Factory ege is irrelevant

I'm interested in what some of the knife makers on the forums think about the subject.

Any of you guys reading this thread?

Allen.
 
Buying a knife from a manufacturer or maker that's not sharp and ready for use is about as bad getting a used pair of underwear. :D A sharp edge is part of a completely made knife. If you have to sharpen it when you get it, I wouldn't buy it. I've bought knives that were not ready to go and it pissed me off. I would never think of letting a knife out of my shop unless it was popping hair and slivering newsprint. Sharp=happy customer, dull=pissed off customer. Just my two cents. :)
Scott
 
I prefer to buy knives from makers who know how to sharpen a knife.

(I also prefer to buy guitars that don't immediately need a setup and cars that don't immediately need an alignment.)

Most importantly, time is money, and we shouldn't have to spend a couple of hours (presuming we know how) to reprofile an edge fresh out of the box.
 
Shmackey said:
I prefer to buy knives from makers who know how to sharpen a knife.

(I also prefer to buy guitars that don't immediately need a setup and cars that don't immediately need an alignment.)

Most importantly, time is money, and we shouldn't have to spend a couple of hours (presuming we know how) to reprofile an edge fresh out of the box.
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No offense intended, but if it takes ya'll ( whoever that encompasses ) a couple of hours to reprofile and edge, it really sounds like you are going about it the very very hard & slow way.

And equating sharpening a knife to some of the analogies put forth in this thread is really pretty silly. Some more than others.

How are you going to know if it's heat treated right?
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By using it, same as I would any other knife, obviously.
 
mike_mck2 said:
No offense intended, but if it takes ya'll ( whoever that encompasses ) a couple of hours to reprofile and edge, it really sounds like you are going about it the very very hard & slow way.

And equating sharpening a knife to some of the analogies put forth in this thread is really pretty silly. Some more than others.
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OK--one hour. It would probably take me about an hour to take a crappy edge (e.g., 1999 Benchmade) to polished-Spydie condition. Maybe I'm slow. I dunno. I still think knifemakers should know how to sharpen knives, and I think it reflects poorly on them if they don't or won't.
 
mike_mck2 said:
And equating sharpening a knife to some of the analogies put forth in this thread is really pretty silly. Some more than others.



By using it, same as I would any other knife, obviously.
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I meant how are you (the manufacturer) going to know if it's heat treated correctly.
 
Some people want a good knife ready, but don't chop stuff all day and resharpen it every 24 hours. People do use knife sharpening services, which should tell you that there are these kinds of users out there. Why start with a knife that already needs service?

It doesn't matter too much to an enthusiast or someone who learned to sharpen them good themselves due to frequent need, but a knife can be TOO bad out of the box and make the initial sharpening a major pain in the neck. I have had knives from Buck and Benchmade which had very steep edges and required almost an hour of careful work to re-profile. A slightly dull edge is easy to fix. A 45-degree grind would be annoying to have to fix.

I wouldn't write a whole review on a single knife's factory edge though. It only takes one or two sentences to say if the edge was very sharp, kind of sharp, or needed a full sharpening job.
 
I guess I'm in the minority here.
If we are talking production, using knives, I'd put fit and finish above OOB sharpness.
I can sharpen a knife.

I'm old enough to remember when axes, fixed blades and slip joints were sold semi-sharp/dull. You were expected to sharpen them yourself...put 'your own edge' on them.

I bought a knife, at a show from a custom maker (whose name I won't mention because he doesn't go online and he's a helluva nice guy), he said to me "once you sharpen that up, it'll cut like no tomorrow" The knife was darn close to sharp, but not bladeforums sharp, ya know?
He didn't fell comfortable having a table full of razor sharp steel at a show where a good number of customers don't know much about sharp.
Is is less of a knife?
No.
The grinds are stellar, the fit and finish great and materials are top shelf.
I sharpened it and it cuts like no tomorrow, now.

Now this is my opinion only...but...I think this is yet another search/grab for market share in a market where the product is man's oldest tool.
How can I make my knife different from all the others?
I'll sell mine blazingly sharp, buffed mirror edges that'll push cut newspaper. No one else is doing that.

BlackJack Sharp. Remember that phrase?
Nothing wrong with it. But they were the first, that I remember, to taut sharp as a selling point.
Cold Steel had tough and, while they didn't coin a phrase, they made up stickers cautioning about their sharp blades. And IIRC used sharp as a selling point too.
Sharp as a selling point worked so well, it has become a standard feature.
Kind of like power windows in a car.

The knife has been around for half of forever.
It is hard to put new twists on something that old. Blade shapes are well explored, we know what works and what doesn't. Same for handles and to a lesser extent, materials.

