Wayne Reimer

[Wayne Reimer]

I have the Southard that inspired this Spyderco. I ordered a Spydie when they were released, thinking it would be a lesser quality knife with the same geometry as the Southard. I thought it would be an acceptable tradeoff as a user knife and I could then keep the Southard in really nice shape.

I was astounded when the Spyderco arrived; it is the best production knife patterned after a custom that I’ve ever seen. It’s fit, finish and action are superb; I have several custom knives that cost quite a bit more than the Spydie that aren’t made as well. I’d expected it would be 60-70% as good as the Southard; in reality it’s closer to 95% as good.

As for the angles; I don’t think he could get it locked in at 15 degrees without hitting the vise with the stones. I don’t know if I’d want this knife at 15 degrees per side; I went with 16 initially (32 inclusive) and found it was dulling very quickly. I went to 20 (40 degrees inclusive) and it’ll top arm hair all day long and I am touching it up once a week instead of daily

[Wayne Reimer]

I’ve had one of those for many years…mine was made by Stanley tools, probably 75 years or more ago. (it was my Grandfather’s)

They originally were intended for checking bevel on woodworking chisels. Even though every one that I’ve ever seen has been stamped out of brass, they’re accurate. I keep mine in my sharpening box with all my stones from my freehand days

[Wayne Reimer]

I use a couple of strips of natural chamois to keep knives in place when clamped…works very well. I think the best investment I’ve made in terms of accessories is a USB microscope for checking edges. It works extremely well for checking a variety of things related to the edge; angle, chipping, uneven grind, verifying whether you’re ready to move up with stones, etc.

I also use it off stand for checking stone contamination to avoid unnecessary stone maintenance.At 80-100X you can clearly see metal fragments and clear them more selectively with rare earth magnets. Speaking of which, I have two rod shaped magnets that I slide into a straw. I roll the straw down the length of the stones a couple of times, then hold the straw over the trash can and remove the magnets. the fragments fall into the trash and don’t adnere to the magnet, so it’s a lot neater. With other shaped magnets, just putthem in a plastic bag first. When you’re done, remove them from the bag as toss it;your magnets stay clean that way

[Wayne Reimer]

There are actually a few mid-to-high end custom knife makers that use stellite, but Tom Mayo is sort of the
unofficial “King” of stellite. He’s used it for well over a decade; not exclusively of course…what I’ve seen of his work, he tends to reserve 6K for his higher end knives ( bearing in mind that Toms knives have a minimum “price of admission” of around $1000.)

Many makers have avoided it for the same reasons that make it such a durable blade; it’s incredibly hard to work with. It eats belts and tooling, so if course that translates into greater aggravation, harder work, increased overhead and higher prices. The last couple of years there seems to be a bit of a surge in interest in it again.

I doubt we’ll ever see material like this make it’s way into production knives when the cost of a finished 6K blade alone is regularly valued at $300. or more. It is pretty cool stuff though…I’m very grateful that I’ve been lucky enough to acquire a knife made with it, particularly one made by the good Mr. Mayo

[Wayne Reimer]

great to know the Android version is out! I knew they were working on it, but hadn’t heard it was available yet

[Wayne Reimer]

I wanted to update this post with a synopsis of how the Stellite 6K has done in a daily carry situation.
I’ve had the knife in my pocket daily for approximately 2 months now, and after I got over my initial hesitation with using it ( not wanting to put the first scratch on it), I’ve used it exactly the same way I would use any other daily carry knife…cutting a sandwich, peeling and apple, opening a box or a letter, scoring drywall, cutting tape, etc. etc.

From my initial sharpening two months ago, I have done nothing but strop it every 4-6 days with a one micron strop, followed by a few passes with bare kangaroo. I have been frankly astounded at the level of wear resistance this material has. One of my other EDC knives is 3V steel, the latest “super steel” in terms of wear resistance. The 6K maintains an edge on average 30% longer than the 3V. With 440C, VG10, etc. I’d grown very used to stropping these every day…once a week with the stellite is in reality a bit too much…it really doesn’t need it that often.

This material will not handle prying. If you’re using your EDC knife for any amount of that sort of thing, this is not the material for you. If you use this stuff stricly for cutting…food, paper, boxes, that sort of thing…it’s pretty tough to beat, despite being an “old” material unlike the latest “super steels”

As a matter of interest, for those of you using an iphone, there is a new application available called “Knife Steel Chart” from ZviSoft LLC that is a searchable database of all known steels used in knifemaking. It allows you to search based on material name, the standard,maker, country of origin, or the technology used to produce it.

When you’ve found the steel your looking for, it gives you a chemical breakdown, it’s characteristics, Rockwell rating, alias names, etc.

