Spyderco Carbon Fiber?

[Lycosa]

That's a capital "G". ^

 

[timberweasel]

I don't think you give knife nuts enough credit. When some said solid they meant they didn't think it was a thin layer of Carbon Fiber material over a thicker layer of G-10. I think most on a knife site knows what Carbon Fiber, G-10, micarta, etc.. is.

Sorry, Ken, that was not my intention and I hope I did not offend anyone.

There were some who compared the 'carbon fibre laminated G-10' to gold. Sure it ain't pure gold, but any jeweller would tell you 14K wears better than pure gold. Most would just call it "gold" regardless of carat. I reckon that is the point I was going for.

 

[CWL]

CWL, I'm pretty sure most all here know what Carbon Fiber is

Wish you were right, but unfortunately, I take a less positive view about many on this Forum. Reading these pages of postings where people are whining that they aren't getting "solid" CF but just a thin layer... this tends to make me doubt it greatly.

Please see my sig line, quoted from Bastid.

 

[Ken44]

Like I said, when they said solid they meant a solid piece of Carbon Fiber MATERIAL. Not a thin piece over a thicker piece of G10. That should be quite evident. In the knife world makers drop the "material" word off of Carbon Fiber, and just call it Carbon Fiber. Always been that way.
They realize we know what they are talking about.
Like I said before, I could care less if my Sage 1 has a thin piece of CF over a thick piece of G-10. I'm glad it does, or I would not have got it for $85.
Now on my customs that are CF, I would be upset if it was a thin layer of CF over a thicker piece of G-10.

Anyway, its a non issue now. Sal said he would change it in the catalog.

 

[Elgreco]

My only concern with the laminated CF is how it would react to oil, grease, brake fluid, brake clean, transmission fluid etc. Being a mechanic this is important. I have had the knife for months and I have had no problems so far.

 

[Ken44]

My only concern with the laminated CF is how it would react to oil, grease, brake fluid, brake clean, transmission fluid etc. Being a mechanic this is important. I have had the knife for months and I have had no problems so far.

You won't have a problem. CF and G-10 is about as tough as it gets, nothing you mention will ever hurt it.

 

[1234]

Do the product descriptions actually say solid carbon fiber? They probably say carbon fiber, and that's exactly the material you have

This is what it says
""The Szabo’s handle is constructed of full stainless steel liners capped by Gold Line carbon fiber scales. This striking material combines the strength and light weight of carbon fiber with an outer layer of embedded gold-colored wire. "
"

Now this is what I thought after reading that in the catalog , you take CF & then you put a layer of gold line CF on top , great idea I thought looks nice , and gives it some traction , I didn't think lets take say 98% G-10 and put 2% CF on top and then call it CF ,

so it fooled me , wont happen again though.

1234,,,

%age above may not be 100% accurate

 

[singularity35]

I really don't like to pay a premium for scale material...so when I buy a knife, it's not for the scale material.

 

[Ken44]

I really don't like to pay a premium for scale material...so when I buy a knife, it's not for the scale material.

Thats not the issue. Telling what it is in the catalog is. Then the buyer can decide for thereself if they want the knife as described.
See 1234's post above.

 

[hunterseeker5]

I think that most people here have a misconception as to what carbon fiber actually is. It is a fabric material made from carbon graphite threads. That's all.

By itself, CF has as much solidity as a sheet of silk. CF sheets has to be stacked-up and held together with plastic resin to have any solidity. It is similar to Micarta or G10, except it doesn't use paper, cloth or glass sheets, but carbon fiber sheets - get it? That's it.

People complaining that CF isn't "solid" really don't understand what they are talking about. Without the plastic resin that gives it shape and hardness, you'd just be holding a couple sheets of fabric. It isn't some sort of magic material, and you aren't being ripped-off by anyone.

Add: Here's your carbon fiber, it is thread.

I think most all of us are painfully aware of what carbon fiber is. To say however that its a "fabric material" is to fundamentally misunderstand what it is in the same way that you could say gold is "simply a metal material." It is perfectly factually correct, but pretty pointless. I'd invite you next time to spend a little time on wikipedia prior to posting so you may comprehend what you're talking about before accusing everyone in a particular thread of being ignorant.

