Spyderco Native Chief in Orange G10/XHP

[cutleryshoppe.com]

I’ve got one of these on the way. I’ve really been liking the Native 5, but I often wish it had the longer blade and handle of my all-time favorite Eagle Ultralight. And I also like the XHP in my Chapparal, it both grinds and sharpens a little easier than the S30V of about equal hardness and I think it’s a perfect steel type for coarse edges, being very homogeneous and loaded with round chromium carbides, about 20% by volume, in combination with pretty high hardness of around 62 to 63 or so. Should be an excellent match to the long blade for draw cuts.

The Spyderco Chief looks to me like it’s right in the range of the ideal size for me, 4” blade and 5” handle, nice lean grind and very acute tip, and it’s linerless G-10 for very high durability without excessive weight. They’re 4 ounces, which isn’t bad at all for a knife of that size.

Plus the orange G10 looks interesting, will help keep visual track of the knife while outdoors, and looks less tactical and weapony than a blacked-out one.

We’ll see how it goes.

Ryan,
That's an interesting knife. When you receive it, will you measure the thickness behind the edge and let us know? I have several knives in CTS XHP. I like it.

Another thing I am wondering about is how much blade play there is with the lock back. It seems Spyderco is doing better these days with their lock backs. Some of their Byrd folders are also excellent in this respect.

Will you use the finger choil of the blade? If so, when? I am curious about how others use them. I haven't found them necessary or even desirable.

Good luck with the knife. I hope you enjoy it and it serves you well.

Yeah I’ll definitely measure the geometry of everything. Edge thickness and angle, primary grind angle, etc.

As far as the choils go, to me it’s a bit of a mixed bag. On knives the size of the Chapparal and smaller, I like it because you get more grip length relative to the folded size of the knife. On large ones like this Chief, the Military or the Police 3/4, I think it can be pretty useful for when you want high control over the tip of the ~4” blades. But for everything in between the size of the Chapparal and the Military, basically anything with a blade of 3” to 3.75”, I really could do without it. I’d rather have more real handle and more cutting edge than less of both for the sake of a feature I don’t need on a knife of that size.

As far as the vertical blade play with the lockbacks, I don’t ever really have much concern with that. It’s an almost unavoidable feature of the lock design and never really bothered me, though some knives have less of that problem than others.

The Chapparal and the Native 5 would be on the upper end of that, having less than any other knives I’ve used despite getting quite a lot of pocket time and enough cutting to wear away a fair bit of steel in sharpening, and my old Endura and Pacific Salt are probably the worst, having a lot of rock after years of use. Although both of those have been on the sidelines for a few years, they’re basically in retirement at this point. In the middle is the two Al Mar Eagles, they’re basically right in between the two ends of the scale.

As a point about what I mean by the larger knives having a choil being worth it, look at the comparison in blade length and cutting edge length, per Spyderco specs, between the Chief and the Endura:

Endura:

- Blade of 3.75”
- Edge of 3.44”

Chief:

- Blade of 4.1”
- Edge of 3.6”


So with these two we clearly see how if the Endura had a choil, it would really reduce the comparative cutting edge length, and even though the Chief has one, it’s still got about 0.150” more edge length. Imagine how badly the Endura would compare if the features were reversed:

Endura (hypothetical choil)

- Blade of 3.75”
- Edge of 3.25”


Chief (hypothetically choil-free)

- Blade of 4.1”
- Edge of 3.8”


It changes the advantage in favor of the Chief from 0.150” to 0.550” and now the cutting edge of the Chief is actually longer than the entire blade of the Endura.

It never occurred to me that it's (the finger choil) usefulness might vary with knife size, I see your points. With a small knife, the extra grip length of a choil will allow you to apply more pressure and have more control. It's almost like having a larger knife. Looking forward to hearing the knifes specs.

So the knife came in today, I’ll probably make a short video comparing it to the Native 5 and the Eagle Ultralight in the next few days. And put up some pictures later tonight.

