The release button on the Zyac Z01S does nothing when the knife is closed. That is not an oversight. Push it with the blade folded and the mechanism refuses to move, because a handle that slid forward on a closed knife would drive the blade tip into the backspacer. Zyac built the interlock first and the gimmick second, and that order is the reason the Z01S is worth a second look.
Here is the trick it performs. Open the blade, press the button on the side of the frame, and the rear half of the titanium handle slides forward and locks. The handle gets shorter. The blade stays exactly where it was, still held by the liner lock, and the knife's proportions change from a 208 mm folder to something that grips like a compact fixed blade.
The numbers are unusual. Closed length is 130 mm, open length is 208 mm, and the ratio between them is the number Zyac is really selling: a blade that nests deep inside the frame when folded, then extends into a much longer cutting package than the closed footprint suggests. Most folders solve that problem with a longer blade hanging out of a short handle. This one moves the handle instead.
Two locks, and only one of them is familiar
The first lock is a liner lock, the same arrangement found on a thousand $50 folders. It holds the blade open in either configuration. The second lock only exists in the short mode: once the rear handle section slides home, a separate mechanism pins it there, and the knife cannot fold until the handle is extended again. Zyac describes the result as a dual-lock system, and the practical effect is that the collapsed grip is not a party trick you have to be careful with.
Materials sit at collector level. The handle is Grade 5 titanium, the liners are stonewashed stainless, and the blade is Bohler M390 at 59 to 61 HRC, offered as either a drop point or a tanto. Six slots on the handle sides are sized for 1.5 by 6 mm tritium or glow tubes. Deployment runs through a back flipper, a front flipper, or the thumb stud, and the frame is deliberately unfinished in the architectural sense, with screws and the sliding structure left visible instead of hidden under smooth scales.
There is no pocket clip in the base configuration. Zyac left it off to keep the profile clean and sells a clip as an add-on that replaces the middle spine section, which is a strange choice on a knife this expensive and an honest one on a knife this thick in the hand.
Pricing runs from $369 for the launch-day titanium version to $1,299 for a ZircuTi frame with a Damascus blade. The campaign has been live since mid-October, passed its funding goal several times over, and lists an estimated delivery of May 2027.
Whether the idea escapes the crowdfunding bubble is the open question. A sliding handle adds a wear surface, a second lock, and a failure mode that a normal frame lock does not have, and the knife community has watched clever mechanisms turn into collector shelf pieces before. If two or three production makers license something similar in the next year, the Z01S will look like the proof of concept. If they do not, it stays a very expensive answer to a question nobody was asking.