Hours remain. Vero Engineering’s Mode campaign closes today at 4:31 PM Central, and the count going into the final stretch sits at $189,722 pledged against a $10,000 goal, with 494 backers on the board. The total runs to 1,897% of the goal for a first production run built around a lock nobody else sells.
Joseph Vero designed the knife in Coral Springs, Florida, where his family business has machined EDC gear since 2018. Mode carries the first Vero Slide Lock.
Vero Engineering Mode
Böhler M390 blade in a 3.5-inch harpoon drop point · Solid titanium handle with titanium hardware
Price: $278
Where to buy: Back it on Kickstarter
The run started fast and never slowed down.
Backers pushed the campaign past 650% of goal in under 18 hours. Two days in, the total crossed $100,000 with almost 300 backers signed on, and Vero answered by adding left-handed versions and a way to add extra knives.
One slider does the opening and the closing
Look at the handle and you’ll spot a small slider sitting in a milled track. Push it with your thumb and the lock releases. There’s no pinch grip, no two-finger squeeze, and no hunting for a lock bar with a fingertip. One thumb travels a short track and the blade is free to move.
The motion borrows from crossbar locks, which slide a bar across the tang. Crossbars ask for a pinch, fingers on both sides. Vero’s slider runs one-sided, worked by the holding hand’s thumb, so the grip never opens up mid-close.
Strength comes from the other half of the design. The slider ties into a top liner lock, the format known for a hard, crisp detent, and that detent is the click you feel at full open and full close. Crossbar locks can feel soft at that moment. This one lands with a thunk.
Closing a folder one-handed usually means pushing a lock bar sideways while your fingers stay clear of the edge path, and plenty of folders make you choose between a firm grip and a safe close. Here the thumb stays on the slider and the fingers stay wrapped around the handle, clear of the blade’s swing. For anyone who opens and closes a knife dozens of times a day, that difference adds up fast.
Böhler M390 handles the cutting. It’s a powder stainless built for edge retention, the steel premium folders reach for when a blade has to stay sharp through cardboard, cord, and wood. The shape is a harpoon-style drop point, 3.5 inches long.
Deployment stays manual. A nail nick cut into the blade does the opening, Vero’s signature touch. The Slide Lock handles the rest of the cycle. No flipper tab sticks out of the handle’s line.
Satin leads the finish list on the blade. Stonewash and blackwash builds carry their own blade treatments to match the handles. The satin tiers go hand-rubbed and belt-sanded. The top tier swaps M390 for Damasteel, the patterned Swedish powder steel that shows its wavy layers across the flat of the blade.
Stonewash to Damasteel with left-handed versions in the mix
Four finishes set the ladder. Stonewash opens the range, then Blackwash, then Hand Satin and Belt Satin at the same step, with Damasteel at the top. Every build runs the same solid titanium handle and titanium hardware, so the choice comes down to surface and steel. The pivot, screws, and slider stay titanium on every tier.
Left-handed versions joined mid-campaign after backers asked. Stonewash and Blackwash both come in a left-handed build at the same price as the standard versions, and existing backers could edit a pledge to switch.
Every Early Backer tier is gone. Those slots ran $10 under the standard tiers and all of them filled, 150 knives in total across the five finishes.
Patterns run $24 and sit on the show side
Three laser-engraved patterns sit on the add-on list at $24 each. Skulls, Topo, and Waves run across the rear half of the show side as a half pattern, printed dark grey on Stonewash builds and silver on Blackwash. Each pattern covers the same rear panel.
Backers with more than one knife on order can assign a different pattern to each one. The option stays open to existing backers even after the campaign ends, added to an existing pledge rather than a new one. The engraving sits shallow on the titanium, a graphic layer over the finish rather than a change to the handle’s shape.
The wider add-on shelf runs deeper. A Timascus clip runs $60 and a full Timascus set runs $120, preinstalled. Vero’s Fulcrum pry tool adds $80, the Vortex Ti bit driver adds $148, and a bundle of the three runs $298.
The tiers and the June 2027 wait
Standard tiers start at $278 for Stonewash and climb to $288 for Blackwash, $298 for either satin, and $548 for Damasteel. Each tier page calls the price below MSRP, though Vero hasn’t published the retail figures the knives will carry later. Extra knives added to a pledge price from $268, at the Early Backer rates.
Delivery is the long part. Every tier estimates June 2027, and shipping runs anywhere in the world. The knives don’t exist as retail stock yet, production slots follow the backer count the campaign closes with, and the seven-month gap between pledge and delivery is worth weighing before the window shuts. Every backer lands in the same first run regardless of tier, from the $278 Stonewash to the $548 Damasteel.
The $170,000 push goal fell too. Every backer’s sticker pack now gains a Mode Bead Lite Driver and a Mode RE Patch.
Our November 9 sale roundup covered the catalog side of this shop, in-stock folders down as much as $80 with a code stacked on top. Mode is the other side of Vero, a new mechanism sold before it exists as stock.
Vero Engineering Mode
Left-handed Stonewash and Blackwash builds at standard tier prices · Three $24 laser-engraved patterns, Skulls, Topo, and Waves · Estimated delivery Jun 2027
Price: $278
Where to buy: Back it on Kickstarter
Kickstarter only charges cards on funded campaigns, and this one’s funded nineteen times over. A pledge placed before 4:31 PM Central today joins the first run at Kickstarter pricing. After that hour the tiers close, the pattern and Timascus add-ons close with them, and the Slide Lock’s first outing becomes a wait for whatever retail release follows. The lock is the story here. The next chance runs through Vero’s own store, at prices nobody has published yet.
