Spyderco & Gardening

When I do outside work at home I usually carry my SE Salt 2 and also a D2 Cutjack with FRN handles. This gives a good mix of a light serrated blade (for bags etc) and a large PE blade in a durable macho man steel.
 
Took the Seratta out into the yard. Not too surprisingly it's not ideal for cutting vines. Its' great on wood carving. Certainly works fine, but a serrated sheepsfoot and hawkbill would be better. Will work on getting one of those.

The good news is that after spending several hours with it I can say the Seratta is a fantastic knife. It moves through wood well and holds an edge far better than rolled 440C. Not a little better. Much better. It sharpens back to newsprint-cutting sharp in a minute or two. The sharpening effort to edge holding ratio is excellent.
 
Took the Seratta out into the yard. Not too surprisingly it's not ideal for cutting vines. Its' great on wood carving. Certainly works fine, but a serrated sheepsfoot and hawkbill would be better. Will work on getting one of those.

The good news is that after spending several hours with it I can say the Seratta is a fantastic knife. It moves through wood well and holds an edge far better than rolled 440C. Not a little better. Much better. It sharpens back to newsprint-cutting sharp in a minute or two. The sharpening effort to edge holding ratio is excellent.

Mate shame it doesn't meet all your needs. Though it sounds like a great user for you.
Thanks for sharing.
Mitch
 
For trimming ends of bushes and branches, i like the long handle of the military. Good leverage when doing swinging cuts high up on a ladder.
 
Mate shame it doesn't meet all your needs. Though it sounds like a great user for you.
Thanks for sharing.
Mitch
Didn't really expect it to. I'm surprised at how good a general purpose outdoor knife this is. It could probably be used for heaving kitchen cutting as well, like chicken bones.
 
For trimming ends of bushes and branches, i like the long handle of the military. Good leverage when doing swinging cuts high up on a ladder.

I have not owned a military or para. ......yet.
It would be a good size for yard work :thumbsup:
Mitch
 
I think a Military would be good. Not sure if they make a serrated version. The Aqua Salt serrated with a black blade is probably what I'll try. The black won't accidentally blind me in the sun.
 
Again I can't stress enough at how good most of the full Spyderedged models can do around good landscaping and gardening jobs. Most of the full Spyderedged units from the Salt Series would fill the void nicely. The Serrated Hawkbills give you the advantage of pull cutting while the serrations give you a lot of leverage as well. I was thinking the other day while messing with some thick vines how my full SE JUMPMASTER would have been at that time. However my full SE, H-1 Spyderhawk still did a decent job.

One fellow just mentioned the Military model and there are rumors that they are considering bringing back the fully serrated Military model which I believe would be a pretty sturdy unit for lawn, Garden and landscaping work. Years ago I had a used/beater version of a full SE ENDURA with AUS-8 steel and it did a nice job on lawn and gardening work.
 
That is true, i think spyderedge is great for yard work and all work well. They Work real well on fibrous material.
mitch
FGn2W2.jpg
 
That is true, i think spyderedge is great for yard work and all work well. They Work real well on fibrous material.
mitch
FGn2W2.jpg
When I was working at a wetlands project in North Missouri about 10 years ago I had gone down to the wetlands taking what I thought was my full SE Endura model>> but when I got there I had taken my full SE VG-10 Spyderhawk by mistake. So instead of going back to house which was about 4 miles away I went ahead and used the SE Spyderhawk and the results were astounding. For the rest of the time I was there working I pretty much just used that Spyderhawk exclusively and I was blown away at how good that blade could cut cattails, reeds, vines ( of all varieties), small seedling trees, and other woody type plants. When I was finished that week with all the work I had done with that SE Spyderhawk I only had to just briefly touch it up with my 701 Profiles.
So far this spring I've been using my older, ATS-55 era stainless handled RESCUE model. That thing is built like an Abrams Tank and it endures hard punishment beyond belief.
I so much want to see the return of the SE Dodo model. Because I do believe it would be one helluva gardening/landscaping tool as well.
 
