Forum knife quality control

pmbspyder · #1

What's up gentlemen (and ladies)! Been gone for a good while, spending $ on other grown up tools, but had to jump when I saw the forum knife.

Got it in the mail today and I have to say, the fit and finish on this thing are really insane. I've had lower and higher end spydies, but this thing is put together like a Swiss watch! Is it the nature of the new back lock, or is this the kind of stuff spyderco is putting out these days? I mean, I opened it for the first time and it felt like a bank vault door swinging open on roller bearings. I'm really, really, impressed and just wanted to offer kudos to the spydercrew.

Looks like I need to get back into the spyderco game!

tvenuto · #2

I've always been impressed with the CO made knives. My manix XL is actually flawless to the naked eye. The forum native that i got is excellent, with no perceivable seam in the backlock ad perfect centering.

gbelleh · #3

My Forum Native is also excellent. Perfect as far as I'm concerned.

ZL1 · #4

I like Spyderco knives :spyder:

sir_mike · #5

I know my two are flawless as is every PM2 I ever had! :D

jabba359 · #6

I was impressed at how loudly the lock clicks into place. Very reassuring, as it sounds extremely solid. Mine has no blade play that I can discern and seems smooth enough. As some others have also noted, this one didn't come quite as sharp as it could have (though I have received much duller Spydercos before). Mine wouldn't push cut newspaper, instead sort of slicing, sort of tearing. After a quick couple minutes on my Sharpmaker, however, and it became shaving sharp and has no problem now with push cuts through newspaper. I was surprised at how easy it was to put on a nice sharp 40° micro bevel on S110V.

DougC-3 · #7

I've said so much good about this knife on other threads I'm afraid if I say anymore I'll be written off as a hopeless fanboy :D

SQSAR · #8

Mine arrived yesterday. It was the least sharp of any Spyderco knife I've ever gotten right out of the box. Noticibly less sharp than the norm in my opinion. No big deal though because I was going to, and did, re-profile the blade on my EdgePro. Noticed two things: (1) that S110v wants to take a nice polished finish almost right away, even with the lower grit stones, and this resulted in a sweet, sweet, sweet, looking edge when done. And (2) it took an exceedingly fine edge, all with surprisingly little effort on the EdgePro (using Choosera Stones). It was a great day. Carrying it at work today for the 1st time.

Ankerson · #9

SQSAR wrote:Mine arrived yesterday. It was the least sharp of any Spyderco knife I've ever gotten right out of the box. Noticibly less sharp than the norm in my opinion. No big deal though because I was going to, and did, re-profile the blade on my EdgePro. Noticed two things: (1) that S110v wants to take a nice polished finish almost right away, even with the lower grit stones, and this resulted in a sweet, sweet, sweet, looking edge when done. And (2) it took an exceedingly fine edge, all with surprisingly little effort on the EdgePro (using Choosera Stones). It was a great day. Carrying it at work today for the 1st time.

S110V is very fine grained and will as you found out polish up very nice. :)

kbuzbee · #10

SQSAR wrote:No big deal though because I was going to, and did, re-profile the blade on my EdgePro.

What angle did you take it to?

Ken

bh49 · #11

pmbspyder wrote: but this thing is put together like a Swiss watch! Is it the nature of the new back lock, or is this the kind of stuff spyderco is putting out these days? I mean, I opened it for the first time and it felt like a bank vault door swinging open on roller bearings. I'm really, really, impressed and just wanted to offer kudos to the spydercrew.

Currently I own six Native5, including Forum knives. All of them made to highest standards. During couple last years Colorado made knives dominated my purchases. I bought few Paras, 2 Militaries, UKPK, 3 Dodos, LW M2 and Natives. All of them flawless.

Donut · #12

Back when the Native 5 was first coming out, I believe Sal said that Eric made some tweaks to the back lock for this model. I like the back lock on the Native 5. It will be interesting to see what models get these changes.

I believe there was mention of redo-ing the original Manix with these tweaks. :)

DJFrostbyte · #13

I think all spyderco knives show a standard-setting amount of quality control and fit and finish. Even the Tenacious has excellent construction and shows great attention to detail. I have pretty much sold all my other knives recently to stick with just spyderco because of this. Even a $100 kershaw does not compare to the $40 Tenacious in fit and finish IMHO. I feel like a fan boy, but I'm not really. I just appreciate solid workmanship and perfection of styling that spyderco knives ALWAYS deliver. I'm hooked!

endgame · #14

Mine is perfect I hope they use this g10 style on other knives

Orangeneck · #15

Got my 2 today

. One is perfect, but the other has the blade off-centered to the right by slightly less than 1 mm

. This is my first spydie, out of >50, that is off-centered. Its OK as it will be an EDC. Perhaps I can fix it by stepping on it (it worked on a M390 mini-barrage LE).

JNewell · #16

Orangeneck wrote: Perhaps I can fix it by stepping on it (it worked on a M390 mini-barrage LE).

Really??? :eek: :confused: :o

bh49 · #17

Donut wrote: I believe there was mention of redo-ing the original Manix with these tweaks. :)

+1
I remember talks about sprint of C95 with improved lock like on Natives. I hope for the blade to be 4mm thick.

Invective · #18

JNewell wrote:Really??? :eek: :confused: :o

I think what happens sometimes during assembly is that the stop pin is not seated all the way causing the two scales to not come together completely (on the margin of a few .1's of a millimeter) so you have to tighten it up as much as possible to get it set. I saw a few tips about this for centering and smoothing out Mini-Grips, although they all said to get a set of Torx wrenches an just tighten the stop pin as much as possible instead of stepping on it, but they're the same in principle just different executions.

Orangeneck · #19

Invective wrote:I think what happens sometimes during assembly is that the stop pin is not seated all the way causing the two scales to not come together completely (on the margin of a few .1's of a millimeter) so you have to tighten it up as much as possible to get it set. I saw a few tips about this for centering and smoothing out Mini-Grips, although they all said to get a set of Torx wrenches an just tighten the stop pin as much as possible instead of stepping on it, but they're the same in principle just different executions.

Thanks for the explanation-I couldn't have said it better (actually I didn't know why it worked).

rodloos · #20

I'll admit I've not taken my "spare" out of the box yet, but my "carry" one is superb. Very smooth, nice fit and finish. It wasn't dull, but wasn't *quite* sharp enough to shave my arm hairs well. I recently acquired an Edge Pro, but since I'm not very practiced with it yet, I used my SharpMaker to touch it up. It did take quite a few strokes on the diamond rods to start seeing where it was taking off my sharpie pen marks, but not bad. It looks like mine came with pretty close to a 30° bevel, and I finished it up with a few strokes at 40°.

I'm *very* satisfied with mine (of course I'll still want to get one of the CF/110V natives when they come out :) ).