Condor knive, what steel they use?

[kurodrago]

Those knive have HT issue, I have hard time to sharp my bushlore too maybe the same problem?
please keep updating thanks

You bet:thumbup: but its not about me, Cliff is looking after the knive.
Also don't get confuse, the one that you see on the pic is the old fat model, the 2011 moldel will be update too...which have issue too

 

[Komitadjie]

Looks like he tried about the same thing I did, but took it to a greater extreme and convexed the entire bevel instead of just putting an edge to it.

I've actually been tempted by one of these after playing with yours, they kind of suck as they come, but they're made of good materials and they're a lot cheaper than most kits! I don't mind a little finishing work... Just don't expect them to be ready-to-go out of the box. lol

 

[demoteamone]

You bet:thumbup: but its not about me, Cliff is looking after the knive.
Also don't get confuse, the one that you see on the pic is the old fat model, the 2011 moldel will be update too...which have issue too

okay, I will keep watching....

 

[Joezilla]

wait, what is going on here? How did Cliff Stamp get involved? He is using the knife you couldn't sharpen? Speaking of not easy to get in contact with...Kurodrago, you are bringing up a thread about knife quality control issues and are not
giving Condor a chance to fix it as you are not contactable.

Joe Flowers
Designer of The Bushlore

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Indeed--I can speak from both personal and professional experience that Condor's customer service is second to none. Give them a chance to make it right.

 

[kurodrago]

wait, what is going on here? How did Cliff Stamp get involved? He is using the knife you couldn't sharpen? Speaking of not easy to get in contact with...Kurodrago, you are bringing up a thread about knife quality control issues and are not
giving Condor a chance to fix it as you are not contactable.

Joe Flowers
Designer of The Bushlore

I never trying to contact nobody, but Cliff is trying hard to contact Condor...with no response so far.......

 

[Joezilla]

Haven't heard anything yet from anyone.. I'll have Rick check emails and voice messages again. If you don't like your knife so much, why haven't you tried returning it? If there is a problem the company would like to correct mistakes. Its not like they do not care.

 

[TheGame]

Indeed--I can speak from both personal and professional experience that Condor's customer service is second to none. Give them a chance to make it right.

+1. I haven't had to return anything, but every time I had a question I got an answer within a day. I didn't exactly go to Rick, just Joe, but I still got an answer within a day, nonetheless.

 

[kurodrago]

Haven't heard anything yet from anyone.. I'll have Rick check emails and voice messages again. If you don't like your knife so much, why haven't you tried returning it? If there is a problem the company would like to correct mistakes. Its not like they do not care.

I don't think that will be honest to ask a new knife without knowing whats wrong with the knife, also I'm not the best knife sharpener out there too...
so I want to cut out my questionable sharpening. Komitadjie din't understand whats wrong with it, but Cliff will.

 

[Bigfattyt]

I have one of their Hudson Bay camp knifes in 1075. I use it daily in the kitchen. I stripped off the black finish and have been messing with different paninas. mustard, vinegar.

Great knife for the money, and the steel takes a great edge!f Very very easy to maintain with my loaded strop.

Edge retention is right were I would expect 1075 to be.

I liked mine so much, I bought one for my dad as a gift!

 

[Joezilla]

This is my beater bushlore that I have had for a year. No power tools to sharpen it, just a DMT stone and spyderco double stuff. I made this video just for this post. Wood being shaved down is Hickory. rope is manilla. I'm not the best rope cutter in the world but I finally got the hang of how to do it in one stroke. i HATE tomatoes. The smell, the texture, everything about them, but they can be sliced even if you are gagging in the back of your throat while filming.

[video=youtube_share;4R5kScOnxdQ]http://youtu.be/4R5kScOnxdQ[/video]

 

[kurodrago]

Nice video Joe.
A good reading for you...................... from
http://knifetest.com/forum/showthread.php?p=23942#post23942

I finally got enough cardboard to do a decent random sample with Kurodrago's Bushlore :

http://www.siteground136.com/~knifetes/forum/showthread.php?t=2162

Before I did any work I reground this blade so it went from this :

to this :

cutting the edge angle in half and completely removing the initial grind. This would allow me to sharpen much faster as I could now apply a 10 degree micro-bevel very quickly.

As a blunting medium, I was cutting 1/8" corrugated cardboard, the knives were honed to final finish with 0.5 micron CrO loaded leather.

Mora #1260 :

-1095, 60 HRC;
-200 grit SiC, 1000/4000 AO
-easily push cut newsprint
-cut 1/8" jute under 500 grams of tension with a 0.5 (1) cm draw.

Bushlore

-1075, 56-58 HRC;

Ok, this is where the interesting part starts. I repeated the sharpening above, at each stage the edge was easily catching on the thumbnail, very aggressive on a finger pad swipe but had NO aggression at all on a slice. The very edge was just fracturing at a microscopic level.

I then switched to a very fine and more importantly very soft, natural stone, this is almost like chalk you can scratch it deep with your finger nail. 100 passes per side and the edge could slice thick paper (photocopy stock). I then switched to the 0.5 CrO loaded strop and after 150 passes per side then it could slice newsprint.

I attempted the jute cutting, but even under double the tension, it would not cut the cord with a 3 cm draw, under this tension the Mora would cut the cord just as soon as it moved, draw length was < 0.25 cm, thus it was more than ten times sharper.

Now if these numbers don't mean anything to you and they won't unless you have done it, then compare this :

The top slice was made by the Condor and the bottom by the Mora, the Condor is much rougher on the cut. Now that may not look so bad but compare these two initial cuts (at 5X linear magnification) :

This is with the Mora, very little tearing with the cardboard. Now with the Condor :

The knife is tearing the cardboard.

