edge hitting the spring and poor finish

Mad_Maxx

Mad_Maxx

Joined
Nov 29, 2007
Messages
2,519
so, here I am again :D

I bought about 15 slipjoints for some friends of an italian forum, I have a 3D there where I try "with my limit"s to show the wonderful world of these knives
most of these are GEC's as I like the company and their knives, like many here

a friend bought 5 slippis with the buy group and he has just contacted me ( I had seen them when I got the package containing all knives)
he got a case xx canoe with is perfect and fine, a queen doctor and 3 riverboat gamblers from GEC

so, the queen has the usual butter edge, the knife has been just ground and polished, the edge on the main blade is like the "edge" of the spatula, the knife needs brutal reprofiling to get to an edge

the 3 gamblers are wonderful snakewood and have great finish, unfortunately all 3 have the edge that hits the spring at the central pin height, one has a bad chip there, the edges are just approximate and won't cut almost anything

I have 8 GEC's and one has the blade touching the spring ( a 73#...) if I close the knife without accompanying the blade (wich I always do!), all have either a poor or almost no edge, the all need reprofiling and sharpening

so, why do GEC and Queen put little effort and/or attention to the edges? they build knives like casexx kershaw and spyderco do!
and why do have springs to have a neclected QC at the central pin height? in some I've seen a kind of burr rising at the center, exactly where the edge gets a nick
in others the back of the spring is flush and well made

I'm sending an email to GEC tomorrow, I love their knives and quality, prices are not high but not even cheap, it would take very little effort to grind the spring correctly and give a working edge to them
even checking for play takes little as it takes little to hammer bolsters with little more force

apologize for the vent, it's 00:30 here too :D
what do you guys think?

cheers!
Maxx
 
I think I have 8 GEC's and 5 Queen's and none of them have a problem with the edge hitting the spring. But all but one of them came with dull or poor edges on them.

I was surprised to find that my most recent GEC, a #66 Serpentine Jack, had a good, usable edge on both blades. Not hair popping sharp but plenty good enough to use the knife right out of the box.

I am hoping that it's a good sign of things to come but I don't know. I have another GEC on the way that I should get next week. Hopefully it will have a good edge too but I won't hold my breath.

I agree that they could easily put a better edge on the knives before shipping them out. I mean it's a knife for cryin out loud. If I bought razors that I needed to sharpen before I could use them I would be very dissapointed to say the least.

I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that GEC has made improvements in that regard and that my #66 wasn't just a fluke.
 
I've been buying GECs almost from the very beginning, and I have seen improvement recently in their blade sharpness. The only knife out of over 100 that has hit the spring has been my Queen #06L teardrop linerlock. As it was quite dull as well, I sent it to Jason (knifenut1013 here on BFC) and he took enough off in the sharpening to keep it from touching the spring any more. I EDC it pretty regularly now, and it's a joy to use.
 
I think it can happen to any knife from any company.

I have a pair of older Case Gunboats made under contract by Bluegrass Cutlery. They're beautiful knives, but the bump created by the center pin holding the springs is sufficiently high to ding the blades. An email to Case showed they were unwilling to rectify the problem...saying I had to contact Bluegrass. Rather than send the knives into the ether, I made a special circumference-only grinding tool and fixed it myself. I've other older Case knives with no such problem, and new ones both good and bad.

Speaking only for myself, I'd much rather deal with a dull factory edge than problems with springs, clearance, uneven grinds, etc.
 
Knives should not be sent out that hit the backspring, it's a major fault in my book. Must be a real nuisance for you to fix that from Italy.

The GECs do come with variable edges and their carbon seems quite hard steel so re sharpening/profiling can take some time. Seems about 50% of my GECs arrive with good edges, so they can do it and should improve their standard there, oddly enough the Tidioutes seem to come sharper than the Northfields, could be co-incidence though.

The situation with Queen is odd. Their carbon knives come beautifully sharp and really well edged but the D2 is usually woeful with regard edge. I have to say that this makes me suspect that Queen simply doesn't have reliable or modern enough machinery to bevel and sharpen the D2 properly, it's hard stuff after all. But they need to make more effort on this front. Yes, I know everybody likes to put an edge on a knife and they will get blunt, but they should arrive sharp in the first place-it's easier to maintain them.
 
having an edge from the factory is easier to resharpen than having to reprofile it
blade wobble/play and aproxximated kicks should be easy to spot and correct, I think they now allo how to build a knife and so how these errors happen

for the price I think that a little more attention or slightly better QC would make huge changes in the final quality

Maxx
 
maxx i have commented frequently on the edge quality of queens & gecs. the edges are so poor that i am really surprised if i get a knife that would open an envelope. the queen d2 presents a real challenge to individuals w/o diamonds. since i've been greatly interested in knives for many years i have power equipment plus edge pro & every diamond hone made. gec carbon [1095] is at a solid 58 on the r.r. & when sharp one of my favorite alloys. queen d2 will almost certainly defeat a novice's effort to sharpen at 61r.r. the gec gamblers edge -spring problem is new to me since i did'nt buy that pattern.certainly it's inexcusable since gec doe'nt make millions of knives a year, i feel that the price charged by gec should guarantee problems such as this are very very few, & corrected when requested by the customer.
dennis
 
Dennis tanks for the answer

my friend refuses to send them back so he is going to keep them even with the problems
for the asked price, some better QC is all I ask, sharpening edges shouldn't be that difficult either...
the quality on gecs is high and the HT is top notch and that's why I have 8 and 2 on order

I have 0 problems with gec's 1095 and CS's D2, I use strop and sandpaper, with a good method/hand and patience I can get them scary sharp, no high tech equipment and I'm not a huge person (55kgs) with lotsa force

the CS was decently sharp , took the same time as reprofiling the gec so no problem for me even if I have hard hrc (never sharpened zdp or sgps though, yet)

GEC is getting an email from me, a good one with some good helping points and suggestions

cheers
Maxx
 
This thing about the edge contacting the backspring has come up in some other threads before. I think it's my #1 pet peeve, from a QC standpoint, in any knife. And it's not just the high-volume production companies, either. I've noticed this problem in probably as many $200+ customs as I have in 'cheaper' production knives. I see it, in particular, on knives with fairly wide blades which are nested deeply in the handles (makes sense).

On the upside, virtually all of these knives can be fixed with just a mild sharpening/reprofile of the edge. Takes off just enough metal to keep it off the backspring. Only exceptions being the REALLY POORLY EXECUTED knives that have little or no kick, and the blade edge is the only thing stopping it when closing. I have one in particular, a 'tactical' style production linerlock with FRN handle. The FRN spacer at the back of the handle is the only thing (literally) keeping the blade from swinging all the way through the handle upon closing. The edge SMACKS it pretty crisply every time the knife closes. Thought it was kind of a cool sound, until I realized what was actually going on (:mad:).
 
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