Patrick Doyle Custom Fixed Blade Review

[Kaizen1]

Hey folks,

I was lucky enough to win a great custom fixed blade on another forum. Below I'll paste the initial thoughts I had about the blade once receiving it and the following post will be the full review I made about a week later. I don't do many reviews so I hope this one doesn't bore you too much. Sorry ahead of time for crappy pics.

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Hey all,

I was the lucky bastard that won Patrick's (Other-knife-site-forum username: Doyle) first giveaway. And a helluva giveaway it was. I have a couple of pictures from my phone but they're so crappy, I'll first post Doyle's pic from his giveaway thread:

I'm not sure on the model name or if there is one, but here's some basic info on it:

Blade finish: Acid Etched and Blued
Blade Length: 3 1/2"
Cutting Edge: 3"
Handle Length: 4 1/4"
Blade stock thickness: 5mm or .1968"
Heat Treat by Peters: 60-61 rc
Steel: CPMD2
Grind: Full Flat
Handle Material: Walnut and Resin Soaked Hemp

Some of my horrible, horrible pics:

Size comparison shot:

Initial thoughts:

One of the initial striking aesthetic features about the design itself to me (aside from the nice acid-etching and patina) was the contrast between the wide-looking blade and the relatively thinner handle. This seemed to me to be the markings of a minimalist and utilitarian influence in the design. In the hand, the ergonomics seem to confirm this thought. The handle is thin but comfortable, smooth but still secure.

Another interesting thing about the design is the hemp rope which is only wrapped partially at the ricasso and where the handle meets the blade. I've personally never seen this and wondered about it when I first saw the pic in the GAW thread. Now that I've seen it up close and handled it a bit, at least part of its design is readily apparent to me; it provides a fantastic extra secure fit into the kydex and it really helps with the grip, especially if I place my thumb on the spine. This is really interesting to me because this is the first knife that I have not been able to shake out of its kydex. I just tried for a good 2 minutes of repeatedly shaking it and though I heard a rattle, it didn't budge. On top of that, it doesn't negatively affect the ease of taking the blade out of the sheath when I want to. It comes right out with no struggle on my part. That may be old news to others, but kind of shocked me to see that. Being able to shake a knife out of its sheath has come to be somewhat of an expectation of mine. This is gonna give me great confidence when hiking. I'm not going to have to worry about that. What it also does aesthetically is provide an opportunity to use a nice looking material like the Walnut he used while simultaneously getting that utilitarian value from the hemp and it gives a unique contrast you don't see much; the wood with the hemp.

The blade came tree-top shaving sharp (I was able to shave arm hair off without touching the skin). All in all, this looks like it's gonna be a nice user. I'll be writing up a full review within about a week or so after I've used it a bunch and resharpened it.

One more note about the maker himself: Based on my communication with him as well as from observing the his comments in his giveaway thread, I get the feeling that the man is a perfectionist that really stands behind his product. In his GAW thread he seemed a bit concerned that there were some minor "flaws" in the blade and I have it up close and it's beautiful. He also put a little note in with the package essentially saying that he's there if there's ever any problem with the knife- and he gave it away for free! C'mon, that's gotta say something about his character. I think that's the type of person you want making your knives personally. More to come later. Thanks for reading.

 

[Kaizen1]

Okay, so I've had a little bit more time with this great custom and took a few more crappy pics. Though I love knives, I'm ashamed to say that I rarely have a need to use a knife really hard or for extended periods like some of yous guys that get out into the wild a lot more. Most of the time when I need a knife, it will be for random tasks, like clam packs or other types of packaging, loose threads, etc. The only real "workout" I ever get to use my knives on is for deanimating cardboard. Cardboard is a nice medium to check for edge retention however because there's so much crap that they put in the stuff, it can wear on edges pretty aggressively. So what I was looking for in this assessment of the knife were things like:
-ergonomics over extended use/ potential hotspots
-edge retention on cardboard
-how well the primary grind worked for slicing through cardboard
-how difficult it is to reprofile the steel and sharpen it.

