PICHI sells its G9 slide-out utility knife in titanium, brass, and aluminum. I bought the brass and the aluminum. On paper they are the same 80 mm body with the same three-position lever and the same trapezoid blade; what changes is the metal, the finish, and roughly a factor of three in weight. Here is what that difference means in a pocket, what the maker's own numbers say, and what I have not measured yet.
The heavy one: 110 g (3.88 oz) on PICHI's spec page, in the same 80 mm body. Bare brass, sold on the promise that it will darken and mottle with handling, which is what brass does.
For: the desk knife, the pocket piece, the gift that reads as an object rather than a tool
Skip if: it will ride in a shirt pocket, or fingerprints and tarnish will bother you more than they charm you
Check price on AmazonThe light one: 33 g without a blade, 37 g with, per PICHI — about a third of the brass. 6061 aluminum under a sealed hard-anodized finish, so sweat and a damp pocket do nothing to it.
For: daily box-cutting, keyring or coin-pocket carry, anyone who wants the mechanism without the mass
Skip if: you want heft — a third of the weight reads as a third of the presence in hand
Check price on AmazonThe G9 is not a folding knife. It is a two-piece metal body that carries a standard trapezoid utility blade on a track. PICHI's product page calls the action a gravity-driven slide: spread the two halves slightly, tip the knife, and the blade runs out; tip it the other way and it runs home. A small lever gives three positions — locked with the blade secured inside, a blade-change position at full spread, and a cutting position.
Gear Patrol's Sean Tirman covered the titanium original when it was a Kickstarter project in March 2024 and described the same three-step deploy — part the scales, slide the blade forward, close — with the lever marked Activate, Swap, and Lock. Yanko Design's write-up adds that magnets pull the halves back together and that a blade can be flipped end for end to use its second edge, which is true of any two-ended trapezoid blade.
PICHI DESIGN is a Canadian company; its site says the knife is made in Canada and that the mechanism is patented. The aluminum page names the alloy as 6061 under a sealed, hard-anodized finish, in black, green, blue, and orange. The brass page lists the metal only as brass and sells it on the patina it will develop.
One maker's line worth repeating: both Amazon listings say a small amount of blade play is inherent to the design and that the knife is meant for daily light cutting, not heavy industrial use. That is the right expectation at either weight.
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| Spec | Brass G9 | Aluminum G9 |
|---|---|---|
| Listing | ASIN B0GGV3499Y, style "Brass G9 ONLY" | ASIN B0GKB1PHD1, style "Aluminum G9-Black" |
| Body metal | Brass; alloy not named. The listing's "Grade 5 Brass" is a titanium designation carried over from the titanium listing, not a brass one | 6061 aluminum, per PICHI's site |
| Finish | Bare brass, meant to patina (PICHI) | Black hard-anodized, sealed (PICHI); the maker's site also lists green, blue, and orange |
| Weight, as listed | 110 g / 3.88 oz on PICHI's site. The Amazon bullet quotes the titanium's 55 g instead | 33 g without blade, 37 g with (PICHI); 33 g on Amazon |
| Size, as listed | 80 × 16 × 9 mm on the titanium/brass page; 3.14 in long on Amazon | 80 × 24 × 8 mm on the aluminum page; 8 cm long on Amazon. The two width figures disagree |
| Blade | Standard trapezoid utility blade; comes with 2 SK2 high-carbon blades | Same |
| Mechanism | Two-half body, blade slides on a track by gravity; three-position lever (locked / blade change / cutting) | Same |
| Blade change | Tool-free: lever to the change position, spread the halves, lift the blade base, swap (PICHI) | Same |
| Carry | No pocket clip listed; lanyard point at the hinge end; the leather holster is a separate purchase | Same; PICHI's own site bundles a TPU case, the Amazon package does not |
| In the box (Amazon) | Knife + 2 SK2 blades | Knife + 2 SK2 blades |
| Owner-measured weight | pending | pending |
| Owner-timed blade change | pending | pending |
Two things in that table do not add up, and I am not going to paper over them. PICHI's titanium/brass page gives a 16 mm width and its aluminum page gives 24 mm for what is supposed to be the same body; a 19 mm-tall blade has to live inside it, so one figure is probably a different way of measuring, not a different knife. And the Amazon brass listing never states the brass weight: its bullet quotes the titanium's 55 g and calls the body "ultra-lightweight," while PICHI's own site says 110 g.
The arithmetic still favors "same part, two metals." PICHI's weights come out to about 3.3 to 1, and Wikipedia puts brass at 8.4 to 8.73 g/cm³ against 2.70 g/cm³ for 6061 aluminum, a density ratio of roughly 3.1 to 1. Identical geometry in two metals is exactly what that looks like. My scale and calipers will settle both questions.
A utility knife is a blade holder. The edge is a disposable, roughly 0.65 mm-thick trapezoid you replace instead of sharpen. A pocket knife is a permanent blade you maintain. That one difference decides most of the rest.
The utility knife wins any job you would hate to do with an edge you paid to keep sharp: cardboard, packing tape, zip ties, clamshell plastic, scoring drywall, trimming carpet, scraping old gasket. The blade dulls, you flip it, then you swap it. There is no pivot to gum up and no edge to apologize for.
