Kershaw Blackout

Pete1977

Pete1977

Joined
Apr 15, 2002
Messages
3,376
I got around to using the Kershaw Blackout that Dennis sent me last week. His main reason for sending the knife was, I believe, to allow me to test whether assisted opening knives are less suitable for a wet or dirt prone environment. I haven't gotten a chance to take it on my boat yet. The weather is still too windy to go fishing.

First let me say that this knife is superior to the other 2 Blackouts that I have experience with. Those knives both seemed fragile. This one is a stouter folder. The plain edge part of the blade came hair shaving sharp, typical for most every Kershaw folder I have experienced. The serrations had noticeable burrs or dings in the edges of all of the large scallops.

I am neither a fan of assisted opening, liner locks, or thumb studs and this knife has all three. The assisted opening gets the blade out and locked with a flick of the thumb. Rolling the stud with the ball of the thumb engages the AO but the knife won't open completely or the lock won't totally engage. My guess is that flicking the stud lessens the contact between thumb and blade whereas rolling the stud, my finger remains in contact a split second too long and fumbles the opening, preventing the AO from positively opening the blade.

I have been flicking the thumbstud to get the knife open but I can already tell that this is going to be uncomfortable with perpetually wet hands and impossible with the gloves that I wear. Here is where an assisted opener benefits infinately from a flipper. Luckily Dennis sent a Shallot as well. :)

I have only actually used the blackout for one day. I mainly cut polypropylene rope that was either frozen or encased partially in ice. If I were to buy another blackout in the future I would select a plain edge. The serrations on this Blackout, my brother's Blackout (exact same knife) and my old Vapor 2 leads me to believe that Kershaw's serrations leave something to be desired. (I am specifically describing the "Spyderedge" style serrations here, consisting of one large scallop and 2 smaller ones)

After cutting only rope, the points on the serrations bent noticeably. They are not blunt, the tips did not break off, they bent. It is easily detected with a fingernail that a significant amount of every tip is bent towards the unground side of the blade.

Kershaw seems to grind the edges of their knives at a more acute angle because this particular blackout came razor sharp, mirror polished, and seemingly with a very thin edge. It sliced paper and shaved hair with ease. After a couple of cuts on the rope, however the plain part of the edge was noticeably deformed. It reflected light in multiple places but there was no detectable (with my fingernail) burr or rolled edge. It was still "sharp" though it did not shave hair.

Most likely I will keep using this knife to better get to know it and it's full potential. The coating held up extremely well and although the blade was wet and not wiped down afterwards there is no rust spotting on the edge or coating. For some reason the FRN handle feels much more slippery than I had expected and may pose an issue when using the knife while wet.

The thumb stud is set up for right handers only, as is the clip. The clip isn't reversible. The stud and clip screws are all phillips screws and the thumb stud appears to be reversible for left hand use. I might try this and see if it is possible. The clip is matte black, but not a "painted" on coating. It doesn't resist scratches but they do not show up like they would Spyderco's painted on clip coating.

I will continue to update this thread periodically as I use the knife more.

Pete
 
I have owned this particular 440A version of the Kershaw Blackout since it was first introduced back in the late 90s. I also own a newer model in Sandvik 14C28N. It is waiting for my first one to "give up the ghost".

As you can see by the photos, it is a "user". Although it is not the partially serrated version as in the OP's review, I believe it is an excellent representation of the model. After well over 10 years of daily carry/use, I can say without hesitation that it is one of the finest knives I have ever owned.

Pete -- As you continue to use your Blackout, I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I enjoy mine. :)

blackout4.jpg

blackout3.jpg

blackout2.jpg
 
pete i've finished with the leek .if you wish to give it to your girlfriend or a friend i'll send it along. otherwise it will only be a sinker for a trotline .--dennis
 
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Dennis, how about return it if it truly is bent and get another from the best CS in the business? Another big name I can think of would classify that defect as "within tolerances" and you'd be SOL.
 
knife has been promised to a member so i will have to use lead sinkers instead. thanks--dennis
 
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My dad has been carrying and using a Blackout every day, forever it seems. 10 years now maybe? He loves the thing, and uses it all the time around the farm, hunting, fishing, doing all kinds of hard work. He's on his second now, the torsion bar on the first broke after a couple years, but he kept on using it as a manual opener. I gave him a replacement a few years back, and he's been using that one, and kept the old one as a spare. The new one's still going strong. Dad uses his tools hard, but he doesn't abuse them, and takes care of his things.

