zhyla wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2024 11:14 pm
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Ok here is the deal. And I know all the Native fans out there know that
Natives have finger choils. I accepted that as gospel when I saw the first Chief prototype. I bought this knife assuming that the finger choil was a good idea. In general I place a lot of faith in Spyderco around the
design of a knife.
My observation/complaint is that on a knife this size the unused handle length scales up to something significant. With my index finger in the choil (forward grip) I have over 1.5" of unused handle. With index finger behind the choil I still have 0.75" unused handle. With that rearward grip the blade feels really far forward of my hand, awkwardly so. I have large hands btw --
but nobody with small hands is buying this knife.
My conclusion is that the finger choil design doesn't scale up this big very well. It's functional but never feels quite right. My index finger really wants to be at the point where the choil and the main handle curve meet.
First of all, thanks for an insightful review/impressions post.
I only have the G10 version, but besides not having any of the QC issues and (unfortunately) not being available in CE, they have much in common and your reflections resonate well with my own experience.
But just to get it out of the way, someone with small(er) hands did actually buy this knife
And sure, there's handle to spare, but it's still quite comfortable in hand. The groove(s) line up quite well, even with my skinny fingers, to provide a secure grip in both positions. It's not as comfortable as the S2XL, but more locked in. Especially when using the choil. I assume it fits even better in the hands of those with larger paws, but I remember sending some thoughts to Sal when I first got the knife, thinking about what goes into the design process to accommodate a wide range of hand sizes. Maybe it was pure luck or maybe it was the result of a tedious process with much trial and error, whichever it is I was both relived (this was my first venture into big folding knife territory) and slightly impressed by this fact.
Regarding the choil. Being a backlock it's hard, if not completely impossible to totally do away with some dead space at the heel of the blade. How the designer goes about addressing this dead space isn't terribly important to me, i.e. if it's a choil that partly transitions into the blade, an exposed ricasso or a ricasso concealed by a handle forward approach - they all have their pros and cons. In all cases I want the dead space to be as small as possible, optimally resulting in more usable edge and bringing the edge closer to the pivot where it's easier to apply force. My issue with the NC isn't that it has a finger choil, I think that was a good choice for this knife, I just think it takes up too much blade/edge length. Visually it looks more like a 60/40 choil than 50/50, but even 50/50 is a bit much on a knife this size. I would have preferred if only something like 30-40% of the choil transitioned into the blade. That would move the "behind the choil" grip further back, but it wouldn't be further from the edge, so that's a worthwhile tradeoff or maybe even a net positive IMO. I'm not a knife designer, so I don't know if that leaves enough ricasso/dead space to create a dependable backlock design, but if at all possible - that would be my preference.
Like some have alluded to, this may very well be a knife designed to fulfil a tactical role. In which case it may already be perfect, I have no experience with that. But it's a solid and well built knife and it's a large knife that doesn't weigh very much - so obviously it's going to attract non-tactical people like myself.
My non-tactical use of larger blades often involves processing food, and in that application I don't mind a bit of dead space between the heel of the edge/plunge grind and where the scales start. This makes it much easier to avoid food residue in the pivot area without paying attention to how far in my edge goes and the behind the choil grip allows for a good, natural grip further back on the handle (compared to most exposed ricasso or handle forward designs) which normally translates to more clearance between my fingers and the cutting surface.
So from being kind of frustrated with most of the larger knives having forward finger choils, I now tend to prefer them, but how I ultimately feel about them very much depends on how they're executed.
