Disapointment

[Siggyhk]

Well, two recent let downs to share. First, I get the bright idea to test my knives' penetration on a phone book. Sere, chinook, 806, af covert, socfk, socom, and a cs med clip voyager. That went fine, no locks closing (thank god), and from my test the afck went the deepest. Great right? Well, after examining all the knives, -I notice that my sere now has some blade play when openned. So that sucks. Makes me want to get rid of it, really. But I know it's my fault, just unexpected when all the rest were fine.

Then, about a week ago a buddy of mine asked me to order him a new civilian on e-bay. No problem. I get another great idea and convince him to take mine (with a scraped clip) and let me get the new one when it comes. If it arrived in anything but new cond. we'd trade back. So it gets here today, and is new, however it's not anywhere near as nice as my old one. The old one was seamless where the lock met the liner- the new one has a slight gap.
Also where the lock meets the blade on the back isn't smooth as before. And the new one has the little spyder on it that I don't care for. Called him to trade back and he tells me fine, but he accidentally slashed his lazyboy and dulled 2 of the serrations. F**K.

The moral of these stories, I think, is to not stab a phone book with a sere, and to not expect a new spyderco to have the same fit and finsh as your old one. Sorry to rant, just disappointed here. In myself and the knives.

 

[Deadhead Archer]

I don't own a SERE, but doesn't the blade have a tension screw (a thousand pardons if I name it wrong)? A simple tightening with a torx should fix lateral blade play.

A few minutes with a Sharpmaker should resharpen the serrations on the Chinook.

 

[Siggyhk]

Just tried to mess with it agian just in case, but nope, it's not helped by tightening the pivot. It's blade play from the spine forward. Appreciate the suggestion.
I also probably didn't explain it all right, but it's the civilain that was dulled. Have to see it before I know how bad it is. I know lazyboys are pretty solid though.

 

[smcfalls13]

Called him to trade back and he tells me fine, but he accidentally slashed his lazyboy and dulled 2 of the serrations. F**K.

Sorry to hear about your disappointment, but I have two questions...

How does one go about "accidentally" slashing their Lazy Boy, and kind of Lazy Boy dulls serrations with one slash.

That's just funny, I hope you smacked him around for that mistake

 

[longbow]

Thats nothing although I can sympathize with you. Today I am just touching up the edge on my W.R. CLark tactical. This was a mint tanto from the early 90's. Just got it off the original ower with all the paper work and the box. Well my daughter calls from Ireland where she is going to UCC til the end of May. Now I am using my Lansky set at 30 deg and it is working perfectly. So I am holding the phone with my shoulder and happily sharpening away when I feel a nice bite to the stone on the blade. Didn't pay much attention to it really. Repeated the sequence a couple of more times and stop sharpening and look down at the big ass hump I put in the edge at the junction of the point and primary edge.

So the blade edge that was freakin perfect now has a big hump on the edge in the shape of a half moon right at the point juncture. The next couple of hours are spent stoning the blade and ruining a pefectly spotless finish:thumbdn: I have a long ways to go yet to make it look even close to what it was before but I will do it. What had happened is that I put the stone in the 20 deg portion of the fixture. Anyways pissed at myself for sure. keepem sharp

 

[Ebbtide]

What happened?
Did the lazyboy make a quick move on him?
And BTW, what did the phonebook ever do to you?

Sounds like you had a Stamp moment and your buddy had a Stump moment.

 

[orthogonal1]

That's strange.

The SERE I was under the impression of being a stout knife. Stabin' into a phone book ain't that big of a deal. So, the lock is giving?

The Civi you can sharpen, it's just no longer mint. Having played with furniture and serrations, I don't see how the serrations could be dulled too much (unless the metal framing/fasteners were hit). But the damage is done and you didn't perform the deed.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Stabin' into a phone book ain't that big of a deal.

Considering it is promoted as one of the strongest tactical folders in existance you would hope it would be stronger than paper. However when I stressed the SERE I have, the liner lock immediately compressed the tang, liners are generally made out of softer material than the blade and the liners mushroom when the lock is overloaded, however on the SERE the opposite happened. It is either horrible design or faulty materials/manufacture.

You can check this visually by inspecting the tang and top of the liner lock to check for deformation. Of course this is not a cause to critize the user, or for the user to blame themselves, the knife was faulty. Even the lightest folding knives like the Spyderco Calypso Jr will not get damaged under such use, it is a phone book and a steel knife. It would be like complaining if the blade snapped while you were cutting french bread because it was too crusty.

The only concern about stabbing phonebooks in general is if the blade tip has an extreme taper and the point is so weak that it will bend during the stabbing, and since it is near impossible to keep the force perpendicular you can break the blade as it turns into a prying movement. This is mainly for fillet and similar blades, even really light blades like a Deerhunter can stab into phonebooks all day long so it takes really extreme tapers.

In short, the SERE is defective, get it replaced/refund, sharpen the Civilian and all problems are solved.

-Cliff

 

[hardheart]

The lock is hardened on the S2K, I believe. But shouldn't the VG-10 of the blade be harder? Maybe grinding of the tang comes after hardening and ruins the temper in that area. I was planning on getting a mini S2K, too. Woulda been my first linerlock purchase in a while.

 

[paulwesley]

guess i wont be stabbing any phonebooks with my Nomad now!!

 

[buckg]

The only concern about stabbing phonebooks in general is if the blade tip has an extreme taper and the point is so weak that it will bend during the stabbing, and since it is near impossible to keep the force perpendicular you can break the blade as it turns into a prying movement. This is mainly for fillet and similar blades, even really light blades like a Deerhunter can stab into phonebooks all day long so it takes really extreme tapers.

