Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
I have been working with this looking specifically at the lock issue, the interesting thing is that this knife is more secure with no lock than a lot of locking folders I have seen because of the fact that when you disengage the lock on most folders the blade will swing back with little to no resistance. This means that if the lock is released from torques or impacts, some of which can be very light it will readily fall back possibly on the fingers.
With the UK Pen this isn't the case at all. I spent some time doing spine whacks and while the blade readily rotates it is very difficult to get it to move past the secondary stop at 90 degrees, it certainly won't happen from light impacts such as you turn with the knife in your hand and accidently hit the spine. Even if I grab the handle by the end and snap it hard enough to dent a piece of birch hardwood flooring by about a mm, the blade only rotates a little past 90.
In regards to cutting, the only real issue is cutting very difficult and very rigid material where you are constantly working the blade through the cut such as thick rubber. But even here the blade won't simply collapse back on your hand but just snaps out and little and you pop it back into place. I have done light chopping with it with no problem with the same effects :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/UK Pen/uk_pen_alders.jpg
The thickest one of these was about an inch, no problems, similar with twist splitting a pine shingle, again no real issues :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/UK Pen/uk_pen_shingle.jpg
The only two standouts to me are thrusts/stabs and batoning. Even a few light pokes shows that unless extreme care is taken it is very easy to load the spine and collapse the blade and thus I would not rely on this in a hard dynamic thrust. Batoning it a diffent issue, it isn't overly effective to baton with the blade is free to rotate because it makes it hard to efficiently transfer force down, however there are not a lot of folders promoted for this use anyway.
I gave it to my brother and he generally had positive things to say about it, the usual for Spyderco, nice sharpness, excellent cutting ability, comfortable/secure, etc. . He generally would prefer a lot though because of a lot of leverage work and point prying, not usually really heavy, but enough to disengage the lock, it could be as simple as using the point to pop some debris out of a crack/joint, or inspecting wood rot. I can see this from a general utility tool vs pure knife usage.
How about the same general design with a compression lock and the M4 blade steel.
-Cliff
With the UK Pen this isn't the case at all. I spent some time doing spine whacks and while the blade readily rotates it is very difficult to get it to move past the secondary stop at 90 degrees, it certainly won't happen from light impacts such as you turn with the knife in your hand and accidently hit the spine. Even if I grab the handle by the end and snap it hard enough to dent a piece of birch hardwood flooring by about a mm, the blade only rotates a little past 90.
In regards to cutting, the only real issue is cutting very difficult and very rigid material where you are constantly working the blade through the cut such as thick rubber. But even here the blade won't simply collapse back on your hand but just snaps out and little and you pop it back into place. I have done light chopping with it with no problem with the same effects :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/UK Pen/uk_pen_alders.jpg
The thickest one of these was about an inch, no problems, similar with twist splitting a pine shingle, again no real issues :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/UK Pen/uk_pen_shingle.jpg
The only two standouts to me are thrusts/stabs and batoning. Even a few light pokes shows that unless extreme care is taken it is very easy to load the spine and collapse the blade and thus I would not rely on this in a hard dynamic thrust. Batoning it a diffent issue, it isn't overly effective to baton with the blade is free to rotate because it makes it hard to efficiently transfer force down, however there are not a lot of folders promoted for this use anyway.
I gave it to my brother and he generally had positive things to say about it, the usual for Spyderco, nice sharpness, excellent cutting ability, comfortable/secure, etc. . He generally would prefer a lot though because of a lot of leverage work and point prying, not usually really heavy, but enough to disengage the lock, it could be as simple as using the point to pop some debris out of a crack/joint, or inspecting wood rot. I can see this from a general utility tool vs pure knife usage.
How about the same general design with a compression lock and the M4 blade steel.
-Cliff
