Mora... not impressed.

Steel-Junky

Steel-Junky

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Jan 15, 2009
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So at the recommendation of some forum members I bought me a Mora for a wilderness knife. Got it Friday. Overall looked like a good knife. I ordered the Carbon Steel blade but for some reason mine says Stainless. But no big deal. I usually sharpen knives when I first get them as the factory edge is just not sharp enough for me... I thought I'd leave this one be and see how it's factory edge does. Well in a word is was terrible. I began cutting on an oak limb that was on the ground... for a few strokes it was doing ok but I noticed each stroke became harder and harder. And finally the knife wouldn't bite at all... looked at the edge and it was rolled. Wasn't like this before cause it would shave me out of the box. So I figured great... they must have left a large bur or something on the blade... so I went to strop it. I have two strops... one I made that's padded and you can put various grit sand paper on (I used some 800 grit) and then on to my finishing strop that has DMT diamond paste in it. Did both and got it back to shaving sharp. Went back to the wood... In about 12 strokes it rolled again and this time BADLY.... to the point to where some of the edge had chipped out. At this point stropping was not gonna work. I have to use stones and the part that was rolled wouldn't straighten out... it just broke off. So now the edge is junk and I'd have to regrind it to use it as anything other than a steak knife now. Which is what I'm gonna do... I tossed it in the kitchen drawer with the other food knives... And that is where it will stay. I know there are people on here that swear by this brand and I have no idea about their other knives... but this one in particular was a piece of junk. I'm gonna stick with my other knives... I'm not impressed with Mora.

Oh... an BTW... I took out my Spyderco Temerance and it shredded the wood with no ill effect so it wasn't the wood. It was just a fallen limb that was a little wet.
 
sounds like you got a bad apple...all my moras have performed stellarly if that's a word.. and I use my blades ALLOT..I've even split large hunks of ash for fire boards with a half tang mora with no ill effects.. I've heard that sometimes since they are made very inexpensively, that the heat treat can be poor on some edges and you might have to grind a bit away before you get to the good steel... but that has not been my experience.. sorry you had a bad one...
 
These are cheap knives. You often need to sharpen them a few times to get down to good steel.
 
sounds typical...

i love my mora #1, but the edge retention is really nothing to be proud of from the factory.

when i get new moras, i grind them back on a coarse belt on my belt grinder, than flatten them with a stone and strop them...its like a totally different knife.

for example:
i recently bought a new mora #1, laminated blade.
i whittled some mostly clear, fresh maple. there were a couple of tiny knots. the edge came away with several good sized dings in it.
i ground off some metal, flattened and stropped...
i intentionally muscled through all kinds of knots and twisty grain...no edge damage at all.

so if you want to greatly increase edge retention with your moras, grind on a very coarse stone until you have removed ~1/16" of blade width. that should be enough to get you back into the good hard steel.

same thing with my Fiskars axe. terrible edge retention until you grind off the soft stuff on top.

by the way, this is nothing new. i was talking to a librarian about the Collins axe factory that used to operate out of this town. she told me about an old saying:
"bury a new collins axe in the ground and leave it for a year. dig it up, sharpen it up, and it will hold an edge for an unbelievably long time."
i explained that this was because the softer, outer layers of steel that were softened with too much grinding were rusted, making them easy to swipe away on a sharpening stone. works the same for moras and Fiskars...
 
runningboar said:
Who's going to bite this time......survival gun thread was enough for me. Chris
Click to expand...

Bingo.

225px-DoNotFeedTroll.svg.png
 
Oops, shoulda realized we were being trolled. Got me the first time, not twice.
 
siguy said:
sounds typical...

i love my mora #1, but the edge retention is really nothing to be proud of from the factory.

when i get new moras, i grind them back on a coarse belt on my belt grinder, than flatten them with a stone and strop them...its like a totally different knife.

for example:
i recently bought a new mora #1, laminated blade.
i whittled some mostly clear, fresh maple. there were a couple of tiny knots. the edge came away with several good sized dings in it.
i ground off some metal, flattened and stropped...
i intentionally muscled through all kinds of knots and twisty grain...no edge damage at all.

so if you want to greatly increase edge retention with your moras, grind on a very coarse stone until you have removed ~1/16" of blade width. that should be enough to get you back into the good hard steel.

same thing with my Fiskars axe. terrible edge retention until you grind off the soft stuff on top.

by the way, this is nothing new. i was talking to a librarian about the Collins axe factory that used to operate out of this town. she told me about an old saying:
"bury a new collins axe in the ground and leave it for a year. dig it up, sharpen it up, and it will hold an edge for an unbelievably long time."
i explained that this was because the softer, outer layers of steel that were softened with too much grinding were rusted, making them easy to swipe away on a sharpening stone. works the same for moras and Fiskars...
Click to expand...


Thanks... I'll give it a try. After all the good things I heard about them I was like "What the Crap" when this was my experience... no one ever told me they had 1/16th of soft stuff near the edge.
 
SpookyPistolero said:
It's a good clue when someone can't make it through their 'intro/welcome' thread without picking a dozen fights.
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The gear you recomended wasn't all it was cracked up to be... what do you want me to do about it? I'm a troll because the edge on a Mora rolled? LMAO... OK. Whatever. Some of you guys on this forum are pretty pissy.
 
RescueRiley said:
sounds like you got a bad apple...all my moras have performed stellarly if that's a word.. and I use my blades ALLOT..I've even split large hunks of ash for fire boards with a half tang mora with no ill effects.. I've heard that sometimes since they are made very inexpensively, that the heat treat can be poor on some edges and you might have to grind a bit away before you get to the good steel... but that has not been my experience.. sorry you had a bad one...
Click to expand...

I figure as much... I really doubt a bunch of people go on and on about these knives if they were no better than chinesse steak knives. I'm gonna keep working on it and see if I can uncover some harder steel at the edge. I mean it wasn't a huge investment but I hate something that seems to work for everyone else not work for me LOL.
 
siguy said:
sounds typical... if you want to greatly increase edge retention with your moras, grind on a very coarse stone until you have removed ~1/16" of blade width... outer layers of steel that were softened with too much grinding...
Click to expand...

Are you saying that the final grinding process after HT generated too much heat and tempered the edges back too far? If that's true, it's a glaring and frankly offensive cheap-a$$ way to make blades/axes quickly. It's ridiculous to expect a consumer to remove 1/16" of steel before the steel is good. Any knife/tool should be delivered ready for immediate use. Bury it for a year? That's insane.

To be fair, I've read a LOT of Mora reviews, and this is the first time I've heard of this. I only have one Frost's SS Clipper, it's performed darn well for me since day one. *shrug*
 
I've never used or owned a Mora but I have heard of this happening before. One guy told me he dented the edge of a Mora on wood and it was really bad. I'm sure they are good knives otherwise people wouldn't like them so much but there's always the occasional bad apple. That's just the way it is.
 
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