Please sell me on the Spyderco Shaman.

[David Mary]

Shaman was neat in concept, I grabbed one, modded it to like it better, sold it anyway.

Hard use? Fixed blade for me. Or a Cold Steel folder if it has to be a folder, which it really does NOT.

 

[jameeson]

My .02 .... but yeah I one of those dudes with 7 shamans.

To me carries great for the size, easy to manipulate , figity, and comes in any flavor steel you can think of. It's a substancial knife of stronger design than a PM2 but lots of same features.

I love the choil , you can get a lot of leverage right up on the blade and thumb over the top. Somewhat noticed it can also help conceal the knife a little better depolyed if you are in public and don't want to alarm people. The compression lock is not the ultimate but if you are not heavy batoning and pushing the limits of it, I don't see how else it could be of concern...you have steel liners and large stop pin.

Pick it up and you should know if it is for you or not. An example I wonder why would anyone want a delica instead of getting a native 5...all just preferences.

 

[Elgatodeacero]

I think the Shaman is one of Spyderco’s best designs. I have one in Rex45 and it has been superb.

The knife is smooth all around the handle, great balance, great ergos, thick blade, good lock.

This one was an EDC for over a year.

 

[jameeson]

I think the Shaman is one of Spyderco’s best designs. I have one in Rex45 and it has been superb.

The knife is smooth all around the handle, great balance, great ergos, thick blade, good lock.

This one was an EDC for over a year.

I need rex45 and 15v and I will feel whole.

Now that we are posting pics, I just can't help myself.....have always thought the shaman is one of the better looking folders out there

 

[Danke42]

I got you a picture of 15V. You can just cut and paste it into your lineup.

 

[Blues]

Even I have one...

 

[jameeson]

I've never been good at photoshop. It would be more appropriate if you can send it over and I can snap an offical updated group photo. I promise to maybe send it back.

 

[ferider]

Good seat-belt cutter …

… and the fancy version:

 

[DA170]

I need rex45 and 15v and I will feel whole.

Now that we are posting pics, I just can't help myself.....have always thought the shaman is one of the better looking folders out there



View attachment 2949491

Nice collection! I may be guilty of owning every sprint/exclusive with some backups!

Not selling anyone on anything , especially people with pre existing biases!

 

[vnvman]

By whom ? Your friend ?



Not the toughest.



No we don’t.



No we don’t.



Not all PM2 have FRN scales.



It is.

View attachment 2948538

If you don't care about people's opinions I guess there's more interesting things to do around besides browsing a forum that pretty much exists for the sake of sharing and or discussing those, let alone replying without adding a single useful input to the discussion. But you do you man.

 

[vnvman]

Sounds like you need some threadlocker on your pivot screws. Never held a shaman, but for hard use I recommend a fixed blade. If I run into a decent deal on a shaman with Micarta, might pick one up.

Thanks for the heads up, well I do use it on other knives, especially the PM2 and Military, often times I have to because you can't find the correct pivot tightness for optimal action ang get have it stay in place at the same time, or at least that's me. Maybe if the pivot screw on the Shaman is longer that may not happen but honestly I have no real use experience with that knife.

 

[ferider]

If you don't care about people's opinions I guess there's more interesting things to do around besides browsing a forum that pretty much exists for the sake of sharing and or discussing those, let alone replying without adding a single useful input to the discussion. But you do you man.

Look, many of your statements in the OP are just plain wrong. For example, the Shamam doesn’t have the toughest Spyderco lock. Maybe it’s not designed for maximum toughness ?

So either you are just trolling, or might want to go back and revisit your opinions, putting the Shaman in a different light for you ? That’s what you asked for, I thought.

Anyways, carry on.

 

[vnvman]

You have an actual friend with lots of these who speaks highly of them but prefer to trust the opinions of strangers on the internet. It’s much more like a Native than a PM2.

Well that's fair for you to think that, but actually it's quite the opposite, I'm trying to find what people love about this knife since it seems to be universally praised on Spyderco forums and such but besides the comfort of the grip and the looks I can't really figure out why exactly since I find my Bush Ranger feels even more comfortable in my hand (at least for the short time I was able to spend playing with a Shaman so far).

One of the reasons (if not the biggest one) why I'm posting is that my friend is a Shaman collector, he doesn't really use his Shamans, he wants to pass his collection to his kid unscathed someday and such, most of his users are cheap VG10 Sekis, and that's totally OK and I respect it...but since I do use all my stuff I was more curious about people's real life experiences with this knife.

 

[vnvman]

Look, many of your statements in the OP are just plain wrong. For example, the Shamam doesn’t have the toughest Spyderco lock. Maybe it’s not designed for maximum toughness ?

So either you are just trolling, or might want to go back and revisit your opinions, putting the Shaman in a different light for you ? That’s what you asked for, I thought.

Anyways, carry on.

You even misquoted me and said that "not all PM2 have FRN handles" while that wasn't what I was saying let alone the fact that there is no such thing as an FRN PM2 (maybe you meant the Para3 LW?) so I'm not even sure what you were trying to convey there, either that or you didn't even read fully, but at that point what's even the point in replying: I just don't get it.

