Spyderco Temperance Passaround

[TOB9595]

When I received the Spydie Temperance(see the specs here) I was immediately struck with how well the knife fit the sheath. This is my first experience with kydex and I am well pleased with the friction fit of the blade. The blade did not slip out no matter how hard I tried to whip it out. There is a nicely placed lip on the sheath to use slight thumb pressure while pulling the blade out. This was a very smooth motion. The belt connector is multi positional, if that's a word, I repositioned the belt clip to ride vertical blade up, blade down, horizontal handle forward, and back. There are also lashing holes on the sheath, if that's your need. A great sheath.
On to the blade!! I removed the knife from the sheath and the knife filled my hand as if it were made for it. The blade is not beastly thick and that bothered me at first. The blade tackled all the projects I gave it. I whittled wood, cut cardboard, and heavy industrial carpet. The blade sailed thru all the jobs as well as any blade I've used. Better than most.
The handle is a nice non slip material. I think the indexing holes are worthless. They did not line up with any of my stubby digits. Theyt were not in the way though!! So no harm no foul.
I proudly showed the knife to a few of the guys and they all agreed with my assessment that the knife feels real good in the hand. Nice weight, it's light, heft and balance. the handle fit all the diverse hands that be-held it.
I would rate this knife as a real user of a blade. It is high quality and I think I will buy one.

 

[DaveH]

Thanks for the review!

 

[Sal Glesser]

TOB9595. Thank you.

sal

 

[Aux]

The Handle:

The handle had an interesting feature - a thumb rest on the end of the handle. Being primarily a "folder guy", I cannot say if this is common among other knives. When held in a grip with the blade at the heel of the hand, and the edge facing away from the forearm, the end of the handle is contoured to allow the thumb to reinforce the grip. Just like a choil prevents the hand from running up on the blade by locking the hand at the index finger, this thumb rest would serve the same purpose. It only seems to work for me with this one grip, but it is effective nonetheless.

The knife came to me with the Tek-Lok installed for horizontal carry. When placed on my off-hand side (left side for a righty), I found that the offhand draw automatically put my hand to take advantage of the above mentioned thumb contour. Readers should note that with my limited exposure to fixed blade knives outside of the kitchen, this first experiment at carrying brought to mind all sorts of "tactical ideas" (handgun retention anyone?).

The balance and feel of the handle was just about right. It might get a bit slick if wet, i.e. not as grippy as G10 or linen micarta, but it has a good texture for this type of material. The only negative I have for the handle are the finger-tip divots (indexing holes?) in the handle. They did not get in the way, or assist the grip, in any way. But at first, I would find my fingertips searching for them. My hands are sized just right for this handle, and so my fingers were always very close to the divots. I found myself subconsciously adjusting my grip to make my fingers fit (no lewd comments please). I believe the handle would be a tiny bit better without them.

The Blade:

At first, I found this knife to be more substantial than I expected. Not a brute, but a but tougher than the pictures I had seen led me to believe. From the catalog, I had the initial impression that the FB Temperance was a bit "kitchen-knife" like, given the blade shape, and the apparent thinness of the blade. However, once I held it in person, that image almost evaporated. The blade is thick enough to impress it's potential utility usage, but the shape would make it useful for food prep as well. I am sure my wife would be appropriately appalled if I was to carve the turkey with a knife carried on my belt or in the field!

The only thing I would change on the blade is it's "shiny-ness". I have come to prefer uncoated blades that are not quite so pretty in finish if they are to be used for utility. A satin blade is less attractive out of the box, but tends to look better given the same amount of use.

Overall I would consider adding one of these to my user collection. The FB Temperance is something of a civilized fixed blade knife that I am sure could find all sorts of jobs in daily suburbia.

 

[DaveH]

I received the temperance back today. Thanks all and it's still look in pretty good shape despite this having been it's 3rd passaround.

 

[Nobody]

I had the Temperance passaround for a few days this go around and I wanted to post my impressions of the knife now that I've had a chance to catch my breath.

First of all I'd really like to thank Sal Glesser of Spyderco and DaveH for giving me the opportunity to participate in this passaround. There are not any knife stores within about 2.5 hours of where I live so my opportunities to handle different models are limited to shows and personal acquisitions. The passaround gives me a great chance to evaluate knives of interest to me first hand. Hopefully, writing about my experiences here will assist other folks in similar situations to my own.

For a fixed blade reference, I already own a Spydie Perrin and I was eager to compare the Temperance to it. The Temperance feels heavier and more substanital in the hand than the Perrin, even though the Perrin has a slightly longer blade. Both knives utilize VG-10 steel for their blades. I found that the Temperance's handle allows for a very secure grip in my medium sized hand and the handle length was quite adequate. In fact, I almost found the length of the handle a tiny bit too long but this is a common problem I find with my hands compared to other knifekuts I know. The handle has lots of indexing points that allow for very easy grip changes, but once you're fully into a grip position it's absolutely rock solid. The Temperance's leaf shaped blade is fully flat ground and well suited to utility work, however, when I received the knife it was pretty dull. This is not unexpected considering the number of people this knife has been through before it came to me. I touched it up just a little on my Sharpmaker to obtain an adequate workable edge. VG-10 in my experience is a great steel that is easy to touch up on a sharpmaker and maintains an agressive cutting edge for long time. For a major sharpening, I find VG-10 requires something more substantial than a Sharpmaker. This Temperance could probably have used a good full blown sharpening at this stage of it's life but due to time constraints I only touched up the edge.

I used the Temperance to break down a few cardboard boxes, cut some string for work projects, and to prepare meals in the kitchen (meat and vegetable cutting). A bonus to the Temp's blade width in the kitchen is that you can use it squash a garlic clove on a cutting board pretty effectively. Not real tactical, but useful. The Temp had an adequate point to gain purchase into whatever material I was cutting and the blade sailed through everything with relative ease. A common thin bladed kitchen knife did perform better on cutting harder vegetables like carrots but that's to be expected. The secure grip was a benefit when cutting heavy duty cardboard boxes.

I found that the Temperance handle's very secure grip was a bit of a hindrance in the kitchen. I change grip positions a lot when I'm cooking and the Temp's handle wasn't as easy with which to perform subtle shifts in grip position as my Perrin's handle. Conversely, over the Perrin I found large grip changes to be very easy with the Temperance while maintaining better control of the flow in the grip change.

The Perrin's handle is also quite secure but it's a totally different animal from the Temperance. The Perrin's handle is more generically fit to the hand and allows easier more subtle changes in grip while I found the Temperance's handle to essentially weld your hand into place when you grip it. I would pick the Temperance's handle over the Perrin's handle for day to day sweaty, adrenaline pumping MBC training, but I've found the Perrin's handle to be better for overall general utility while maintaining a secure enough handle to defend myself in a last ditch effort. As you may gather, 98% of my "tactical" knife usage is in the kitchen and around the house.

The blades on both these knives are excellently designed and both cut like demons. I would greatly prefer that the Temperance have a dropped edge so that spine of the blade were nearly level with the top of the handle. I feel that this would squeeze even more utility performance out of the knife without sacrificing any MBC performance. This preference obviously reflects the time I spend using knives at home in the kitchen versus defending my life from evildoers. The Temp's blade "feels" more durable, but having said that, I've not had any durability problems with my light weight Perrin over the last year of use.

Basically, I really like both of the knives but I'd prefer to use each of them in the performance niches for which they were designed. In my opinion... the Temperance is a better MBC knife with good utility aspects, and the Perrin is a better overall utility knife with good MBC aspects. YMMV

This opportunity to test out the Temperance has peaked my interest in trying out a L'ill Temperance.