Showing posts with label spyderco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spyderco. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 February 2014

Unboxing Review Spyderco's South Fork By Phil Wilson

South Fork: home of TV's Ewings, an area in Utah, Phil Wilson's collaboration with Spyderco, or the place where the idea moves in another direction.

Phil Wilson made his name with a back-to-the-future design philosophy, while most makers favor a full-tang hunting/survival ethos Phil Wilson's is more hidden-tang fishing/hunting. All over the world people cut up fish with long thin flexible blades, all over the world butchers use long thin blades.  Yet all over the world knife makers sell short, thick, rigid blades as 'hunting' 'outdoor' and 'skinning' knives.

As ever, my interest was piqued by the idea of outlying performance coming from outlying thinking. Having owned a few 'sharpened pry-bars' over the years I was curious to try out his potentially 'foodie-afield' concept. So when Phil Wilson's Spyderco collaboration turned up at a price I could almost justify, in yet another moment of weakness I bought one.

Spyderco have always been one of my favorite companies, not just for their wonderful sharpeners and lazer-like folding knives, but the way Sal and Gail Glasser run their enterprise.
Spyderco have a way of speaking to their customers, 'speaking to' is wrong, they have a discourse with their customers that melds bespoken with small-to-medium production runs. You get a tool closely designed to a users brief, from a production run that's big enough that you can actually buy one, but small enough that there's a lively secondhand market for most of the designs.

I've seen 'business guru's' and 'marketing thought-leaders' waffle on about engaging with the customer, every time I've put my hand up and said "like Spyderco?" I've been greeted with blank incomprehension. Look and learn people. Spyderco have made a good thing out of offering: generalist and niche tools, in limited edition colours and specifications, feeding their customers interest not only in the designs but the materials. partnering with designers, makers, and groups of fans. Using the internet's knife forums as focus groups, and achieving that holy grail - offering the customer what they didn't know they wanted. Look and learn people. Look and learn.

 "The South Fork has evolved over about 20 years of my own use and from feedback from those who have used my custom knives. It is named after a mountain and valley area in Utah where I have hunted for Mule Deer and Elk. I guess you could call it a general purpose Sportsman, Working/ Utility knife. The edge sweep and trailing point make for an easy cutting geometry. The sharp point comes in handy for fine work like caping or removing a splinter or cactus spine. The belly sweep and slightly dropped handle position the blade in the hand for skinning big game. Some prefer a drop point or semi skinner for field dressing and skinning chores, but the trailing point has worked very well for me as well. Some will also prefer a shorter blade but again my preference is for a little more reach for boning out an elk quarter or removing the back strap. Some blade shapes are more efficient for specific field tasks but it is my humble opinion that the trailing point can cover a wide range of tasks easily."
Phil Wilson. 
You can read his articles on sharpening, steel performance and knife making HERE

The numbers:
Blade Steel: CPM-S90V
Handle Material: Green G-10
Sheath material: Bolatron ™
Weight: 5.3oz (151 g)
Overall Length:  9.57'' (243 mm)
Blade Length: 4.82" (122 mm)
Blade Thickness 0.118" (3mm)
Most fishing knives are a bit longer in the blade than this, most hunting knives a fair bit shorter. Will this be best of both worlds?

The is the first time I've seen Boltaron used as an alternative sheath material to Kydex, I don't know what its like to work with, but it's very nice stuff in the hand. The grade Spyderco have used here is a tad thinner than the kydex I've used to make sheaths, and the surface just a little smoother. It would seem to have exceptional shape hugging properties. One to watch.

Would I buy one for 'list price'? It's a very nice knife, made of the best materials, to a really high standard of fit and finish, but there are other knives that would get my $429.95. There are other Spyderco's that I'd buy before I'd saved up the money!
Would I buy one for 'street price'? Hell yes. I very nearly did. the South Fork has been a serious contender on my wish list for a while. On the day I had a window open and was about to press 'order now' at a more reasonable $230 on Amazon, when I found this example secondhand. I'm only going to use/scratch mine, I don't have any drawer queens, so I was happy to save more than a few bucks by going pre-loved.

More soon
SBW
PS I have a meat related project in mind, stay tuned for some real world testing in part two.

