- Joined
- Jun 24, 2013
- Messages
- 4,162
Why The A.R.K. for me?
I ordered the A.R.K. as fast as it came out since I'll be travelling through a few countries in 3 weeks and none of them like my normal edc of locking one hand opening folders. Fixed knives however are fine but would earn you lot of "looks" if carried on a belt.
I can manage to fit a seal pup in my pants but if I actually want to sit down it gets uncomfy really fast. Non locking folders are either too slow to open like an SAK or close too easily (sorry UK-Pen Knife)
The A.R.K. is advertised as a self defense tool which I like but I also wanted to see how its up to every day tasks since I will be doing lots of food prep for the kids. Last time I had a D2 blade and water, fruit acids and humidity in India for example were manageable with rinsing drying and oiling but if I don't have to even better. H1 sounds great and with the salt air on the coast this time and sweat from wearing it around the neck or maybe even for a swim it makes sense.
The Review:
Lets start with the not so good first. The break away necklace is too short for my head, but since I'm 6feet2 tall I guess thats not a surprise. The chain is about as long as the ones issued for military dog tags (in the German Army and presumably any other Nato Nation). Lets see if I can find my old extended chain or simply switch to paracord.
Now that we got this out of the way and everybody gets a chance to make fun about my head size lets focus on the knife.
Everybody knows how it looks in its sheath, still a little reminder here. It also hints at what the little ARK will face in this review.
The sheath is genius compared to other neck knifes. You can grab the knife normal as it is and pull it out and its 100% ready to go. Other neck knives dont have their index finger groove acessible while sheathed. You pull them out and only then can you place the index finger where its supposed to be. The ARK has the groove out in the open while sheathed. Duh, every neck knife should. This is great for fast deployment but makes it a little bit harder to insert back. Twice the ricasso got stuck a bit but once you know it and take care to apply a bit pressure towards its spine while inserting it the ARK doesnt get stuck.
How does it look in a hand, in a very big hand? (XXL, 4.25inch palm width)
First Try
Much better:thumbup:
Very comfy and while I had to widen the finger groove on my bk14/bk24 the ark groove is sufficient but for sure should not be smaller. The ramp on the spine is the killer. Pressing the thumb in there while pulling the index finger down wedges the knife in there really tight. For a 3 finger knife it feels awesome and certainly better than many 4 finger knives. Seriously, no kidding. The FRN handle starts in the finger choil and not a millimeter too late. Its right there where the pressure on the index finger starts and just metal would make for a possible hotspot. Great engineering. The ramp is just metal and the spine is as thin as on my kitchen knives. My thumb can feel it but its not hurting. I don't think anybody would have trouble unless they start peeling potatoes for 2 or 3 hours.
I had a picture of the spine and the taper but Mr. blurry cam struck again. Instead lets continue with a shot from the side
The very uniform taper starts where the grind hits the spine. The grind is very slight hollow to V.
Out of the box the mirror polished edge of the ARK shaved arm hair 80% and made short work of printer paper (24lb). The sharpness was what Im used to from Spyderco and exactly the same like my new UK Pen Knife which I had lying arround.
Now some more serious work.
PINEAPPLE. You can tell I like them, all capital
Cutting off the endpieces worked just fine. Instead of cutting straight through like with a big knife I simply cut in a circle around it and it came off without any problem.
Cutting the skin was a little bit harder than normal due to the length of the A.R.K. A longer knife goes in and out of the pineapple so the bark comes of one slice per cut. The A.R.K. however only goes in thus needing two cuts per slice of peel. No big deal it was still plenty fast
Now what to do with the little brown holes?
Whith a longer knife I just make long cuts. The ark just ended up all over the place until I used it more in a shorter shaving motion. Then it was actually more precice, faster and less wasteful than a bigger knife. By that time I was so used to the little guy that I didn't pay attention on how to hold it. It felt just right and trustworthy.
The result.
How well does it slice the inside?