I then did 50 slices through a 3 cm draw length with both knives through 30 cm of 1/8" cardboard stock. Total cutting length was 1500 cm, or 15 m of cardboard cut. At this point the Condor simply could not cut the cardboard at all and was ripping more so than cutting.

The Mora was still cutting clean, but there was some loss of sharpness observed.

Again, two pictures of the cut cardboard at 5X magnification.

First the Mora :

and the Condor :

No comparison. If you compare to the first two pictures, the Mora is cutting cleaner after 50 slices through 30 cm of cardboard than the Condor was on its first cuts.

In order to quantify the loss of sharpness, the Mora was used again to cut the 1/8" Jute under 500 grams of tension and now required 2.0 (2) cm of draw. Again showing how after the 50 slices through cardboard the Mora was sharper than the Condor when it started. The Mora would now slice newsprint but would no longer push cut.

I then ground the edges off of both knives by cutting into a 600 grit DMT stone, resharpened and did all of that cutting again and the results were exactly the same to within the tolerances of the measurement. The results are consistent and what I would expect of the Mora and what I would expect of the Condor given the behavior described.

As noted in my comments in the original thread, this steel is obviously faulty and is micro-chipping at the edge producing very low initial sharpness and very low edge retention. Since the edge itself is the thinnest part of the knife it is possible that it is just the edge that is damaged as the thinner parts of the knife heat/cool the fastest and thus they will be damaged long before the main part of the body during hardening.


So I started grinding :

Using an x-coarse DMT benchstone, 50 passes per side, the edge again had no slicing aggression. 100 passes per side and a little bit of the tip and a little bit of the edge near the handle are now shaving sharp and can push cut newsprint. Time passes, and hundreds of passes per side and I can see the sharpness starting to set in along the entire blade.



In order to remove all of the damaged edge I had to give the knife 1000 passes on an x-coarse DMT. This thickened the edge back and put a 0.025" thick secondary bevel on the knife. This was a lot of metal removed

However after all of that grinding the edge would now finally push cut newsprint, shave, etc. . I then refined the edge with a 600 DMT stone (fine) and it was now sharpening sensibly.

Without taking the knife to the belt sander and laying in the new primary grind it would have been nearly impossible to restore the edge as I would have had to plane off that very wide bevel, as there is a simple linear relationship with width and stock removal it would have taken approximately 100, 000 passes with a x-coarse DMT to remove the problem with the initial bevel as ground.

It appears the problem may be resolved, however as is obvious, the vast majority of users would have long since junked this knife because the initial geometry and problematic steel would have made it very difficult to sharpen and produced a very low cutting ability due to the extreme wedge shape.

 

[cramsey3006]

Unless both knives are the same thickness, same grind profile, and same edge profile, tests like that are kind of pointless. The Mora should cut much better and with less effort, it's a considerably thinner blade.

I'm just going to say that there is a reason Cliff Stamp was banned from this site.....

I agree with the others, you should have contacted either Joe or Condor directly about the problem and give them a chance to make it right.

 

[kurodrago]

I'm just going to say that there is a reason Cliff Stamp was banned from this site.....

For a guy who registered in 2010..How can you know why Cliff was bannerd for?
Cliff was banned because he had argument with the ower of this forum..& because that, few Co. & knifemakers who sell shit... been feeling relieved form the dangerous Cliff.
The truth is out there!

 

[Jason B.]

Sorry, no pictures of the edge and Cliffs above rambling is pointless. Pictures of cut cardboard are useless you need to see the edge to know anything. And 1000 passes on a XC DMT? It's 1075 not CPM-125V, your knife with it "problem" has years of wear from all this sharpening with hardly a good days use.

If something was wrong with the steel it would not be that hard to see, a skilled sharpener would be able to tell in a few passes on a stone especially if using diamond hones. On the same note he should also know to not use diamonds on such a soft steel.

 

[kurodrago]

This why I call ya god in the firstplace...yaknow better than anyone else? sign in & tell him?
http://knifetest.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1911

Sorry, no pictures of the edge and Cliffs above rambling is pointless. Pictures of cut cardboard are useless you need to see the edge to know anything. And 1000 passes on a XC DMT? It's 1075 not CPM-125V, your knife with it "problem" has years of wear from all this sharpening with hardly a good days use.

If something was wrong with the steel it would not be that hard to see, a skilled sharpener would be able to tell in a few passes on a stone especially if using diamond hones. On the same note he should also know to not use diamonds on such a soft steel.

 

[Jason B.]

So now your making fake accounts using my name?

 

[kurodrago]

So now your making fake accounts using my name?

????Yeah, I did that 8 months ago before I knew ya
Do me a favor.... stay out of my thread, with ya stupidity ya did already too much damage:thumbup:

 

[Jason B.]

Good job, have fun with your knife.

 

[Komitadjie]

Better than a THOUSAND passes on an XC? Dang Kuro, I was afraid *I* would take too much life off the blade with the light belt grinding I did! Was there any blade LEFT after that? I've used me XC Diasharp mounted on the EP to do quite a few profiles, I don't think it's ever taken me more than a couple dozen passes to adjust a bevel unless I was having to grind out serious, very visible nicks.

Perhaps I'm just not quite as demanding of my blades as you are, but slicing cardboard with an eighth-inch-thick blade with a convex edge, then comparing that to a sixteenth-inch-thick scandi grind? That'd be like trying to compare a razor to a knife, they're just totally different animals. And 1095 at 60Rc? That's... a lot of hardness for a plain-carbon steel.