This knife represents a departure for me, I didn't get it because of any particular feature, there's nothing here to uphold as the hight of the industry, it just is what it is, and whatever that happens to be makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside whenever I hold it.
One of my favourite things to do in life is take something intended for one purpose and use it to great effect in another application. The idea of using a Ferrari to get the groceries, or a Katana to cut your birthday cake. It's a type of irony. This knife fits that category in two ways.
One, the aesthetic design. You have what would otherwise be a sleek sub-hilt design, only this time it has a Spyderco hump on the spine. A knife so focused on aesthetics, but then with classic Spyderco practicality thrown in to "crash the party". I don't want to make it sound like they made an ugly knife, but rather commend Sal and Mr. Vallotton on making a knife that holds true to what it is and not what people might think it should be. This is an Italian style folder, with a Spyderhole. Not a Spyderco with some Italian styling, and not an Italian folder with a few trademarks tacked on. They didn't try to shrink the hole or sink it into the blade to minimize the hump, as is becoming more common on other Spyderco folders. No, this knife wears its hump proudly, the circle is big and protruding, right where it should be.
Second. The build is thick, heavy, beefy, the tip looks like it came off a fixed blade, and yet the profile is slender and it's perfectly polished all over. This knife has all the design cues of a hard use folder, but is dressed nothing like it. The liner lock protrudes from the handle under your index finger, some people grind it down to make it rub less in a white knuckle grip. but I think that's not what the intention of the folder was. It's not a "hard use" folder, it's a gentleman's folder with overkill in its DNA. Something that takes design attributes from things intended for one purpose, and applies them with great effect to something completely different.
Now for some technicals.
The liner lock is thick enough, I seriously doubt you'd have problems with it flexing in use. The ramp geometry also looks good, not too steep, maybe I would have made it a little more shallow but I don't mind a sticky lock as much as others. Unlocking on this isn't buttery smooth but it's definitely not "sticky".As you can see the lock bar sits perfectly at 100% engagement when new (upon looking at my pictures, which are pretty much straight out of the box, it looks like it wasn't a "perfect" 100%, so the lock bar has only moved about a quarter millimetre since new). After about a week of flipping it open and re-setting the pivot after applying Tuf-Glide, it moved half a quarter millimetre farther.
Opening (blade deployment) feel had some texture at first, and the lock-bar still gives some friction (it's pushing on the blade pretty hard), but I got the pivot set with almost no play or tension so it's just the detent rubbing now, and as you might expect after the Tuf-Glide the texture has become pretty buttery.
Of course it's a liner lock, so you don't want to baton with this knife, or use it for anything particularly harsh. I've basically come to the conclusion that both framelocks and liner locks should not intentionally be subjected to stress. They will wear out and become unreliable if you subject them to impacts or heavy stress on a regular basis. These things are here to keep the blade open in regular use, not pry a house apart.
Apart from the regular disclaimers about the lock I find the placement of the pivot pin a little odd. Being so close to the lock side means the leverage advantage heavily favours the stop pin instead of the lock bar, meaning you should be able to safely flip this thing to your hearts content, but the lock will be subjected to more stress than otherwise if the pivot had been in the middle instead of right on top of the lock bar. The engagement point is a little less than 1/4" away from the pivot point, which may be average for some but on bigger knives I prefer something closer to 1/2" (IIRC the ZT0200 was close to that).
However, I don't anticipate it performing any worse than any other well built lock in everyday use.
The lock bar is .0625" thick.
Overall fit and finish is spectacular, some of the transitions between G-10 scale and steel bolster are invisible to my fingers, on average it's a nearly flawless transition. The back spacer is almost as good, much better than most other knives I've seen and still highly polished. I've never felt such a smooth texture on the rough side of G-10 before.
The blade grind is one of the better examples I've seen, they didn't waste much steel when applying the edge bevel, which starts at.025" thick and is around .030" near the tip. Pretty much average for a Spyderco but I've seen knives with edge geometry closer to .040". The edge angle might be a little steep though, I have a feeling it's a little over the 15 degrees per side that is ideal for use with the Sharpmaker. Which also doesn't make any difference if you sharpen freehand.
The primary bevel is almost as good as the bolsters, nearly flawless. It's well centred and that swooshy grind at the tip is an amazing. Both design and execution right there are fantastic.
The Spyderhole is probably on the "more sharp" side than "less sharp", it has a tiny bit of bite to it, which works perfectly for me but if you've got supple baby like skin it might be too much. Of course a few seconds with a Sharpmaker rod would fix that if you have any problems. The hole has definitely been polished on the inside (unlike most Golden models), which is just par for the course at this point. It looks like the edge has been given a very light pass to slightly smooth it out.
In closing, it's an original design with as close to flawless execution as could be expected from a production company.
