Love or hate me for it, after frustration at finding any hard facts about S110v, nor anyone willing to put their theories to the test, I decided as the owner of a wicked edge and therefore the capable of actually resharpening and repairing minor damage in a controlled timely manner. This knife continually blew both mine and several forum member's away with how much abuse it could take. I took a linerless knife in a steel theorized to be the most chip prone knife steel to ever be used and then sharpened it to 30 degrees inclusive which would invite just about steel to chip when abused. As you can see nothing I could throw at this knife had yet to damage either the handle, nor cause severe chipping of the blade itself.
Then finally it happened, perhaps I had moved the thread to blade forums as things continued or simply forgot to document it, but I finally broke it, I took a large chip out of the edge It was either using it to shave pieces off of a piece of aluminum scrap about 3/16 thick or simply pounding it into the knife into the aluminum. I can't remember which, but that finally broke a large enough chip out of the blade to require a full regrind, and also cracked the scales, though the knife seemed to function just fine despite that.
Rather than regrind the blade into something else entirely knowing I'd also cracked the scales, I decided to retire the poor knife, as it survived abuse after abuse beyond what I would've expected of any knife, let alone a knife that people expected would chip if you looked at it wrong.
I never thought to contact warranty for obvious reasons, It'd literally documented it's extremely against warranty abuse on the official forums. I just wrote it off as my little contribution to the knife word. When I moved, I gifted my friend my beloved daily carry PM2, who in the process of overseeing the building and selling houses used it every bit as much as I hoped he would. So much so that he doesn't think it could be sharpened anymore, which I'm trying to convince him to send it in and let them make that decision.
To bring this long winded thread to a close, when I realized how sentimental that chipped up manix was to me, as when I began to become active on the forums and started my knife testing it had marked the end of a very long spell of depression that had me even considering suicide from time to time. So I contacted the warranty department and they simply said to send it in along with my story I did so, even including the link to the thread in the letter placed 25$ they posted as their fee for a regrind though I doubted the chip could be ground out without dramatically changing the blade profile.
2 days ago on my birthday in fact, I receive a package from Spyderco containing this.
As for me, while I'm absolutely going to go out and buy a sharpmaker to keep her touched up, and undoubtedly going to start a collection again. I doubt I'm going to be doing any more testing of knives for a long time unless I get Sal Or Kristi's open or tacit approval on this thread as right now money is very tight and until I can afford to move to a place that has job opportunities for skilled tig welding it'll continue to be too tight to risk destroying knives nor investing in another wicked edge setup. If sal asked me to I'd start testing and repairing knives again on so much as a sharpmaker. But short of that. It'll be a while before you see any of my old style posts.
Lastly. Please don't see this as an opportunity to abuse Spyderco's generosity. I asked their approval before even posting this out of fear that it would encourage people to abuse their knives with no rhyme or reason thinking that no matter what they did Spyderco would replace their knife. Please don't be that guy.
On a more positive note, it was a bit of a dream to be able to contribute my little bit to the knife community and play mythbusters in my small little way. I never expected the positive reactions to any of it, I figured I'd be seen as the guy who would whack lock backs against the table thousands of times until they eventually failed. So I tried to keep my testing as real world as possible, progressing from every day to simulating worst case scenarios, and had money allowed it I never would've stopped.
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:D 