Got the Nilakka - Couple Observations and a Potential Issue

Honestly this is kinda pathetic, I wonder if any steel would stand to anything more than spreading butter with that grind. I get that its a light duty knife but how light can duty get? I'm struggling to understand the purpose of such a fragile tool, and such an expensive fragile tool at that.

Agreed. Not acceptable for a folder at $250+. RRP is $299.

Bad quality and testing by spyderco. I am sure they will sort it out but I would be sick to the stomach if I paid 200+ for that..

I'm surprised at how many people think that its acceptable to say "oh its a light use knife only"..

I'd say that for a cheap stainless blade sub $20. I would not say that for a $200+ blade designed to be a folding copy of a wood carving knife design..

Having to re-profile blades is not what I want for a knife of this price.

I really like the design of this knife. It was on my list but I am waiting to see how this all pans out...
 
If it can't cut basswood it can't cut any wood at all. It seems like this one is more of a collectors piece or a box opener, which is disappointing.
 
How thin is the Nilakka edge compared to the Para edge?

There really isn't any comparison. The Para, and every other Spyderco, is a battleaxe by comparison to this. There is no "behind the edge bevel"on the Nilakka, it is a zero grind. The target edge angle on the rest of Spyderco's knives is three times the angle of the Nilakka.
 
My word! ^ OK, what's up then? Even on a thin edge, if the burr is formed and then buffed off, that edge should not roll, yes?
 
Doesn't matter, if the steel is too thin for its hardness then it will bend and deform. If the S30V was at proper hardness for the grind thickness it would have fractured when pushed beyond its elastic limits.

Wrong steel, wrong hardness, wrong thickness.
 
if there's something to keep in the three specs i'd like it to be thickness, so i'd really like it to be rethought in another steel with more edge stability, hard carbon on tool steel may be the way to go, 3v at 62, m4 at 64.

some stainlesses may work too cpm154, 19c27 ...

just thinking loud, i'm no knifemaker but i've seen a lot of customs that were basicaly zeroground and that worked ... probably slightly steeper grinds but nowhere near that fragile.

oh and btw the reason i think steel is the problem :

i've put some of my kitchen knives on the edge pro. all are freehand sharpened, all are dedicated slicers, sharpened as thin as i can hold them. all can handle a least one full day of work without resharpening, this means prep for two services, two service .... neither chip or roll when used on a hardwood cutting board, minor issues when my hand gets heavy on PEHD cutting board.

the list: takeda wa gyuto in super blue, ikkanshi tadatsuna wa sujihiki in white steel, suisin inox honyaki in 19c27, fowler wa gyuto in 52100, mizuno tanrenjo yanagiba in blue 1, suisin kama usuba in blue 2 ...

the results : kissing the edge on the finest polish tape at 10° (checked with angle cube) for a couple of strokes each side resulted in a microbevel that was barely visible on each side, meaning that every knives was lower that 10°/side.

pretty surprised by those results btw, i knew i was below 15°/side but never thought i was that low.
 
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I'd love one of these. I might even go so far as to say I'd like it better with a zero edge on 0.125" stock. I'm getting ready to regrind my Delica. I'd never have to regrind one of the these.
 
Actually, it isn't chipped at all, it just bent.

Edit to add: I was not chopping. I was not prying. I did not twist the blade in a cut. Making a couple of cuts across the grain on knot free soft wood stretched the steel of the edge, leaving behind the ripples you see in the pictures. I had the same thing happen on a custom jackknife when I hit a very hard knot whittling hard pine. If you've ever tried using a straight razor for something other than shaving, you know what it is like to use this factory edge. I have in fact made similar cuts with a single edge razor blade without damaging it. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had tried shaving a strip off my knotty ash branch I usually use for testing new knives.


Sounds like the hardness is on the lower side from what you are describing here, that's pretty typical damage for an edge ground that thin at lower hardness.
 
Doesn't matter, if the steel is too thin for its hardness then it will bend and deform. If the S30V was at proper hardness for the grind thickness it would have fractured when pushed beyond its elastic limits.

Wrong steel, wrong hardness, wrong thickness.


Pretty much, although S30V at 61 HRC in a Custom and CYRO treated ground that thin would do very well, the thinner the grind is the higher the hardness really needs to be to get the edge stability needed to support that thin edge.

But yeah in a production knife I tend to agree, maybe the grind needed to be thicker.

That said, all edges will fail if pushed hard enough and they will fail in one of two ways:

Chipping out.

Rolling/Denting
 
Any word from Spyderco on this? I'd like to know if a recall or redesign is being planned or if I should just write off this model as a loss. I really don't want to do that, as it is a very nice model, and I'm sad that I can't buy one AND use it. I'd really like to do both.
 
Any word from Spyderco on this? I'd like to know if a recall or redesign is being planned or if I should just write off this model as a loss. I really don't want to do that, as it is a very nice model, and I'm sad that I can't buy one AND use it. I'd really like to do both.

In one of the threads here, Sal posted that they've stopped shipping them, the designer requested a micro-bevel, and he's been trying out different edge angles and thicknesses to determine what to do.
 
still pretty sure the issue is the steel choice. pekka does this model as a custom, in RWL34, i asked a guy on another forum and his exemple is zerogrind too but hold up well to various uses including light wood work and more. he told me he had some microchips at first, very light undetectable to the naked eye. he got rid of those after taking it a couple of times on a loaded leather.
 
Hindsight but RWL34 would have been a great choice.
I never had any problems with my RWL34 blade.
 
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