Siiiiffuuuuu!!!

[Samurai6]

Hey, if you read this already on the other forums, take off!

Recieved my BF Sifu yesterday. This thing is ferocious. Bob Taylor is a sick, evil, genious. >

It is big(you knew that). Between the 5.5" blade and the longer handle, there is a fair amount of reach. I love the long flat handle. It is easy to change grips with and your hand always ends up in a good position after a flip or a twirl. The handle fills the hand very comfortably, so the coupling always feels strong. I was expecting to dislike the finger grooves, but they definately lock you hand in place, probably a good thing on such a long handle. They are not uncomfortable in any way once I sanded the points off of them.

The recurved edge is brilliant for always presenting the edge at the best mechanical advantage. The lock is perfectly solid, with no blade play at all, even better than my Crawford Carnivore. Full force snap-backcuts have no adverse affect on it. The lock has an effective detent to hold the massive blade closed, but a little practice with a double flip motion allows you to flip open with zest.

This thing rocks! Thanks REKAT, Spark, Mike, Mom, Dad, whoever, for bringing this creature to life. The Sifu is, by far, the most knife I have ever seen for under $200.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Steve, concerning the handle shape. I have done some work with similar designs in the past (Buck folder) and pretty much gave up on it in a few minutes. While I found that it did prevent any slipping it was very uncomfortable when doing any hard slicing as the grooves tended to extert too much force laterally on my fingers. Anyway, have you done any slashing work with the Sifu? If so is this a problem?

I realize that in a fight security would probably be better optomized over comfort however I was just curious from a utility point of view as the strong indexing would be attractive if the comfort was there (not with that particular blade, just musing about the handle).

-Cliff

 

[Samurai6]

Cliff,

That's kinda' the way I look at the Sifu. I'm not likely to need to do anything repetitive with it at all. I have worked out with it on my wooden cutting dummy for a few minutes and spent maybe a total of a half an hour practicing flip openings and grip changes. No hand discomfort has ensued. I did have to round of the peaks of the finger grooves with a sanding block and radiused the shoulders of the back of the handle, and it is not uncomfortable for the sort of use it was designed for. I think if a person used a folder this size to chop and chop at something solid, it would need to be more overbuilt. I think the Sifu would get beaten to pieces pretty quickly used that way. If I had done the handle, I probably would have only cut in the first three grooves, and they are just a little too closely spaced for my finger size. The bottom line is a good tight grip though.