You could sell me a stupid sharp knife, and I'd have to mess with it...put my own edge on it, anyway.
Now if I got a high dollar custom delivered directly from the maker of course I'd like it to be sharp. But I'd communicate that when we originally talked about making the knife.
Production?
F&F, proper grinds, materials are higher on the list.
Call me old school.
:D
 
I guess I fall in with pretty well the majority of you guys on this one. I don't expect factory made knives to come as sharp as I'd have them, but I do expect them to be usably sharp from the box. Like Ebbtide says, I'll soon enough be putting "my own edge" on any knife I own, but I expect the makers to have enough pride in their work to ensure that the knife leaves the factory with a servicable edge and a good, central grind.
If the knife is made well, is of the right steel and materials and suits the purpose I want it for, I'm perfectly willing to spend a little time reprofiling the edge if that will make the knife into the tool I want. In recent months I've bought two Buck/Striders, one fixed blade and one folder, that I knew by reputation to be tough SOB's. As both are marketed as "tactical" knives, I fully expected them to come with steeply ground edges (for strength). I wasn't disappointed, but a little time with the honing kit soon saw them both with fine, mirrored edges that are scary sharp. Both knives would shave out of the box, and had perfectly central grinds. Had the grinds been bad, they would have gone back to the maker.
I do like to buy a knife thats sharp, but I don't expect any mass produced blade to have the kind of edge on it that I can produce. I've never bought a true "custom" blade, but I know that if I did I would expect it to arrive honed to at least as good an edge as I can produce if not better. After all, I'd be paying a lot of money to a professional to make the thing by hand, and would expect him to have the skill, the pride, and devote the time, to making the thing as perfect as possible before shipping.
 
Knives should come out of the box sharp, IMHO. A dull knife is a dangerous one and I believe the manufacturer has a responsibility to make sure their customer is safe. When I buy a knife I expect it to function well right away, not to function well after I spend another hundred dollars on equipment and hours of research on profiling...

I could understand if you were buying a Katana though.. The high-end katanas come with no edge, and you get it sharpened by a master who spends a few months on the stone - thats a different story.

-- Vince.
 
Bah. A knife is a tool, and any one who uses a tool has to expect to maintain it, so what does it matter if the first time you have to maintain it is when you get it out of the box, rather than after the first day's use?

Anyway, I have my sharpening methods, which no doubt differ from the factory's methods. I don't want someone else's sharpening getting in the way of mine - I want a dull edge that I can make my own. To me, putting that first edge on is part of owning a knife; I do it anyway, so I never even notice factory edges.


Although this all goes out the window for show knives, which a high percentage of knives round here seem to be. I can't fault knife collectors for wanting NIB sharpness; if you're not planning on heavy use, you can expect to go quite a while without sharpening, so maybe the NIB edge matters more than on a 'working' knife.
 
jim_w said:
Bah. A knife is a tool, and any one who uses a tool has to expect to maintain it, so what does it matter if the first time you have to maintain it is when you get it out of the box, rather than after the first day's use?
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MANY MANY customers!!! I have had customers locally and those serving overseas ask for us to check the edge to make sure it's shaving sharp. Why? For one thing, they expect it to be sharp upon reciept. Would you buy a hammer you had to install the handle on yourself? I wouldn't.

Many people do NOT have the sharpening skills or passion for knives that many of us do have and would like a sharp knife when they pay what they do. I have seen a few knives from cheap to expensive that still have a slight burr or "rope edge" and to me, that is a small case of quality control.

Buying a dull knife is like buy a ferrari missing a door. :)
 
Anyone buying a 'working' knife will be able to sharpen it, and will expect to. As I say, people wanting knives to put in a cabinet and fondle every now-and-again might think differently, but if the knife is going to be used for real work, then it's owner will know how to sharpen it, and will take pride in doing that. I'm sure I'm not the only person who re-sharpens new knives at once... It's about knowing your tools and taking responsibility for maintaining them.

When I buy a frying pan, I don't want it to have some lard already in it - I'll have to put my own in next time anyway, and their stuff is bound to be worse than mine (or at least less to my taste ;)), so I'd rather just get a clean un-larded pan and do it myself. Comparing a dull knife to a car without a door is silly; it's more like a car with a dirty windscreen - it'll cost you next to nothing to fix, and you'd have to do it anyway sooner or later. I'd rather my car maker spent his time making better cars than spend it cleaning windscreens.
 
I think to say the factory edge is irrelevant is like saying "I don't care if my car (let's assume you order your cars, not buy one off the lot) has the proper wheel torques, proper tire pressures, proper fluid levels, or if they even bothered to take off the cosmoline, cause I can fix that all myself." Sure you could, but A) you shouldn't have to and B) how would that reflect on the company?
Richard
 
"Anyone buying a 'working' knife will be able to sharpen it, and will expect to. As I say, people wanting knives to put in a cabinet and fondle every now-and-again might think differently, but if the knife is going to be used for real work, then it's owner will know how to sharpen it, and will take pride in doing that"

I would say that you've got that reversed.
Anyone who just wants to put the knife in a cabinet probably would'nt care if it can cut or not, since they are'nt going to use it anyway.
But for those of us who actually use their knives (and all of mine get used) we expect an edge right out of the box.
Ask around butcher-shops, military bases, construction sites, wilderness schools, etc...ask how many expect to buy a dull knife brand new?

