Sharp Out of the Box?

lava_lamp

lava_lamp

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Oct 5, 2006
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I've noticed some variation in factory blade sharpness. My new Emerson CQC-13 is the sharpest knife I've ever gotten, my Buck 110, and my Spyderco Military are close behind. (In fact, just about every Spyderco I've had has been sharp out of the box, except a Ladybug.)

In contrast, I got a new Bradley Alias II today, and although it was a nice knife, it was close to dull. It wouldn't shave and dragged when cutting paper. My Kershaw Groove was like that, too, although my Leek came sharp and got even sharper with a few passes on a ceramic rod.

Is my experience unusual?
 
In general Spydercos usually come pretty sharp out of the box. Most of the Benchmade knives I have or have had came sharp out of the box. However you will run into some that are not quite up to snuff at times. Sometimes it is hit or miss on sharpness. A lot of us get rid of the factory edge as soon as we get a new knife because you can beat most factory edges with just a little work on some good benchstones.
 
It seems to vary quite a bit. The two Delicas that I've gotten were dull as hell out the box, and the 4 Enduras I've dealt with were SHARP as hell out the box.
 
mine usually come pretty sharp. they all go on the sharpmaker or my buddieslansky, cardboard wheel and leather strop tho
 
lava_lamp said:
I've noticed some variation in factory blade sharpness. My new Emerson CQC-13 is the sharpest knife I've ever gotten, my Buck 110, and my Spyderco Military are close behind. (In fact, just about every Spyderco I've had has been sharp out of the box, except a Ladybug.)

In contrast, I got a new Bradley Alias II today, and although it was a nice knife, it was close to dull. It wouldn't shave and dragged when cutting paper. My Kershaw Groove was like that, too, although my Leek came sharp and got even sharper with a few passes on a ceramic rod.

Is my experience unusual?
Click to expand...

To me, Spyderco seems to be the most uniform in having OOB sharpness. But the sharpest OOBknife I ever had was a Ka-Bar Large Dozier.

That being said, OOB sharpness is really not that important to me. Usually the first thing I do when I get a knife is change the edge angle and sharpen it the way I want it.
 
Cold Steel knives have uniformly been very sharp of of the box. They also sharpen very easily. I've been putting sharp edges on all of my knives lately, but most of the time a searing sharp blade really isn't needed. Nice to have, though.
 
The sharpest blade I ever received was a Benchmade Grip. Sharpest thing I had ever touched. Unfortunately, the bevel was very uneven, probably 6 degrees or less on one side and 15 - 20 on the other :grumpy: At the time I didn't have much sharpening experience but learning to fix that bevel really helped with my, to borrow a term from Spyderco, edge-u-cation :D
 
In my experience, Buck and Spyderco have been the most consistently sharp knives out of the box, and more importantly they've had the most consistent edge grinds. I don't care if a new knife is sharp or not as long as the edge grinds are even.

The dullest new knife I've ever bought was a Benchmade 710. But on the 710 the edge grinds were near perfect and it took ten minutes to get it to whittle hair.
 
I love my Busses but almost all of them were about as sharp as butter knives when I got them. Fortunately, they were easily sharpened to a hair popping edge and have never needed resharpening.
 
I buy most knives used, but it has been a rare knife that I've bought new that I couldn't get much sharper myself.

My Spyderco Caly 3 CF/ZDP189 was SHARP out of the box and remains one of my absurdly sharpest knives. My Benchmades and even Barkies, not so much. I got a William Henry that was really factory-sharp. Of my 2 Endura4's, the wave was sharp and the CE was not, the latter featuring a fat, obtuse grind that I'm still knocking down.

I really don't hold it against a knife that it doesn't come from the factory painstaking hand-honed. I don't really expect a factory gun to arrive sighted in, either. I'm picky about sharpening and I don't mind touching it up.
 
Most factory edges only seem sharp, the edge that is put on is very coarse. I notice a lot of factory edge's are not polished anymore but the edge's are much cleaner. My guess would be that the factory sharpening equipment got a upgrade, higher quality belts for cleaner cutting of metal and something like a hard felt de-burring wheel to finish it up. The edges will feel extremely sharp like this, when I got my EKI commander back from service a little over a year ago it was like yours VERY sharp. It was also the first time I had noticed this type of factory sharpening.

For some this is just fine and if its done right it can be almost as sharp as a high polished blade. But when its done wrong or for quantity not quality you end up lots of different factory sharpness levels. I personally don't like factory edges but that's only because I know I can get them a whole lot sharper.

You must also consider that the employee at the factory sharpenig hundreds of knives a day is the FNG. :p
 
My Spydies and Benchmades were all very sharp, Sog, Gerber, Vic, and Buck have been just ok.
 
Both of my griptillians were hair popping sharp out of the box, next in line was my combo edge leek which could shave words off a page, and then my Delica and my Jester, sadly my spyders werent as sharp as theyre famously supposed to be
 
So far I have to say its my William Henry B12 TZ which is just stupid sharp...followed pretty closely by my XM-18.
 
I've been lucky in that almost every knife I've bought has been what I consider razor sharp. My Emrerson Commander Karambit would be the sharpest. Wicked sharp. Not only would it easily dig into something like the edge of my fingernail with ease, but with little effort it would continue until it really ****ed it up. More so than with any other knife I've tested. A step above the rest.
 
My experience is pretty much the same. My Spydercos have all been sharp, my Emersons have all been outstanding, and my Benchmades have varied from very sharp to rather poor. However, I think OOB sharpness has improved a lot over the years. About 30 years ago, you had to sahrpen every new knife. Today, most are reasonably sharp to start and unless you want to change the angle, a quick touch up usually does the job.
 
To me, a company that does not provide a very sharp knife out of the box is selling an inferior product. If the customer has to put a sharp edge on their new knife, I wonder where else the knife company has cut corners (pardon the pun). The purpose of a knife is to cut... right? If it will not cut efficiently out of the box, why produce & sell it?

Two of the sharpest out of the box companies that I have seen are Bark River Knives & RAT Cutlery.
 
I've always hard good luck with Spyderco's initial sharpness. My newer Benchmades have all been very good. I've never had a Buck that didn't exhibit excellent "out of box" sharpness.

The sharpest production knife I ever received, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was a Marbles Fieldcraft, from back in the Mike Stewart era. You could just look at that 52100 blade and get cut. The edge had an absolutely incredible polish on it. It was on a whole different level than I've found from any other production knife company.
 
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