"Fit & Finish" - discussion

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that design and ergos are what sets Spyderco apart from the others. Spyderco's fit and finish is often flawless even on the less expensive knives but to be honest, Kershaw and Benchmade also do a great job of this as do some others. What really sets Spyderco apart from the others is that they are designed to be used. They have a special quality to them that you can feel. The balance is right, the ergos are good and the blade designs are the best of any production company I know of. The fit and finish is often impressive but to tell the truth, I would still buy Spyderco knives even if the F&F took a slight downward turn. Spyderco is one of the only production knife companies that seems to understand what a knife is for, cutting!

I just got a Centofante III and I was shocked at what it did to my steak today. It has such a thin blade that it just zips through meat like a laser. I think it cuts even better than the Calypso Jr. and that is famous for being a good slicer. I have only owned about 10 Spydercos so far but about 6 of them have been really great knives. I mean they had that certain feel and balance and they WORKED. I have had half a dozen Benchmades and none have even been special like a Centofante III or a Calypso Jr. None have ever cut like these either. Spyderco kicks butt with the blade designs. No other production company turns out so many winners as Spyderco.

F&R is important but not as important as a good design. I could have the best fitted and finished Buck 110 but a run of the mill Spyderco is going to be much more usefull for me. I am all for getting F&F along with the great designs but what reallys sets Spyderco aside is the great work that is done before the knives are actually made. Design is the strong point of Spyderco, design and great steels even in the less expensive models.
 
I alluded to this earlier, but I just felt the need to address it. There is only one gripe I have ever had with Spydies; overl-fine tips on a lot of models. I know many prefer a fine tip, but I tend to like slightly stout tips (but not tanto type tips...that's just too much), because I tend to use the tips of my EDC blades ALOT. Good examples of stout tips would be BM TSEK knives (or most BMs for that matter). I hope you all know what I mean. Spydies I've seen that I loved, but didn't purchase because I knew I would damage the tips are the Temperance (as I stated earlier), Civilian, the one Ronin I actually held (loved the knife, but the tip was sooo thin). This is what has kept me from buying a Chinook 2. I've heard the point is ground quite thin. It's odd, but my SPOT tips are fairly stout when you consider the size to tip ratio. This is a minor gripe. I have seen plenty of stout Spydies, too, but nothing that really caught my eye.
 
I have a lot of knives. Some are "display" knives. Others are "beaters". My Spydercos are my best beaters. As far as fit and finish goes, it doesn't really matter much to me on a beater. I want the best functionality I can get, but don't need anything more than that. I wouldn't let the quality slip to the point of excessive blade play or lock slips or anything, but the cosmetics of my Spydies are wasted.

If I want cosmetic beauty, I buy a custom.
 
My fathers long standing business found a competitor in his commercial park about 5 to 8 years ago. They undercut him on prices, but they also had poor quality. About 7 months ago, I asked my father what happened to his competitors shop when I stopped by to visit. He smiled and said " They dried up and blew away".

Just my thoughts on this matter.
 
kgriggs8 has a good point. I've only cut two or three things with my Yojimbo so far, and the cutting potential- my god. There's just enough resistance for me to know that something is being parted. That's it.

Someone has called the Manix a pocket chainsaw. If that's so, my Yojimbo is a pocket lightsaber.

John
 
kgriggs8 said it best. When I pick up my Spyderco UK Pen, I still get that feeling of the knife being an extension of my hand. Pure design of function. I still love that feeling. F&F on that knife is PERFECT!
 
I am always impressed when a knives handles fit to the bolster so well that you can not "feel" a change when running you finger across them, anything less than that is inferior work IMO.
 
In general, I don't like the style where the slab is much smaller than the liner. A noteable exception is the inlayed Sebenzas, but in that case the handle material isn't just slapped on top of bare metal. Also, if you're going to expose the liners, IMHO, you need to put alot of work into beveling the edges and making it work.

The Spyderco steel handle, and its noticable lack of square corners (except in the very earliest models), is great design.

You can almost always tell the quality of a knife by looking at the junction of two materials - blade and bolster, spine and handles, etc. In the best cases, they match perfectly. Slightly poorer, significant grinding, sanding, or other material was removed to make the fit. Not so good is filler - epoxy or something similar that fills the gap. Worst is a small, but very noticable, sharp edge diging into your finger. Makers using unstabilized natural materials get a bit of a pass on this one. Natural expansion and contraction of materials due to climate or continued curing can put a knife into the last category, no matter how close the original tolerances.
 
This is a hard call to make.

Where it matters, fit and finish are important. I appreciate craftsmanship as much as the next guy. I also appreciate Micarta, coatings on high carbon blades, etc. As for bolsters and the like, yeah, definitely, I think the quality is not what it used to be.

I've heard both sides of the argument, and am still ambivalent. I love and appreciate it when someone obviously took the time to get it right. I also understand the economics of someone trying to feed a family, when 50% of the effort will give 80% return. That last 20% might not be worth the time.

I drive an old pickup that I bought 17 years ago. The fit and finish aren't the best, but with no major repairs and 270,000 miles on the odometer, I guess the fit and finish are where it counts.
 
The new slogan for the modern era should be.....

"Build a CHEAPER mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

OR

"CONVINCE people that a useless hunk of plastic is really a better mouse trap,
and the world will beat a path to your door."
 
I'd say fit and finish are still important. It's hard to watch other makers churning out inferior products and making up for it in hype, but there's always a few people who can recognize quality, and they'll come to you for a great knife.
 
Morgane said:
I'd say fit and finish are still important. It's hard to watch other makers churning out inferior products and making up for it in hype, but there's always a few people who can recognize quality, and they'll come to you for a great knife.
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Well the nice thing about Spyderco not being a publicly held company is that they don't have to worry about being like those companies just to keep the stockholders happy. Publicly held companies aren't satisfied to turn a profit, they want an increase in profit ever quarter. That is an impossible dream and leads to a lot of problems, like hype over quality, "cloning" other peoples products, and using legal arm twisting to force competition out of business so that the publicly held company can continue using the same business model instead of staying on top of quality.

I'm not saying this is always true of publicly traded companies, but it certainly is a lot of the time. **cough** microsoft **cough, cough**
 
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