I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks, and find it invaluable. Well worth a look

[Wayne Reimer]

Originally from Calgary Alberta. Since retiring, I have been following my wife around the country with her career, currently in Regina Saskatchewan.

As for Camera equipment, I was a die-hard Fuji fan for many years, and still shoot an S5Pro for weddings and portraiture. I started an independent video production house a couple of years ago and began shooting Sony products for video work, and eventually moved into their mirrorless systems for stills. I currently have a NEX 3, a NEX 5N and a NEX7, and many more lenses than I need, Sony E and A mount and many Nikon lenses as well from my Fuji days. Astonishing that they are able to fit an APS-C sensor and 24 megapixels in a camera as small as this.

I will try to shoot some images of my pens in a few days. I am being admitted to hospital in a couple of hours for surgery so I’ll be off-line for a few days

[Wayne Reimer]

Leo,

I fell in love with fountain pens during my university days, and never fell out of love for them. To be truthful, I am not even sure how many I have at this point…

I’m now retired, but when still employed I think I was viewed by many as a throwback since I would never use a ballpoint unless all other options were exhausted ( I used to keep from 4 to 6 pens, ink, some nibs, etc. in my desk at all times). Even now, years after I have any real need to even carry a pen, I seldom leave the house without one in my pocket.

I own exactly one ball point pen…a Fisher space pen in my maxpedition bag that I haul my camera equipment in.

[Wayne Reimer]

I think there are too many factors at play here to make anything more than a subjective opinion. I usually carry two knives; one smaller knife, sharpened as sharp as I can make it, stropped nightly and used for light duty cutting (envelopes, fruit etc.)

The second knife is usually either a Strider fixed blade, or one of several Emerson folders. These knives are generally taken to 800 grit, then stropped, and finished with a micro bevel (only a few passes, mind you) of the 800 stones offset 2 degrees from the original bevel, to restore a slight tooth to the edge. It’s this knife that gets the “grunt” work…cutting zip-ties, breaking down boxes, general digging, prying, stripping wires, that sort of thing. It will get a light stropping at night, but not anything too extensive. I usually wait until it’s showing signs of actual dulling before going back with the stones.

Since I rotate through about 10 knives for this role currently, I seldom carry one “hard use” knife more than a couple of days in succession, so it takes a while (as a general rule, about every third rotation for the knife, or roughly a month)

I sort of prefer the “two knife” approach since I can be pretty confident that regardless of the job I’m tackling, I’ll almost always have the right knife, and I will usually have the right knife sharpened properly for the task at hand.

I don’t think you can discount the medium you’re cutting, the frequency you cut it, nor where you cut it. Although when I’m at work I still carry two knives, the smaller folder gets used much more often for fear of intimidating someone with a larger knife, so at times it “seems” like the smaller, sharper knife dulls more quickly. I think it does also due to the concentration of forces on the edge multiplied by the frequency it’s used.

Apples vs. oranges…and then a highly subjective answer results anyway

[Wayne Reimer]

As promised, a shot of the edge of my Mayo TNT with the stellite 6K blade. Sharpened & stropped to 1 micron diamond spray

Attachments:

• MayoTNTedge.jpg

[Wayne Reimer]

hi there,
Stellite has been around for quite a few years, and is used in many applications where they need high wear resistance with low/no lubrication. It has only been used by “high end” knife makers primarily due to cost; the raw material for an average 3 inch knife blade runs more than $100….6 or 8 times that of an average high quality blade steel.

Yes I was definitely hitting the edge…I’m an old fan of the sharpie trick. it’s simply the nature of stellite; the edge will roll easily due to the cobalt content, and won’t tear away due to the chromium and other elemental contents. the only way to eliminate is to abrade it away, and since it’s highly abrasion resistant, that too takes some time.

Now that it’s very sharp, I’m curious to see how long it will remain that way. There are several scientific papers available, comparing it’s wear resistance to a variety of other materials; Talonite, which is also used for knife making, is also known as Stellite 6B…it’s less than 50% as wear resistant.

Some others that come to mind;
440C – 6K is approx. 400% more wear resistant
VG-10 – 6K is 70% more resistant
AUS8 – 6K is 80-90% more resistant

know there are several others that were compared, I just can’t remember them offhand. Of course, these are lab results, which have little meaning in real world use. I know a number of people with 6K blades, both Mayos and other manufacturers. The consensus seems to be that it is not a steel you’d use for prying or extreme hard use because it doesn’t have the sort of Rockwell rating for that application. It’s best as a slicing material…I keep wanting to type “Steel”, which it isn’t….there are several knife makers who specialize in kitchen and chef’s knives that use stellite extensively because of it’s wear resistance…

I normally carry two knives with me most of the time; lately it has often been a Strider SJ-75s for light duty, slicing things, and a fixed blade Strider SLCC Wharncliffe, or a Strider SA fixed blade for heavier things, prying,etc. I’ve swapped out the SJ-75s for the Mayo to see how the resilience of the blade material works out

I had a quick look at the edge through the USB microscope just before my wife dragged me out shopping…it looks WONDERFUL for only 1micron stropping. I’ll snap a couple of photos later on and post them.

