Rounded/Contoured/Polished G10 Kiwi 4

[demoncase]

I'd take one of those in a heartbeat I tells ya! :D

[Nate]

Look fantastic David.

Autozone should have all the 3M wet/dry sandpaper you could want. I have a bunch of 2000 and 2500 grit laying around from my early sandpaper/mousepad convex sharpening days.

[Doc Dan]

Very nice. If they came like that from the factory, perhaps with Carbon Fiber or Ti bolsters, I would buy one.

[gaj999]

Wow. That's spectacular. What an improvement.

Gordon

[jackknifeh]

Looks great. It looks like it screams "comfortable grip". Nice job. Isn't that knife pinned? Did you do this without disassembling it?

[Evil D]

Looks great. It looks like it screams "comfortable grip". Nice job. Isn't that knife pinned? Did you do this without disassembling it?

Yeah, I did take the blade out and the clip off but the rest stayed together. The pins were sanded down quite a bit but are still holding up fine. You just have to be careful how much gets sanded off.

[paladin]

Wow...the best way to express how I feel about what you've done to that Kiwi is with this statement:

It's times like this that I wish that Spyderco Forums had a WTB / WTS section...

keep up the good work & innovation & please keep sharing! :) :spyder: :)

[remnar]

Looks great! I hope Sal is listening. :)

[ChrisinHove]

Very, very nice! Who would think that the plain Jane Kiwi 4 would come up like that! My favourite Spyderco, improved.

[HarleyXJGuy]

My only thought is how much would you charge to do mine like that?

[FCM415]

Very nice man, I'd buy one.

[mattman]

Very nice, David!

I think you've inspired me to try this myself...

[3rdGenRigger]

That looks amazing...I'll have a hard time not doing that to mine.

[Evil D]

Very nice, David!

I think you've inspired me to try this myself...

Just go easy on the pins...if you sand the head completely off, the scale will likely pop off in that spot and you definitely don't want that to happen on the pin that holds the lock bar in place. You really have to bevel the edges of the G10 way down across a wide section of the G10 to expose the grain. I originally just beveled the corners down some and smoothed out the peel ply texture but if the scale is left flat on the top it doesn't have the same effect. If you look at the scales now, the very center section that doesn't look as shiny as the rest is the area that's mostly flat. If the scales were thicker you could contour it much more aggressively and make the scales much more rounded and get rid of a lot of that.

By comparison, the Vallotton's scales are obviously much larger and wider which allow them to be rounded off more, which really shows the grain of the G10. It's really beautiful and I really wish more knives came with polished G10 instead of the usual textured kind, especially knives like this that obviously aren't going to be used hard and have really aggressive ergonomics anyway so they lock into your hand even with smooth scales.




Obviously I also have quite a bit more polishing I could do. I also don't know if Spyderco uses any kind of lacquer or anything like that on the G10 to make it shine after it's polished.

[Evil D]

Looks great! I hope Sal is listening. :)

If there's enough interest, that usually helps to make things happen.

[delphidoc]

Absolutely awesome!

[mattman]

Obviously I also have quite a bit more polishing I could do. I also don't know if Spyderco uses any kind of lacquer or anything like that on the G10 to make it shine after it's polished.

I think I recall sal saying they were buffed?

[gingerninja]

That looks awesome. Your kiwi gets the nod of approval from a kiwi

[dwong]

very cool, just like the original ss which i love

[bh49]

I am not a kiwi fan, but this is the nice knife. I certainly would love to see more knives with Contoured and Polished G10 scales. Bolsters will be icing on the cake.