Lets visit some numbers:

G10 is made of, as you so astutely mentioned, fabric. Its actually a glass fiber fabric in resin. So lets visit that for a moment. Glass fibers in resin must, by your description, be all the same right? So how shocking would it be for you to find out that, depending on resin and fabric inclusion, you can go from a tensile strength of a mere 14ksi to over 340ksi? Thats greater than an order of magnitude, in fact thats over 24 times the tensile strength for what you just called effectively undifferentiable "fabric material in plastic." So what about carbon fiber then? Surely that must be completely homogeneous and within that same performance range of fiberglass since according to you its identical and being told one is the other isn't ripping you off in the least. Well actually in fact you can run in the range of over 800ksi, so thats double fiberglass composite. You starting to see why it matters and is in fact different? Of course you could start looking at material properties beyond tensile strength, like its unusual reflectivity which is why most people buy it, and realize again that its just not the same. Or you could look at price. Lead and gold are both heavy soft metals highly malleable metals, so you really wouldn't mind trading me your gold bars in exchange for lead ones right?

The real difference here is price. If you paid for something advertised as carbon fiber, its not unfair to expect carbon fiber. For Spyderco to claim that it was not trying to deceive anyone, is to ignore the fact that the underlying G10 is colored black. You see colorants usually slightly reduce tensile strength of composites, as they're effectively contaminants, and ignoring that fact they also cost money and require specialization of the product. If they had merely been doing it to save weight, and had no intention of attempting to conceal the actual production method used, why wasn't plain (which appears primarily translucent) G10 used? There was obvious intent to obfuscate and obscure the fact that the knife was not entirely made of carbon fiber. While its nice for Sal to say he feels that "to suggest that Spyderco is intentionally deceiving our customers is somewhat insulting..." is to ignore the fact that Spyderco DID deceive its customers, and clearly many of us feel this way. If we didn't this wouldn't have been a discussion at all, someone would have posted it and everyone would have said in their most sarcastic teenager voice "NO DUH." In fact the ferocity with which people defended Spyderco clearly shows that, whether or not it was malicious, Spyderco did extremely effectively deceive their customers. Attempting to shirk responsibility by, instead of apologizing, stating that it should have been obvious to consumers as they should have gone to the forums to ask or otherwise simply know or not care is not representative of the integrity I normally associate with spyderco. Clearly people were deceived, and mere pages back it was, apparently, subject to debate which nullifies the forum suggestion in the first place.

It's not like they gave you pot metal and said it was titanium.

You're right, to be an accurate analogy it would have been titanium coated potmetal.

 

[singularity35]

Thats not the issue. Telling what it is in the catalog is. Then the buyer can decide for thereself if they want the knife as described.
See 1234's post above.

I know what your issue is, I just stated my opinion. It's just that I go for the knife design and maybe the steel more than for whatever scale material it has. So if I save money by buying a knife with a laminate, it's all good to me.

 

[Ken44]

Cool.

 

[CrimsonTideShooter]

I think that most people here have a misconception as to what carbon fiber actually is. It is a fabric material made from carbon graphite threads. That's all.

By itself, CF has as much solidity as a sheet of silk. CF sheets has to be stacked-up and held together with plastic resin to have any solidity. It is similar to Micarta or G10, except it doesn't use paper, cloth or glass sheets, but carbon fiber sheets - get it? That's it.

People complaining that CF isn't "solid" really don't understand what they are talking about. Without the plastic resin that gives it shape and hardness, you'd just be holding a couple sheets of fabric. It isn't some sort of magic material, and you aren't being ripped-off by anyone.

Add: Here's your carbon fiber, it is thread.

I can't tell if this post is a troll post, or if you are just being dense on purpose.

This thread is quite obviously not about the semantics of what we call carbon fiber. When people refer to the scale as being "solid" carbon fiber they are of COURSE referring to it being 100% carbon reinforced plastic material, and not 99% G10 with 1% of carbon fiber twill weave on top.

