- Joined
- Dec 30, 2008
- Messages
- 4,563
First let me say, this is one of my favorite pocket knives. I bought it for just over 100$ brand new on the internet. I had previously owned a spyderco delica 4 in VG-10 but decided to bring it back and buy something more useful for me, a victorinox swisschamp. I had missed the delica ever since and decided i needed to get a new one, but looked around for other spyderco choices. The price and materials of the caly3 were enough to make me buy it. So i ordered it. The fit and finish is great, i'm mixed on whether or not having no washers around the blade is a good thing. The 420j2 outter layer on the blade scratches easily, but that's fine by me. I love the wire clip, and the carbon fiber is awesome. I can attest to how good ZDP-189 is. When i first got it, the pivot area was really dirty so i disassembled the pivot and cleaned it all out. Took the clip off and cleaned in there and loc tited it back on with blue loc tite. Flushed out the lock and pivot area with brake cleaner, let it evaporate and then reassembled, lubing and applying loc tite. But let me backup a second. Since i was tired and not thinking, i forgot to open the blade, it had been a while since i wrked on a lock back and i clearly wasn't awake enough, but wanted to do it before i went to bed. Anyways, to make a long story short, if any of you have worked on a lockback without opening the blade you know when you take the pivot out the blade will then go slamming into the back spacer extremely hard and do some damage. Well, after sweating and nearly crying, i took the blade and looked at it. Tip was still needle point, not flat or anything, and there was a slight flat spot in the upper 1/4" of the blade. Fearing the worse but having confidence in my new steel, i threw it on the sharpmaker and in 2 or 3 minutes it was back to new. No chip or anything. WOAH! So, i went ahead and gave the blade a full over sharpening on the sharpmaker and have left it at that edge since. It's been in storage as i have moved and had my beater knives out while working around the house. So i decided to take it out and put it to work. Seeing one of fellow member Ankerson's videos the other day of him cutting up boxes got me to thinking. When i first started out with knives, i didn't know how to sharpen nor did i know anything about blade steels. For all i knew they were all the same. So i beat the living crap out of them, and to my suprise the cheaper knives (like CRKT) took a decent beating and i still have them today. The reason i mention this is because more often than not, for whatever reason, i use a box cutter for tasks that i'm afraid will damage a knife. So, i decided today i was going to cut up a 24x14x5 cardboard box because i know cardboard is abrasive and my gerbils need something to chew on besides the plastic hide they have in their cage! So here we go. By the way, before the test the knife would whittle hair. Now, i know you can't see this for your own eyes so you'll have to take my word on it, but i would tell you if it was crappily sharpened. I cut each piece of cardboard into knife length sizes squared. The blade got extremely hot during the cutting, suprise suprise lol. It cuts sweet and although i can feel the up and down play with the lockback, which i have in all my lockbacks, it doesn't bother me much unless i'm trying to pull the knife out. I did notice cutting against the cells in the cardboard is harder than with them lol. It was pretty thick cardboard. The knife survived it all though! I found myself having my thumb on the hump of the spyderhole and had the entire knife engulfed in my hand. It was comfortable, had no hotspots and cut like a champ. After i finished cutting, it still shaved! Not as sharp, but it shaved. It lost most of its crazy sharpness, but shaves and cuts paper fine, so that's good in my eyes. It developed some blade play, but it's not all that bad. I'll just re loctite it. Here are a few pictures, any other questions feel free to ask.
Beforeish
After
Beforeish
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