I cut it the usual way and for every big slice I needed two cuts, one from each side. For smaller slices only one pass. It went through very easily and since it cut less material on each pass I think it went through with less pressure than my Santoku would have.
How did it dice?
Like most knifes since that didn't require any deep cuts.
The big belly allowed for full use of the whole blade, which I like since that dulls the blade more equally along the whole edge/less fast than if there would be only one point sticking out for work.
Excellent work A.R.K.!
Did it exhaust you?
After all, you have much less blade than a normal pineapple opposing kitchen knife and making two cuts instead of one every time should dull you much faster. The factory sharpness dropped indeed. Hair shaving went from 80% to about 20%. Still, paper cutting seemed to be the same as before. It is still a perfect working edge and the next picture will prove it.
I compared it to my 2 best kitchen knives. One is a chisel edge Masahiro and the other one a V edge Guede. Both Santoku and both with a very similar shape. Coincidently both steels have the same thickness like the A.R.K. which should put us overbuilt knife fans at rest who might be wondering if the A.R.K. might be too thin. Same thickness and much smaller should be plenty of strong. I can't bend it with my fingers,
Anyways, back to sharpness. I applied similar pressure and only used as much blade of the Santokus as the A.R.K. is long or else it would not be fair. Both knives were sharpened a while back but I keep steeling them after every use and they are up to my standard for kitchen work. The banana peel test is my own way to compare the sharpness of knives to each other for the things I use them for. Better than shaving which depends on angles, skin condition, direction of hair and what not. Paper, if I don't hold it right will give different results too. So a more stiff banana peel is more telling to me.
In my test the already used A.R.K. with the same pressure and same blade length utilized, landed right between my chisel edge Masahiro and my V edge Gude. So still perfectly fine for a lot more cutting.
Another thing I noticed even though my folders are much longer I always have to take care that no juice makes it into the handle and pivot. No such issues with a little fixed blade makes for a much more relaxed food prep experience.
Now where is my old long neckchain, cant wait to see how the A.R.K. carries around my neck.
I ordered the A.R.K. as fast as it came out since I'll be travelling through a few countries in 3 weeks and none of them like my normal edc of locking one hand opening folders. Fixed knives however are fine but would earn you lot of "looks" if carried on a belt.
I can manage to fit a seal pup in my pants but if I actually want to sit down it gets uncomfy really fast. Non locking folders are either too slow to open like an SAK or close too easily (sorry UK-Pen Knife)
The A.R.K. is advertised as a self defense tool which I like but I also wanted to see how its up to every day tasks since I will be doing lots of food prep for the kids. Last time I had a D2 blade and water, fruit acids and humidity in India for example were manageable with rinsing drying and oiling but if I don't have to even better. H1 sounds great and with the salt air on the coast this time and sweat from wearing it around the neck or maybe even for a swim it makes sense.
The Review:
Lets start with the not so good first. The break away necklace is too short for my head, but since I'm 6feet2 tall I guess thats not a surprise. The chain is about as long as the ones issued for military dog tags (in the German Army and presumably any other Nato Nation). Lets see if I can find my old extended chain or simply switch to paracord.
Now that we got this out of the way and everybody gets a chance to make fun about my head size lets focus on the knife.
Everybody knows how it looks in its sheath, still a little reminder here. It also hints at what the little ARK will face in this review.
The sheath is genius compared to other neck knifes. You can grab the knife normal as it is and pull it out and its 100% ready to go. Other neck knives dont have their index finger groove acessible while sheathed. You pull them out and only then can you place the index finger where its supposed to be. The ARK has the groove out in the open while sheathed. Duh, every neck knife should. This is great for fast deployment but makes it a little bit harder to insert back. Twice the ricasso got stuck a bit but once you know it and take care to apply a bit pressure towards its spine while inserting it the ARK doesnt get stuck.
