MERINO MM
The knife you'll actually carry.
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MERINO MM
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- 202011-WDU
Merino MM · The Story
You've seen the look.
You took your knife out to open a box at work, and someone across the room went quiet for half a second. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. The next morning the knife stayed home — not because it didn't fit your pocket, but because of what it said when it came out of one.
People sort a knife into tool or weapon before they've thought about it at all — by colour and shape, not by what it does. Most blades are black or silver, and black reads tactical.
The MM's blade is dark blue: Titanium Nitride, heat-shifted inside a window of temperature and time so narrow the factory at first wouldn't attempt it. Six to eight months of development made it repeatable at production scale. Safety yellow comes from the outdoor gear in your pack; white from the appliances in your kitchen. Nothing in it reads tactical, so the room sorts it as a tool.
It doesn't default to tactical.
It defaults to intentional.
The MERINO Line
Carry first.
Everything else follows.
Every MERINO starts from one question: will you actually have it with you?
The MERINO convictionThe MERINO MM
Three years.
Not because it was hard.
Because “good enough” never was.
At every step, the faster option existed. A dimension that was close enough. A mechanism that was smooth enough. A material that would do. Three years of refusing each one until the answer was yes.
On November 11, 2024, the first production boxes arrived. Beren opened the first one with his beta MM.
The result is a knife that won't impress you with its feature count. It is slim enough to disappear into a front pocket without touching the side of your hand. Light enough that you genuinely stop noticing it's there. The mechanism is smooth in the way that only comes from caring about the mechanism as an end in itself.
It will impress you on a Thursday afternoon when you reach into your pocket without thinking and it's there.
Open it one-handed. Close it the same way. You'll do both more than you need to.
Closing a knife usually takes a second hand. This one doesn't — so putting it away never interrupts whatever the other hand is already doing.
Decisions, Not Features
Every spec is a choice made for a reason. The reason is always about the person carrying it.
Select a part of the knife — or a tab below it — to read the decisions behind that part.
Open profile
Closed · clip side
Spine · 0.35"
Pepperwool · MERINO MM
Decisions, not features
Blade Steel
CPM S35VN · US-melted · Cryo heat treated
A stainless steel that holds an edge through real use without becoming brittle. Cryo heat treated for consistent hardness and improved toughness throughout the blade.
HRC Hardness
60–62
Where S35VN performs at its best. Hard enough to hold an edge through real work, soft enough to sharpen on the equipment most people already own.
Blade Length
2.125"
Long enough for every daily task. Short enough to carry legally in most jurisdictions and fit in the narrowest pocket.
Blade Type
Tanto
Two angles, one purpose. The reinforced point handles work that would chip a thinner profile. The straight edge cuts cleanly without rolling into the work.
Blade Grind
Flat
A clean grind from spine to edge. Slices through material with less resistance than hollow or sabre alternatives, and re-sharpens to the same geometry every time.
Edge Angle
20–25° inclusive · 10–12.5° per side
Honed to the same angle on every Pepperwool — keen enough to bite on the first pass, obtuse enough to hold up to daily cutting without the edge rolling. Learn to sharpen one and you can maintain them all.
Finish
Titanium Nitride
Hard, low-friction coating that reduces drag on the draw.
Blade Stock
3/32"
Thin stock is a carry decision. Less material through the blade means less weight and less bulk in the pocket, and a finer geometry that slices with less resistance.
Handle
Machined G10
Chosen for grip in wet or dry conditions without bulk. Machines to tight tolerances. Doesn't flex, doesn't corrode, doesn't demand maintenance.
Lock
Ambidextrous Bar Lock
Locks open with the authority of a full-size knife. Releases cleanly with one thumb — left or right. No grip compromise required.
Lock Strength
700–1,000 lbf
Tested past anything a folding knife will encounter in real use. The lock holds because the geometry is right, not because we asked it to.
Deploy
Kip Deploy™ · One-hand open/close
A kick deploy on a bar lock, patent pending — two mechanisms that rarely share a knife, and are harder still to make work together. Smooth and repeatable in both directions. One hand opens it and closes it — the other never has to leave what it's holding.
Pivot Bearing
Steel Thrust Bearing
Hardened steel races with a captive bearing cage at the pivot. Smooth from the first deploy, smooth after a thousand cycles. Cleans with compressed air, lubes with a single drop of oil.
Weight
1.6 oz
Below the threshold of perception after the first hour. You stop accounting for it. That's when it starts doing its job.
Thickness
0.35"
Thinner than a stack of three house keys. Sits flat against whatever else is in the pocket. Doesn't fight for space.
Pocket Clip
Keeper Clip™ · Deep Carry · Fully Reversible
Hard to lose and easy to draw usually trade against each other. It catches the hem so it can’t leave without you. It lets go the moment you mean it. Deep carry, configures left or right. Patent pending.
From the Inside
Just under
900 pounds.
The factory's new head engineer looked at the MERINO's proportions and concluded that a knife this thin couldn't survive daily carry. So the samples went to the factory's accredited test lab: edge retention, flexure, torsion, and a lock test run until failure. Thirty people turned up to watch.
The lock broke at just under 900 pounds of force. The factory's own specification for a knife this size asks for a fraction of that. The room went quiet. The head engineer shook Beren's hand and said he hadn't believed it was possible to build something that strong in a knife that carried like this.
That handshake is built into every knife we ship.
In the Field
What Owners Say
Real owners, unedited.
The Founder
Beren McKay
Founder & CEO, Pepperwool
Nearly two decades building products
Twelve years at SOG Knives. Built their product development team from one person to twelve. Learned how mass production works — and where it fails. Then walked away to build one knife that solved the problem the industry had decided wasn't a problem.
Read the full storyMore from Pepperwool
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It deserves to stay there.
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Free shipping | 30-day returns | Made to carry every day
1,000 lbf | S35VN | The MM