I've given Dad several other knives, Spydercos, Benchmades etc., but none of them seemed to take. He likes his Blackout just fine, thank you very much. I have a feeling that he likes the thing so much that he may carry it, or one like it, to the end of his days. I can't think of a much better endorsement than that.
 
moonwilson said:
My dad has been carrying and using a Blackout every day, forever it seems. 10 years now maybe? He loves the thing, and uses it all the time around the farm, hunting, fishing, doing all kinds of hard work. He's on his second now, the torsion bar on the first broke after a couple years, but he kept on using it as a manual opener. I gave him a replacement a few years back, and he's been using that one, and kept the old one as a spare. The new one's still going strong. Dad uses his tools hard, but he doesn't abuse them, and takes care of his things.

I've given Dad several other knives, Spydercos, Benchmades etc., but none of them seemed to take. He likes his Blackout just fine, thank you very much. I have a feeling that he likes the thing so much that he may carry it, or one like it, to the end of his days. I can't think of a much better endorsement than that.
Click to expand...

Give them a call or email and Kershaw will send you a new torsion spring at no
cost. Great Customer Service.
 
A couple of observations after about a week of use-

the coating is tough. very tough. It has resisted scratching so far even when cutting dirty rope that is literally impregnated with fine sand.

I don't like the thumb stud. I am biased to using an opening hole and prefer them. I can tolerate a thumbstud on certain models of knives. This is not one of them. It seems to be too close to the handle. I am not much of a "flicker" when it comes to opening a knife. I prefer to roll the blade open. That doesn't work with this knife. I find holding the knife and attempting to roll the blade open enough for the assist to engage puts the knife in an awkward grip. Flicking it open works better but to do so I have to overcome 15 years of muscle memory.

The steel holds an edge much better than 8Cr13MoV which I had expected. I have mainly used a Byrd folder for the better part of 18 months. The edge retention from the factory was not that great but I think it is because the knife came with a highly polished edge and a pretty low bevel (20-25 degrees inclusive I think) than what I am used to. I have touched it up on a lansky crock stick sharpener at 20 degrees with the fine stones. They brought it back to a paper slicing edge. I used the medium stones on the sharpmaker this morning at the 30 degree setting and did not notice a difference. I did manage to straighten out the serration points.

I am going to give a little more effort in sharpening it tonight.

pete
 
Pete1977 said:
I don't like the thumb stud. I am biased to using an opening hole and prefer them. I can tolerate a thumbstud on certain models of knives. This is not one of them. It seems to be too close to the handle. I am not much of a "flicker" when it comes to opening a knife. I prefer to roll the blade open. That doesn't work with this knife. I find holding the knife and attempting to roll the blade open enough for the assist to engage puts the knife in an awkward grip. Flicking it open works better but to do so I have to overcome 15 years of muscle memory.
pete
Click to expand...


Thanks for providing a great example how to give a fair criticism of a knife. You admit your bias and then give a reasonable explanation of why you don't like it. There are a lot of people that could learn from this post.

My first assisted opener used a thumbstud, carried it for years. It was hard to get used to pushing only as far as the assist needed when I started using it, I always wanted to follow through like on the prior manual. After I started using assisted flippers, I found that I had a tough time using thumbstuds, forget about spyderholes. I try to switch back and forth more frequently now, it only takes a day to get the hang of a switch.
 
What is the date on your Blackout? The old style serrations would lead me to believe you might have a 440a or 13c26. All of Kershaw's new serrations are the same size and have been this way for about 5 years. The new ones should all look like the well used 2445st in this picture. They are still a bit fragile and will break but they do work better for me than the other style or Spyderco's.
DSCN1535.jpg
 
There is no date on it and this blade is definately not 440A. It does have the Spyderedge style serrations, as does my brother's Blackout that he bought from a store 2 or 3 weeks ago.

This knife took a very sharp edge with minimal effort and the serration tips that were bent were easily straightened with a few passes on the sharpmaker. They are less pointy and more effective it seems now.
 
I got a chance to use the blackout extensively today. I did some splicing of groundlines for my lobster gear. After the initial sharpening of the serrations the bent tips of the teeth were straightened out and lost their fine points. They were exceptionally sharp. The plain edge on the other hand was disappointing. I had touched the edge up on fine stones to bring it back to hair shaving sharpness. It failed miserably at cutting through 3/8 inch rope. The serrated portion on the other hand would cut through the rope with one pull. After several attempts to use the whole blade, I relied solely on the serrated portion for cutting out the knots.

I believe the gross failure of the plain edge portion of the blade to cut through the rope was that the edge was too polished to really grab the fibers of the rope, through no fault of the knife itself. The serrations were just about as sharp at the end of my work as they were in the beginning. I sharpened the plain edge on the diamond sharpmaker rods. The edge is noticeably toothy now. We will see how it fares tomorrow.