How does it look in a hand, in a very big hand? (XXL, 4.25inch palm width)
First Try
Much better:thumbup:
Very comfy and while I had to widen the finger groove on my bk14/bk24 the ark groove is sufficient but for sure should not be smaller. The ramp on the spine is the killer. Pressing the thumb in there while pulling the index finger down wedges the knife in there really tight. For a 3 finger knife it feels awesome and certainly better than many 4 finger knives. Seriously, no kidding. The FRN handle starts in the finger choil and not a millimeter too late. Its right there where the pressure on the index finger starts and just metal would make for a possible hotspot. Great engineering. The ramp is just metal and the spine is as thin as on my kitchen knives. My thumb can feel it but its not hurting. I don't think anybody would have trouble unless they start peeling potatoes for 2 or 3 hours.
I had a picture of the spine and the taper but Mr. blurry cam struck again. Instead lets continue with a shot from the side
The very uniform taper starts where the grind hits the spine. The grind is very slight hollow to V.
Out of the box the mirror polished edge of the ARK shaved arm hair 80% and made short work of printer paper (24lb). The sharpness was what Im used to from Spyderco and exactly the same like my new UK Pen Knife which I had lying arround.
Now some more serious work.
PINEAPPLE. You can tell I like them, all capital
Cutting off the endpieces worked just fine. Instead of cutting straight through like with a big knife I simply cut in a circle around it and it came off without any problem.
Cutting the skin was a little bit harder than normal due to the length of the A.R.K. A longer knife goes in and out of the pineapple so the bark comes of one slice per cut. The A.R.K. however only goes in thus needing two cuts per slice of peel. No big deal it was still plenty fast
Now what to do with the little brown holes?
Whith a longer knife I just make long cuts. The ark just ended up all over the place until I used it more in a shorter shaving motion. Then it was actually more precice, faster and less wasteful than a bigger knife. By that time I was so used to the little guy that I didn't pay attention on how to hold it. It felt just right and trustworthy.
The result.
How well does it slice the inside?
I cut it the usual way and for every big slice I needed two cuts, one from each side. For smaller slices only one pass. It went through very easily and since it cut less material on each pass I think it went through with less pressure than my Santoku would have.
How did it dice?
Like most knifes since that didn't require any deep cuts.
The big belly allowed for full use of the whole blade, which I like since that dulls the blade more equally along the whole edge/less fast than if there would be only one point sticking out for work.
Excellent work A.R.K.!
Did it exhaust you?
After all, you have much less blade than a normal pineapple opposing kitchen knife and making two cuts instead of one every time should dull you much faster. The factory sharpness dropped indeed. Hair shaving went from 80% to about 20%. Still, paper cutting seemed to be the same as before. It is still a perfect working edge and the next picture will prove it.
I compared it to my 2 best kitchen knives. One is a chisel edge Masahiro and the other one a V edge Guede. Both Santoku and both with a very similar shape. Coincidently both steels have the same thickness like the A.R.K. which should put us overbuilt knife fans at rest who might be wondering if the A.R.K. might be too thin. Same thickness and much smaller should be plenty of strong. I can't bend it with my fingers,
Anyways, back to sharpness. I applied similar pressure and only used as much blade of the Santokus as the A.R.K. is long or else it would not be fair. Both knives were sharpened a while back but I keep steeling them after every use and they are up to my standard for kitchen work. The banana peel test is my own way to compare the sharpness of knives to each other for the things I use them for. Better than shaving which depends on angles, skin condition, direction of hair and what not. Paper, if I don't hold it right will give different results too. So a more stiff banana peel is more telling to me.
In my test the already used A.R.K. with the same pressure and same blade length utilized, landed right between my chisel edge Masahiro and my V edge Gude. So still perfectly fine for a lot more cutting.
Another thing I noticed even though my folders are much longer I always have to take care that no juice makes it into the handle and pivot. No such issues with a little fixed blade makes for a much more relaxed food prep experience.
Now where is my old long neckchain, cant wait to see how the A.R.K. carries around my neck.
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