Not sure which statements are "wrong", maybe opinions you disagree with but I guess that's fine right, I can live with people having different opinions than mine. I'm sorry I have to break this down to you but I really don't "have to revisit" any opinion because some random dude asks me so on the Internet without even giving me any legit reason to do. So... unless I want to of course, and truth be told I do so very much often, being that because of direct experience with knife, or other people's experience with it, believe it or not even forum people.

Speaking of which, If the compression lock is not the toughest lock on a Spyderco that what would that be then?

I tried them besides maybe the most exotic or vintage ones and I'm pretty sure it's the only one that was able to take the most abuse without failing on some level in my use. Maybe it got some play but I was always able to fix it afterwards, which I cannot always say about the back locks, for example, let alone the liner locks and so on.

Legit question here, maybe I've been missing some Spyderco tech this whole time and I'd be curious to know about it. Hoenstly I started collecting and using Spydercos only after 2015, I'm definitely a much younger user than many here so I don't mind getting schooled, don't get me wrong.

 

[vnvman]

My .02 .... but yeah I one of those dudes with 7 shamans.

To me carries great for the size, easy to manipulate , figity, and comes in any flavor steel you can think of. It's a substancial knife of stronger design than a PM2 but lots of same features.

I love the choil , you can get a lot of leverage right up on the blade and thumb over the top. Somewhat noticed it can also help conceal the knife a little better depolyed if you are in public and don't want to alarm people. The compression lock is not the ultimate but if you are not heavy batoning and pushing the limits of it, I don't see how else it could be of concern...you have steel liners and large stop pin.

Pick it up and you should know if it is for you or not. An example I wonder why would anyone want a delica instead of getting a native 5...all just preferences.

That's exactly the kind of feedback I'm after, real long term use one, thanks man.

 

[vnvman]

Well actually I do lol. I do like the aesthetics and the more I browse this thread the nor they grow on me. If I know myself well enough I'm more like looking for good reason to finally cave and get one

Doesn't sound like the OP wants to be sold at all.. fine by me, hah. The Bodacious is the better Shaman. "Change my mind".. or some such thing..

 

[Fonedork]

Well that's fair for you to think that, but actually it's quite the opposite, I'm trying to find what people love about this knife since it seems to be universally praised on Spyderco forums and such but besides the comfort of the grip and the looks I can't really figure out why exactly since I find my Bush Ranger feels even more comfortable in my hand (at least for the short time I was able to spend playing with a Shaman so far).

One of the reasons (if not the biggest one) why I'm posting is that my friend is a Shaman collector, he doesn't really use his Shamans, he wants to pass his collection to his kid unscatethed someday and such, most of his users are cheap VG10 Sekis... since I do use all my stuff I was more curious about people's real life experiences with this knife.

I think what distinguishes the shaman is the thick contoured handles, many popular spydercos have flat handles and the rounded, hand filling shaman handles are a lot different feeling than those. Having space between your hands and the knife handle typically will make the handle hurt after a while if you’re actually carving stuff. The blade has a thick spine and an obviously stronger tip than a PM2/military so it’s sort of like a heavier duty edc option for spyderco fans who carve and cut wood or whatever for minutes rather than a few seconds at a time. I tend to just carry knives and rarely use them and when I do use them it is often contrived so the shaman isn’t for me, it takes up a lot of your pocket

 

[vnvman]

Hey I don't like peas but if a horde of anonymous people at the bus stop tell me I should like peas I'll grow to love them.

I definitely don't need a horde of people to tell me to buy a knife, infact I bought soo many knives because of much sillier reasons

 

[ferider]

Speaking of which, If the compression lock is not the toughest lock on a Spyderco that what would that be then?
:
Legit question here, maybe I've been missing some Spyderco tech this whole time and I'd be curious to know about it. Hoenstly I started collecting and using Spydercos only after 2015, I'm definitely a much younger user than many here so I don't mind getting schooled, don't get me wrong.

That would be the PowerLock in Tatanka and Chinook4.

One could argue that the CBBL (Manix) is stronger than Comp lock, too. Just more material … the backspacer in the Manix is a different question.

Also, I got used to putting blue loktite on all my pivots, and on clean pivot screws, not just with Spyderco’s.

There is a lot of hype about Spyderco’s, much like about other brands. But - except maybe for Tuff and Chinook 1 - building the toughest knife has never been their goal, IMO. Neither should it be, for that we have fixed blades.

And yes, my 3V Ti AD10 is the toughest folder that I have. But it’s heavy and will loose in a cutting competition with my CRK and most of my Spydercos. Putting one vs the other doesn’t make sense.

It’s good to have choices.

 

[vnvman]

I think what distinguishes the shaman is the thick contoured handles, many popular spydercos have flat handles and the rounded, hand filling shaman handles are a lot different feeling than those. Having space between your hands and the knife handle typically will make the handle hurt after a while if you’re actually carving stuff. The blade has a thick spine and an obviously stronger tip than a PM2/military so it’s sort of like a heavier duty edc option for spyderco fans who carve and cut wood or whatever for minutes rather than a few seconds at a time. I tend to just carry knives and rarely use them and when I do use them it is often contrived so the shaman isn’t for me, it takes up a lot of your pocket

That's a good point. For me it's unlikely that I happen to need a folding "bushcraft" knife on normal weekdays, and if I'm heading out with that intent I carry something like a small scandi fixed blade - Wenger MSK as of late. I do appreciate a well contoured handle tho, infact on slab handled knives I tend to do some countouring myself, as you see attached here.