Good 1 Jd
I've looked at the hawk wirh envy, i don't think Any made it to Oz, there is the harpy
& SE tasman.
Before I discovered h1, 79mm rescue was the go to. Vg10 hilds up real well. I still use it regularly. I wouldn't say no to a dodo.
Mitch
 
The joy of neighbours. Spent most the morning cutting back the mandarin tree that had bent with the weight of it, not snapped just bent and the fence was taking the weight:oops: included pics,
My atlantic got a bit of a workout:D
yLmJ6p.jpg

before
EBkWxQ.jpg

after
4GThwC.jpg
 
You can't beat the Tasman Salt for landscaping/ gardening! It's been in my pocket along with a non serrated blade every workday for the last 2 years. Cutting dirty burlap off rootballs when planting will dull anything else I have used almost instantly. It's so easy to disassemble and clean if its ever full of mud too.
H5hYZrk.jpg

h8iFQwe.jpg

tsLH1O1.jpg
 
Agreed
I Like the h1 probably cause I'm slack.
More than once i have come in to clean up and forget to clean my knife till the next day. :eek::D
Mitch
If Spyderco's marketing department were to get together with one of the bigger gardening catalogs like A.M. Leonard or anyone similar to them>> then I don't think they could keep their H-1 Hawkbills in stock. They could bring back the H-1 Spyderhawk in SE & PE both and serious gardeners and landscapers or anyone in the horticulture trades would most certainly love them if they would ever try them.

Spyderco has so many serrated models that would work well in gardening. But Hawkbills have that pull cutting advantage that is also safer to use in many cases. Every time I work in the community garden there are about 5 Spyders I have in my tool pouch I always take with me>> and most of the time they get plenty of use too.
 
JD
You are right it would be marketing made in heaven.
The hawkbill or peach pruner blade is still advertied as the horticultural knife of choice here.
Cheers
Mitch
 
JD
You are right it would be marketing made in heaven.
The hawkbill or peach pruner blade is still advertied as the horticultural knife of choice here.
Cheers
Mitch
Mitch I don't know how long you or any of the other guys here on this gardening thread either have been here at BF for that matter. But back around 2005 to 2007 Spyderco had sold for a short time a "Spydersaw". Which was a folding saw very similar to the one you all showed on one of the pics above. It has a "Swedish tooth pattern" and I had one for a while>> the tooth pattern on the Spydersaw was very similar to really popular Swedish brands like Sandvik or Corona. The Spydersaw was also very similar to some of the gardening saws that I have owned made by Swiss gardening tool company "FELCO". The only thing I didn't like about the Spydersaw is that I couldn't figure out how to efficiently sharpen the teeth on it. I ended up trading it to one of the fellows here at BF and I wish now I would have kept it. They don't show up very often on the trading exchange or the secondary markets.

I think it probably only had modest success for Spyderco because they didn't sell it very long on their main line up and maybe for that reason that the tooth pattern was one that needed a special sharpening jig. If my memory serves me well I think it was one of their "Japan made" units. But it was a real aggressive cutter and did a really smooth job of pruning and removing. Now it was the type of tooth pattern that really didn't need sharpening very often but I sure couldn't figure out how to re-sharpen it. Like most of you guys I mainly like tools that I can re-sharpen myself. With all that being said and I do believe if Spyderco's marketing department would start out with maybe like 5 folders ( or any other tools they could add) being especially designed for gardening work I do believe that the major gardening catalogs and websites would really embrace them.
 
The saw I used was my sak soldier, it was the right size bow saw wouldn't have fit. I do remember the saw.
Felco have collabration with Victorinox for nane branded pruning knives.
I'm happy for Spyderco to stick with knives, always more to get:cool:
If tbey made a specialist garden tool.
I rekon a traditional hori hori knife would work broad blade with 1 side straght edge the other serrated, versitille and I have heard of them used as a bush tool.
Mitch
 
Did some weeding early this morning around my lilly pilly's.
So removed a few wayard branches.
Iv73cq.jpg
wdJOuv.jpg
 
Back
Top