Spyderco Forums

Hello, I'd like to know if it's normal that my two last USA made Spyderco knives (Manix 2 G10 and Native LW) have differents angles on the edge.
Here are some pictures :




It doesn't seem a lot because of the light reflection but in person it is really flagrant.
I'd like to use my knife with it's full potential and I don't want to reprofile it, should I return it?
Thanks.

If it's sharp I would just use it. Eventually, you'll work out the grinds with normal sharpening and reprofiling as needed.

It's sharp if I incline my knife to adjust the angles while I cut.
Is it common with their US made ones? I don't have this problem with my Chaparral and Endura

Not to defend Spyderco, because this bothers me as well, but you haven't seen uneven grinds until you seen a Benchmade.

I've got a Stryker and Griptilian G10 and their grinds are perfect. But they both have bladeplay I can't fix. I am not so lucky I guess xD

They usually all are. When I sharpen mine freehand, they are uneven a bit. It just doesn't really matter performance wise. If it bugs you, just resharpen. If it makes you feel any better, I hate the 40 degree angles they usually come in. I almost always have to thin it down when new, and I hate sharpening.

My sage 2 was way off like yours. Not just uneven, but different angles on each side. I just reprofiled. Everything else about the knife was awesome.

Justin

Thanks for your messages. I guess I'm gonna have to reprofile it a bit. I've watched some videos and apparently, a lot of those blades are like mine.
I'm surprised because I thought in the Golden place, they were sharpening the blades by robot.

There is some fluctuation. It's pretty normal. Always sucks when you get a particularly uneven one. I reprofile all of my knives using a guided angle sharpener and even then it's hard to get them exactly the same. If it wasn't so notoriously another knife companies "thing" I'd ask Spyderco to make some Chisel edge knives that are only sharpened on one side. The single bevel not only means you don't have to worry about matching both sides anymore, but you get a shaper knife at higher angles because you're edge angle is no longer "inclusive". Sharpening 20 degrees per side for an inclusive angle of 40 degrees becomes a single 20 degree edge with the chisel grind.

Jazz wrote:They usually all are. When I sharpen mine freehand, they are uneven a bit. It just doesn't really matter performance wise. If it bugs you, just resharpen. If it makes you feel any better, I hate the 40 degree angles they usually come in. I almost always have to thin it down when new, and I hate sharpening.

I'm pretty new to the nuances of blade angles. What do you hate about the 40 degree angle? And what do you prefer, or what's your ideal? Why?

ConspicuousConsumption wrote:
I'm pretty new to the nuances of blade angles. What do you hate about the 40 degree angle? And what do you prefer, or what's your ideal? Why?

40 degrees is 20 degrees each side of the blade laid at an angle to the stone. It's to shallow of an edge for nice slicing, whittling, etc. I like around 15 degrees each side, so a 30 degree edge angle. The 40 degree angle is a lot stronger, but I don't cut sheetrock, so I'm fine with what I like.

Jazz wrote:

ConspicuousConsumption wrote:
I'm pretty new to the nuances of blade angles. What do you hate about the 40 degree angle? And what do you prefer, or what's your ideal? Why?

40 degrees is 20 degrees each side of the blade laid at an angle to the stone. It's to shallow of an edge for nice slicing, whittling, etc. I like around 15 degrees each side, so a 30 degree edge angle. The 40 degree angle is a lot stronger, but I don't cut sheetrock, so I'm fine with what I like.

Thank you for the explanation. So basically you want a finer edge with the lower angle.

ConspicuousConsumption wrote:
Thank you for the explanation. So basically you want a finer edge with the lower angle.

Exactly.

Minding shiny footprints here but that's nowhere near as bad as Benchmade's factory edges. My grip that I sold to buy a PM2 was really uneven and even has one factory bevel exposed in some parts after a proper reprofiling. It still took a really freaking good edge and held it well though.

That's cool but I am on a Spyderco forum and how Benchmade grinds their blades... Euh, how to say? Who cares? :p

Think of the factory edge as a small courtesy, like gas in your tank when you buy a car, it's something that isn't meant to last.

You think that's uneven, check this out! And this is after I did some grinding with a diamond rod on the short side (20 degrees is the shallowest I can go for now)

I thought I must have bought a single bevel blade on accident

I have Spydies from every factory, except China and I have seen perfect symmetry and terrible symmetry from all of them! Probably the best is my Caly 3 CF, which has a fantastically thin primary grind and a faultless edge... the only blade I own that I looked at and decided immediately that it would never get reprofiled unless I damged it somehow. Hot on its heels are the S110V, CruWear, M390, 52100 and REX45 PM2s, all of which came with very good to near perfect symmetry, the only reason these have gotten reprofiled is to get rid of the last 1mm of unsharpened blade at the heel, it bugs me and now that I have a guided angle system it's easy to correct.

In general newer production knives have been better than older ones and the worst grind errors have been from Sakai, but that was on a knife from quite a few years back.

I've seen uneven edges on a few new :spyder: s that I've bought over the years... I've even seen uneven edges on knives of other reputable companies as well. All of these knives still cut and are very functional, so I just use the knives and understand that eventually those uneven edges will sharpen out over time.

My feeling is that unless the factory grind is exactly 30 deg (or whatever you use) the you are reprofiling when you sharpen. If it’s a thinner grind you can sharpen without reprofiling fully, if it started more obtuse then you have to finish reprofiling before you actually sharpen anything anyway. Ideally Spyderco would sharpen everything at 29deg so you could sharpen on the sharpmaker without thinking about it at all.