Cru Wear Centofante III !

[Evil D]

That's a great comparison, Abba.
In my head I had surely pictured the Caly 3.5 to be the larger knife. No less interested in the Centofante after seeing this, but my interest in the Caly 3.5 increased quite a bit as I've always thought of it as being too big.

My only issue with those knives (3 and 3.5) is that it doesn't take a lot of sharpening to reach a point where the blade tip becomes exposed out of the handle when closed. The butt of the handle needs to be just slightly thicker to hide the blade more. You can grind down the kick a little and the blade will close into the handle more but then eventually the edge will hit the back spacer too. My ZDP Caly 3 bit my finger pretty good when I discovered this.

Mmm.. that's nice to know.
There should be a LW Caly in the works, lets hope this is addressed in the process and the new version gets some CQI.

In my opinion the Endela also suffers badly from this issue, but I rarely here this being mentioned. And it could easily have been solved/improved by addressing another (IMO) shortcoming of the endela, which is the short blade relative to the handle space. If the blade was made just a bit longer and they did nothing else the tip would be (better) covered by the slight curve at the butt.


I have pretty much stopped carrying my Endela TRL after I got the Endura TRL. A more well rounded design in my opinion.

As TkoK83Spy mentioned it does take a good amount of sharpening, so these "gents knives" may never see that much heavy use so to most it'll never be an issue. My old Caly was a major learning point in my sharpening knowledge and ZDP forced some lessons onto me and they came at the cost of some blade length. My argument here would just be that I wish the design allowed for those who DO use their knives a lot to sharpen them down to a nub if necessary, especially considering that the Caly 3 did have a plain user oriented VG10 model too. These days I've learned more about sharpening and I could reprofile my Centofante and then as long as I'm not chipping away the edge and constantly having to do more heavy grinding, the tip will probably never be exposed. The bigger issue with my Caly is that it's also pinned construction, so if I tried to grind the kick down to bring the blade tip down into the handle, I would like to do so with the knife taken apart so I can monitor how close the edge gets to the back spacer, but can't do that if I can't take it apart. That'll be much easier to do with this Centofante if the need ever comes.

[aicolainen]

This is probably not something that would keep me from buying/trying a Caly or a Centofante, but if it turns out to be an issue I'l probably look elsewhere when it comes time to replace it.
This so called "gents" class of folders, i.e. slim and discrete carry are what I carry both for work and casual off work use unless I know I'll be doing rougher work or outdoor type use, so they actually tend to need more regular sharpening than my so called "hard use" folders. OTH I'm perfectly fine with high edge retention tool steels in this type of knife, so that could make it a non-issue as long as such options are available. And now that I'm aware of it, I'm more likely to go that route.

[austrian_spyder_fan]

I love my C3 and was lucky to get a pre owned C4.
Dream of getting a Vesuvius.
I will try to get this beauty!
Which shop whould be the best for shipping to Europe?

ASF

[Bdubs808]

These are on sale at the moment at NationalKnives
https://www.nationalknives.com/spyderco ... bon-fiber/
Money has been tight lately as some of you know. In the last year I've only picked up 3 Spydies. REC avocado PM2, GB2 CW, and now this sweet new Centofante. I have wanted an upgraded C3 for years. Thanks to Eric and Sal and the crew for making this special Centofante. I can't wait to compare it to my Caly3 and Baby Horn.

[awa54]

...and now on Knifecenter BF/CM sale:

https://www.knifecenter.com/item/SP66CF ... er-handles

[GarageBoy]

I do find the choice of cru wear funny in this application. Would love to see a high wear resistance steel rather than a high toughness steel in a gent adjacent folder

[abbazaba]

Agreed. ZDP-189

[p_atrick]

I remember Sal saying something about how ZDP-189 will continue to be produced by the foundry, but it will be laminated. Fine by me. I'm interested in this steel because it is so odd (yes, I know there are others that demonstrably better). It appears I have massively underestimated how long production of a knife (I'm looking at you HP Delica), so who knows when we will see another run of ZDP in the Centofante or otherwise.

[EDITED: fixed a typo]

[Evil D]

I'm pretty certain I've petitioned for a British Racing Green ZDP version in the past, I'm surprised it never happened (not because I asked for it, because for a while Seki Spyderco was all about ZDP).

[awa54]

Mine arrived with the same dent in the edge near the heel of the blade, looks like contact with the lockbar is the likely cause. I'd agree that it's likely to have been an assembly issue, since the blade has a decent amount of available overtravel when compressed into the handle, before it bottoms out.

It seems like this version just has a less-deep hollow grind than the standard VG-10/FRN version (at least the one I own), so basically what Spyderco has called a sabre grind in the Delica etc. It does appear to be thicker behind the edge though.
As far as steel choice, I'm glad to have CruWear, since it's one of my favorite all-around steels and I don't really love ZDP. Maybe 204P/M390, MagnaCut or K390 would have been even more attractive, but I have no grumbles about how it was delivered.

*really* nice knife!

