Does out of the box sharpness correlate with the quality of the rest of the knife?

A

alan aragon

Joined
Dec 10, 2003
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hey knutz,

i've been pondering this question, & figured i'd throw it out there to folks who have extensive collections &/or been repeat customers of any particular brands of factory folders.

does out of the box sharpness correlate with, or usually indicate a higher level of attention to detail about the rest of a knife? i realize that the answer to this question is personal experience-based, & not necessarily across-the-board fact, just want to hear some of your own accounts. my experience with repeat purchases has been from spyderco, whose knives are always sharp as hell out of the box, and very consistently have very good build quality throughout the rest of the knife.

conversely, have you experienced purchases where little attention is paid to the sharpness of the edge, & this also corresponds with a lack of attention to detail throughout other parts of the knife?

TGI monday, everyone.
 
Yes, and no. I think it depends more on the maker of the knife than the price point. I have seen even the cheapest Spyderco come right out of the box and be very nice and sharp. I have also seen similiarly priced knives from CRK&T come out of the box not near as sharp as Spydies.

Generally though I would tend to think that as the price goes up attention to detail does to. I don't mind paying $20 for a knife that isn't really perfectly sharpened OOB. But if I payed $200 for the knife I expect it to be ready for use OOB. Of course just because we expect something doesn't mean that is the way it is. I have gotten upper range production knives that weren't all that sharp when I opened up the box. I have just pretty much come tp expect that I will need to do some amount of work to get the edge to where I want it, regardless of price.

Exceptions do exist though. CRK, Spyderco, and Microtech are amoung those who I have never gotten a bad blade from.
 
BM is known for producing very good knives at a reasonable price point, but their knives sometimes come with rather obtuse edges. I guess the general public doesn't like sharpening their knives? Anyways, it's no biggie, as long as you know how to reprofile and polish an edge.

Camillus produces fundamentally solid work, but in order to keep the prices down they sometimes leave out some finishing work. On their cheaper knives, expect to have to reprofiled the edges.
 
Will P - it's a given that the knives are gonna be sharpened eventually at the very least. for my newbie self, reprofiling is something that doesn't sound too appetizing to do on a brand new knife. perhaps when i get an edgepro, i'll be a reprofiling maniac, not batting an eye at the notion. but that's aside from the point of the question. i've generally heard good stuff about camillus, especially their darrel ralph designs.

ErikD - you're cool with paying $20 for a new knife? a folder? you're a brave & brazen dude :D.. agreed about the brands you mentioned, at least the ones i've handled.
 
Some of the dullest knives I have purchased have been customs. Although the edge would struggle with cold butter the rest of the knives were exceptional in their quality. One quick sharpen later and the whole knife was exceptional.

Other times I have bought very cheep beaters, where the blade was simple marked "Stainless", and where the edge would shave a gnat's arse without drawing blood. This level of sharpness lasted a day at best.

So no, I would say the sharpness of a knife is it's least indication of quality.
 
I've yet to see a Benchmade that had OOB sharpness that was superior to a Victorinox SAK.
 
cold steel knives (not their tomahawks :( )come with incredibly sharp edges but the quality control is rather lacking.

my benchmade balis were always good and sharp out of the box but my friends ambush folder came sharp but had lock up problems.

so to me i don't judge how sharp something is out of box to overall quality.
 
witchhunter makes a good point. Judging the quality of a knife based on OOB sharpness alone isn't something that I tend to do. Sharpening a knife is one of the few things that an end user can do to improve the knife without much problem. If you get a knife with good lockup, good fit and finish, but a dull blade would you send it back? Sharpening up a knife is part of regular use, and also everybody has a different idea of what the ideal sharpness is. Some might want a blade as sharp as it can get, even if just cutting up a box will quickly dull it. Others want a knife that can hack through everything and anything that might come up, and keep cutting.

alan - I will admit to having a few knives in the $20 or under category. One of the best knives in that category is the Opinel, I got the thing super sharp easily. But my experience with those knives is really more just in passing not use.
 
Judging a knife by the one thing that is most likely to be changed by the end user is kinda useless IMO.

Some of my BM's are scary sharp (Ritter Grip). Some have not been.

Part of the problem here is what is "sharp" to each person. To a person that does all of thier own sharpening, has used knives for years, if not decades, sharp is not the same thing as it is to a person that's new to knives, or doesn't sharpen thier own.