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Review: Spyderco Sharpmaker 204MF Ultra Fine


If you're the kind of person who has one of those annoying 'wheel sharpeners' for your knives best to stop reading now, as either you don't care about edge durability or you dont yet know what it'll mean to you. I'll concede that 'wheel sharpeners' can achieve a sharp [ish] edge, but never a durable edge.

 I know its frustrating to start with, but by working your way through a set of stones you get an edge that is far more robust and with enough patience far far sharper too. It took me ages to be able to get even half decent results on a set of stones. While I was practicing I used and reviewed the Spyderco Sharp Maker, which with - a very small amount of practice/following the instructions, will give you excellent results. The Sharp Maker is absolutely the perfect sharpening system for Spyderco's blade geometry; works surprisingly well on axes, and is very safe and handy for broadheads: it took me a while to get good results from thicker convex blades like the F1, but its excellent and intuitive for any flat-ish grind.


What you get is a box that does double duty as a stand/handle for the hones, setting them at 40 and 30 [giving you grinds of 20 and 15] degrees for blade sharpening, 12 degrees for scissors and flat for an improvised bench stone. Comes with course brown and fine white hones which make short work of carbon steel and are hard enough for stainless' including the 'super steels' like VG10 ect.

I've always wanted a pair of the Ultra Fine hones but they used to be crazy money so I never took the plunge. They've come down in price a bit lately so I ordered some from the chaps at Eden Webshops and two days later they were on the door mat.

Puta Madre!

Hallelujah

Yes sir I can boogie

They're good, really good, they take you to a whole new realm of sharpness, and considering the sharpness you get from the fine hones, that's really something. To illustrate the point my TK6 has a cutting edge in Super Gold Powder Steel hardened to 62, the fine stones made very short work of restoring the factory edge.

If you've already got a Sharp Maker, get a set, these you will love. If you haven't yet got a Sharp maker you've only yourself to blame.

More Soon

SBW

Thursday, 7 April 2011

Unboxing: Byrd Wings Slipit Knife Review

Serrated or not s'rated?
I got this one in a trade a while back and I really like it, not too expensive, bastard-sharp out of the box, and  a handy EDC size. Not the premium knife of the enthusiast, but for the money great value. If you need your EDC to cut a lot of man-made materials i.e nautical or climbing rope, the serrated blade comes into it's own, saving the straight edge for finer work.

More soon
SBW

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Unboxing: Spyderco Urban Knife Review

Big, big fan of the Spyderco design aesthetic; some very well thought-out knives at price points from cheap to mid range. If you're spending £25 or £175 the knives represent very good value, (even better value in the USA where prices are 30-40% cheaper) and the choice of steels is enough to satisfy the most anal collector discerning enthusiast.

As ever my choices were determined by:
A, the second hand market (contrary to popular belief there is a limit to the amount I'll spend on toys kit)
B, the time I have to put into watching the second hand market. I've missed a few bargains, this catch was not the spec I really wanted but the price was about what I wanted to pay.

In folding knife design what I really like are 'integral or frame locks' (like the Subcom F) but in the UK this most ingenious of safety features is deemed to make your knife 'weapons grade' and is therefore only permissible with 'good reason' and good reason is to be determined by a costly visit to the local courthouse.
Unit of Measurement .270
As is so often the case, restriction has led to innovation, with many makers seizing the opportunity to provide a 'street legal' knife for our EDC needs. Spyderco have been leaders in this field with the UKPK (UK Pen Knife) and the Urban both being slip-joints i.e held open but not locked open - just like a traditional penknife. Blade length for UK pocket carry is restricted to 3 inches (75mm) and the Urban comes in at 2 and 9/16ths (65 mm) with the whole knife only 6 and 1/16ths (154 mm).

The Urban is made in Japan with VG10 blade steel and G10 for the handle. Although the Spyderco-rati deem the made-in-Japan models to be second fiddle to the USA made knives in terms of finish, as users they are the same.

I already own a VG10 bladed knife (its the centre section of the laminated Fallkniven F1's blade [Reviews here] ) and while it's one of the more difficult steels to sharpen, when you get there it really takes and holds an edge.

I'm going to be using a Spyderco Sharpmaker (review here) to care for it.  I've had the Sharpmaker for a few years now and I'm even happier with it now than I was when I got it. The Sharpmaker sets the angle between stone and blade. As its Spyderco/Spyderco the angle of the stones is 20/20, perfectly set to the blades grind. I'll let you know in part two how easy a blade it is to maintain.

