Spyderco Forums

Hi All,

First time posting here, but a long time lurker. I'm looking for some advice/opinions. I have a Sage 5 LW that I enjoy using, but I see that the tip doesn't sit that low in the scales. I'm aware that others have brought up the potentially shortened life span of the blade because the tip might stick out of the scales after a few sharpening. Because of this, I'm considering selling my Sage 5 LW. So my question is, am I worrying too much about this/is it a real issue that others have had with this knife?

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Anthony

Yes you are worrying too much unless you actually have a defective knife. Post a picture of it and folks here will be able to tell you if it is normal or not.

There have been very few issues reported with that knife. Many people regard it as one of the best, if not the very best, EDC knives made by Spyderco.

If you are concerned about sharpening your knife so much that you remove enough metal to make the tip stick out, you are sharpening improperly. As a pocket knife or typical EDC folder, you should be able to use and sharpen this knife for decades without removing that much metal.

A lot of good information here:
viewtopic.php?t=97530&hilit=spy+tip

If you are at all concerned, send it into Spyderco and they will let you know if its within spec. If it is, keep it and use it, if its not that will give you a credit and replace it.

As far as sharpening, if you reprofile, use the knife a lot, etc. then there is a chance you can take a lot of steel off the blade over multiple years.

Thanks so much for your replies. I appreciate them all and your efforts

If it gets to where the tip is too close to being exposed you can remove some metal from the spine to bring the tip down deeper into the scales. It will obviously change the blade profile but shouldn’t really impact cutting performance aside from piercing (are you really going to use an EDC knife for that, though?).

Im not much into collecting knives to leave in a safe/storage and enjoy using different steels/designs and playing with geometry/sharpening so please take my suggestion with that in mind.

Thanks for your input!

Hi Jack,

Welcome to our forum.

sal

Welcome Jack. Enjoy great discussions and we learn alot here.

Thanks for all your help and thanks Sal for your welcome. I'm on my 7th Spyderco now. Great knives.

Hello All!
I’m new here and glad to join this great community!
Probably I have the same issue with my brand new Sage 5 Salt.
Is that tip‘s position okay for this model or something that I should be concerned about?

papa_pinguin wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 11, 2025 1:47 pm

Hello All!
I’m new here and glad to join this great community!
Probably I have the same issue with my brand new Sage 5 Salt.
Is that tip‘s position okay for this model or something that I should be concerned about?

I own 3 Sage 5 Lightweights (including a Salt) & have never cut myself on the tip in a closed knife, though I suppose some risk is there.

As @holokai has mentioned in his post above, if you sharpen enough times that the tip starts protruding, you can simply "drop" the tip by taking material off the spine. It's easy to do if you have access to a belt grinder, and I've also done it manually with a 150 grit diamond plate when I had to reprofile a PM2 in S30V that had its tip broken off.

It should take a whole lot of sharpening & reprofiling before your S5LW Salt gets to that point, though. Unless that S5LW Salt is your only folder & you sharpen it very aggressively at even the slightest hint of a loss of razor-sharpness, it should be years & years before it becomes an issue. You generally don't have to take off a lot of material to keep a folder sharp, unless you're trying to remove a chip or a roll at the same time.