Which folding knife would you pick?
(Locking knives aren’t legal in the UK.)
relative costs? I would go with the cheapest I guess.
Meanwhile seems like a locking knife would be safer, so why are they banned?
None of those, because none open one-handed. There are several ways to make a knife openable with one hand, and apparently all of them are cheap and simple to implement.
If I had to choose one of them, I’d choose the SAK. I like my Knipex tools, but Victorinox is a proven and reliable knife maker. The aluminum scales are strong and durable, in my experience. It seems to cost more than the Stahlwille, but I’d gladly pay the difference.
The Knipex knife has a sheepsfoot blade, which might be fine for electrician’s work, but is probably not the best shape for general use. Sometimes you need a sharp point on your knife. The blade also has a curved section apparently intended for sharpening pencils (or at least, that’s how the product photos show it being used.) I’ve never, ever felt the need for that, and in fact I’ve never sharpened a pencil with a pocketknife. Maybe that section is meant for stripping wire or something, but I find a straight blade works fine. There is no information on the type or composition of the steel used.
It’s hard to say say anything about the Stahlwille, because there are no pictures of the blade, not even on their website. (There’s also no information on the handle composition and only the word “stainless” to describe the steel.) But I can say that in the large picture, the bevel on the scales is uneven (the edge of the green wanders around), which is something you don’t see even on cheap Chinese knives. That probably doesn’t affect its function, but it makes me wonder how well it’s made. It’s puzzling, because it would’ve been easy to alter the photo to eliminate that unevenness, but they didn’t bother to do even that. Maybe they sell mostly to governments or the military.
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Order of magnitude more expensive and maybe not even available over there, but the Benchmade Proper 318 is a fantastic non-locking folder. I love it for EDC - super thin and light for the blade size. Or if not, maybe you can find a Case, Schrade (no frills but solid and affordable - I still have my grandpa’s Schrade Old Timer) or for a nice compromise between price and quality the Spyderco Pingo. There’s a few others, too, but of non-locking is the main thing you could do a lot better than any of these you’ve asked about.
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Do you know what Maserin, James Brand or Böker knives are like?
I guess I’ll make a very late reply.
Of the three, I’m only a little familiar with Boker. My impression is they make a wide variety of knives, but most we see here in the US are relatively cheap but decent quality, with some attention paid to appearance. They’re not a prestige brand, so they are sold in places like Garrett Wade (which sells expensive beautiful tools and gewgaws to DIYers, I think), sometimes with no mention of the brand name. But maybe that’s about Boker’s lack of marketing.