SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

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Evil D
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#21

Post by Evil D »

GarageBoy wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 1:26 pm
How do you take damage out of a SE edge? (Are the corners on a cbn rod usable?) I bought, tried sharpening, and then sold a knife because I could not get rid of the rolled serrations.

I've been honing them out on the Sharpmaker. I've had some teeth chip and I've had chips inside the scallops and they all eventually sharpen out (faster so if you use diamond rods).

Here's a bit on that viewtopic.php?f=2&t=81297#p1267838

Also I've recently been working on this Stretch. When I started with it, one of the teeth was very badly chipped off and looking at the knife now, I honesty don't remember which one it was.

Image
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#22

Post by SpyderCuse »

The SE Dragonfly Salt sold me too. I'm hoping we see a SE wharnie Dragonfly in vg-10 or h1 salt. Is this a possibility Sal?
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#23

Post by Evil D »

dj moonbat wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 4:29 pm
Sure sounds complicated, compared to figuring out whether a PE is sharpened properly.
When I first started getting serious about knives in general I was overwhelmed with information and it did seem complicated. The more I learn, the more it makes sense.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#24

Post by Evil D »

SpyderCuse wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 5:10 pm
The SE Dragonfly Salt sold me too. I'm hoping we see a SE wharnie Dragonfly in vg-10 or h1 salt. Is this a possibility Sal?
I am 100% on board with this. In fact I've been holding out on getting a wharnie Dragonfly for this exact reason. Fingers crossed. I would be totally fine with FFG/LC200N though.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#25

Post by SpyderCuse »

Evil D wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 5:12 pm
SpyderCuse wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 5:10 pm
The SE Dragonfly Salt sold me too. I'm hoping we see a SE wharnie Dragonfly in vg-10 or h1 salt. Is this a possibility Sal?
I am 100% on board with this. In fact I've been holding out on getting a wharnie Dragonfly for this exact reason. Fingers crossed. I would be totally fine with FFG/LC200N though.
Oh yeah totally meant to include FFG/LC200N.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#26

Post by Evil D »

JD Spydo wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 2:58 pm
David it's high time this discussion got out on the table for virtually everyone in Spyderville to consider>> for those who like and use Spyderedges that is. Showing that comparison of the somewhat more rounded serration pattern of the Carribean versus the more "spikey" type serration below it is something I've tried to put out for conversation for almost 8 years now but yet I don't seem to get the attention you've attained on this one. But I don't care because maybe now is the right time.

I wish I had a way of e-mailing you a pic of the SE pattern on the older AUS-8 CAtcherman model I use constantly. It's even more low profile with more elongated scallops and less defined spike between the scallops that gives you a slice close to what a razor sharp, supersteel PE blade can deliver under the right circumstances. I've tried to drive home the point that more testing needs to be done looking into new and different SE patterns. Truly I think Spyderco has only begun the search for better and more efficient serrated blades IMO.

I do use a 204 Sharpmaker on some types of SE patterns but not to the point to where it literally rounds off and somewhat deforms the original factory grind. I still ultimately like manual tools for doing final finishes on SE blades. So I still think the ideal tool for making SE patterns like curved straight razors is still yet to be discovered>> but the Spyderco 701 Profiles were a big step in the right direction.

OK let the conversation proceed folks>> let's put it all on the table>> different patterns, sharpening techniques, Sharpening tools for SE and the grind being on one side versus the grind being on both sides. And which SE pattern is best on certain cutting jobs>> Not to mention stropping SE blades and deburring SE blades.
I suspect that with the Catcherman being so thin they had to use a different wheel to grind the serrations, otherwise the teeth would have been far more spiked and prone to breaking off. One of the major benefits of more rounded teeth (aside from not snagging so much) is that they're less likely to take damage.

JD Spydo wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 4:59 pm
Yeah I know that works>> but what do you do with the spikes and grooves in between the scallops? Myself I've used oddly shaped diamond files with some decent results.

Also on stropping Spyderedges here lately I've been stropping from the back side with some encouraging results.

