52100 Military, what are your plans?

[gunmike1]

I've carried my first 52100 Military for a couple weeks and dulled it down where I'm ready to sharpen it. The action has broken in where it is smooth like the second 52100 Military that I ordered up (which I requested a free dropping blade), so that is good. No issues with corrosion so far, but I wipe it down every time I use it, but I haven't really put it through its paces with food yet.

I'm debating whether to just reprofile the edge to somewhere around 7-8 degree per side, and leave the primary grind alone, or of I want to plane down the whole primary grind to a zero, or near zero grind. The way I see it is you are completely wasting 52100 if you run the same edge profiles as S110V and the like. I may send the knife off to Big Chris for the regrind, but it really shouldn't be that difficult to manually get 52100 reground on a good Xcoarse stone like my SPS II 240 grit stone. Has anyone done a big regrind/reprofile on their 52100 Military yet, and what were your experiences with it?

[Evil D]

Planning on sending mine to Chris, I was very impressed with what he did with my S110V Military and Manix 2.

[gunmike1]

Planning on sending mine to Chris, I was very impressed with what he did with my S110V Military and Manix 2.

He did great work on my Benchmade Contego, Super Blue Endura, and K2. He completely reshaped the K2 blade to look more like a Military blade profile. Very impressive stuff. I'll probably send my 52100 Military to him as well at some point, I just figured it should be a lot easier to plow through 52100 by hand than it is with CPM M4 or 10V.

[Evil D]

Planning on sending mine to Chris, I was very impressed with what he did with my S110V Military and Manix 2.

He did great work on my Benchmade Contego, Super Blue Endura, and K2. He completely reshaped the K2 blade to look more like a Military blade profile. Very impressive stuff. I'll probably send my 52100 Military to him as well at some point, I just figured it should be a lot easier to plow through 52100 by hand than it is with CPM M4 or 10V.

I'm sure it's easier to grind than other steels, I just don't think I trust myself on a knife that isn't easily (or cheaply) replaced. Rather leave it to the pros.

[gunmike1]

Planning on sending mine to Chris, I was very impressed with what he did with my S110V Military and Manix 2.

He did great work on my Benchmade Contego, Super Blue Endura, and K2. He completely reshaped the K2 blade to look more like a Military blade profile. Very impressive stuff. I'll probably send my 52100 Military to him as well at some point, I just figured it should be a lot easier to plow through 52100 by hand than it is with CPM M4 or 10V.

I'm sure it's easier to grind than other steels, I just don't think I trust myself on a knife that isn't easily (or cheaply) replaced. Rather leave it to the pros.

I certainly understand that line of thinking. But, I do have a spare and this one will be my user, so I'm not super concerned about the aesthetics. Plus I've had several knives that I thinned out flat to the stone many times, and I later had Krein regrind them and they look like new after they regrind them.

[dreadpirate]

Hmm - after reading this thread I guess should buy a new Millie 52100 if I know where there is one left. You goes are driving me into bankruptcy.

[gunmike1]

Hmm - after reading this thread I guess should buy a new Millie 52100 if I know where there is one left. You goes are driving me into bankruptcy.

National Knives

[dreadpirate]

Hmm - after reading this thread I guess should buy a new Millie 52100 if I know where there is one left. You goes are driving me into bankruptcy.

National Knives

Yep - I just ordered one! Wonder how many he's got sitting around?

[dreadpirate]

Oh - what are my plans? Nothing special - I will use it, but not as a hard use work horse like some of my other knives. I am not going to re-profile the edge.

[gunmike1]

Hmm - after reading this thread I guess should buy a new Millie 52100 if I know where there is one left. You goes are driving me into bankruptcy.

National Knives

Yep - I just ordered one! Wonder how many he's got sitting around?

He had 8 or 9 when I bought two a couple months ago. Must be below 5 now.

[dreadpirate]

Hmm - after reading this thread I guess should buy a new Millie 52100 if I know where there is one left. You goes are driving me into bankruptcy.

National Knives

Yep - I just ordered one! Wonder how many he's got sitting around?

He had 8 or 9 when I bought two a couple months ago. Must be below 5 now.

He now says he is down to two.

[dreadpirate]

Sooner State Knives also has them in stock - for a higher price.

[captnvegtble]

Also in stock at CS:
http://www.cutleryshoppe.com/spydercoc3 ... ntrun.aspx

[DougC-3]

Mark's Outdoors in Vestavia (Birmingham, AL) still has a small number in stock. They have a huge waik-in business and are not primarily a mail order place, but they certainly do some mailing, and don't seem to mind call in-mail out sales. I once called up and got them to mail me a fluted Ti Millie.
http://marksoutdoors.com/product/spyderco-knives/

[gunmike1]

I rebeveled the edge to 10 degrees per side and sharpened the microbevel with Spyderco bench stones. At medium it was shaving above the skin and pushcutting phonebook paper cross grain. At UF it was whittling hair, but most of the time it would pop the hair in two rather than whittle it. I may use some lapping film or a 16000 grit Shapton glasstone to see how the Edge reacts to that. This steel certainly gets very sharp with ease, as it should.