You have obviously done this many times, so I don't question the correctness of your statement but I find it suprising. Phone books can stop hollow point bullets. Wet phone books are frequently used to test bullet penetration, but dry phone books are similar to hitting solid wood. I suppose that it is different for knives because they cut their way through, rather than punching their way through.

 

[TorzJohnson]

Then, about a week ago a buddy of mine asked me to order him a new civilian on e-bay. No problem. I get another great idea and convince him to take mine (with a scraped clip) and let me get the new one when it comes. If it arrived in anything but new cond. we'd trade back. So it gets here today, and is new, however it's not anywhere near as nice as my old one. The old one was seamless where the lock met the liner- the new one has a slight gap.
Also where the lock meets the blade on the back isn't smooth as before. And the new one has the little spyder on it that I don't care for. Called him to trade back and he tells me fine, but he accidentally slashed his lazyboy and dulled 2 of the serrations. F**K.

So, let me get this straight. Your friend asks you to order him a Civilian, and you immediately talk him into taking your older, cosmetically damaged one so that you can take the new one. Then, you further stack the deck in your favor by stipulating that if the new one arrives in anything but perfect new condition, you can swap back and let him have the crappy one. So now you're disappointed that the newer one was crappier, but in the meantime your friend slightly damaged the better one that you wanted to trade back.

Wow.

The moral of these stories, I think, is...

I think the moral to this story is, if you have a "friend" like Siggyhk, don't let him do you any "favors", even if for some reason you're not capable of ordering your own knife.

 

[Guyon]

What happened?
Did the lazyboy make a quick move on him?
And BTW, what did the phonebook ever do to you?

Sounds like you had a Stamp moment and your buddy had a Stump moment.

I wondered why the Lazyboy was "accidentally" slashed. Sounds premeditative to me.

Knives aren't made to stab phonebooks. Generally speaking, I'd go with a spear for this job.

That is.... if I ever actually wanted to stab a phonebook.

 

[Siggyhk]

I guess I personally just like to stab things from time to time. I couldn't really think of anything better to stab at than a phone book.

As far as my "sitpulation", I figured I was doing him a small favor, and asked for one in return. He intends to carry his civilian, and I probably wont be carring one any time soon- so I wanted a new one.

 

[TorzJohnson]

As far as my "sitpulation", I figured I was doing him a small favor, and asked for one in return.

I see. Well, it's clear that you are a true friend, then.

 

[AmadeusM]

Thanks to the original poster.

What I took out from his experience is that with folders at least, if one is to be relied on for self-defense, a custom knife is the way to go.

The cost may be significant (hint: instead of 10 production folders why not save money and buy one custom one?) for most of us, but it's still cheaper than a trip to the ER when one of those production pieces of "heirloom quality" fails and lops off a finger or two.

 

[hardheart]

except lots of customs fail as well

 

[Cliff Stamp]

...but dry phone books are similar to hitting solid wood.

Not unless the wood is balsa or similar. It isn't difficult to get a knife which can be stabbed right through a standard phonebook, 900+ pages. The same knife on a stab will be stopped in a fraction of the distance on cross grain thrust into even a medium density wood like spruce.

Phonebooks are easier to do penetration tests on than wood because they are consistent, readily available and already calibrated extremely precisely. Wood is highly variable in density, even from the same tree, and the grain flow will influence penetration massively as it can change from a split to a cut.

Contact Al Mar and see if they will actually make a public statement defending the fact that their SERE knife (check the meaning of that name) is functionally damaged by stabbing it into newsprint. No maker/manufacturer of any tactical knife would make such a statement.

-Cliff

 

[longbow]

Interesting point on the phone book. So after FIXING my PDK from W.R.Clark and before cleaning it by taking it apart I decided to stab and old phone book. This is a tanto pointed knife I have that he made. Thick liner lock, all titanium handles and a newly sharpened edge/point. These were the Yellow Pages for Monroe County towns where I live so it is pretty thick.

Now understand the knife had not been cleaned at all and was pretty slippery even to hold but it has an orange peel finish on the ti handle slabs. Kind of feels thick and tacky sort of in your hand. Ice pick grip and hit it reasonably hard. No problem at all. Got excellant penetration, no discernable wobble whatsoever. Liner didn't fail or even feel like it buckled under the shock. The reason being I belive outside of just being a stout ass knife is that the blade stop pin in hardened s.s. and is big almost .250 big. The back of the blade also is precision fit to go around the stop pin too. I mean it is a nice tight fit where they come together. I also think that the meat of my hand was keeping the liner that fully engages anyhow in place. I also didn't hit straight down on the phone book. The point was angled just a tad but back towards me which I think put more stress on the stop pin than on the liner lock.

Beats me but suffered 0 anything outside of my wife thinking I am an idiot of sorts. I think blade geometery plays a big roll along with the medium being worked. Dry phone books are very unforgiving in that they don't compress well save for a tiny bit. Nice to know that this knife held up though. If it were me and I could take the knife apart I would just to see what is going on with it. Look at the fit and all that inside the pivot area and how everything mates to every thing else. ON the Clarks I have he uses a bronze bushing over a hardened s.s. pivot and then bronze bearings(fancy term for washers) along either side of the bushing. The knife itself is mirrored where the bearing ride against that part of the knife. The back of the blade as a perfectly fitted cut out that fits tight against the stop pin. The liner lock is very thick too. Thickest liner lock I have ever owned and is cut exactly perfect to the back of the knife. Solid click when it engages. Well there you have it. Keepem sharp

PS I guess what all this says is the devil is in the details on how a knife is put together.

 

[Siggyhk]

Mr. TorzJohnson,
You obviously already know that I wont be doing you any favors, so what do you care. I mean really, why do you even waste you're time with a post like this? -Tryin to be cute? Oh, just because you have free speach and have the right? I don't understand...