Evil D's Dremel methods have a lot of good results as well. I've also tried to make the scallops smooth while leaving the spikes and grooves with a kind of rough finish and that has had some good results. Serrations are a completely different animal all together and I'm not so sure there are a lot of rules put in concrete like there are with plain edges IMO.
I repair edge damage inside the scallops the same as anything else, though if I do have a particularly bad section I may focus on that spot a little more, but I try to be careful because I don't want to end up with one overly large or over sharpened scallop...if that makes sense. On my Autonomy when I cut the CAT5 cable and chipped the crap out of several teeth and scallops, I just went over the whole edge with a diamond rod and reprofiled the whole edge. When I first started using the Sharpmaker on SE one of my first concerns was "grinding the SE pattern away", and while I still don't trust 100% that this can't happen, I have now reprofiled 4 different SE knives on diamond rods and while the pattern does get more rounded and the ridges between the scallops do smooth down a bit, they still remain as defined as they were and you can measure this by comparing the curve of the edge to the curve of the top of the serrations on my leaf blade Caribbean and my Stretch, both of which haven't had the entire bevel reprofiled yet so the very top of the serrations still show the factory serration pattern/curve.

If you look close at this pic you can see where I've reprofiled this Stretch and fixed the edge from where I chewed it up using the tapered diamond rod. The shinier section towards the bottom of the scallops has been reprofiled and sharpened up through the ultra fine rods, while the top part is mostly factory ground aside from a couple spots where I went too far with the tapered diamond rod.
Image

What's really surprising to me is the angle of the factory serration grind on that knife. I know that I didn't go so far as to lower the edge angle with the tapered diamond rod because you can see parts of the grind that are still factory. The shiny part of the lower bit of the edge that I'm pointing out was done on the 30 degree Sharpmaker setting, so that bevel is LOWER than 15 degrees. On my Caribbean and most of my other SE knives the edge seems to be just a bit higher than 15, since the 30 setting on the Sharpmaker tends to hit the shoulder and not the very edge. I haven't encountered a SE knife with a factory edge ground this low before.

Also if you look closely in this pic you can see that the very first large scallop towards the tip of the blade and the last large scallop at the plunge line are both right at 30 degrees, since the entire bevel has been sharpened and polished. It seems that the angle of the serrations gets lower towards the middle of the blade and higher at the ends. Since this Stretch has long since been discontinued, I wonder if these teeth were ground by hand, and that's why the angle varies so much?
Image

I know Spyderco are doing a lot of bevels by robotic arm now. I would really like to know how Taichung are grinding the Caribbeans. That bevel is different from any other SE knife I've seen and it has some really interesting things going on, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it was done by a robot.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#27

Post by Cambertree »

Great, quality post D, thanks for taking the time to put all that together.

Thanks also to you and the other SE crew for schooling me on the virtues of serrations.

My first 20 or 30 Spydies, I had exactly 0 SE knives - never even looked at 'em, just wasn't interested. Same with the Salts.

After taking the plunge with a Dragonfly Salt SE, after reading a bunch of posts and Youtube vids from you SE fans, that little pocket chainsaw completely turned me around. It's one of the best models Spyderco make, I think, in terms of all the disparate elements being 'right'.

I remember a few times when I was first using it for what I judged as an outsize task for the knife, my eyes literally opening wide, at how the Dragonfly SE Salt tore through the work without even breaking a sweat!
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#28

Post by Doeswhateveraspidercan »

With you on everything David but would like to point something out.

You can call the blade on the Caribbean serrated but with the work you have done on it since it was new it has become something else.

When I looked at it I thought this is no longer truly serrated. Ok then what is it?

The answer that came back to me was this blade started out serrated but now it is like an undulating chisel grind of some kind where hints of points between super sharp crescents exist.

I think it is the crescents forming a none stop wave that are giving it the super slicing ability. All that geometry is unstoppable.

This knife started as a Spydie edge and serrated to a lesser degree than the military snag fest for example and is now I don’t know what to call it how about an EvilD ?;)

The Fully Serrated Stretch is one of my all time favorites it too tends towards the more shallow design yet has more aggressive points than the Caribbean ever did but with that belly in the blade with those serrations whew look out quite the performer!
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#29

Post by Evil D »

Doeswhateveraspidercan wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 6:37 pm
With you on everything David but would like to point something out.

You can call the blade on the Caribbean serrated but with the work you have done on it since it was new it has become something else.

When I looked at it I thought this is no longer truly serrated. Ok then what is it?