[Evil D]

I rebeveled the edge to 10 degrees per side and sharpened the microbevel with Spyderco bench stones. At medium it was shaving above the skin and pushcutting phonebook paper cross grain. At UF it was whittling hair, but most of the time it would pop the hair in two rather than whittle it. I may use some lapping film or a 16000 grit Shapton glasstone to see how the Edge reacts to that. This steel certainly gets very sharp with ease, as it should.

Do we know what approximate grit the Ultra Fine stones are? I honestly haven't seen any real difference between it and my Shapton 16k so I assumed the UF stones are at least around 16k or higher. Another thing for me at least is I seem to get cleaner edges from ceramic even though the Shapton Glass stones are very nice.

Once I get my hands on an M4 Military I plan on sending both it and a 52100 out for a regrind. I really wish Spyderco would give us some 52100 in a Nilakka or some other zero grind blade.

[gunmike1]

I rebeveled the edge to 10 degrees per side and sharpened the microbevel with Spyderco bench stones. At medium it was shaving above the skin and pushcutting phonebook paper cross grain. At UF it was whittling hair, but most of the time it would pop the hair in two rather than whittle it. I may use some lapping film or a 16000 grit Shapton glasstone to see how the Edge reacts to that. This steel certainly gets very sharp with ease, as it should.

Do we know what approximate grit the Ultra Fine stones are? I honestly haven't seen any real difference between it and my Shapton 16k so I assumed the UF stones are at least around 16k or higher. Another thing for me at least is I seem to get cleaner edges from ceramic even though the Shapton Glass stones are very nice.

Once I get my hands on an M4 Military I plan on sending both it and a 52100 out for a regrind. I really wish Spyderco would give us some 52100 in a Nilakka or some other zero grind blade.

I am having my M4 and 52100 Militaries reground, likely to zero. I also have S110V and Cruwear Manix 2's ready to be thinned out. Maybe to zero. I want to see how thick you need to make the different steels to hold up for different types of cutting, hence even taking very high carbide steels extremely thin, even if they would probably be better served thicker. At least that's what I'm thinking to do now. Maybe I'll regain my sanity and just put them all (except the 52100) to .005" thick edges and call it a day.

I haven't used the Spyderco ceramics in years. Due to how they are made you can't really define their grit size, but I'm sure someone has studied the relative finish they leave compared to other stones. They do seem similar to the 16000 Glasstone, and I figured it might be interesting to test out the differences between the two finishes directly. The Spyderco ceramics are excellent for quick microbevel jobs. They do tend to be easy to raise a burr with and to burnish if you don't keep them very clean and/or use too much pressure. I found the Glasstones to be less prone to raise a burr, but then again it is possible to gouge them, which a Spyderco stone will never do.

[Brock O Lee]

Has anyone done a big regrind/reprofile on their 52100 Military yet, and what were your experiences with it?

I convexed both the 52100 and Ti/G10 M4 Militaries quite some time ago. Both are flat convexes, as flat as I could get them in an hour or so freehand with the DMT XC and EP 120 grit stones. If I had easy access to a regrinding service I would have gone that route, but a nice flat convex gives you similar cutting performance and doesn't cost anything except some time and effort.

I guess the primary bevels near the edges are around 7-8 deg incl or perhaps lower. I added 30 deg incl micro bevels with the SM for strength and I haven't had chipping issues with them during light use. Do it! :)

(sorry no pics since Photobucket conked out)

[gunmike1]

Has anyone done a big regrind/reprofile on their 52100 Military yet, and what were your experiences with it?

I convexed both the 52100 and Ti/G10 M4 Militaries quite some time ago. Both are flat convexes, as flat as I could get them in an hour or so freehand with the DMT XC and EP 120 grit stones. If I had easy access to a regrinding service I would have gone that route, but a nice flat convex gives you similar cutting performance and doesn't cost anything except some time and effort.

I guess the primary bevels near the edges are around 7-8 deg incl or perhaps lower. I added 30 deg incl micro bevels with the SM for strength and I haven't had chipping issues with them during light use. Do it! :)

(sorry no pics since Photobucket conked out)

I do have a 140 grit Atoma diamond plate and a 240 grit SPS II stone which cuts through any steel quickly. It still takes a long time to get the full knife to a zero convex in my experience, but I may try it for a bit and see where it leaves me. I work 55-60 hours a week so I don't have a lot of spare time to regrind my knives. But it is more satisfying to have done the work yourself than it is to have someone else do it, not to mention much cheaper. It doesn't look as pretty, but you can always polish out the blade to make it look better. Since I'd probably want to keep my blades zero ground it wouldn't be worth the bother to take out the scratches in the blade finish beyond whatever finish I sharpened the edge to before adding a microbevel.

[Brock O Lee]

I find the 120 grit EP stone leaves a scatch pattern close to the typical primary grind factory finish. Also, if you 'scratch' the whole blade uniformly from spine to edge with whatever stone you use it looks neat and tidy, and not so much like a mangled backyard job (that it actually is! :D)

I took the 52100 down to about 1000 grit to try to improve the non-existent corrosion resistance.