A VISION OF PROGRESS
A lot was happening in 1999. The Euro came into existence. Star Wars I - The Phantom Menace was released. Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France. The war in Kosovo was ending while war in Chechnya ramped up. The entire world was on edge anticipating the arrival of Y2K as we turned toward our attention toward the coming dawn of a new century. A bunch of us took Prince's words to heart and partied like it was 1999 – because it was.
Lost a bit in the hoopla of 1999 was a knife that SOG introduced that year: Vision. A folder manufactured in Seki, Japan, Vision featured the first titanium handle in SOG history and had an ATS-34 steel blade. The short write-up in the 1999 SOG catalog said, "this powerful knife was made for extreme conditions." At the 1999 Blade Show, Vision won the "Imported Knife of the Year," and it would remain a staple in SOG's lineup from there, spawning multiple variations like the X-Ray Vision, Night Vision, Visionary and today's Vision XR.
As a company, SOG was merely a teenager in 1999, and like a human teenager, SOG was starting to shape its own identity. Founder Spencer Frazer, who started the company in 1986, had moved SOG into a new building in Lynnwood, WA in 1996 and Vision stood as a testament to the company's unwritten policy of aggressive exploration within that intersection of mechanical engineering, material science and aesthetic design.
CONTINUATION OF A THEME
As SOG celebrates its 35 years in business, it makes sense to mark that occasion with a commemorative knife built in the same vein as the first Vision. Although Frazer started SOG by producing fixed blade knives, the company hit its stride with innovations like the Arc-Lock and Compound Leverage multi-tools. The Blade Award that Vision captured in '99 was a nod to the boundary pushing taking place at SOG.
And for those reason, and for this 35th anniversary, SOG introduces a special edition knife: Vision XR LTE 35 Year Edition. Like the original, Vision 35 (for short) is a folder (using the new XR Lock that evolved from SOG’s Arc-Lock), features a titanium handle (this one is micro-textured), incorporates new materials (carbon fiber liners, as in Light Edition, aka, LTE) and high-end steel (CTS-XHP). It's tiger-striped blade is also a nod to the company's roots, as the revamped Vision family now sits in SOG's expanding line of hard-use knives designed for professionals.
"I felt like the original Vision was a turning point for SOG," said Chris Cashbaugh, SOG's Senior Director of Product Strategy who was instrumental in the planning of Vision 35. "The first Vision was really well received at the time, and it represented a transition of the company from sort of a smaller, specialty knife maker to a legitimate manufacturer capable of making high-quality knives at a larger scale."
Frazer, who designed the original Vision, said the 1999 knife was his way of letting the world know that SOG was flourishing in the tech-driven business atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest.
"It was time to do something like that," Frazer said. "Titanium seemed like an exotic material, but something I was familiar working with from my aerospace design days, so I saw Vision as a way to combine the strength of steel and the light weight of titanium. It was a new look, a new exploration of materials."
A HARBINGER
As a company in 2021, SOG is still exploring new materials and continuing to forge its refreshed direction. Vision 35, which slots in as another of SOG's new LTE (Light Edition) knives, represents that.
"Ultimately what Vision 35 brings is a showcase of where we're heading in terms of the LTE application," said Jonathan Wegner, SOG's Vice President of Brand. "It shows the next direction in terms of how we design, but it also shows we're not afraid to go back to things that were good ideas in the past."
With only 350 Vision 35s being produced (each individually numbered and coming in a hard plastic case with a commemorative coin), the knife might wind up as a collector's piece, rather than being used in extreme conditions.
"It's made for hard use," Wegner said. "We do know, with it being serialized and coming in a case, that it will probably end up being held in knife collections, but that's not how it was designed. Although we'd love it if people beat the hell out of it."
Plus, said Wegner slyly, it's highly likely the materials and technologies will be used in more SOG knives in the very near future, just not in this combination.
