Why such poor factory edges?

Spyderco knives are ground by hand-generally very good and consistent but there are non-negligible amounts of substandard edges too. I had a Kiwi hair-whittling out of box, and a Delica which wouldn't shave.
 
Twindog,

I agree with you 100%. But there always seems to be a list of "Industry's friends" here who tell me my bar is set too high. Oh well.

I confess that my bar was set pretty high when I received my two Hogues. The edges were thin, shaving sharp, even enough and nearly polished right out of the box. And each are well under $200 from a production facility.

I'm not going to drink the Kool Aid. If one can do it then why not all. Are these MFG's targeting knife enthusiasts or newbies as customers?
 
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Every Rough Rider I have had came out of the box hair-popping sharp. If an $8.00 knife can do that, there's no reason anyone else cannot.
 
I don't mess around with factory edges beyond checking to see if they are sharp out of the box unless I am testing the knife as out of the box.

Factory edges don't last long for me if I am going to use the knife, I generally reprofile and sharpen them once I get them.
 
Ankerson said:
I don't mess around with factory edges beyond checking to see if they are sharp out of the box unless I am testing the knife as out of the box.

Factory edges don't last long for me if I am going to use the knife, I generally reprofile and sharpen them once I get them.
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Same here. Most of my Spydercos (I have a lot of them) have been very sharp out of the box, as in a few would whittle hair even with an agreressive, coarse edge. All but 1 of my Spydercos has come in under 15 degrees per side, and my Caly 3 ZDP and both of my Manix 2's (154CM and S90V) have come with 9-10 degree per side edges. Most are fairly even. I will use a good factory edge or a Tom Krein edge before I reprofile a knife, but I'd say 90% of the time the first thing I do with a knife is pound it on my DMT XX Coarse to set a thinner than factory angle, then I polish it out to various degrees of hair whittling or beyond sharpness. So basically I don't really care much about the factory edges aside from the fact that thinner angle mean less steel I have to remove, as I have the tools and know how to set the edge to my liking, but I can see how most customers would be at upset at a bad factory edge that won't work on a common sharpener like a Sharpmaker due to being a fairly fat angle. If the factories could come up with some system to put a pre set angle and really good sharpness on every knife they put out it would be great, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be worth the extra cost per knife for most manufacturers to put a whole lot of effort into sharpening every knife when the vast majority of customers are quite happy with factory edges that are set by hand in a very small amount of time as they go through the assemble line. I could be wrong about the costs, but most people rave about factory edges, so I don't see much incentive for manufacturers to go away from a quick hand sharpening job on a production knife. I have just learned to deal with the factory edges by reprofiling and/or sending the knife to Tom Krein for a regrind if the whole blade (not just the edge) is too thick for my liking.

Mike
 
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