The answer that came back to me was this blade started out serrated but now it is like an undulating chisel grind of some kind where hints of points between super sharp crescents exist.

I think it is the crescents forming a none stop wave that are giving it the super slicing ability. All that geometry is unstoppable.

This knife started as a Spydie edge and serrated to a lesser degree than the military snag fest for example and is now I don’t know what to call it how about an EvilD ?;)

The Fully Serrated Stretch is one of my all time favorites it too tends towards the more shallow design yet has more aggressive points than the Caribbean ever did but with that belly in the blade with those serrations whew look out quite the performer!

Ya, yeah it has been worked over a good bit. Really though I've only emphasized what Taichung gave us. This isn't the best pic but it shows what the factory edge looked like, you can see it was already far more wavy than pointy.

Image


What's really unusual is if you look at the ones on the left in that pic you can see that the serration ridges are actually flat on top. It's almost like they ground a flat chisel bevel into the blade first and then cut the scallops in second.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#30

Post by vivi »

All else being equal, the same model in PE is about twice as thick at the edge as the SE version. Ignoring all the other differences, that alone accounts for a massive improvement in performance.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#31

Post by Evil D »

Vivi wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:07 pm
All else being equal, the same model in PE is about twice as thick at the edge as the SE version. Ignoring all the other differences, that alone accounts for a massive improvement in performance.

This Stretch came crazy thin from the factory. I figure the back of the blade is at least a few degrees off from 90 degrees, so the total inclusive edge thickness was less than 20 degrees since parts of the front side were less than 15 and the back is definitely less than 5. The very edge is now 15 degrees on the front side and however many the back side of the blade adds but it's still less than 20 inclusive.


This knife is also a bit of an experiment of sorts. I've been honing the back of the edge flat on stones ever since I first started sharpening it. The back of the blade is as close to a zero grind as you can get. Still the angle of the FFG counts towards the total inclusive edge degree.
Image
Image

I'm also seeing that the blade grind really isn't truly flat, there are waves in the surface that are showing up from honing it on stones.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#32

Post by Evil D »

Pelagic wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 2:13 pm
Really cool write up!!

I am in the vast minority it seems, as I have MUCH better performance cutting rope with deeper serrations and pointer teeth. I want the teeth to catch. When they catch more rope, they cut more rope. I look forward to reading the other half is this later when I get off.

Hey I'm one guy and this is just how I see it. I certainly didn't write the book on what's best and what doesn't work, this is just what works for me. I can't honestly say I cut enough rope to know either way, but I can say that "my version" of SE if you wanna call it that is performing better for my day to day uses than the sharp and pointy stuff. I suppose if you really do cut enough rope then that's something to consider. I know a lot of folks look at SE as a specialized edge type that is only suitable for cutting certain things but I really think that's a narrow way to look at it.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#33

Post by vivi »

Evil D wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:21 pm
Vivi wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:07 pm
All else being equal, the same model in PE is about twice as thick at the edge as the SE version. Ignoring all the other differences, that alone accounts for a massive improvement in performance.

This Stretch came crazy thin from the factory. I figure the back of the blade is at least a few degrees off from 90 degrees, so the total inclusive edge thickness was less than 20 degrees since parts of the front side were less than 15 and the back is definitely less than 5. The very edge is now 15 degrees on the front side and however many the back side of the blade adds but it's still less than 20 inclusive.


This knife is also a bit of an experiment of sorts. I've been honing the back of the edge flat on stones ever since I first started sharpening it. The back of the blade is as close to a zero grind as you can get. Still the angle of the FFG counts towards the total inclusive edge degree.
Image
Image

I'm also seeing that the blade grind really isn't truly flat, there are waves in the surface that are showing up from honing it on stones.
Yep. I've had the majority of my PE Spydercos come in a little over 30 degrees inclusive. My SE Pacific Salts are ground at 15 degrees, so about 17 degrees inclusive.