[awa54]

So... I had another blade dent where the initial one was after carrying the knife for two days. This lead me to examine the lockbar a bit more closely and I decided it probably needed to be re-ground to get rid of the functionless hump that's between the pivot point and the spring perch/notch. This was definitely NOT an assembly issue, since the knife can easily be built up on the bottom liner with complete safety and control of the blade position.

It took a few weeks, but I finally made the modification this evening and it created much more clearance inside the knife, but the new "hot spot" is the innermost part of the backspacer (which can be relieved a bit if needed without compromising the strength of the part).
The best news is that the liners in this knife are so strong that you can just take the top scale off and the pins hold the blade and other parts in almost perfect alignment, removal of the lockbar and reassembly of the knife are incredibly easy!

I'll report back on my results after I get some more pocket time with the modified lockbar and if it works out without needing further mods, I'll disassemble it again and photograph the new shape, so you all can replicate it if you choose.

[Ramonade]

Yeah the liners keep straight pretty nicely ! I liked the construction but passed it on to a fellow Spyderite because I did not know it would come in a saber grind. I prefer to have a pinned VG10 blade with the hollow. Cruwear is storng enough already, don't need my gent Centofante to be thicker than the OG :)

The blade hitting the spring was pretty annoyign too, when you let it snap shut on the OG it does not snap as hard I guess. Looking forward to read more @awa54

[mikey177]

These are currently $50 off at DLT.

https://www.dlttrading.com/spyderco-cen ... wear-blade

[riclaw]

@awa54 How are liking this model now that you modded it?

[awa54]

@awa54 How are liking this model now that you modded it?

It's had zero pocket time since the mod, sorry!

I *will* actually carry it some time soon, I promise...

[Meadowlark]

These are currently $50 off at DLT.

https://www.dlttrading.com/spyderco-cen ... wear-blade

This is also on special @ knifecenter.

Is the discount/special status due to poor sales?

[WilliamMunny]

These are currently $50 off at DLT.

https://www.dlttrading.com/spyderco-cen ... wear-blade

This is also on special @ knifecenter.

Is the discount/special status due to poor sales?

Could just be the overall higher cost of everything in general. Without getting into politics I feel like most people’s buying power has gone down greatly in the past few years. Without getting too deep the huge jump in cost of cars, groceries, health care, heating, housing, etc has greatly out paced my salary. Personally I only saw a 1.7% raise this year while my health care went up 13.9% alone.

So my basic point is lower disposable income on fun items, like knives, so sales might be sluggish.

[Mrj]

My original c3 has a kick/nub on the lock bar. Does this one not have that?

It does, and under normal use it does keep the edge from hitting anything, but if you press the lock bar in while closed and press the blade in at the same time, the edge can and will make contact with the lock bar.








This is one of those weird scenarios like when your kid comes to you and says "daddy daddy, when I jam my thumbs into my eyes really hard it hurts!" and then you say "why would you ever do that in the first place?". I still can't imagine why this happened at all, it should be something most of us never discover. It may well be an issue with the originals, I can't say because I can't take them apart to see.

So this issue still lingers in my mind. Today I poked myself in the eye and remembered Centofante blades hit the lock bar.

[SpeedHoles]

These are currently $50 off at DLT.

https://www.dlttrading.com/spyderco-cen ... wear-blade

This is also on special @ knifecenter.

Is the discount/special status due to poor sales?

Could just be the overall higher cost of everything in general. Without getting into politics I feel like most people’s buying power has gone down greatly in the past few years. Without getting too deep the huge jump in cost of cars, groceries, health care, heating, housing, etc has greatly out paced my salary. Personally I only saw a 1.7% raise this year while my health care went up 13.9% alone.

So my basic point is lower disposable income on fun items, like knives, so sales might be sluggish.

Agree.
Guessing you, too, work for a large corporation?
This corporate scam of weening their employees to "striving for that 3% raise" but then settling for 1-2% annually because of hollow excuse performance objectives, really needs to die. Meanwhile the shareholders are very proud of you I'm sure, the revenue last year was 18.9 billion. Enjoy your pizza party, but you probably won't be cutting any with a Centofante III Cruwear.

[Evil D]

My original c3 has a kick/nub on the lock bar. Does this one not have that?

It does, and under normal use it does keep the edge from hitting anything, but if you press the lock bar in while closed and press the blade in at the same time, the edge can and will make contact with the lock bar.








This is one of those weird scenarios like when your kid comes to you and says "daddy daddy, when I jam my thumbs into my eyes really hard it hurts!" and then you say "why would you ever do that in the first place?". I still can't imagine why this happened at all, it should be something most of us never discover. It may well be an issue with the originals, I can't say because I can't take them apart to see.

So this issue still lingers in my mind. Today I poked myself in the eye and remembered Centofante blades hit the lock bar.

I haven't got around to it yet but I plan to grind down a wee bit of the lock bar in that spot. I don't think it'll compromise strength, at least not on a knife I don't plan on using hard anyway.