[Wayne Reimer]

I have several knives made from it, and it’s one of my favorite steels. It’s tough to sharpen well.
Until purchasing the WE a couple of months ago, I’d always sharpened freehand, and it was always a job I dreaded with this steel since it is so tough.

This will probably sound crazy, but I usually found with free-handing especially it seemed to take forever to see or feel any discerable difference in the edge, then all of a sudden things started to happen.

I have speculated on “why?” for more than a few hours…am I alligning things on a molecular level before it starts to “cooperate”? Is the act of draggin the blade across the stone heating the steel enough to make it somehow more amenable to being sharpend? I have absolutely NO idea…to me, it’s always felt like there was almost a harder “crust” that had to be dealt with before you started to make any headway.

Of course I know that’s nonsense…just a perception on my part. On the WE, I do find that I have to both increase the number of strokes per stone to get good results, and pay very close attention to having the stones completely flat on the bevel at all times. It doesn’t tolerate a stone edge being dragged across a sharp bevel; I looks through a Loupe almost like a tear in the edge, not a chip.

When it’s sharp, I love the steel. I don’t recall ever chipping an edge on it, and it retains the feel of a freshly sharpened bevel for a long time. It’s definetly one of those trade-offs; you almost NEED a good system like a WE to sharpen it properly, but once you have it sharp, it lasts and lasts.

(the above is completely subjective in nature, and my personal opinions with no basis whatsoever in scientific fact. your mileage may, and likely will, vary)

[Wayne Reimer]

Good tip. The one thing that I might have a concern with since you said it’s a gun oil is
whether it has any solvents of any sort in it, and if so how might it interact with the medium holding the stone itself together in the long term.
I would think almost any light oil…perhaps even a light vegatble oil, may have a similar effect. I know we have a bottle of sunflower oil at home…I may give it a try, and tell my wife I made a salad for lunch when she notices the oil in the bottle is depleted :^)

[Wayne Reimer]

Just an update on the reprofiled edge and how it’s held up. In the past three weeks, I’ve carried this Emerson roughly 75% of the time as an EDC knife.

In that time, it’s been treated to the same sores of things my knives get daily…carboard, zipties, a little mild pruning of some shrubs, scraping a couple of stickers off my garage door, etc.

The edge settled into a “working edge” ( not sharp enough to consistently ribbon phone book paper, but capable if done slowly. Would cut meats, raw and cooked, nicely…vegatables as well, including ripe tomatoes. would not shave arm hair effectively.

Overall, not dull enough to break out the WE, but not as sharp as it had been. Once selttled into that degree of sharpness, it seemed to hold it without significant change for a full week. I was able to restore it back to full sharpness with 50 passes of the 5 micron strop.

This configuration is marginally more difficult to sharpen than the “Emerson Chisel”. It’s working edge is, however, sharper overall. I have not put it back on the WE for stone work yet,however I will apply stones the next time, likely a few passess with the 1000 grit and then stropping. OVerall, I like it quite well.

[Wayne Reimer]

A couple of suggestions to offer since I’ve done about 100 knives on the Field and Sport so far, including quite a few at 20 degrees. First of all, make sure you actually NEED 20 degrees. There are a lot more edges at 22 than 20 in my experience, including several that are actually published with specs showing 20, when they’re actually closer to 22.

There are VERY few knives that won’t sharpen at 20 degrees. In my experience so far, that’s the cut-off angle; anything below that is dependant on the blade width, but at 20, if you make CERTAIN that you are never trying to sharpen with the bottom bolt extended into the vise too far.

Back out both bolts until they are inside the vise frame. Position your knife properly against the ledge in the top of the vise…VERY important. Then tighten the top bolt onto the knife until the knife is held firmly by the top bolt tension only. DON’T over tighten, but tighten it firmly. you should not be able to move the blade by bumping it. THEN, tighten the bottom bolt in. Again, don’t reef on it with both hands; remember the knife is already held in place with the upper bolt.

The blade positioning is important with the F&S, and the bolt issue is big. Another work around based on your photo, try sharpening one side of the blade on the clean side of the vise ( the movable side), then turn the knife in the vise and sharpen the other side.

I hope some of that helps!

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