Spyderco/Farid K2

[Ankerson]

Well still have the wood to do yet, tomorrow.....

Sprayed the blade down with WD-40 and let it soak awhile to get all the glue etc off the blade....

Looked at the edge and I don't have any edge damage, no shiny spots on the edge, just the normal edge wear that I should be seeing.

[wrdwrght]

So Jim - how do you think it would do with a very fine edge?
I can't stop polishing my edges for some reason.

Well, I have tested CPM 10V with a polished edge before... It likes coarser edges better....

Should do fine with a 1000 grit edge or so though.

Which brings to mind, were you using a factory-edge, Jim, or did you reprofile before your yards of testing?

[Ankerson]

So Jim - how do you think it would do with a very fine edge?
I can't stop polishing my edges for some reason.

Well, I have tested CPM 10V with a polished edge before... It likes coarser edges better....

Should do fine with a 1000 grit edge or so though.

Which brings to mind, were you using a factory-edge, Jim, or did you reprofile before your yards of testing?

Ah... NO.....

I reprofiled and sharpened before the rope cutting and resharpened before the cardboard...

Edge is 400 grit SIC and 15 DPS...

[wrdwrght]

So Jim - how do you think it would do with a very fine edge?
I can't stop polishing my edges for some reason.

Well, I have tested CPM 10V with a polished edge before... It likes coarser edges better....

Should do fine with a 1000 grit edge or so though.

Which brings to mind, were you using a factory-edge, Jim, or did you reprofile before your yards of testing?

Ah... NO.....

I reprofiled and sharpened before the rope cutting and resharpened before the cardboard...

Edge is 400 grit SIC and 15 DPS...

Good to know. Thanks for the effort and report.

[Ankerson]

Well, I have tested CPM 10V with a polished edge before... It likes coarser edges better....

Should do fine with a 1000 grit edge or so though.

Which brings to mind, were you using a factory-edge, Jim, or did you reprofile before your yards of testing?

Ah... NO.....

I reprofiled and sharpened before the rope cutting and resharpened before the cardboard...

Edge is 400 grit SIC and 15 DPS...

Good to know. Thanks for the effort and report.

The factory edge is close to 15 DPS so that will make things easy for most people, and it was screaming sharp out of the box...

[chuck_roxas45]

I wonder what Phil, Cliff and Joe will say about the test they put the knife up to.

I'm.guessing Cliff will have different results.

Oh, and you can send me another of your nasty PM's, I need a laugh. :D

[Donut]

Your test brings to light the level of performance we are all facing with this knife.... despite the buying lockout I am facing, this may force me to reallocate funds from somewhere to land one of these in my stable. Thank you for your effort Jim.

I agree, I'm not so much into large knives or ones with such a large upsweep at the end of the blade, but if nothing else performs like it, I might have to get one.

[tvenuto]

So after doing all of that work with it, how was the knife in hand? Any hot spots? I had originally thought the handle was more contoured but your side on shots show the scales to be relatively flat. I'm guessing the height of the handle fills the hand well and makes up for the lack of contour, since you didn't mention any issues.

Anyway, awesome work and that is one big pile of cardboard. I hope you have a big recycling bin.

[Laethageal]

I'm.guessing Cliff will have different results.

Oh, and you can send me another of your nasty PM's, I need a laugh. :D

Good thing you had a laugh! Don't know if he'll love the blade but the shape/design doesn't fit the steel choice he sees would be best suited. One way or the other, I ordered one from CS almost as soon as I saw that price. There's a chance I was one of the first 5 to order frim them and will get it soon.

Whatever they say, I guess they will all bring insightful comments about it, but I'll make up my mind about it by myself.

[ManixFan]

I will welcome the honest unbiased results of all of the people testing the new K2. I don't see Sal sending out new knives for public testing to people whose opinion he doesn't value. :)

Personally......I really love the size and raw look of the knife which has also had some of the hard corners reduced from the original custom version while at the same time retaining the overall "look" of the knife. I also like the change in the lock bar from the original circle drilled through the Ti to the more traditional look it now has.

The wavy cut-outs though.....that is the one thing that kind of puts a blemish on the overall appearance of knife for me. But if I end up getting one I am sure that I will eventually become blind to this one minor flaw in its aesthetics (IMHO).

[Laethageal]

The wavy cut-out for the RIL is Farid's signature.

[Ankerson]

So after doing all of that work with it, how was the knife in hand? Any hot spots? I had originally thought the handle was more contoured but your side on shots show the scales to be relatively flat. I'm guessing the height of the handle fills the hand well and makes up for the lack of contour, since you didn't mention any issues.

Anyway, awesome work and that is one big pile of cardboard. I hope you have a big recycling bin.

I used gloves in the rope cutting, I always do that...

On cardboard I didn't use gloves and the knife felt fine, didn't notice any hot spots, it fills the hand nicely. :)

[Ankerson]

My review is up here:

http://www.spyderco.com/forumII/viewtop ... =2&t=65155" target="_blank

Time to wait and see what the others find. :)

[HarleyXJGuy]

Excellent work Mr Ankerson thanks for doing this. Look forward to reading your results.

So is there somewhere you have all these steel tests collected?

Picking up a sharpening system and am curious about your recommendations for a couple of different steels. Like use up to 400 or 1000 grit for sharpening. S30v and 204P to be specific.

My memory could be faulty but it seems like you don't recommend the high 5000 or 10k polish for sharpening?

[mattman]

Excellent work Mr Ankerson thanks for doing this. Look forward to reading your results.

So is there somewhere you have all these steel tests collected?

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showt ... -quot-rope" target="_blank

[HarleyXJGuy]

Excellent work Mr Ankerson thanks for doing this. Look forward to reading your results.

So is there somewhere you have all these steel tests collected?

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showt ... -quot-rope" target="_blank

Thanks!

[Laethageal]

Woot, package just got shipped!


Shipping at Cutlery Shoppe <shipping@cutleryshoppe.com>

12:21 PM (20 minutes ago)

to me

A package was shipped to you on 09/26/2014 via U.S. Postal Service First-Class Package Int'l Service, Parcel to the following address:

[Cliff Stamp]

Your test brings to light the level of performance we are all facing with this knife

Knives blunt in a very non-linear manner and this has dramatic consequences to interpreting performance. Consider the performance in the tail end of the following graph. By the time this blade has cut 250 m of cardboard the rate of blunting has slowed so much that you could cut the same amount of cardboard again, another 250 m and you would need careful measurement to even show a change in sharpness at all :



The amount of material you need to cut to keep reducing the sharpness keeps increasing again in a very dramatic and non-linear way. Because the relationship is nonlinear then it is easy to cut a km of material with a simple Opinel and if you do a run and the Opinel is taken to something like 3.5% of optimal while say an Elmax blade is only taken to 5% of optimal then the Opinel will cut more material than the Elmax blade.

If you get the end points fairly close, both are taken to the same sharpness, then the Elmax blade will cut more than the Opinel. But because it is a nonlinear relationship, you have to have very precise end points or that is what you will see more so than the steel. Hence one of the reasons you ideally need blinded runs.

[Studey]

Cliff, I think we can all agree that this is impressive performance for any knife steel.

[Fancier]

I have a really hard time seeing any trend at all after the 150m point in that graph.