Spyderco Forums

Recently expanded collection to include a couple of fixed blades, The Sprig and a Maxamet Mule, I was a bit surprised by the small bevel on both, nothing like the edges on my Paramilitary 2's and 3's, is this typical of fixed blades? If so why?

If you're talking about how tall the secondary bevel is (the part people like to polish) I made an illustration that explains this a while back:



Comparing the left two diagrams you can see how the secondary bevel angle affects how tall the bevel is. Comparing the right two diagrams you can see how blade stock/thickness behind the edge affects how tall the bevel is.

Fixed blades often have more obtuse bevel angles because they're intended to see heavier use than folders. They may also be thicker behind the edge for the same reason.

The secondary bevel (sharpened edge) will appear narrower if the primary grind is very thing behind the edge, as the above "Thick Acute" and "Thin Acute" illustrate, with the same sharpening angle.

My Sprig is very thin behind the edge, so the sharpened bevel looks very narrow, even at a low angle. The PM2 is much thicker behind the edge than the Sprig, so the sharpened edge looks wider than the Sprig when bother are sharpened at the same angle.

The Primary grind of fixed blades (just like folders) vary greatly when talking about thickness behind the edge. As mentioned above, sometimes fixed blades are intentionally thicker to create a more durable tool that can be subjected to more abuse than a thinner edge (think Ka-bar Becker Knives). However, Spyderco does a great job (IMO) in giving us production grinds that are reasonably thin behind the edge (impressively so with the Sprig).