Initial Thoughts:
Upon receiving the knife, I noticed it has in fact been ENTIRELY reground. Right from the spine to the edge. This was a good sign! They even stamped a new Fiddleback logo on to the blade since the old one was ground off. Except... it wasn't actually. A big chunk of the old logo is still visible near the spine. It looks pretty tacky having two logos on the blade, if you ask me. I wish they would have removed the old logo completely, so my knife would at least look new. Seems like a lack of attention to detail for whoever ground the knife (if I have time I will take a pic of this and edit it in). Oh well, moving on.
Edge Geometry, Sharpness, Etc:
The new edge was noticeably duller than the original edge. Understandable, as the original was so thin that freakin' wood had bent it. But this new edge struggled to even cut through paper. I assumed this was because of the (hopefully) steeper convex grind - toughness over sharpness, right? This still bothered me, though, because despite the steep angle, it could have easily been sharper. I've seen much thicker knives re-profiled with THICK convex edges (ESEE-5, BK-2, etc) that were significantly sharper than my relatively thin Recluse. So I don't really know what happened here. I'm personally not the best at hand sharpening, so whenever I get a knife sharpened professionally, I'm always very excited to see the new cutting performance. I was disappointed with my Recluse's edge, to say the least. I could have gotten it sharper myself using sand paper and a strop, despite my poor sharpening skills.
The Meat of Any Review; Performance:
I'm very heavily into winter activities such as camping, backpacking, and hiking. I love the snow, I love the solitude winter provides (nobody else wants to camp in our windy -30c Canadian mountains!), and I love the challenges. So I was fortunately able to take my Recluse out on a couple trips immediately after receiving it, despite the frigid temperatures outside. Here's how it did.
First, a quickie hunting trip with my best friend's father (is it weird that I hang out with him more than his daughter, who I've been friends with since fifth grade?). I unfortunately did not bring my camera for this trip, as my girlfriend works as a veterinarian and hates it when I kill animals. A match made in heaven, no doubt - a vet and a hunter! Anyway, because of this I make sure there's no photo evidence of any hunting I do for my girlfriend to see. So no pics here, guys, just a write up. Sorry!
Hunting Tasks:
I didn't have any luck that day (no ethical shots), but my hunting partner did get a handsome Buck. He was nice enough to let me field dress it with my "new" knife. The Recluse did pretty well skinning; the continuously up swept blade works well for slicing tasks, and the length is right on spot. The handle is also very comfortable for this task. It of course would have been MUCH better with a sharper edge, but I wont hold that against the knife because I knew going in to this it wasn't very sharp.
Removing meat from the Deer, on the other hand, proved to be very annoying with this knife. The point on the production Recluse is VERY sharp. Excessively sharp, in fact. It makes it very easy to accidently pierce too far into the animal and make a mess of things. I was startled while removing the back meat when my blade accidently pierced into the chest cavity, expelling gas out. Guys who field dress their kills know what I mean by a knife's tip being "too sharp". I also found the handle to be pretty uncomfortable while removing meat; the handle slabs should be tapered towards the blade for when your thumb is resting on them, to form a nice ramp. These ones have a sharp angle there. Not very good.
I don't have much else to say about that. It's a relatively good skinner, but that's about it. I do not recommend the Recluse for hunting.
So I'll move right on to my second outing with the knife, a quick overnight camp out in the mountains (and Christmas Tree harvesting, but we wont talk about that!). This trip has some pics for you guys. I will also mentioned that before this trip I sharpened the Recluse on my strop until it was sharp enough to take the odd hair on my arm off. Not shaving sharp, but as close as I can get it with my own abilities.
Bushcraft Tasks:
I don't hunt much, and when I do it's usually just rabbit or grouse, so I don't have a need for dedicated hunting knives. Instead, my knives primary purpose will always be bushcraft. I purchased the Recluse with this in mind.
Upon reaching the camping site - some flats between a cliff and a frozen lake - I decided I would use my knife and axe to make fire. I've never started a fire by friction during the winter, so why not give it a shot?
One of the tasks my knives must be able to do is baton wood. I use my axe to split anything bigger than a few inches, but for smaller logs it's much easier (and safer) to split wood with a knife. I'm happy to report that the Recluse performed BEAUTIFULLY batoning wood. The new steep edge geometry is perfect for this. I put it through several knots with no complaints, no edge damage, nothing. Fantastic!
Despite being pretty sharp now, it only did okay creating fuzz-sticks, nothing to write home about. It got the job done, but not without some effort. I have better luck during this sort of task with a scandi knife.
So I now have a board, some tinder, some kindling, and am ready to get my bow drill going. I sent my girlfriend out to find me a bow and a pivot rock while I got the board ready. I began by drilling a small divot into the board, and encountered a major problem.
Remember that too-sharp tip? Yeah, I bent it to a freakin' 90 degree angle while trying to drill into the wood. Catastrophic failure, as far as I am concerned. I ground off the bent portion and did my best to make it look normal when I got home, but it's just not the same. I am still pretty pissed off about this. I think it's a major design flaw having a tip that sharp. It serves no purpose as far as I can tell. It's not good for hunting, it's not good for bushcraft, it's not good for anything. Unless you want to stab through somebodies thick motorcycle leather, I guess?
So I retired the knife and just sparked the fire with my firesteel and some cotton, disappointed. I used my Griptilian and my Axe for the rest of that trip.
I used the knife one last time when I got home, shaping the top of our new Christmas Tree so it would be thin enough to accept a star. Pretty light duty carving task; the same as making a spear, basically. However, after doing this, the knife was DULL. Like, REALLY dull. I was dumbfounded. Batoning wood didn't even effect the edge like this.
And now I can't seem to get a good edge back on the knife. I mentioned earlier that I have poor sharpening skills, but normally I can at the very least get it sharp enough to be useful. This is not the current case. I can't even get it sharp enough to cut paper. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I think either the new steep grind or the steel is what is preventing me from sharpening it again. After my hunting trip it was still somewhat sharp, so I could simply use my leather strop to get it going again. But this time, it's too dull for my strop to have any effect on it, and I have to use sandpaper. It just ain't working for me. I don't know if this is my fault or the knives, but in my experience the Recluse is very difficult to sharpen. Your mileage may vary.
Summary:
I am not pleased with the production Recluse. My experiences with it have been mostly negative. If you are interested in getting this knife, I recommend getting the real one as made by Andy Roy. The BRKT variation does not live up to the Fiddleback reputation.
Out of the box, the knife failed while carving. After waiting a very long time for it to be reprofiled, it still failed (the tip, this time) and now has a dull edge that is very difficult to sharpen. I should also mention once again that BRKT failed to make it look like "new" after reprofiling it, because I now have two logos on my blade. I will also reiterate that the knife is a decent skinner, but overall not suitable for hunting due to the somewhat lacking handle and extremely sharp tip.
On a good note, the new grind is extremely tough, as proven by my batoning test. So +1 for the Recluse there. I went through a lot of wood with that thing, and saw no signs of trouble on the edge. It seems like I went from one extreme to the other with this knife when I had it reground. Too thin to too thick.
Arbitrary Overall Rating: 3/10. For me, this knife is prettier than it is useful. At a price point of over $200, I do not think it's a "good" purchase. It would rank a lot higher had I payed less money for it. But as it stands, I can't figure out what the production recluse excels at. It is not a bushcraft knife, and it is not a hunting knife. It's a good slicer, though, so maybe it would do well in a kitchen setting? I don't know.
Remember, this is all just the opinion of one man. Let's try and keep things civil. I do not wish to offend anyone. Criticism is more than welcome.
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