- Joined
- Apr 15, 2002
- Messages
- 3,376
The Byrd Rescue 2 that Spyderco sent me to replace the Cara Cara Rescue I lost overboard. I have been doing a lot of my rope work and splicing indoors (in my kitchen) due to the temperature being in the teens lately. I usually use a burner to cut the knots out of the rope because the splices come out a lot cleaner but the girl didn't want the apartment to smell like burned plastic. Plus it gave me a chance to cut things.
It usually takes me a couple hours to cut and splice up a groundline that has a lot of knots. They are about 650 feet long (not including the buoy lines) and mine have a LOT of knots in them. The serrated edge makes short work of the 3/8ths and 7/16ths rope. I keep the sharpmaker nearby and usually have to sharpen the knife 3 or 4 times in the 5-6 hours I do splicing. I usually use the brown stones but have had to use the diamond rods a couple of times. The rope is impregnated with sand and it wreaks havock on an edge.
I like the long blade (around 4 inches) with the straight cutting edge for doing rope work. I can pull cut or saw through the rope without worrying about the line coming off of the tip of the knife as it does with a blade with belly to it. I prefer the sheepsfoot/wharncliffe or tanto (yeah, they make decent rope cutting knives
) to a hawkbill (which is also exceptional for cutting rope with the pull cut but not so good slicing it against a cutting board for example) and I prefer a straight or concave cutting edge to one with even moderate curvature or belly. I have never used a recurved blade for work. I prefer the "less-super" steel for this kind of work. This rope will dull VG-10 and S30V as fast as it will AUS-8 or 8Cr13MoV so i prefer a blade steel that i can resharpen easily with minimal effort.
I preferred the old-style clip on the Cara Cara Rescue to the new "paddle" style clip on the Rescue 2. For long cutting sessions I found the paddle style to press into my palm. Cutting rope is not as easy on the knife as a whole as it may seem. 2 days of splicing put a moderate amount of up and down and side to side play into the blade and the clip has begun to exhibit side to side play as well. I think I will need to tighten the screws for the clip and also for the pivot to correct this.
2 final points about this knife- I like the texturing to the FRN better on the second gen. byrds than on the first and I like how the sheepsfoot Byrd knives leave a 1/4 inch or so of plain edge at the very tip of the knife instead of the short serration found on spyderco sheepsfoot knives.
All in all I don't hesitate to recommend the Byrd line to non knife people looking for an inexpensive folder. You get a heck of a lot of quality and a hard working knife for 20 or 30 bucks.
pete
