Customer feedback, assuming its welcome.

[hunterseeker5]

Part of what I love about this company so much, aside from its products being better than anything else I've yet found, is that I really feel like our feedback is appreciated and incorporated into future products. To that end as a user I feel responsible to provide feedback. Heres what I've got:

1) The spyderco military I thought for a time was perfection. Then the paramilitary2 came out. It offers deeper carry and in all four clip positions, a lock which in my opinion is better and much slicker, a more ergonomic "choke up" choil for your index finger, and a larger lanyard hole. Does anyone else think it might be time for a military 2? Not a huge upgrade, the blade angle and shape are superb, but a few tweaks to the handle and lock?
2) Sprint runs keep coming out in G10 and carbon. As someone who works with composites I've always found Kevlar to be the most abrasion resistant and toughest in these sorts of applications of the common three fibers. It also is gorgeous, looking like golden stirred honey. A kevlar handle on a DLC black blade millie or para I think would look great and be a functional upgrade as well. What do people think?
3) The photos of knives on your website are...... not so great. The problem I sometimes have, and other people have, is actually picturing the knife in your hand. It seems like I keep getting a surprise when I pick a new spyderco up because it fits really well in my hand in a way I didn't expect. I think of each spyderco as an incomplete piece of sculpture. While other companies design their knives as complete standalone pieces of sculpture, at best, spyderco designs theirs as half a piece.... the other half being the human hand. The critics I know who insist the knives look "ugly" change their minds when they hold my knives and see them in the hand. All of a sudden the knife looks somehow complete. So yes somehow I'd recommend adding a series of pictures of knives actually being held. Maybe as some sort of sales experiment you could try it on just a few models and see if it boosts sales. Obviously among "the faithful" it shouldn't help because we "get it" but for the uninitiated perhaps. I just keep thinking about Sal's line "we'd rather be the ugly knife in your pocket than the pretty one in your safe" and thinking thats unfair. After all take away either person and the Pietà wouldn't make sense or be so beautiful either.


Anyway keep the winners coming.

[The Deacon]

1) Military 2 is currently "under development" and has been for some time. Will incorporate a brand new lock, call the "stop lock" and other changes as well. No prototype has been shown, so it's still a ways out.

2) I, for one, have never seen Kevlar composites, do you have any pictures?

3) Problem with photographing knives in hand comes down to "who's hand" mine are small, a buddy of mine's are gorilla mitts. Problem with "enhancing" the website in any way is that Spyderco has limited manpower. Given that even new models sometimes take a while to show up, not sure how feasible expanding the photo gallery would be. FWIW, there is a page on Spydiewiki that allows you to view any model full size on your computer. That might give you at least some idea of how a given knife will fit you.

[hunterseeker5]

1) Good to know. Sorry I missed that. Now I'm dying to know that the new lock will be like, although I'm thrilled with the compression lock myself.

2) To be clear this picture isn't mine. I also just have to say that, like carbon fiber, pictures NEVER do it justice. It also possesses that gorgeous iridescent depth. Tones can be made lighter or darker via dying or different resins. Anyway I thought stirred honey was a description which did it the most justice.
http://www.fibreglast.com/product/Kevla ... 443/Kevlar

3) It was more of a marketing suggestion than a personal need. If I want to see how a knife looks in someone's hand I just look on youtube.

[The Deacon]

If you "advanced search" this forum for stop + lock you may find a thread with a link to the patent drawings.

The Kevlar is quite attractive, but it's just fabric. Big question is whether anyone makes and sells a Kevlar composite commercially, something comparable to G-10, micarta, or the CF composites Spyderco uses?

[hunterseeker5]

G10 starts life as fiberglass cloth, and carbon fiber does as carbon cloth. Someone makes it as sheets, I know I've seen it somewhere, and most of those companies are just dying for production orders anyway. Laying up a few sheets is just about SOP. Spyderco could almost certainly just request it of whatever supplier makes there oh so popular peel ply carbon and fiberglass material now.

Thanks for the tip on the stop lock. I'll start looking.

[hunterseeker5]

Wow. After looking over the stop lock patent I must say I'm very disappointed. Given the beautiful elegance of their bearing lock and compression lock that appears to me to both over-complicate the mechanism and require an awkward release. Yeah I'd definitely vote for a compression lock over that, and I think the szabo folder reasonably proves its efficacy on large knives.

[dbcad]

Hello Hunterseeker, appreciate your thread and thoughts. Kevlar does sound like it might be interesting. I don't have a clue about cost or workability of it though. Sounds like it might be the same or maybe easier than carbon fiber, but I confess I know nothing of the properties of either in a laminated form.

Enjoyed your thoughts about the design being incomplete without the hand. Rings in my ears(eyes) as being completely true. Also enjoyed your appreciation of what Spyderco does even though I'm not a Milli or Para fan myself :)

[unit]

I totally agree about the knife in hand thing...but I will go a step further and say that seeing the knife in motion is even better. As much as I dislike a bad video...there is still huge value to me in seeing a person hold a knife in front of a camera and fiddle with it so that I can see it from every imaginable angle.

There is no way in heck that anyone has the time to do this at Spyderco or any other decent knife company (if they do, they have way too many people standing around on payroll, and since I pay their payroll when I buy knives... ). The point is that there are many videos on Youtube....check them out. The catalog will give you specs and such, but videos will always give you a better representation of scales and angles.

Just sayin'

[redyps04]

Sprint runs keep coming out in G10 and carbon. As someone who works with composites I've always found Kevlar to be the most abrasion resistant and toughest in these sorts of applications of the common three fibers. It also is gorgeous, looking like golden stirred honey. A kevlar handle on a DLC black blade millie or para I think would look great and be a functional upgrade as well. What do you think?

