would love to see more orange handles on folded and fixed blades alike

[Thorgal]

I was lucky enough to be present at the yearly Amsterdam spyderco meet and it was a great event. :)

I gave feedback were possible, which hard at time as not all knives were placed back correctly. In general however i wash more fixed and folded knives would become optional with an orange handle. Personally i am out in the woods and outdoors a lot. If you ever drop a knife by accident it can be hard to find it back in between leaves and other stuff. If a handle is orange it just so much easier. Also it looks great too :)

[SpeedHoles]

I was lucky enough to be present at the yearly Amsterdam spyderco meet and it was a great event. :)

I gave feedback were possible, which hard at time as not all knives were placed back correctly. In general however i wash more fixed and folded knives would become optional with an orange handle. Personally i am out in the woods and outdoors a lot. If you ever drop a knife by accident it can be hard to find it back in between leaves and other stuff. If a handle is orange it just so much easier. Also it looks great too :)

Wow, so, after seeing all of the cool prototypes, technical designs, groundbreaking concepts, handmade customs, and upcoming unannounced releases... I'm honestly amazed that just simply a color would cross your mind now as the first request to see make it to production.

Your reasoning is sound for outdoor usage, I agree, visibility, but it just seems like such a basic criteria that you could actually accomplish yourself as the end user with about any knife of any design.
For awhile there during recent years I was actually getting a bit tired of all the orange options they kept releasing, mostly all the REX45 and Cutlery shoppe exclusives, Seki FRN, Positron, Subvert, etc., etc. You're right though, not much for fixed blades.

[jmj3esq]

I love orange handles for the same reason. I’ve lost too many knifes in the weeds and leaves. I switched the burlap micarta out on this Shaman and put the orange scales of my XHP Shaman. This is my hunting knife. I have a lot of knives in orange.

[Wartstein]

I like orange handled knives, though I prefer the burnt orange of the HAP 40, REX 45 and now REX 121 sprints.
Bright orange is better for finding a lost knife of course.

What I found though: In many outdoor settings a bright blue makes a knife even more visible than bright orange.

[Wartstein]

Just thought of this old pic and that it might fit the thread...

[R100]

Just a counter opinion so there isn't an impression that this is what everyone wants.

I would never carry a knife with an orange handle. I dislike all brightly coloured handles but to me orange is the worst of all. Give me black or earth tones every time. Forest green is probably my favourite. This is my natural inclination in general but particularly with knives.

FRN can at least be dyed but an orange G10 handle would be an insurmountable problem to me. My plea to Spyderco is no orange handles unless a knife is also offered in an alternative colour.

Dan

[Manixguy@1994]

I normally like warm browns and greens , but Orange something just calls to me . MG2

[Jeb]

I really like the orange on this knife Dan, it's like it's plugged in to 220 voltage.

[mikey177]

I'm okay with knife handles that are orange or blue. Black and forest green are fine too. My least favorite is red; I would pick pink and purple over red any day.

[SpeedHoles]

I'm okay with knife handles that are orange or blue. Black and forest green are fine too. My least favorite is red; I would pick pink and purple over red any day.
orange_blue_02.jpg

There used to be a time in Spyderco history where an unspoken rule (as far as I'm aware, I could be wrong) was that Red handles were reserved primarily for Trainer versions of models only.
Up until fairly recently actually, red was super hard to find on any production model outside of maybe a Ladybug or something... and the early red tinted paper Micarta (not really visibly red).
Then somehow the floodgates opened and exclusives went free for all with no rules and Red was everywhere for st nick, etc

[Coastal]

For EDC I like browns, grays, dark blues and dark greens. But for the outdoors I agree, bright orange is great. Same for yellow and bright green. Like Wartstein, I think a light, bright blue -- azure, baby blue, flo blue -- might be the very best for the outdoors, since the sky is one of the few places in nature it occurs. Not a lot of bright blue stuff on the ground in my gardens, in the woods, on a fishing pier or rock jetty, or in my orange kayak, etc.

A Spyderco mystery I don't understand: Why isn't the Jumpmaster 2 available in yellow or orange?? It's one of the company's premier outdoor knives. I get that its original mission favored low-vis black, but with that mission in mind, why isn't the blade blacked out???...

[Skywalker]

Agreed with other comments about brighter blues standing out well outdoors. Personally also generally prefer blue to orange if it's not a neutral/grey scale/earth tone.

► Show Spoiler

[Wartstein]

Agreed with other comments about brighter blues standing out well outdoors....

I was the one who made that comment, and I think the reason for what we say is that bright blue tones are colors one rarely ever can find in nature, at least not on land and aside from perhaps some flowers.

Of course bright orange is really visible too, but for example in fall, when the ground is covered with autumn leaves or on some kinds of soil it is still not the very best, but a bright blue clearly more visible.

Actually I always spray paint my no spin throwing knives in blue AND orange or stick them with duct tape in that two colors: Great for finding the throwers when I miss a target and they disappear somewhere in the brush.

The old pic below might illustrate what I mean.

So if ops goal is a handle color that makes it most easy to see and find a knife in the outdoors, it imo is debatable if orange or bright blue would be the better choice overall

[aicolainen]

but for example in fall, when the ground is covered with autumn leaves or on some kinds of soil it is still not the very best, but a bright blue clearly more visible.