I've been handed knives with people saying "check out this edge" and have not been impressed at all, even though I'm not a great sharpener myself. So much of it is personal perception I think.
 
This was a debate by guitar makers for a long time-set up the action, and tune at the factory, or hope the salespeople do it. In the case of guitars, any instrument that can be set up at the factory, go through 110 temperature changes, and countless hands banging them around, and still come out ok at the store is a major selling point for me. While edge sharpness may not speak volumes about the knife, it sure does say a lot about the manufacturer.
 
hmmm... the more i think about this, i kind of tend to be of the thought that God dwells in the details. this leads me to have a certain level of suspicion about total quality control of the knife's manufacturing process if the edge is substandard out of the box. but as someone brought up, folks have different standards of sharpness & what actually defines "sharp enough". as it stands, it would just plain bother me to have a dull-feeling edge with a crappy bevel job/angle right out of the box. perhaps i need to get over it, or just hurry up & get an edge pro, heh.
 
I don't think there is a correlation between how well a knife is sharpened by its maker or producing factory and overall quality. I've just seen too much variance here across the entire price spectrum and many brands of production knives.

I've only had one new knife, a mid-range Sypderco, that I've not felt compeled to re-sharpen myself and I have more than a few knives. Yet, I'll freely admit I'm very fussy about my edges.

I do think Spyderco does the best in this arena overall though. But, like most large producers, they have knives made in several different locations and use different factories. I also think they do the best job on their VG10 bladed models.
 
I have a CR Shadow III and a Sable IV that both came less than sharp. Afew minutes with my Sharpmaker fixed them both. Never did quality come into question.
 
It depends. All the edge will tell you is what kind of edge the maker likes on his knives, or in some cases where he cuts corners to save time. Let's take as an example Busse. I love their knives, I really do, they're tough, they take a good edge and hold it a good long time, the plunge cuts are nice and clean(often a telltale sign of grinding skill and attention to detail) but the edges.. nothing wrong with them persay, they'll shave, and cut okay, but when I look at them I just think "man that looks nasty, gonna have to do some work with that" and then reprofile the edge to a more acute angle and bring the polish up a bit, or go with a slack belt and wide convex bevel. Cold steel who has (or had at least) great repute on factory edges just don't work well for me, they're too polished, push cut good but they can't slice for the life of them. Spydercos factory edges are the closest match to what i consider a good edge, but even those get a little polishing on a strop before they get the green light most of the time. I've seen very good edges of knives that were utter crap, and more than a fair share of really bad edges on Benchmades and other upper tier factory knives.
 
I wouldn't necessarily tie out of box sharpness to quality. Its a matter of economics... that final perfect stropped/buffed edge takes a lot of time and if you are talking mass production, even high quality like Benchmade, say, it would add a lot of time=money to the final knife. I'm more concerned with primary grinds - if they are off significantly, then the quality or quality control might be suspect. I don't mind doing a little work on a new knife to get it where I want it, but if I had to completely regrind or rebevel it, that's a worry.
 
I'd say no. Some of my better knives (better as in not cheap junk) came out of the box reasonably sharp, but not as sharp as they coudl be. Some junk knives came really sharp (and some came dull as a stick). I'd say there is no correlation between knife quality and whether they're shipped super-sharp in general, although certain manufacturers will consistently display the correlation (goiod manufacturer = sharp knife, POS manufacturer = dull knife).
 
I think of it this way, if you can't sell me a knife with a super sharp factory edge on it how am I supposed to feel about the rest of the knife. The edge is a fairly "key" part of the overall tool and a maker's inability (or unwillingness) to hone it to perfection before the sale speaks volumes.

I remeber reading a post on these forums in which a customer called a certain company to complain about a dull edge on a recent purchase. The customer service rep told him (in so many words) that if he couldn't sharpen it himself why did he buy it? And that it would eventually need sharpening anyways even if it would have come sharp originally. While this is true, it was a heck of a thing to say to a guy that just dropped over a hundred smackers on that company's product. And this was a "premier" production knife company.

A keen factory edge can be put on a $3 knockoff and a dull edge can be put on the latest two hundred dollar tactical mall ninja super folder. So therefore factory edges are certainly not the sole indicator of quality. But the lack of a sharp edge on a "quality" knife is quite quite disturbing.
 
I normaly find that knives come with a burr that needs a fair bit of stropping. Once thats sorted I find the better knives will feel sharper. Victorinox seems to have very good edges on their knives though. The swiss tools I've seen when new have all been worse though
 
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