I think that sounds extremely interesting. I've never heard of it on knives before, but Spyderco has always been quite the innovator within the knife world.

Sounds like a great idea for the Millie- considering Kevlar is already associated with the life-saving equipment soldiers and LEOs rely on everyday.

[JLS]

Kevlar is extremely difficult to finish properly. Given that Kevlar is designed to resist cutting, you can imagine that it wouldn't be easy to contour into a handle.

We've made some pieces out of prepreg Kevlar at work and I tried to work on a piece of "failed R&D" and got almost nowhere. To do it well, you'd almost have to lay it into a mold as the top layer.

In comparison, G10 and carbon fiber have proven relatively easy to work with, especially in comparison to Kevlar.

[Pinetreebbs]

Kevlar is extremely difficult to finish properly. Given that Kevlar is designed to resist cutting, you can imagine that it wouldn't be easy to contour into a handle.

We've made some pieces out of prepreg Kevlar at work and I tried to work on a piece of "failed R&D" and got almost nowhere. To do it well, you'd almost have to lay it into a mold as the top layer.

In comparison, G10 and carbon fiber have proven relatively easy to work with, especially in comparison to Kevlar.

Perhaps it is time to make a liner less molded Kevlar/carbon fiber knife with a steel blade?

[wsdavies]

UV degrades Kevlar, so that wouldn't be good.

[hunterseeker5]

UV degrades everything. Usually making composites UV resistant is a function of the resin.

We've made some pieces out of prepreg Kevlar at work and I tried to work on a piece of "failed R&D" and got almost nowhere. To do it well, you'd almost have to lay it into a mold as the top layer.

Yes Kevlar is miserable to work, which is why I suggested it. If it were easy to work it would also be easy to damage. I'd compare it to the s90v (or maybe s125v) of the handle world. It should offer improved performance characteristics, but unfortunately that will also make it harder to work. Either way the Kevlar suggestion is just food for thought. Hopefully Sal will notice this thread and perhaps give it a try and see what he thinks.

[JNewell]

Interesting feedback about Kevlar. Mad River and a few other companies used to (still do?) make canoes out of Kevlar. I had the impression that it was basically similar in concept to using fiberglass or carbon fiber sheet. Guess not! :)

UV degrades Kevlar, so that wouldn't be good.

Same for CF - as finished, they incorporate UV blockers in one form or another.

[dj moonbat]

Interesting feedback about Kevlar. Mad River and a few other companies used to (still do?) make canoes out of Kevlar. I had the impression that it was basically similar in concept to using fiberglass or carbon fiber sheet. Guess not! :)

My folks had a Mad River Kevlar canoe when I was growing up. It was far superior to fiberglass canoes. Basically, I think the deal with Kevlar was that they could lay up a much thinner composite sheet than they could with fiberglass, while maintaining strength. Ergo, the thing was really, really light.

EDIT: It occurs to me that the ability to use a thinner laminate doesn't benefit Spyderco's knives nearly as much as it benefits Mad River's canoes.

Also, even if it's highly durable, I don't think Kevlar is likely to be more rigid than carbon fiber; and it seems to me like rigidity is very high on the list of requirements for a knife handle.

[Teddy Thompson]

My folks had a Mad River Kevlar canoe when I was growing up. It was far superior to fiberglass canoes. Basically, I think the deal with Kevlar was that they could lay up a much thinner composite sheet than they could with fiberglass, while maintaining strength. Ergo, the thing was really, really light.

EDIT: It occurs to me that the ability to use a thinner laminate doesn't benefit Spyderco's knives nearly as much as it benefits Mad River's canoes.

Also, even if it's highly durable, I don't think Kevlar is likely to be more rigid than carbon fiber; and it seems to me like rigidity is very high on the list of requirements for a knife handle.

I'm sure that, just as with CF and FG, filament size does play a role but, for any given filament diameter, Kevlar is a less rigid, than fiberglass, and fiberglass is considerably less rigid than carbon fiber. Whether that's important on a knife, where it's being used as a decorative material rather than a structural one, is debatable.

I suspect the two most important question would be whether sheets of Kevlar composite with an attractive surface are available and just how difficult it is to cut and shape. If using it would mean Spyderco having to bear the R&D costs to develop such material, I doubt they'd be interested. If it's extremely hard on equipment, the cost goes up, possibly enough to make the retail price unattractive.

[dj moonbat]

I'm sure that, just as with CF and FG, filament size does play a role but, for any given filament diameter, Kevlar is a less rigid, than fiberglass, and fiberglass is considerably less rigid than carbon fiber. Whether that's important on a knife, where it's being used as a decorative material rather than a structural one, is debatable.

On the Urban and the UKPK, the G-10 is doing all the work (no liners).

[Tsujigiri]

I'd like to see a Kevlar-handled knife... maybe on the Military 2?

[jzmtl]

I'm sure kevlar is stronger, but I don't see the necessity of it as knife handle TBH. Knife handle isn't high stress bearing, I've never seen a folder with broken handle unless that's what the user was trying to do. It would be a novelty for handle material but given the difficulty (thus expense) of working with it I don't know if it'll be worth it.

[JNewell]

Kevlar wouldn't return any real world benefits to Spyderco. I'd argue that even carbon fiber is a purely cosmetic upgrade. In the pieces and uses relevant for Spyderco, there just isn't enough of the material, and the uses aren't critical enough, to get any practical benefit.

The lick I remember on the kevlar canoes was that they were great(er) in every way until you hit a rock, at which point you might have damage that required real and immediate repair - in the field, and that could be a problem. :eek: