DPx HEST FOLDER OVERVIEW -- Production Version

Ultimate

Ultimate

Joined
Jul 5, 2009
Messages
1,107


There isn't really a format for this overview. I will just mention whatever comes to mind and try to show pictures explaining what I mean.

For some reason, ImageShack decided to rotate many of my images 90 degrees.

I received this knife last Friday and have spent some time using/playing with it.

First, some comparison pictures:




It feels great in the hand; I have large hands and have plenty of room.


Blade centering is perfect


This blade is thick!


The tip of mine is not exposed in the closed position.


You can see where they sanded the tang in order to correct the problem


However, when the blade is closed, the edge is very close to the spine of the knife. I can easily touch the blade just by resting a finger on the spine. I could not really find a good angle to show this. I also have no idea why imageshack made the picture vertical


The texture of the G10 is great. Not too aggressive and not too smooth. It looks cool too :D


The coating on the blade is sweet. It's very smooth and very durable. I cut through a bunch of treated lumber and you can barely see any wear.


The thumbstuds are HUGE. They grab my pants when trying to clip the knife in.



The clip is alright. It allows the knife to ride as deep as possible in your pocket. It was very weak when I got the knife though. I could easily slide it from side to side across the handle. I took the clip out, bent it, and now it has the perfect tension.



The bottle opener works pretty well. I've heard that it's better than the fixed HEST but I don't have one so I wouldn't know. It does work like a wave. I waved it open on the first try - real easy.


The lockbar is massive and locks at about 50%.


This knife uses nylon washers. Not sure if I like these; I would have preferred a metal/alloy of some kind.


You DO NOT need the skull tool to take down the knife. The pivot accommodates an allen key.


For me, the rotoblock is useless but it does work. When the blade is open, rotating the rotoblock moves the tab shown below into a cutout in the lockbar. This prevents the lockbar from being pushed back over. It also acts as a stop and prevents you from pushing the lockbar over too much when unlocking the blade.


Here is what the rotoblock looks like taken apart:


Here is a better look at the washers. You can't really tell in this picture, but the detent hole is deep and not tapered.


The scales and handle require some messing with but eventually come right off.


You can see how the clip is mounted here:


I could not get a picture of this but the edge grind was pretty off center. One side was ground much more than the other. The two sides are ground at significantly different angles.

This is also my first experience with D2. I love it so far. It sharpens well and has pretty good wear resistance. Really takes a nice edge.

This was my biggest issue with the knife:
When I first received it, the blade was IMPOSSIBLE to open with thumb pressure only. The lockbar just had so much tension pushing the ball into the detent on the blade. Eventually I took the knife apart and bent the lock bar out (you have to remove the rotoblock to do this). I wound up pushing the bar over too much and the result was a VERY sloppy lock up. I could wiggle the blade up and down and hear the clicking noise of the tang hitting the lockbar face, though the lock never failed. I lived with this for a day until I took the knife apart again so I could bend the lockbar back over. This worked somewhat as there is significantly less up and down play. There is still a very small amount though. I will have to take the knife apart and try bending it over a little bit more.

Overall, once the kinks are worked, the HEST folder is truly a hard-use, tough little knife. :thumbup:

If you have specific questions or want to see a specific picture, I'd be happy to help.
 
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Ultimate said:
I've heard that it's better than the fixed HEST but I don't have one so I wouldn't know.
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I guess is called "better" because you can open the bottle with the knife closed
Other than that I see no difference, and I've used them both, finding them equally effective, 2 lifts
I like to open the bottles with the Ti Skull tool, it does take around 3 lifts as opposed to 2 from the knife, anyway, it is a cool small item to carry around
How do you open the bottles with the production Skull Tool ? Is it the big hole that counts as a mouth that doubles as a bottle opener ?
Thanks
 
Great job on the review ;) I'm surprised this is the very first time I heard about the pivot screw also being hex compatible.

I recall seeing several pictures of just delivered knives with the four spanned holes looking a little beat up from someone in the delivery chain tightening the pivot screw with the Skull key. Maybe they should have used an Allen wrench instead.
 
Perhaps but I never saw it in print here myself


And I still recall seeing a picture of a beat up pivot on the four little span holes from someone from the dealer or MFG using the Skull tool instead of a hex to tighten the pivot. No biggie though. It's all water under the bridge at this point

jacktrades_nbk said:
I thought the pivot screw being hex compatible was well known...
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Reeek said:
Perhaps but I never saw it in print here myself


And I still recall seeing a picture of a beat up pivot on the four little span holes from someone from the dealer or MFG using the Skull tool instead of a hex to tighten the pivot. No biggie though. It's all water under the bridge at this point
Click to expand...

Yep, I saw that picture also.
 
Mine was stiff to open at first too. At the end of the first day I was ready to put that down as a negative. After a couple more days though it smoothed out a lot and became possible to flick open. There seems to be a break-in phase.
 
Thanks for that detailed review and photos. While there have been some problems with this new design, your pictures show the rugged construction of the HEST folder.
 
Great review. Nice pics. Designer comments.

Rotoblock is there to make sure it never folds on you. You don't have to use it but it essentially makes the knife a fixed unit. I like that.

Its not really designed to be a "flick it open" knife" .Although it can be deployed much faster than many other folding knives. Its a hard use knife with a very solid lock bar engagement and of course the Rotoblock makes it a solid unit

there is some seating required when it comes out of the box. A week or so of obsessive playing with a new toy is about average. :)

Under normal use thumb pressure is all you need to adjust the pivot tension. The tool is more for swapping out the glass breaker screw for the round one.

Any HEST/F owner who wants a new hex pivot (or anything that is not perfect) just needs to contact customerservice@dpxgear.com and get a free replacement. LE owners get the Rolls Royce treatment whenever they want. As you may have noticed we enjoy supporting our customers and are happy to make your knife working perfectly for it's lifetime.



The DPx HEST system is field expedient. We fully expect customers to tweak, modify and repair our tools as they see fit. All important items will be on our list of tweaks for the second run.
Bottle opener is on First Run Titanium Tool. But don't be surprised to see a different Mr DP skull tool for each run ;)

What I want to see (cuz the knife was designed for this) is someone using this knife in Afghanistan, the Mahgreb, Iraq, Somalia, Congo, Colombia etc

Hell I will even take the backwoods or mean streets
 
Ultimate said:
This knife uses nylon washers. Not sure if I like these; I would have preferred a metal/alloy of some kind.
Click to expand...

I remember RYP saying they were Teflon and not Nylon... maybe he can clarify this.

RYP said:
LE owners get the Rolls Royce treatment....
Click to expand...

I trust you'll be delivering the remaining LE's in this:

phantlimo.jpg
 
Ultimate said:
However, when the blade is closed, the edge is very close to the spine of the knife. I can easily touch the blade just by resting a finger on the spine.
Click to expand...
- RYP, is this one of the things that will possibly be fixed in the next production run? It's a little unnerving to be able to touch the blade when the knife is closed.
 
Joben said:
Mine was stiff to open at first too. At the end of the first day I was ready to put that down as a negative. After a couple more days though it smoothed out a lot and became possible to flick open. There seems to be a break-in phase.
Click to expand...

Some are so stiff, that won't get it. Everybody who has ever owned any knife at all can tell when something is wrong. Some of them are far too stiff to ever "break in". Don't mistake normal "wear in" thinking that your knife is like all the others. It is not. Having used two good ones and one clunker, I am in a position to know.
 
Horn Dog said:
Some are so stiff, that won't get it. Everybody who has ever owned any knife at all can tell when something is wrong. Some of them are far too stiff to ever "break in". Don't mistake normal "wear in" thinking that your knife is like all the others. It is not. Having used two good ones and one clunker, I am in a position to know.
Click to expand...

I think this was my experience. This was my first framelock but I could instantly tell it was WAY too stiff. I emailed customer service and hopefully they can work things out. I really love the knife, just need to get this straightened out.
 
RYP said:
Its not really designed to be a "flick it open" knife" .Although it can be deployed much faster than many other folding knives.
Click to expand...
Horn dog says his deploys faster than his ZT 301. Ya, that could happen. :D
 
I got one of the LE Mr. DP versions (with the slightly protruding tip), that seemed more than a little stiff when opening. Since this was going to be a user, I thought I'd take a crack at tweaking it. First thing was loosening the pivot, which was cranked down so tightly that opening was a two hand affair. They must have had me confused with someone living in Canada. Much like my tiger-striped Striders, and a few other DLC coated knives, the action smoothed out considerably after a couple hundred openings as the blade coating became polished off the path of the detent ball. The process happens a lot faster with a little flitz if you're impatient. I also took the knife apart to fix the protruding tip (which really was a nonissue is terms of snagging, but bothered me aesthetically). All it took was a very light sanding at the base of the blade where it touched the stop pin when closed. However, after fixing the tip issue and putting it back together, the knife was once again ridiculously hard to open to the point of being dangerous. Taking it apart again, I noticed that the detent hole for this knife is pretty large compared to my other knives, and the sides are not chamfered in the slightest. By sanding that little portion of the blade, I had somehow significantly increased the detent. I assume the ball now sat further into the hole, and the sharp sides made it hard to get the blade started when opening. So what was originally a very strong detent became an impossibly strong detent. I ended up sanding the tiniest amount (and I really do mean the tiniest) to soften the sharp edge of the hole. That completely solved the issue. The knife now is now one of my favorite EDCs. Fairly strong detent, but snaps open when I want. Since my past experiences with trying to bend lockbars has been hit-or-miss, I'm glad this worked out. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with this knife, though I think I would prefer if they offered one without a coating. And I'd be perfectly happy without the glassbreaker (which I promptly removed, after the first time it poked me). Honestly, I think the quality is very comparable to other popular knives in a similar price range, and actually seems like a pretty good deal to me considering the number of features the knife has. However, I think that my perspective is probably tempered by the fact that at one point or another I've gotten knives with "issues" from practically every company I've ever bought from. Others might feel differently.
 
I received mine about a week ago.
The blade grind is symmetrical and sharp as hell.

Lock up is about the same maybe a little shy of 50%.

The edge on mine is not as close when closed.

I did the same thing with my clip, there was not nearly enough pressure to keep it firmly in one spot in my pocket.

It was tough to open at first. I DO NOT bend lock bars it just seems like a bad idea to me. I have had numerous Striders and other frame locks so the stiffness was normal to me. I took it apart cleaned it with some CLP and lubed it with some Miltec 1 grease. Then after reassembly I loosened the pivot slightly back from hand tight and worked it. After a few days of opening and closing and a little no. 2 pencil lead on the tang she is mighty smooth.

My overall impression is that this is one hell of a knife. Thanks to everyone involved for getting this into my pocket.
 
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Just an update:

Sent the knife back to DPx to have them look at the lock. Tracking says it arrived there today so I will update this again when I get the knife back. Looking forward to it!
 
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