well, i finally got my commander, wanted one ever since i got into knives and finally broke down and bought one. I've heard mixed reviews about this nice and despite the it's shortcomings and it's overpriced cost i still wanted one
for lock up i give this knife an 8 - the lock up is solid but the titanium liners are WAY too thin, especially for something that claims to be the number one hard use knife. nevertheless the lock up seems to be fine, doesn't close on a pretty hard spine whack. but still the thin liners doesn't instill confidence, there is little side to side blade play which can be eliminated by tightening the pivot screw but by doing that the knife is too hard to open and a bet counterproductive considering it's wave feature
for the smoothness i give it an 7.5 - it's pretty smooth but not that smooth, smoother then a 100 spyderco chinese folder yet only about the same as a 50 dollar Camillus EDC, how weird
for fit and finish i give it a 6 - overall the fit and finish is pretty good but i gave it a lower score cause for the 165 dollars i paid for it i expected more. the grind on the liner i pretty bad with lots of marks, my kershaw boa (90 bucks) with very similar construction in regards to scale and liner has much better grind and the scales and liner match up better too and the boa uses aluminum which imo is harder to work with then g10 since g10 has some flexibility to it. the black coating on the pivot pin started flaking off the moment i touched it with a screwdriver to adjust the tension, just great... and the stop pin is so small, once again for something called the number one hard use knife i expected it to be overbuilt not underbuilt
for the handle i give it a 9.5 - excellent ergos and it's big enough to get a really good grip on, the g10 is very grippy and all in all it's wonderful but in don't think anything is perfect henceforth the 9.5 score
for the blade i give it a 7.5 - the fact that it is sharpened on one side imo is simply retarded, at least for edc utility uses, since it's mainly a "hard use" knife which i translate to a hacking and chopping knife and a SD knife i guess the one sided edge makes sense, the knife was not too sharp out of the box, took me about 45 minutes to sharpen it down to a 20 degree angle with diamond stones, i think this might be kinda counterproductive since now the edge is probabl too thin for hard use. oh well i'll see how good the emerson 154cm is. the blade shape is wonderful i love recurves so that pretty much sums it up on that. the coating i find to be completely unecessary. somepeople who work near the ocean might say it's a good thing but 154cm is pretty stainless already and i hate coatings of any kind since they all eventually come off, and this hard chrome coating is suppose to be really strong yet, after i stabbed the knife repeatedly into three layers of cardboard about 20 times the coating from teh very tip of the knife chipped off already, guess it ain't THAT strong.
for the strength of the overall knife i give it a 8 - before i sharpened it to 20 degrees i believe the edge came from the factory at 25. so out of the box i decided to hack some stuff with it. i started hacking at three layers of cardboard and each whack up down at least an inch which is not bad i guess since i wasn't like whacking it all that hard, also each time i stabbed the three layers of cardboard i can get the knife through all the way up to the thumstud which i find pretty darn good, the really thick tip does inspire confidence when stabbing hard materials and the handle always makes my hands feel safe.
overall i think i gave the knife really good scores despite the bad things i had to say about it. All in all i really like this knife but i SERIOUSLY think that at 219 msrp and around 160 street price the knife is WAY overpriced. At around 120 i think it would make much more sense, cause for 120 i can get a benchmade with an axis lock thats smoother, has a stronger lockup and is of better quality
for lock up i give this knife an 8 - the lock up is solid but the titanium liners are WAY too thin, especially for something that claims to be the number one hard use knife. nevertheless the lock up seems to be fine, doesn't close on a pretty hard spine whack. but still the thin liners doesn't instill confidence, there is little side to side blade play which can be eliminated by tightening the pivot screw but by doing that the knife is too hard to open and a bet counterproductive considering it's wave feature
for the smoothness i give it an 7.5 - it's pretty smooth but not that smooth, smoother then a 100 spyderco chinese folder yet only about the same as a 50 dollar Camillus EDC, how weird
for fit and finish i give it a 6 - overall the fit and finish is pretty good but i gave it a lower score cause for the 165 dollars i paid for it i expected more. the grind on the liner i pretty bad with lots of marks, my kershaw boa (90 bucks) with very similar construction in regards to scale and liner has much better grind and the scales and liner match up better too and the boa uses aluminum which imo is harder to work with then g10 since g10 has some flexibility to it. the black coating on the pivot pin started flaking off the moment i touched it with a screwdriver to adjust the tension, just great... and the stop pin is so small, once again for something called the number one hard use knife i expected it to be overbuilt not underbuilt
for the handle i give it a 9.5 - excellent ergos and it's big enough to get a really good grip on, the g10 is very grippy and all in all it's wonderful but in don't think anything is perfect henceforth the 9.5 score
for the blade i give it a 7.5 - the fact that it is sharpened on one side imo is simply retarded, at least for edc utility uses, since it's mainly a "hard use" knife which i translate to a hacking and chopping knife and a SD knife i guess the one sided edge makes sense, the knife was not too sharp out of the box, took me about 45 minutes to sharpen it down to a 20 degree angle with diamond stones, i think this might be kinda counterproductive since now the edge is probabl too thin for hard use. oh well i'll see how good the emerson 154cm is. the blade shape is wonderful i love recurves so that pretty much sums it up on that. the coating i find to be completely unecessary. somepeople who work near the ocean might say it's a good thing but 154cm is pretty stainless already and i hate coatings of any kind since they all eventually come off, and this hard chrome coating is suppose to be really strong yet, after i stabbed the knife repeatedly into three layers of cardboard about 20 times the coating from teh very tip of the knife chipped off already, guess it ain't THAT strong.
for the strength of the overall knife i give it a 8 - before i sharpened it to 20 degrees i believe the edge came from the factory at 25. so out of the box i decided to hack some stuff with it. i started hacking at three layers of cardboard and each whack up down at least an inch which is not bad i guess since i wasn't like whacking it all that hard, also each time i stabbed the three layers of cardboard i can get the knife through all the way up to the thumstud which i find pretty darn good, the really thick tip does inspire confidence when stabbing hard materials and the handle always makes my hands feel safe.
overall i think i gave the knife really good scores despite the bad things i had to say about it. All in all i really like this knife but i SERIOUSLY think that at 219 msrp and around 160 street price the knife is WAY overpriced. At around 120 i think it would make much more sense, cause for 120 i can get a benchmade with an axis lock thats smoother, has a stronger lockup and is of better quality
I gave mine to friends who like them but don't know much about what makes a good knife. Like a few other knife companies out there it is all just HYPE!!!
)
Very cool knife!