I bought the LMF II ASEK a few weeks ago. The sheath/nylon carrier setup is like sgmblades, but 1) it's brown as is the knife handle and two, the rubberlike sheath's clasp and builtin sharpener are black. They aren't separate pieces just look like different colored plastic was used for these parts of the sheath.
Anyhoo, I tried doing
sgmblade's tests with my knife.
It chopped and batoned into kindling a 2x4 piece of seasoned longleaf pine just fine, and the edge seemed perhaps a little duller than before but not much. But certainly no rounded edges or dings or divots.
The thing I don't like is this: I have a devil of a time getting a really sharp edge on it. In fact, I can't. Almost three quarters of an hour of sharpening and I had an edge arguably worse than the factory one.
I tried a diamond plate, my water stones, and even stropping with diamond paste. Made it sharp but nothing close enough to shave hair off my arm with. Finally I gave up and ran the dang thing through the built in sharpener. Half a dozen passes and it was sharper than the best I could do. Which again is sharp but not super sharp.
Stainless steels. Hate em. Why did I even bother? Shoulda known better. I'm way more into woodworking than knives but my chisels, plane irons and, once just the the heck of it, even my cheezy hollow plastic handled Fiskars hatchet -- I can get em all scary sharp in 5 minutes on my water stones and strop -- sharp enough to where it is folly to 'test' the edge with a finger. Unless one likes to bleed.
Not so with my LMF ASEK.
What kinda burns is knowing about that hatchet. It's this
one. Nothing fancy but it can take as keen an edge as I hoped a knife costing 70 bucks would.
The LMF II ASEK is ok. But for the money I want a knife I can get sharp, my kind of sharp, and I don't want to spend 40 minutes working to get only a decent edge.
Or just go with a Fiskars hatchet and carry a (non-stainless) pocket knife for the little stuff.