First impressions:
Neat and Petite - Not ideal for slicing a whole ham, but perfect for sausage or biltong
Well Made - The fit is good, all the parts are tight, some of the surface finishs could be better
Excellent Materials - VG10 is a great knife steel, and the handle's G10 is totally uniform
Good Value - Just that little bit nicer than the cheaper knives, almost as nice as knives twice the price.

Looking forward to some thorough field testing

Your pal
SBW

Thursday, 5 June 2008

Happy Blogday To Me! Bushwackin’ 365


Suddenly it’s time to do one of those ‘that was the year that was’ reviews that TV stations use as cheap programming on new years eve. A whole year has passed since I formalised my journey and started telling all of you about it. I’ve not been deluged with animal rights nutters telling me I’m a cheerleader for the forces of darkness, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who have told me that they couldn’t do it themselves but understand why the wild food journey is so important to me. First things first, I’m always a bit amazed that you are actually reading this, and enduringly grateful to those of you who could be bothered to chip in with the odd comment, it’s made keeping the blog going a lot easier. The year has been full of soaring highs and crushing lows in my other life, the one I lead outside of the adventure in this blog, and the blog has helped. It’s given me a focus outside of work, a perspective, a purpose. The other positive output has been a new found confidence in my writing. Like it or loathe it, mock my spelling and poor grasp of grammar, but there’s no one else writing anything quite like it, it’s mine and, there are a growing number of posts that I’ve started to feel quite pleased with.
I’ve done errhm ‘some’ work on the skill set that my hunt will require, re awakened the kit fetishist within, took a bit more exercise (ok babe a very little bit – but I have dug the vegetable patch over!), expanded the range of my reading, learned the basics of bare bow archery, hunted rabbits with ferrets, used a shotgun to turn flying ashtrays to dust, and cast my first fly at a wild trout. My compound bow still languishes in the garage, certainly not unloved, but unused. I’ve found an archery club I could attend but they are stickbow only as their secretary told me her butt wasn’t big enough. I was confused too until I remembered that a butt is the traditional name for an archery practice ground!

Lessons in feral failure?
When I stared fishing I learned three knots, and for some reason my brain has only assigned enough memory to its knots database to remember those three, I can tie them in the dark, in the rain, wherever. Regular readers will have noticed that while I confidently announced that I would be making my own set of purse nets for rabbiting, so far all I have to show for my efforts are some tangled pieces of string – described in the word[s] of one observer as ‘shocking’.

Tanning Hides?
Firstly I’d like to try to shift the blame onto Mrs SBW – she found my rabbit brains in the freezer and chucked them out. So that was brain tanning out the window. Sadly the rest of the failings are mine. Tanning hides is harder than it looks, one rabbit skin is now hard enough to make a knife sheath from and the other two are still hiding from Mrs SBW in the freezer.

Fitness and Mass Reduction?

I’m too embarrassed to talk about it; there is only one worthwhile prescription.
Eat less and do more

The wild food highlights were;
Bunnies ferreted out by James’s little helpers. The legs cooked with tomato, paprika, and black olives. The loins rolled into spirals, poached, browned and served on top of large slices of black pudding (traditional English blood sausage).
A haunch of Muntjac; which turns out to be the perfect size of eating deer for suburban dads on portion control, skinny bints and picky city kids. I casseroled mine in a gravy of shallots, plonk red and Hoisin sauce. Yummy.
GMT Chestnuts (harvested in Greenwich park) eaten with pancetta and leeks in a cream sauce.
Road kill Pheasant – Although I haven’t had the opportunity to either attend a traditional English pheasant shoot (which looks from the outside like a sort of real life video game shoot ‘em up - for £1000 ($2000) a day!!) or join a walked up woodland hunt. I have been keeping my eyes open and have been pleasantly surprised by the number of daft birds who made the mistake of playing in the traffic. With delicious consequences!

As with every ‘that was the year that was’ round up there are of course some awards to dish out.

On the kit collecting front the Best in Test award is shared by the
Fallkniven F1, covered in scratches, sharpened, blunted and sharpened again, a genuinely bombproof confidence inspiring tool.
The Bahco Laplander Saw: which has proved itself to be thoroughly deserving of its ‘bushcraft’ reputation - lightweight, cheap and a very, very efficient cutting tool. [Apparently there are; hardwood, softwood, and greenwood blades available, but the card mine came attached to made no mention of which blade it’s equipped with. It has happily cut all three.

