Randall Made knives 12-9 / 14 grind stainless field test review

What a great thread full of hands on knowledge, many thanks to all of you guys who share these experiences here, especially thanks to the OP, he is one of few guys who wasn't afraid to put this fantastic looking knife to very tough test and that thanks to this we (who don't have these blades yet or who are making decisions what knife to get) will benefit from this review... It is great to hear especially from guy, who made hands on comparison to other premium brands and steels, such as Busse's Infi, or CPM steel and so on, that Randall's S steel outperformed these knives.Many great photography presented here too,interesting reading!

Thank you
 
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Gaston

A tad late to this thread but the handle shape on your Model 14 stopped me cold. Congrats on owning that amazing looking Randall. I've never seen what looks like a Commando Finger Grip style handle on a Randall before and would love to know more about your knife. Is that a Dealer or Club knife? Thanks in advance for any info.
 
Thanks! I think you meant the Model 12? My Model 14 has a standard handle... The bigger Model 12 handle is actually a home-made re-shaping of Randall's hugely oversized "Commando handle", that I did myself using a drill with a coarse sandpaper drum, then sanding by hand with finer grits. I reshaped only the micarta, as the metal pommel was much too hard for my tools, and I then sent the knife to RazorEdgeKnives to have him re-shape the pommel into a much smaller and still professional looking result. I think he did a bit of polishing to blend in the pommel to the micarta trimming work I did at home.

The handle's shape was gradually arrived at to match the shape of my hand, but the general shape should work for most people: I wonder why this kind of shape is rarely seen, as it worked beautifully and seems very tolerant of various grips or hand sizes: It is similar to a shape you would get from squeezing putty in your hand...

Randall's big commando handle offers a huge amount of excess material, which is good for reshaping, but if you want to avoid the hassle I would go for the Model 12's finger-grooved handle, which seems a LOT slimmer than the Commando handle... There are a few other shapes offered on the Model 12 as well, but I would rate the Commando handle as probably the worst: It doesn't look bad in photos because the blade is big, but it really feels wrong and grossly oversized in person...

This view shows some of the re-worked handle's radiuses better:

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Gaston
 
Gaston,
Thanks for the reply. Yes the 12, my mistake. In my haste I didn't bother to look at the pics again before writing my post. Nice job! That handle looks great and very functional. I agree, in my opinion the commando handle takes a great picture but not as functional as others. I'm also partial to the Randall finger grip handle style. That said the curve of the commando handle and the finger grooves make a lot of sense to me. You did such a good job creating the finger grooves that I assumed it was done by RKS. Thanks again for the info.
 
OP, great review thanks!! If you happen to see this, can you please tell us exactly what options you have on that sweet blade in your pics??
I'm on the fence, seriously thinking about ordering my first Randall! :D
 
Hey Gaston. Do you carry your Model 12 in a Gerber BMF sheath?

Yes, but the fit is a bit tight in the blade width: It will produce small rubber shavings for a while... It does work very well (including using the snap almost as is), as the BMF sheath is entirely made of some kind of rubber-like structure, so there is nothing hard to touch the blade, and the blade is never dulled in the least from the contact.

I considered the Gerber sheath superior to the original Randall brown leather sheath, which absorbs water like a sponge, and loses its neat appearance -forever- in one hour of exposure to rain (the leather also eventually softens out of shape)... The black finished Randall sheaths are infinitely more water-resistant, almost like plastic, and seem completely impervious to water, like almost no other leather I have seen, including other black dyed sheaths... In general black dyed sheaths do much better in rain than brown leather, due to the sealant that prevents the dye from staining on you. The Randall black dye sheaths are something else however...: They are dyed right through the full thickness of the leather, which I have never seen done elsewhere, and this seems to enhance the water-resistance even further...

I later modified the BMF sheath to take a very high-quality old 10" blade Buckmaster clone made in Japan (adding a rigid "extension" at the sheath's mouth, and moving the snap up for the extra inch). That turned out extremely well, even if the "clone" is very heavy, but the Randall was now sheathless, so I sold it as I needed the money. There was nothing wrong with the Model 12 or its performance, it just did not fit in the general style of "big" knives that I own, which I like loaded down with extra features... It never failed, or showed the slightest manufacturing defect. I would also like to say my Model 12 was built to much tighter tolerances than the other Randalls that I owned: Its symmetry, grinds, fit and finish was far, far superior to my other 3 Randalls: 18-14 and Clinton. I was not happy with the workmanship on my other 3 Randalls, especially the Model 18 which had a completely misaligned wonky guard (something truly horrible), and the Model 14, which needed heavy re-working and re-grinding to be even remotely acceptable, starting out with a boat-like point so dull it could only be used for sheathless knife sparring...

The Model 12 seemed on completely another level of build quality: No comparison at all... All 4 of my Randalls were of recent vintage and new from the same accredited dealer.

The only thing that ever happened to the Model 12 was that, after thousands of chops, the silver soldering around the guard cracked and flaked away: This had no consequence except a very, very slight vibration perceptible in the guard: I ran some thin crazy glue where the soldering had flaked off, and the guard was again perfectly vibration free. The edge-holding was among the very best I ever experienced, with more work put on it than any other knife I owned. It was really the perfect knife, except for the original shape of the Commando handle, which was horribly oversized before I had it re-shaped... I would recommend the finger-grooved models, which look very comfortable...

Gaston
 
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