- Joined
- Jun 4, 2010
- Messages
- 6,642
Gifted myself a new pocket knife for Xmas, Cold Steel AirLite. Nice, lightweight, thin, mid size, solid build, TriAd lock, Aus10 steel. All in all a good knife for the money.
Blade stock is a little thick and sabre ground instead of their usual hollow grind. Edge uncharacteristically not very sharp out of the box. Went to reset it at 26° with a microbevel and had to grind way up the primary to make it happen. Add to that uneven primary grind and the bevel on one side was just too thick to tolerate, so I reground the primary to thin it out.
Of course this led to the primary reaching the branding logo etc, so had to regrind the flats above the shoulder as well to clean that up. I have the gear to do rudimentary regrinds but usually takes me a lot of hand work to get them cosmetically crisp, so I just don't do very many - this is somewhere between, about the best I can do straight off the belts 120 grit Norton Blaze.
Pretty happy with the outcome, now to see how it holds up. Don't have any other knives in this blade steel, seems pretty good based on how it reacted to sharpening.
To anyone looking to buy one of these you'll want to sand every outside edge on the G10 and chamfer the spine and thumb serrations to avoid tearing up your pockets. Other than that, a good buy for the price.
Blade stock is a little thick and sabre ground instead of their usual hollow grind. Edge uncharacteristically not very sharp out of the box. Went to reset it at 26° with a microbevel and had to grind way up the primary to make it happen. Add to that uneven primary grind and the bevel on one side was just too thick to tolerate, so I reground the primary to thin it out.
Of course this led to the primary reaching the branding logo etc, so had to regrind the flats above the shoulder as well to clean that up. I have the gear to do rudimentary regrinds but usually takes me a lot of hand work to get them cosmetically crisp, so I just don't do very many - this is somewhere between, about the best I can do straight off the belts 120 grit Norton Blaze.
Pretty happy with the outcome, now to see how it holds up. Don't have any other knives in this blade steel, seems pretty good based on how it reacted to sharpening.
To anyone looking to buy one of these you'll want to sand every outside edge on the G10 and chamfer the spine and thumb serrations to avoid tearing up your pockets. Other than that, a good buy for the price.
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