger was warm in my hand, and it felt good to admire something honest in a world that was not always so.