First Use of my NO

[Lenny]

Well, other than some minor chopping and cutting, my NO hadn't been properly broken in. I was over my friend's house the other day in his back yard. As usual, we eventually came around to staring at his tangled mess of rose vine and wisteria that had taken over a small back porch, climbed up a downspout and forced its way up to the roof. He'd been saying for the longest time that he wanted to clean that mess up and finally pulled out the pruning shears and got to work. Well, he was getting nowhere fast and I ran home to get my NO. I had already rebeveled (sp?) the edge to give it a normal V grind (which I know how to sharpen easily). Well, I got to work on that mess of vines, and, to make a long story short, we were done in 5 min. It sliced thru vines up to 3/4" no sweat. This is harder than it sounds because the vines were not solidly anchored and swayed when I hit them. The technique I found works best is to hit the vines on an angle, not straight on.
The length of the NO was perfect for getting into the mess and cutting individual vines when called for. Both the BM and Steel Heart would've been unwieldly or near impossible to use in this situation for this reason and the fact that the mess was so close to the house and porch. It was nice to have the "perfect tool" for a situation. Oh, the edge was virtually unchanged after the event. And I can definitely see the advantage of that big flat handle in keeping a solid grip during chopping.
What can I use it for next? It just begs to be used hard.
Lenny

 

[OwenM]

Used my Basic #5 to limb a tree a few weeks back. It was about 5" in diameter, and I ended up chopping the whole thing down. I also chopped down some vines, and sticker bushes (blade was really too short for this-Ouch!), recreated the tip strength test by ramming it point first into a 2x4 and torqueing it out, and ripped a rotting log in half. Took about 4-5 strokes per side to bring the edge back to shaving sharpness.
I have never done anything like this with a knife before, and did it "just to see". Need to quit reading Cliff Stamp's reviews

I'm impressed, and have a lot of confidence in that blade.

btw, I ditched the assymetrical edge, too. Couldn't get the hang of sharpening it, even though I tried all the methods that have been described. I'm much happier with the edge now. It's 40 degrees included, and I used a Lansky extra coarse to reprofile.