When I realized Spydercos SE knives came ground so thin it made me think of all the time I coud have saved VS reprofiling PE knives to be thinner. I LOVE being able to pocket a factory edged knife and be content with its geometry. I reprofile every PE knife but have no need to on my SE.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#34

Post by Hobnob »

Hey David, Thanks for the extensive write-up on SE. I have had several Spyderco SE knives for a few years. You could say that I have the bug for trying the SE exclusively for EDC. Like you said, I have found the 30 degree slots hit the shoulder, and the 40 catch the very edge. Almost like a microbevel. I may experiment a little to find the sweet spot. By the way, I just got the Endela with SE. Think I'm going to like the FFG VG10.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#35

Post by zhyla »

I’m really enjoying this quality level thread.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#36

Post by benben »

Appreciate the write up David, that took some time and effort! These are the valuable threads us forum members greatly benefit from, thank you!
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#37

Post by knivesandbooks »

Very nice thread. I've returned to carrying one of my SE wharncliffe delicas lately. Love those things. I have one fresh in box and one with a bit of a fudged edge due to a lil damage and sharpening practice. I don't know if I'll get around to fixing it but it's around
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#38

Post by Bloke »

Excellent work D! :cool:

Thanks for taking the time mate! I only recently took the plunge and sharpened my little HB SE Ladybug, my first SE ever so I’m a late starter.

Your logical analysis has flattened the learning curve for me. :)
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#39

Post by Pelagic »

Evil D wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:28 pm
Pelagic wrote:
Tue Oct 01, 2019 2:13 pm
Really cool write up!!

I am in the vast minority it seems, as I have MUCH better performance cutting rope with deeper serrations and pointer teeth. I want the teeth to catch. When they catch more rope, they cut more rope. I look forward to reading the other half is this later when I get off.

Hey I'm one guy and this is just how I see it. I certainly didn't write the book on what's best and what doesn't work, this is just what works for me. I can't honestly say I cut enough rope to know either way, but I can say that "my version" of SE if you wanna call it that is performing better for my day to day uses than the sharp and pointy stuff. I suppose if you really do cut enough rope then that's something to consider. I know a lot of folks look at SE as a specialized edge type that is only suitable for cutting certain things but I really think that's a narrow way to look at it.
I think you're pretty much spot on really, and I've never seen anyone say they prefer the deeper serrations/pointer teeth like I do. Even Sal himself says worn in/rounded off serrations are better. I'm the one just sharing my personal experience since it is so different. And of course I'm essentially ONLY cutting rope with my serrated knives. THICK rope. So my experience is very specific and anecdotal. But it seems to perform like a saw blade. Ever had to use a hack saw on wood in a pinch? It's not the right tool for the job, but boy, there's a big difference between a 24 tooth blade and 32 tooth blade. The 24 can walk through wood (not like a coping saw or bow saw of course) much faster than the 32 tooth blade due to the size of the teeth, while the 32 tooth blade does better with hardened steel. Not the the perfect analogy but I feel it illustrates my thoughts. I know I'm not the only one getting my SE knives extremely sharp, so I guess it's partially the sheer amount of force I put into the draw cuts (sawing, essentially) which causes all the fibers that the teeth catch to cut instantly, allowing me to cut the rope in fewer slices. I always cut rope quickly, partially for practice. If a towing line (or any line) under tension traps someone in the stern corner of the boat or God forbid gets wrapped around them or something (a million different things could happen), I want to be able to cut that line before someone loses a limb. So everything is focused on speed, from grabbing the knife to the last slice.
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Re: SE performance is more than simply teeth vs no teeth.

#40

Post by JD Spydo »

The "grind" has sure been proven to be an important factor in the overall cutting ability of a Spyderedged blade. About 3 years ago or so Evil D pointed out that Full Flat Grind serrated blades seem to do better in SE than serrated edges in most other grinds. I have found a couple of minor exceptions to that rule but for the most part he's right on the money. His example was the Stretch in FFG. However my all time favorite Full Flat Grind in SE was the original C-54 Calypso model. That was literally a "chain saw" of a knife in SE. I would love to get one of those back in my hands again.

One exception that sticks out is the C-60 Ayoob in full SE. The C-60 Ayoob has a hollow grind which a lot of people don't really like. But with the curve/belly it doesn't seem to matter with that C-60 design at all. Because I still rank the C-60 Ayoob in SE to be one of my all time favorite Spyderco SE blades ever. It's just a great blade for a wide range of uses in SE or PE. What I wouldn't give for a new C-60 in M390, S110V or one of the other newer/better blade steels. In SE I would like to see the C-60 Ayoob in XHP. I still easily rank the C-60 and C-54 both easily in the top 5 best SE Spyderco models ever IMO.
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