The folder wins anything that needs length or belly — food, wood, rope thicker than a blade is tall — and anything wet, because a carbon-steel utility blade left damp rusts. It also wins on carry, because it has a clip. The G9 has none; it rides loose or on a ring through the lanyard point at the hinge, which puts it closer to a keychain tool like the Bibury multitool than to a clipped folder. For the folder side of that line, my two Kizers are the reference points: the Drop Bear, the Sheepdog Mini, and the head-to-head between them.
Brass is about three times as dense as aluminum, and PICHI's listed weights track that: 110 g against 33 g. For scale, the brass G9 outweighs a complete folding knife — Kizer's published spec for the Drop Bear is 3.28 oz, and the brass G9 is 3.88 oz on PICHI's page — while the aluminum G9 is about a third of that folder. In a jeans pocket, 110 g is a presence you notice on every step; 33 g is a thing you forget until you need it.
Brass is a copper-zinc alloy, and copper reacts with what your hands and the air bring to it. Wikipedia's brass article describes the sequence: copper reacts with sulfur to form a brown, eventually black, surface layer of copper sulfide, and only with prolonged exposure to slightly acidic water does that oxidize on to the green-blue copper carbonate of an old roof. Pocket carry gives you the first stage — dark where you grip, brighter where you do not — not the green. PICHI sells the brass on exactly this, promising "a rich patina" with time. If you would rather freeze the look, polish it back and seal it: the Copper Development Association's guide to clear organic finishes for copper alloys recommends lacquers formulated with a tarnish inhibitor such as benzotriazole. A wax does the same job for a while.
Anodizing converts the surface of the metal itself into aluminum oxide; the Aluminum Anodizers Council says that layer has much higher corrosion and abrasion resistance than the bare aluminum under it, and the Aluminum Extruders Council notes it will not chip or peel, because it is grown from the part rather than painted on. The black is dye absorbed into the pores of that oxide and then sealed in. Sweat, salt, and a damp pocket do very little to it. PICHI's aluminum page describes the finish as sealed and multi-layer; I have no independent test of that claim.
Both metals feel cold at first touch, because both pull heat out of your skin far faster than wood or plastic. Aluminum does it faster: Wikipedia's list of thermal conductivities puts 70-percent-copper brass at 109 to 121 W/m·K and pure aluminum at 204 to 250, with 6061-T6 around 152. So the aluminum G9 reads colder in the hand than the brass one, and both read colder than a stainless folder handle (16 to 24 W/m·K on the same list). The "warmth" people attribute to brass is mostly color and patina, with a little physics behind it: it is not warm, it is less cold.
Brass is soft and malleable — the same Wikipedia article notes that higher-copper brasses are softer and that brass is more malleable than bronze or zinc. Drops leave dents, keys leave scratches, and both polish out because the metal is the same all the way through. Anodized aluminum resists scratching better, per the anodizers' own description above, but the color lives in the oxide layer, so when a scratch does get through it shows bright silver aluminum and there is no home fix that re-blackens it. My expectation, not yet an observation, is that the sliding faces where the two halves rub are where the black wears first; I will say so on this page when it happens.
Both G9s take the standard trapezoid utility blade. PICHI's Amazon listings say "standard SK2 high-carbon steel blades," its aluminum page says the G9 is "designed for standard utility knife blades," and Gear Patrol confirmed standard-size blades on the titanium original. Each knife comes with two SK2 blades and nothing else.
What "standard" means in numbers: Sollex, a Swedish blade maker, puts the common trapezoid at about 59 to 60 mm long, 19 mm tall, and 0.65 mm thick in its guide to utility blade types, with two or three mounting slots along the top edge; a shorter 52 mm version also exists. Stanley's 1992 heavy-duty blade is listed by Stanley at 62 mm long and 0.024 in thick in high-carbon steel, and Stanley says it fits most standard utility knives. That is the blade I would try first — Stanley 1992 heavy-duty blades, 100-pack with dispenser — and I will say plainly if the mounting-slot spacing fights the G9's blade base. I have not dropped one in yet; that check is part of the pending measurement round.
PICHI also sells its own SK2 blade pack for the G9: trapezoidal, about 3 g per blade by the maker's figure, with a maker's claim of more than three times the durability of a standard blade. Nobody I can cite has tested that claim, so treat it as marketing until someone counts cuts.
Other blade types by name, none of which I have checked for fit: hook blades for roofing and carpet, which are shaped differently and may not seat; bi-metal and ceramic blades; and the two edge treatments Matt Higgins explains at Fine Homebuilding — a carbide edge for hardness and edge retention, and the gold "titanium" blades, which are a thin titanium-nitride coating rather than titanium. SK2 is a plain high-carbon steel, so the included blades will rust if you put the knife away wet. Wipe the blade dry; the body does not care, but the blade does.
What I can say: I own both, bought at retail, and both are in use. The maker's specifications for the two match on everything except metal, finish, and weight, and the weight ratio matches the density ratio of the two metals, which is what two identical parts should do. Both Amazon listings resolve to the G9 in the named material, and the maker's own site sells the same three-metal family.
What I cannot say yet, and will not pretend to:
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