This is the thing. While I personally like orange, I do spend a lot of time outdoors in late summer, autumn and early winter when the ground is generally covered with yellow, brown and orange leaves, and after multiple occasions of leaving my orange handled knife on the ground and having a quite a difficult time seeing it even though I know where I left it, my own perspective on the benefit of orange handles has cooled off somewhat. I still enjoy orange as a scale/handle color, and I can't really say the same for bright blue, so there's that.

Having some experience with hunting, I can see where the natural tendency of turning to orange for visibility might stem from, but wearing something to be visible to other hunters without creating high visual contrast for animals to detect is quite a different use case/requirement compared to giving your knives and tools a color that makes them easy for yourself to see / harder to loose, as these knife handles will barely (if at all) be visible to an animal when sheathed, pocketed or carried in a backpack.

I can empathize with the OP though, I've been there myself, but as time goes by - handle color has become less and less important to me.

Edit to add: as slightly related I could mention that I do like, and prefer, to carry bright yellow Salt knives for my SAR duty. Mostly because they are Salts, of course, but also because the yellow matches the uniform and hence looks more professional and less scary (I imagine). The colour is also quite functional from a visual point of view as many rescue operations take place above the tree line and / or after the first snowfall where yellow is less prevalent on the ground.

[Thorgal]

I was lucky enough to be present at the yearly Amsterdam spyderco meet and it was a great event. :)

I gave feedback were possible, which hard at time as not all knives were placed back correctly. In general however i wash more fixed and folded knives would become optional with an orange handle. Personally i am out in the woods and outdoors a lot. If you ever drop a knife by accident it can be hard to find it back in between leaves and other stuff. If a handle is orange it just so much easier. Also it looks great too :)

Wow, so, after seeing all of the cool prototypes, technical designs, groundbreaking concepts, handmade customs, and upcoming unannounced releases... I'm honestly amazed that just simply a color would cross your mind now as the first request to see make it to production.

Your reasoning is sound for outdoor usage, I agree, visibility, but it just seems like such a basic criteria that you could actually accomplish yourself as the end user with about any knife of any design.
For awhile there during recent years I was actually getting a bit tired of all the orange options they kept releasing, mostly all the REX45 and Cutlery shoppe exclusives, Seki FRN, Positron, Subvert, etc., etc. You're right though, not much for fixed blades.

Well to be fair, cant really say much else without breaking possibly the trust they gave us for not revealing anything.

Also giving colour options per blade seems like an easy fix. Makes a knife look totally different and we all have our preferences.

[Thorgal]

I like orange handled knives, though I prefer the burnt orange of the HAP 40, REX 45 and now REX 121 sprints.
Bright orange is better for finding a lost knife of course.

What I found though: In many outdoor settings a bright blue makes a knife even more visible than bright orange.

orange looks like green for animals though, where as blue really stand out. Also if your outdoors and are mainly glad in greens and browns, orange matches that really well. Less so with blue imo anyway

[Thorgal]

I love orange handles for the same reason. I’ve lost too many knifes in the weeds and leaves. I switched the burlap micarta out on this Shaman and put the orange scales of my XHP Shaman. This is my hunting knife. I have a lot of knives in orange.

thnx for sharing, they look great!

[Thorgal]

Just a counter opinion so there isn't an impression that this is what everyone wants.

I would never carry a knife with an orange handle. I dislike all brightly coloured handles but to me orange is the worst of all. Give me black or earth tones every time. Forest green is probably my favourite. This is my natural inclination in general but particularly with knives.

FRN can at least be dyed but an orange G10 handle would be an insurmountable problem to me. My plea to Spyderco is no orange handles unless a knife is also offered in an alternative colour.

Dan

How is it hurting you though when knives will comes out with various handle options? I never can understand ppl who will advocate against something that other ppl like but they themselves not.

[vivi]

Just a counter opinion so there isn't an impression that this is what everyone wants.

I would never carry a knife with an orange handle. I dislike all brightly coloured handles but to me orange is the worst of all. Give me black or earth tones every time. Forest green is probably my favourite. This is my natural inclination in general but particularly with knives.

FRN can at least be dyed but an orange G10 handle would be an insurmountable problem to me. My plea to Spyderco is no orange handles unless a knife is also offered in an alternative colour.

Dan

How is it hurting you though when knives will comes out with various handle options? I never can understand ppl who will advocate against something that other ppl like but they themselves not.

Cold Steel SRKC in CPM3V with a black handle is currently listed for $144 on Midway.

They put the orange handled 3V version on sale for around $50 at one point.

I bought one and figured I could get the same performance for 1/3 the price and just dye it black or green.

The handle doesn't take dye. I don't care for bright orange. So I haven't used the knife.

I'm all for everyone getting a the options they want, but at the end of the day knife companies have limited production capacity.

Would I nix the next planned Dragonfly sprint if it meant we got a new Police sprint?

100%

[aicolainen]

Would I nix the next planned Dragonfly sprint if it meant we got a new Police sprint?

I would too :)
DF2 is my favorite Spyderco overall, but I have enough of them. Missed out on the PD sprint Police, so still looking for my gateway version of the Police.