If there were a category for best gadget (ok there is) it would have to go the spyderco Sharpmaker. It does what it says on the tin.

The Bushwacker Style Award
Rogue for their great hats – described by one observer as ‘Like and outdoor Bez hat, way cool’

Services To Bushwacking – furthering the cause.

In the afield category
James Marchington – for teaching me to hunt with ferrets

In the a-stream category
Jeremiah Quinn – for his inspirational fly fishing lesson

In the best blog comment category
Mungo – Butcher, Bushcrafter, Project manager and Surrealist.

Thanks for reading, stick with it – it gets better!
Your pal
SBW

Saturday, 21 July 2007

Ceramic File Set



At the same time as I got the SharpMaker (see Really, Really Sharp Knives) I ordered these ceramic files.

Ceramics may clog quickly, but they scour clean even more quickly. No file ever wears less. In this set the profiles are round, square, triangular, and teardrop (with a groove for sharpening points on fishing hooks and darts). They come in a comforting suede pouch.
I would have liked to see a conical file included in the set. But, for the money,they are what they are.

£41 in the UK
$31.95 (£16) from the usual suspects
Spyderco SP-400F ceramic file set

Non illegitimis carborundum
Bushwacker.

Wednesday, 4 July 2007

Really, Really Sharp Knives Spyderco Sharpmaker Review


Being a bit of a lummox with a whetstone I wanted to try one of the sharpening systems that have proliferated in recent years

The Lansky system received a glowing recommendation from my cousin T, but honing oil and a clamp to attach the system to a table top have little place afield, so ruled it out for me. I settled on the Spyderco SharpMaker, as it looked more portable, less complex and is a ‘dry’ sharpener.

While I don’t currently own any Spyderco knives I’m a fan, for the most part their blades seem well made and with a few exceptions the designs are well thought out.
And being a lover of the simple direct self-explanatory sales pitch, I’m very taken with their slogan:

“First we made things sharp, then we made sharp things”.

Loads of glowing user reviews on the net tell how the new owner sharpened everything in the house, then the shed, and nearly all of them report how much sharper their nail clippers are!
I’d like to be more committed to sustainability, but it had never occurred to me to give a new lease of life to my nail clippers, until I saw the instructional DVD and book that came with the SharpMaker. Presented in an irony free infomercial style it gives you clear instruction and uses nail clippers as an example of how you can use the SharpMaker on anything with an edge.

If you use braid fishing line, you'll know just how much some people are charging for 'braid clippers', the SharpMaker means you can make your own from even the cheapest nail clippers.

The design is a very simple and ingenious mix of freehand and guided sharpening. Two ceramic hones fit into a stable plastic base, two brass rods stop you cutting the back of your hand open.
The base has 30, 40, 12.5 and zero degree settings. The 40 setting gives you a 20 degree edge – acute enough for sharpness yet obtuse enough to withstand extended use. The 30 degree (2x15 degrees) setting lets you ‘thin’ the profile of your blade. The presenter of the DVD suggests that you wont have to use this feature that often, but if like me you've got a whole variety of different edged tools in varying states of sharpness, you might be pleasantly surprised at how good this feature is. It had the most fantastic effect on one of my kitchen knives. The 12.5 degree setting is for scissors and the zero degree setting lets you use the stones as a conventional flat grinding area. The hones are formed by mixing synthetic sapphires (alumina particles) with a ceramic bonding agent, then kiln-firing at temperatures around 1,600 degrees C (3000 degrees F). Ceramic upside: very hard will file almost anything. Ceramic downside: clogs easily. Spyderco also offer two other sets of hones that fit the SharpMaker, a pair of steel hones with very course alumina particles stuck on the outside for rough shaping work ( I’ve not found a price for them) and an ultra fine pair for an even finer edge.
List price $75
Rip-off Britain a laughable £75 (yes $150!!!!)
Best Knives have them for $42.95 (£21.50p) Or about the same price as a 'high end' braid clipper!
The ultra fine hones are $57.95

The bit where Spyderco have missed a trick is the additional hones don't fit into the case.
http://spyderco.com/

http://bestknives.com/spydtriansha.html

For the last word in sharpening have a look at this guy.
the guys who know say he's the guy who knows
Old Jimbo
Old Jimbo too