Since I know you are much more intelligent than your post suggests, I can only think that your post was a classic case of the "red herring" fallacy. You are bringing up a totally separate non issue in hopes to divert the attention away from the real topic being discussed. One doesn't have to know the details of what carbon fiber is made of to understand that their scale is or is not made of 100% carbon fiber reinforced plastic. Just like one doesn't have to know how an internal combustion engine functions to drive a car.

 

[Jet B]

You're right, to be an accurate analogy it would have been titanium coated potmetal.

I guess an even better analogy would be titanium coated steel since G-10 is actually better than carbon fiber in a lot of ways for a knife handle. I'm guessing the price difference is mostly because G-10 is a more common material not because CF is so much better.

I do however understand the point that the OP was trying to make. It could definitely be seen as misleading advertising to some. Spyderco is a pretty upstanding company though, I don't believe they ever intended to mislead just like Sal said, and I wouldn't even be surprised if they let him return his knife for an exchange if he really felt disappointed with the knowledge that it's G-10 under there.

I didn't know it was G-10 until the last time this subject came up a while ago, but honestly it didn't really bother me either way. (I own and use a Sage 1) Everyone is different in how they perceive value though.

Cheers.

 

[PG5768]

I always thought G10 was G10 because it complied with a Mil Spec (Mil-I-24768/2).

I think most all of us are painfully aware of what carbon fiber is. To say however that its a "fabric material" is to fundamentally misunderstand what it is in the same way that you could say gold is "simply a metal material." It is perfectly factually correct, but pretty pointless. I'd invite you next time to spend a little time on wikipedia prior to posting so you may comprehend what you're talking about before accusing everyone in a particular thread of being ignorant.

Lets visit some numbers:

G10 is made of, as you so astutely mentioned, fabric. Its actually a glass fiber fabric in resin. So lets visit that for a moment. Glass fibers in resin must, by your description, be all the same right? So how shocking would it be for you to find out that, depending on resin and fabric inclusion, you can go from a tensile strength of a mere 14ksi to over 340ksi? Thats greater than an order of magnitude, in fact thats over 24 times the tensile strength for what you just called effectively undifferentiable "fabric material in plastic." So what about carbon fiber then? Surely that must be completely homogeneous and within that same performance range of fiberglass since according to you its identical and being told one is the other isn't ripping you off in the least. Well actually in fact you can run in the range of over 800ksi, so thats double fiberglass composite. You starting to see why it matters and is in fact different? Of course you could start looking at material properties beyond tensile strength, like its unusual reflectivity which is why most people buy it, and realize again that its just not the same. Or you could look at price. Lead and gold are both heavy soft metals highly malleable metals, so you really wouldn't mind trading me your gold bars in exchange for lead ones right?

The real difference here is price. If you paid for something advertised as carbon fiber, its not unfair to expect carbon fiber. For Spyderco to claim that it was not trying to deceive anyone, is to ignore the fact that the underlying G10 is colored black. You see colorants usually slightly reduce tensile strength of composites, as they're effectively contaminants, and ignoring that fact they also cost money and require specialization of the product. If they had merely been doing it to save weight, and had no intention of attempting to conceal the actual production method used, why wasn't plain (which appears primarily translucent) G10 used? There was obvious intent to obfuscate and obscure the fact that the knife was not entirely made of carbon fiber. While its nice for Sal to say he feels that "to suggest that Spyderco is intentionally deceiving our customers is somewhat insulting..." is to ignore the fact that Spyderco DID deceive its customers, and clearly many of us feel this way. If we didn't this wouldn't have been a discussion at all, someone would have posted it and everyone would have said in their most sarcastic teenager voice "NO DUH." In fact the ferocity with which people defended Spyderco clearly shows that, whether or not it was malicious, Spyderco did extremely effectively deceive their customers. Attempting to shirk responsibility by, instead of apologizing, stating that it should have been obvious to consumers as they should have gone to the forums to ask or otherwise simply know or not care is not representative of the integrity I normally associate with spyderco. Clearly people were deceived, and mere pages back it was, apparently, subject to debate which nullifies the forum suggestion in the first place.