Initial sharpness is excellent, very similar to the finish produced by a Spyderco Fine rod. Could shave your face without much irritation but still does have some aggression on a draw cut, it wasn’t over-buffed.

I switched the clip to tip down, as you can see. I prefer that on the larger knives.

The factory edge is 0.019” to 0.021” thick at 14 to 15 DPS. Not bad and not surprising, several other people on YouTube noted that theirs was the same geometry.

I'm glad we seem to be mostly over the days of 35 thou thick blades, although it is a little unfortunate that Spyderco in general doesn't seem to want to go below 15 on anything if they can help it. Still, looks like a great knife.

Yeah Luis, 0.020” seems to be the average for most Spyderco knives these days. It’s sort of right on the cusp of the durability/cutting ability line. Anything thicker and the cutting ability starts to really fall off in binding materials, and anything less starts to get easy to damage. In this case I think the best remedy in absence of a regrind is to reduce the edge angle to 10 DPS. That’ll put it on equal ground with a Mora for shallow cutting and over the Mora for deeper cutting, while still being more than durable enough.

The knife is decent so far but I do have some concerns about potential hotspots on the clip in the tip-down configuration, but I have to do some wood carving to actually check this, we’ll see.

i think they have many options, all which would increase the cost, but it shouldn't really add that large a leap in cost.

as an example. they could just stay at 15dps, but drop to 0.010" bte which will have a significant boost in performance and maintain a good geometry for stability and durabilty, but if they are worried about that then a middle ground could be taken as going to 0.010 on a full height grind will add a lot of grinding cost and risk..

so ideally they can do the same machine grind to 0.020 that they do, but add a secondary machine grind to add a 10dps bevel down to a smaller 15dps edge.

the entire factory knife business seems to be hung up on 2 bevel knives of "saber" or "full height" or 1 bevel scandi style, with the exclusion of convexed knives like Bark River who are nowhere near the same volume.

it feels like a lot of these issues would be resolved by using 3 bevels on knives so that its more like a convex. not a too thick or too thin approach, but a more balanced approach, like the attached design of quality razor blade profiles.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2022 06:53PM by cKc (Kyley Harris).

Yeah cKc, that razor blade profile you mentioned is what I did to the Chapparal. The edge itself is 15 to 20 DPS freehand and about 0.005” to 0.008” but there’s a wide 10 DPS bevel behind that. Combined with the 2mm blade stock and the full-height and tapered grind, it’s probably the best cutter I have besides an old Opinel.

Hi Ryan,

Thanx much for the feedback. Beat hell out of it and let us know. I designed that model 20 year ago. Then recently Eric tweaked it. He has a better eye. And we managed to get it into production. I. too prefer larger (4.") blades for daily chores.

Hey Kyley,

If we were just makin' them for you guys, I'd love 10 BTE. But we serve a larger market. We are beginning to play with a "High Performance Group" in a special Delica we're going to focus on the kind of performance that is available for junky's like you/me. If the reaction is positive, I'd love to get a "special division" for Hiper cutting edges. Wish Cliff were here.

BTW, your edge geometry is interesting. I'd like to give that some thought. Have you actual pieces you've used?



sal



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2022 07:32AM by sal.

Quote
sal
Hi Ryan,

Thanx much for the feedback. Beat hell out of it and let us know. I designed that model 20 year ago. Then recently Eric tweaked it. He has a better eye. And we managed to get it into production. I. too prefer larger (4.") blades for daily chores.

Hey Kyley,

If we were just makin' them for you guys, I'd love 10 BTE. But we serve a larger market. We are beginning to play with a "High Performance Group" in a special Delica we're going to focus on the kind of performance that is available for junky's like you/me. If the reaction is positive, I'd love to get a "special division" for Hiper cutting edges. Wish Cliff were here.