For specs on the knife, check the hyperlink at the top of this post. I went straight to work with the knife based on the way Patrick Doyle gave it to me. I didn't sharpen it before using it.

So the first thing I did was I went to town on a cereal box. I sliced it up into fairly thin pieces. I wanted to gt an idea of how long the shaving sharp edge would last. In my experience, cardboard can take away a shaving sharp edge on most steels rather quickly. I've read that cardboard can have things like glass or metal particles in it.

The knife was able to keep a shaving sharp edge throughout most of the box. By the time I got to the very last pieces of the box, the part of the edge where I started most of the cuts was no longer able to shave at all. The part of the edge that I ended most of the cuts at (toward the tip of the knife) was still shaving, but it took some effort.

Next I went postal on a postal box. What I was looking for was how long the "working" edge would last:

Throughout the slaughtering of this innocent box, I was checking to feel how smoothly the blade was going through the cardboard and I also tested how smoothly the edge would go through receipt paper. The way the USPS box was made, it was pretty much made to bunch up even if the edge was shaving sharp, so I experienced the edge catching on the cardboard at times the entire way through. This was also why I was checking against the receipt paper. The rate at which the edge was catching on the cardboard didn't change all the way through and the knife continued to slice very smoothly through the receipt paper. By the time I was done with that box, the edge seemed to be just a little bit duller than before I went to work on it.

I found a slightly smaller box and went to town on it. Unfortunately in this pic it's hard to tell how much more I sliced up, but it was another 25-30% or so more cardboard:

By the time I was done with that box, the edge was still at about the same level of sharpness. Now I'm not sure about what you folks are experiencing out there with your steels, but that's pretty damn impressive to me. The edge retention on this CPMD2 blade (60-61rc) showed a better overall edge holding than the S30V on my Spyderco Military and showed roughly the same level of retention that I've seen on my XM-18's Duratech 20CV. Well, let me qualify that. I was too damn lazy to see how much more cardboard I'd need to slice to get the damn thing really dull. But in my experience, the edge was still sharp in a similar way that I've experienced in working with my XM-18 after a comparable amount of work. This is all highly subjective of course.

I can get fairly OCD on my knives if the edges are not polished and able to split hairs. So for my purposes, I almost never need to see how far I can take most steels because I know I'll need to get it screamin sharp again and I try to avoid putting too much of a workload on myself. If a steel can hold an edge this long, then experience tells me it can be a nightmare to try and bring an edge back that's really been brought to ze uber-dull level.

Time to reprofile and sharpen:

I reprofiled the edge a bit and polished the edges, just because that's what I does. Using the Spyderco Military's S30V and the XM-18's Duratech 20CV as comparative measures, this CPMD2 fell in betweeen them in terms of how easy it was to reprofile and sharpen the blade. I gotsta tells ya, that Duratech 20CV stuff ain't no fun to reprofile in my experience.

After freehand reprofiling and resharpening:

I was concerned about the choil interfering with my slices on the cardboard. I've had that problem in the past with other knives. Maybe it was because I was conscious about it, but it didn't bother me at all when I was using it and it did help in sharpening the blade. The handle was comfortable all the way through. My hand didn't seem to fatigue at the same amount that it normally does after that many slices of cardboard and reprofiling/ sharpening.

The primary grind allowed nice, smooth slices through the cardboard. Better than I anticipated it would do considering the stock thickness of the blade. I measure it at about 5mm or .1968" thick.

This really is a fantastic design, folks. It has a very natural feel when using the blade. Some designs sacrifice utility for aesthetics which is cool if that's what you care about. But I'm a pretty big Spyderco fan because they put utility first and I feel the same way about this knife (as attractive as it already is). The knife in your hand feels smooth, comfortable and reliable- that's pretty much the best way I can describe it.

I highly recommend you all give this knife a shot and check out more of Patrick's other knives (Full name: Patrick Doyle). He's a helluva nice guy and he's only been doing this for 4 years. He'll only get better from here. Thanks for reading everyone.

 

[Turbo4x4]

So pretty knife!