Sharpest Blades Right Out of the Box?

Every Survive! Knife (GSO-X etc) comes absolutely razor sharp. The owner is a bit obsessive. :)
 
So far in my 1st year of grabbing up blades I'm gonna have to say it was my Bad Monkey sharpest out the box. Runner up is a Yojimbo 2, the top half of the blade came razor fine, but the bottom half of the blade was not real sharp. I love sharpening, but the S30V on that Yojimbo can really take a while longer to get there.
 
craytab said:
What I do know is that if you are in this hobby and you use knives you must learn to sharpen.
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Absolutely! In fact, one of my regular "therapies" is to just sit quietly and focus on sharpening every dull blade I can get my hands on.

BTW, I'm sorry if I sounded miffed; I was not at all upset and am enjoying the conversation.

Thanks!
 
bradrian said:
Absolutely! In fact, one of my regular "therapies" is to just sit quietly and focus on sharpening every dull blade I can get my hands on.

BTW, I'm sorry if I sounded miffed; I was not at all upset and am enjoying the conversation.

Thanks!
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No worries. I think my point of contention with "who does the best out of box sharpness" threads is this: anyone can buy any knife they want. The real art to this hobby is maintaining that knife, sharpness being one of the more important factors.

And those veff serrations are apparently a PITA for CRKT to do because of the attention it takes. They should be sharp given this! Always wanted to try them but never have.
 
Sharpest I've had out of the box is between a Benchmade 586 and Spyderco Slysz Bowie.
I'd say the most consistent I have received have been Kershaw/ZT and Spyderco.
 
In my experience, Cold Steel, Emerson, and Spyderco have all delivered on the scary sharp promise. Buck is up there too, and occasionally Benchmade.
 
Spyderco. I've seen a couple grinds a little off but they were still extremely sharp, never seen one anything but right out of the packaging. I bought my son a cold steel and it was literally butter knife dull, it looked like it missed completely the final sharpening phase but that only allowed me to put my edge on it from the get go, the steel is great as it holds it very well. Some slip by I guess. Buck comes in next. Ever since they started the buck 2000 thing I've yet to see any buck with a flaw on the edge.

Of course Mora is right there too. For the price I'm amazed at the factory edge and how well it retains it.
 
Yeah Cold Steel and Spyderco.

Spyderco wins out to me because I've had a ridiculous variety of steels including ZDP and S110v come in super sharp. I've even gotten a couple that split hairs out the box. Of note, a serrated H1 blade's scallops came in hair splitting sharp which surprised me.

Cold Steels are always sharp in my experience but its limited to several AUS8 and so far one XHP for me.

Kershaws and ZT's are good too, never come dull...Doesnt usually come "super sharp" like the two above though.

Benchmade in my experience is very hit or miss and that's being nice. Out the box sharpness doesn't matter much to me though compared to other attributes so I'll live.
 
Also--my ZT's and Striders came plenty sharp, just not the best geometry for slicing.
 
Kershaw and Buck the most often.. Case have been pretty terrible for me the past few years.. They apex, sometimes evenly, but dat burr, tho.. They just leave it on there. Last 3 cases I bought were like that, one little fixed blade and 2 different trappers. I know that a 'bad batcb' wasnt responsible, because they were so time-spaced out and different. Absolute worst for me out the box has been Bear. I bought a 110 style lockback a while back that was totally un apexed halfway up from the pivot all the way to the tip. The bevel that was there was probably 35dps.. Yuck. The first bear I ever got was a Damascus straight razor style folder, and it was effin sharp, but no symmetry at all to the edge.
Lately, I havent bought a NIB anything, so I dunno who is crappin the worst polished turds into their boxes these days.
 
craytab said:
...One brand that consistently sucks river rocks with out of box sharpness for me is CRKT. For their sake I hope they have changed that but I wouldn't know, I've stayed away from most of their stuff for a while now.
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I can say that in the past year or so I've purchased 4 CRKT Knives due to seeing great prices on 'em; lake 111z, free range folder, large Pazoda, and a Kasper/Crawford Dragon, and all 4 were sharp enough to leave a small bald spot on my wrist/forearm without effort. All have held that edge rather well too, as the free range (which I carry the most as my "dirty" work around the house knife), is the only one I've had to touch up yet, and the lake and dragon do both see time in my rotation, and still will take hair off my arm with ease... I also won a Heiho and can say the same about it's edge, (and all 5 are standard 8cr14mov china steel).

Now I'm not suggesting you or anyone should run and go buy one, I get it about losing faith in a company, for me it's Gerber, and they'll never see any hard earned money from me again, but i just wanted to say that whatever their issue "was", I would venture to say that they appear to have figured it out and corrected it in their newer models at least, whether it was correcting the HT recipe, a new oven at the manufacturing facility, or if they changed facilities altogether, idk. But if a new one would ever really catch your eye, I would say don't be scared to pull the trigger if the price is right.
 
The craziest sharp knife of of the box I've ever encountered was my Kershaw Tilt. It hurt me very badly...
 
craytab said:
I guess I don't get the obsession with out of box sharpness. If it comes out of the box sharp, it won't stay that way. I'm going to dull it. If it isn't sharp out of box I will sharpen it, just like if it was sharp and I dulled it.
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Same here. The thing I hate is when the edge is ground too thick. It goes from sharpening a knife to fixing a knife. Some guys like fixing knives, I don't.
 
The Bad Monkey has been the winner of this category for a long time in our shop. Then we got in a recent batch of ZT0801s. I am not sure what ZT did to these but they are as sharp or maybe sharper out of the box than the Bad Monkeys. Both are insane sharp!
 
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