BTW, your edge geometry is interesting. I'd like to give that some thought. Have you actual pieces you've used?



sal

I'll start another post and collate some references of my work and the geometries i used on different blades. I literally just asked my friend Bruce Rugg to send my last small AEBL blade to Jason as a gift, or i'd have happily sent you one as a reference to play with. i will link the new post once done.

I fully understand why companies like you need to go a bit thicker, and im OK with that in general. its not that hard to grind down the BTE and blend them. the blades dont really need to be thinner all the way through. only thinner on the apexes.

new post on AEBL Sal

https://www.beyondt01micron.com/read.php?3,794

Quote
cKc (Kyley Harris)


I'll start another post and collate some references of my work and the geometries i used on different blades. I literally just asked my friend Bruce Rugg to send my last small AEBL blade to Jason as a gift, or i'd have happily sent you one as a reference to play with. i will link the new post once done.

I fully understand why companies like you need to go a bit thicker, and im OK with that in general. its not that hard to grind down the BTE and blend them. the blades dont really need to be thinner all the way through. only thinner on the apexes.

sal,
I would be happy to send you the knife Kyley sent me to check out if you want. It is one of the better cutting knives I have seen, and the way the AEB-L is heat-treated makes it a joy to sharpen.

Hi Jason,

Is that one with the triple bevel grind shown above?

sal

sal,
I believe so, but Kyley would have to confirm that it is. The knife has been sharpened (I also believe by Cliff) by Bruce Rugg and I have also sharpened it.

Sal, the knife Jason has is not. that would be a standard flat height grind to a very small bevel that just exemplifies what AEBL can do.

typically, this is the style of grind i apply to any factory knife i buy, where i just run a 7dps bevel over the existing 15-18dps bevel to create a tertiary bevel. so its pretty easy to apply. you get most of the benefits of a thinner grind, but without making the knife as weak.



if the knife is something like a mora, with a 12dps bevel. the apex cuts well, but the knife is too thick for performance. i would do the same thing. i would just grind a new bevel that 1/2's the height of the 12dps bevel as a facet.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2022 04:15AM by cKc (Kyley Harris).

I think the main way to look at the edge with 3 facets is that its actually just acheiving a convex bevel. but the reality is that convex bevels in production are unreliable and hard to get an accurate and consistent angle and curvature.

but if you have a robot doing the work like use USA Spyderco factory, rather than just applying a single sharpening bevel. there is the ability to have the robot make 2 or 3 passes at different angles.. say 16ds, 12dps and 7dps then finally the edge. this is going to work as well as a hand convex, but with excellent accuracty and tolerances.

Quote
sal
Hi Ryan,

Thanx much for the feedback. Beat hell out of it and let us know. I designed that model 20 year ago. Then recently Eric tweaked it. He has a better eye. And we managed to get it into production. I. too prefer larger (4.") blades for daily chores.

Hey no problem Sal, it seems like a solid piece and carries very well for its size. I’ll do some cutting and post my thoughts as it goes along.

I look forward to some longer term feedback. i think this narrow leaf blade is one of the most versatile blades. in general i find narrow blades more useful than tall chef like blades.

Yeah cKc, the narrow blades are nice because they turn in cuts easier. It’ll take time to get a decent amount of work done, although I do have a large pile of cardboard to cut up for burning. I’m gonna do the pine carving first as a way to check for hotspots on the handle or the clip, then the cardboard.

I finally remembered to pick up a pine 1x4x4 last night. For about $3 it’s the best investment to make in terms of checking grip and handle ergonomics with knives. From light and detailed cuts to forces so high that not even the shoulder can push the knife through. Cutting ability can of course be checked also, but that requires fairly careful measurements and I prefer to just sort of zone out and carve away, making note of any hotspots and how long it takes for them to show up.

I did some carving last night with the Chief, I’ll do some more today and see if the observations are consistent, then make note of them here.

I think I’ll end up making a shortish video on the ergonomics. It’s a little too complicated to easily convey through writing.