My usual suggestions for improvement would be to make it 1/4" longer and use steel like CTS-B75P (Powdered BG-42, because BG-42 is just cool) or M390 (similar to the Duratech 20CV, which somehow seems to perform better than S30V with nearly the same alloy content). I didn't say something like K390 (no similarity with M390) because somehow "maximum edge holding" doesn't seem like a design characteristic that this knife should be shooting for. A more conventional, but "cool" steel type like BG-42 (it's the hipster of steel types) would be more suiting.
One of my favourite things to do in life is take something intended for one purpose and use it to great effect in another application. The idea of using a Ferrari to get the groceries, or a Katana to cut your birthday cake. It's a type of irony. This knife fits that category in two ways.
One, the aesthetic design. You have what would otherwise be a sleek sub-hilt design, only this time it has a Spyderco hump on the spine. A knife so focused on aesthetics, but then with classic Spyderco practicality thrown in to "crash the party". I don't want to make it sound like they made an ugly knife, but rather commend Sal and Mr. Vallotton on making a knife that holds true to what it is and not what people might think it should be. This is an Italian style folder, with a Spyderhole. Not a Spyderco with some Italian styling, and not an Italian folder with a few trademarks tacked on. They didn't try to shrink the hole or sink it into the blade to minimize the hump, as is becoming more common on other Spyderco folders. No, this knife wears its hump proudly, the circle is big and protruding, right where it should be.
Second. The build is thick, heavy, beefy, the tip looks like it came off a fixed blade, and yet the profile is slender and it's perfectly polished all over. This knife has all the design cues of a hard use folder, but is dressed nothing like it. The liner lock protrudes from the handle under your index finger, some people grind it down to make it rub less in a white knuckle grip. but I think that's not what the intention of the folder was. It's not a "hard use" folder, it's a gentleman's folder with overkill in its DNA. Something that takes design attributes from things intended for one purpose, and applies them with great effect to something completely different.
Now for some technicals.
The liner lock is thick enough, I seriously doubt you'd have problems with it flexing in use. The ramp geometry also looks good, not too steep, maybe I would have made it a little more shallow but I don't mind a sticky lock as much as others. Unlocking on this isn't buttery smooth but it's definitely not "sticky".
Opening (blade deployment) feel had some texture at first, and the lock-bar still gives some friction (it's pushing on the blade pretty hard), but I got the pivot set with almost no play or tension so it's just the detent rubbing now, and as you might expect after the Tuf-Glide the texture has become pretty buttery.
Of course it's a liner lock, so you don't want to baton with this knife, or use it for anything particularly harsh. I've basically come to the conclusion that both framelocks and liner locks should not intentionally be subjected to stress. They will wear out and become unreliable if you subject them to impacts or heavy stress on a regular basis. These things are here to keep the blade open in regular use, not pry a house apart.
Apart from the regular disclaimers about the lock I find the placement of the pivot pin a little odd. Being so close to the lock side means the leverage advantage heavily favours the stop pin instead of the lock bar, meaning you should be able to safely flip this thing to your hearts content, but the lock will be subjected to more stress than otherwise if the pivot had been in the middle instead of right on top of the lock bar. The engagement point is a little less than 1/4" away from the pivot point, which may be average for some but on bigger knives I prefer something closer to 1/2" (IIRC the ZT0200 was close to that).
However, I don't anticipate it performing any worse than any other well built lock in everyday use.
The lock bar is .0625" thick.
Overall fit and finish is spectacular, some of the transitions between G-10 scale and steel bolster are invisible to my fingers, on average it's a nearly flawless transition. The back spacer is almost as good, much better than most other knives I've seen and still highly polished. I've never felt such a smooth texture on the rough side of G-10 before.
The blade grind is one of the better examples I've seen, they didn't waste much steel when applying the edge bevel, which starts at.025" thick and is around .030" near the tip. Pretty much average for a Spyderco but I've seen knives with edge geometry closer to .040". The edge angle might be a little steep though, I have a feeling it's a little over the 15 degrees per side that is ideal for use with the Sharpmaker. Which also doesn't make any difference if you sharpen freehand.
The primary bevel is almost as good as the bolsters, nearly flawless. It's well centred and that swooshy grind at the tip is an amazing. Both design and execution right there are fantastic.
The Spyderhole is probably on the "more sharp" side than "less sharp", it has a tiny bit of bite to it, which works perfectly for me but if you've got supple baby like skin it might be too much. Of course a few seconds with a Sharpmaker rod would fix that if you have any problems. The hole has definitely been polished on the inside (unlike most Golden models), which is just par for the course at this point. It looks like the edge has been given a very light pass to slightly smooth it out.
In closing, it's an original design with as close to flawless execution as could be expected from a production company.
My usual suggestions for improvement would be to make it 1/4" longer and use steel like CTS-B75P (Powdered BG-42, because BG-42 is just cool) or M390 (similar to the Duratech 20CV, which somehow seems to perform better than S30V with nearly the same alloy content). I didn't say something like K390 (no similarity with M390) because somehow "maximum edge holding" doesn't seem like a design characteristic that this knife should be shooting for. A more conventional, but "cool" steel type like BG-42 (it's the hipster of steel types) would be more suiting.
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