I carry the knife clipped to my back right pocket usually. Occasionally I will clip it to my right front pocket. From time to time I will stick it in my jacket pocket or into my right front pocket. Today I noticed when I closed the knife there was enough crud, sand and whatnot between the handles that the blade scraped when closing. I cleaned it out with a cotton swab. There is quite an accumulation of sand and lint at the pivot, most likely attracted by the oil that was present in the knife when I got it. So far it hasn't affected the AO. Any failure to open and lock i have attributed it to my technique and unfamiliarity with the thumb stud after using an opening hole for so long.

That said, I still stand by my original position that the AO mechanism will be affected as the knife is used more and gets dirty. I have not been fishing due to the high winds and seas we have been having but I hope to get this knife actually on to the boat in the very near future.

One gripe that arose tonight is with the lanyard hole? on the knife handle. I can't tell if this is what it actually is or if it is a scale screw that is just hollow. Whatever it may be, the hole is too small to accept even the thinnest twine that I have on hand (blaze orange poly net twine.) I wanted to put some type of bright fob on the handle to make it easy to see if I set it down on a trap or on the rail of the boat. I may make a bail out of an old split ring and see if I can put some type of fob on that. The hole is too small to accept even the thinnest split ring I have.

Other than that, this is turning out to be a fine little knife and is offering me some experience with another Kershaw product, assisted opening in a dirty, corrosive environment, a blade steel that I do not have much experience working with, and a half-serrated blade after using fully serrated knives exclusively for almost 2 years.
 
I ended up making about 100 or so cuts today in the same kind of synthetic rope as before. The coarser edge that I put on the plain section of the blade cut better than the polished edge i had been using. It still didn't last very long but I did not expect it to. This rope is pretty tough stuff, made to be chafe resistant for use on rocky bottom. It is old so it is probably completely impregnated with very fine sand as well. I don't expect a plain edge to perform period on this stuff so it is no surprise to me when anything i use on it dulls.

Let me digress and say that this is why i prefer a less wear-resistant steel for a working knife over a "super" steel. I would rather the knife dull and have to take a few minutes to touch up the edge or even resharpen it, or reprofile it if i used the knife hard, than have it last a little longer while cutting and then have to spend longer resharpening it.

The serrations still cut but had dulled enough to pull or catch on the rope fibers now. This is where I prefer a shallow serration with a flat sharpened point as opposed to a deep serration with a more "pointy" tip. This is also where lock failure can occur or blade play can begin. As the serrations get dull, i have to put more force into the cut. I primarily cut with the edge up in a bend of the rope and pull, or with the edge down in the bend and push. Either way, if the knife is dulling, I tend to grip harder and push harder on the cut. With the latest Byrd folder I had been using, the lock bar would depress and disengage the lock in white knuckled cutting. I have not noticed any blade play with this knife yet and the lock appeared secure even after some heavy cutting.

The nice thing about assisted opening is, unlike a lockback, if the lock fails the AO mechanism is working to keep the blade open and at least with this blackout it is enough to keep the blade from swinging down onto my fingers.
 
I sent a PM to Thomas W re: the type of steel and the serration pattern on this particular knife but did not hear back. After a week or so of rigorous daily use the edge retention on the plain edge portion of the blade lasts for 1 or 2 cuts before losing even a working edge. I have relied on the serrated portion of the blade for almost all of the rope cutting I have been doing.

After making hundreds of cuts this week to remove knots from my fishing gear the knife has begun to fail to open completely and lock up via the assisted opening. I need to complete the opening with a flick of my wrist to get the blade locked open. I have taken to leaving the knife open for long sessions of cutting. There is still no blade play either vertically or horizontally and the lock up is still secure. There is noticeable dust in the knife, pocket lint, seaweed, etc. I haven't done any maintenance to the knife since taking possession of it except for sharpening it daily. I will probably give the Blackout another week of use and then switch to the Shallot.

In the almost two weeks since my last post I have used this knife exclusively except for a few times when it just would not cut through the rope. Otherwise this has been the knife i have carried and used several times a day every day. My estimate is that since getting this knife from Dennis Strickland I have made over 1000 cuts of rope with it. The coating has not shown much wear except above the teeth of the serrations, the edges of the spine and the grind lines on the blade.

I might switch the thumb stud to the opposite side of the blade and carry this knife as a backup while I review the Shallot.
 
thanks pete for continuing your testing of kershaw products. has your girlfriend done any cutting with the leek? i will be interested in your comment on the crooked blade of the leek or if it is just my eye, --thanks dennis
 
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