You're right, to be an accurate analogy it would have been titanium coated potmetal.

 

[hunterseeker5]

I guess an even better analogy would be titanium coated steel since G-10 is actually better than carbon fiber in a lot of ways for a knife handle. I'm guessing the price difference is mostly because G-10 is a more common material not because CF is so much better.

I do however understand the point that the OP was trying to make. It could definitely be seen as misleading advertising to some. Spyderco is a pretty upstanding company though, I don't believe they ever intended to mislead just like Sal said, and I wouldn't even be surprised if they let him return his knife for an exchange if he really felt disappointed with the knowledge that it's G-10 under there.

I didn't know it was G-10 until the last time this subject came up a while ago, but honestly it didn't really bother me either way. (I own and use a Sage 1) Everyone is different in how they perceive value though.

Cheers.

As far as G10 being superior, I covered this in one of my earlier posts. I'll revisit the concept briefly though and say that if you bought a watch advertised as simply "gold" and priced accordingly, how disappointed would you be to find out that its technically superior stainless steel? I feel like there is a lot of running around in circles in this thread by a number of spyderco AFIs who keep reiterating the same argument which was just shot down last page.

As far as intentional misleading, as I said before putting black in the G10 resin certainly wasn't an "accident." Nobody accidentally tipped a bucket of it in the resin mixer. Clearly then there was intent to make the G10 look more like the carbon fiber over it. Otherwise why not do it in translucent G10 which would show off both sides of that single layer of carbon cloth? You can do the math yourself.

As far as Spyderco accepting returns and/or compensation for the error, they have yet to actually concede this was an error and apologize. Maybe they'd accept the return, maybe they wouldn't. My point here simply is that I've heard a lot of spyderco AFIs, I myself was once among the guilty group doing this, speaking for spyderco regarding their warranty and customer service. It was a pretty hard crash-landing to earth seeing a few pretty ugly CS decisions as of late where customers were denied service because they were honest and spyderco flat out rejected them not because their products were determined not to be at fault, but simply because they legally could within their TOS.

I always thought G10 was G10 because it complied with a Mil Spec (Mil-I-24768/2).

Precisely why its not the same as "cloth in resin."

 

[Nullity]

I am happy that I now know more about these pseudo-carbon-fiber scales, but it has not changed my mind about purchasing a knife that has it.

As singularity35 said, I don't buy a knife for the handle scales material.
The scale material matters even less when it's simply an aesthetic scale that serves no structural purpose.


Thanks for weighing in Sal.
Your conscientious posts are always welcome among the sea of negativity and ego.

 

[arty]

Am I missing something here? The handles made of G10 or CF are mostly resin. Aren't they mainly a plastic?

 

[Jay_Ev]

"I don't buy a knife for the handle scale material".

For me, it depends on the knife. I have been looking for a carbon fiber Delica & Harpy for years and I will get one, not because of the blade steel but because of the carbon fiber.

 

[Minibear464]

Am I missing something here? The handles made of G10 or CF are mostly resin. Aren't they mainly a plastic?

I believe they're mostly cloth. Or, as some smart-aleck poster mentioned, carbon fiber cloth. The cloth is then soaked in resin, and then stacked together. They're mostly cloth, made hard by absorbing the resin, and then allowing that resin to harden. Also, I'm pretty sure us knife people use Carbon Fiber to mean the scale material, and not the cloth. It's similar to how by saying Titanium, no one really means pure titanium, but rather 6Al4V, or some other form of titanium suitable for knife use.

Also, I'm pretty that Spyderco never intentionally meant to trick buyers by writing carbon fiber instead of G10 with carbon fiber on top. You have to admit, it's not very noticeable, and I haven't read any thread about the material when the Sage 1 or the GB were released. The scale material works. Yes, it would be nice to know what it really is, but it was just a mistake, and Sal has said that the actual composition of all scales will be put in the catalog.