"It's about knowing your tools and taking responsibility for maintaining them. "

So, when you buy flat-tip screwdrivers, you don't really mind if they're rounded abit?
I mean after all, sooner or later you're going to have to file them flat again, right?
Do you mine dull drill bits?
How about a dull saw blade?

Knowing how to sharpen a knife is of the utmost importance, but why lower your expectations to buy a new knife that is dull?

I can clean my car's battery terminals with no problem, but I would'nt expect to buy a new car with corrosion on them.
I can change my own motor oil, but I would'nt buy a new car with oil that was 10,000 miles old.

Would you buy a new knife if it had some rust on the blade?
After all, you can remove the rust yourself.

Would you buy a knife with burrs on the liners?
After all, you can remove them yourself.

How about if the scales are slightly oversized for the liner on side?
You can grind and trim them yourself, right?

I have to admit, I'm very surprised at how low the standards are for some folks here (when it comes to a factory edge).

To me, THAT IS part of the fit-and-finish of the knife--the knife is'nt finished until that extremely sharp edge is on it.

And maybe I've been luck, but I have only had two knives that were rather dull when I bought them (both were Camillus I'm sad to say).
Others have been very sharp right out of the box (Spyderco, Benchmade, CRKT, Kershaw, Buck, Case, Schrade, Gerber, SOG, Kabar, Camillus, Meyerco, Victorinox, Wenger, Boker, and a few I cannot recall right now).

Allen.
 
The knife should be properly beveled & at least have a good working edge at a minimum. I say fire the knife sharpener if he cant do this! I am sure there are at least 20 posters here that can do an excellent job for 22.00 an hour plus family medical included. Even the Chinese are putting on a decent edge now days! Queen seems to be the worst in giving you a sharp knfe & their product is A-1. Queen needs to train this slacker better or pink slip him! JMO :mad:
 
Here's a real life example. I got a Benchmade 710HS that was both dull and had an obtuse edge bevel -- bigger than the 40 degree setting on the Sharpmaker. The 710 has a recurve, so it's not like I was going to get out the course carborundum or extra course diamond flat hones and start hogging off steel to reprofile -- that would likely screw up the recurve. No, without buying new sharpening equipment, I was pretty much stuck reprofiling an M2 blade with the medium Sharpmaker rods. It took about 4 hours to reprofile at the 30 degree setting. (Now it has a wicked edge, thank you very much.)

Do I wish the 710HS had come not only with a sharp edge, but with a reasonable profile? What do you think?

The other question to ask is how difficult is it for a manufacturer to put a decent edge on a knife, and how much does it add to the cost? I don't think it adds much if anything to the cost. I mean, you basically go through the same steps to put a crappy edge on a knife as you do to put a good edge on it. If you're going to put any edge on it at all, why not do it right? As an example, Spyderco knives are, IMO, reasonably priced, and uniformly come not only sharp, but with the edge bevel set at a usable angle that allows for easy resharpening without reprofiling. There's simply no good reason other manufacturers can't do the same.
 
A knife cuts things.

If I buy a knife, I expect it to cut things.

If it doesn't, it's not a knife. It's just a slab of metal.



OK, so a knife that comes dull from the manufacturer/maker I guess is still a knife. True, even a knife that comes sharp OOB will need resharpening. But a factory edge is part of the QC and value of the knife, and I'm not likely to buy a knife from a company that sells dull knives (unless perhaps everything else about it overwhelms that issue).

IMO, a knife that comes dull is an unfinished product. There's thousands of products out there that require assembly, extra parts, etc, but I don't include knives in this catagory. Unless it says on the box "requires sharpening before use", then I expect it to be sharp.

That isn't to say that I've never had to sharpen a NIB knife. A lot of people mention Benchmade's factory edge, but I haven't had any real problems with them.

Their factory edges are weird. They don't feel sharp at all using my normal testing method, which is to touch (even drag) the blade aganst my thumb. I swear that no BM I've had could even come close to cutting my thumb. However, they all shave with ease. They also scrape (or as is often the case, dig into) my thumbnail. But they won't cut skin. Maybe they're too polished or something. But all it takes is a stroke or two with a ceramic rod, and they can push-cut my thumb with ease (don't worry folks, the skin on my thumb is extremely tough...as you might expect from somebody who tests knife sharpness the way I do).

Spyderco and Kershaw are the only brands I've used that come sharper than I can ever hope to achieve myself.
 
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