Spyderco High Performance Delica

Spyderco Forums
A Delica in VG-10 with a High Holow Grind. Somewhere in Heaven, Cliff is smiling. He had been advocating for Spyderco to have a 'performance line' for their more popular models for sometime.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2021 06:41PM by cKc (Kyley Harris).

I wouldn't get too fired up over a high hollow grind. doesn't mean anything really. what is important is how thin the BTE is..

a high hollow grind can be of value over a flat grind purely because there is less work on the stone over time to keep it in the same geometry, but if the geometry is thick, flat or hollow, the cutting quality wont be improved.

as I've shown with my CRK Sebenza, and even their new high hollow grinds.. so thick BTE at 0.20" that i can pretty much remove then entire hollow portion by the time the knife is in the geometry i would have made it in the first place.

So, hard to say if its a performance line yet until we see it. It will be nice if they are taking something like their delica that is 0.010-0.015 flat and making that exact geometry into a high hollow

cKc,
Supposedly the blade is suppose to be 0.010" bte. Sorry I forgot that. Originally the blade was to be in K390, but for some reason they can't take it to 0.010", but they can with VG-10. That is what Sal posted in the Spyderco Forum.

I don't have much experience with hollow ground blades--I think a Sebenza I had a while ago was the only one I've used much--but I found in my use primarily cutting up cardboard and stiff materials where the entire blade was through the piece being cut, the grind didn't show any noticeable advantage over an FFG. I found it amusing the shoulder where the hollow came out to the full thickness of the blade was absolutely covered in scratches, since it has to wedge through everything.

Even a simple task like trying to split an apple, the hollow sinks in almost without effort, and then the shoulder wedges immediately, threatening to break it in half rather than cut it.

The only real advantage I can see is when cutting something against another surface, like cutting leather against a cutting mat, where only the hollow portion is submerged in the material. That type of cutting comprises a very small portion of what I use a knife for. Do you guys do a lot of cutting like this? I could see this profile doing very well on a rope cutting test where the force required is measured, and inaccurate conclusions being drawn from it.


But to the original topic, I'd be interested in a high performance FFG Delica. VG-10 would be fine with me, too.

valorum,
Hopefully it will be a full height hollow grind, but I don't have my hopes up. Most likely it will just be a high hollow grind like a Sebenza. On hollow grinds, you can plane down the shoulder of the hollow grind to make it cut better in binding materials, although the knife won't look pretty anymore. Like you noted, with shallow cutting you won't notice an issue.

Thanx Jason,

The edge Junky's on the Spyderco forum have been nagging me for a long time to consider a more performance oriented model(s) as opposed to the "general knife user" market.

This model is kind of an experiment. I asked the maker to make the grind as high as he can and to make the edge as thin as possible. Generally speaking, Valorum (welcome to the Phorum BTW) is correct in that hollow ground knives perform better with shallower cuts like skinning, as opposed to passing all the way through the material, like cutting up cardboard. But it's a good start. As Jason mentioned, one can reduce the shoulder on this experimental model.

If this is well received, I'd like to try other grinds/edges to perform. Eg: a Japanese sword has a "hamaguri" grind (appleseed) and the spine has the corners ground off to reduce friction going all the way through the material. I'm sure we/you can come up with other performance oriented grinds.


As I've said, "the edge is a ghost" and we're still learning more after 40,000 years and going from rocks to copper, bronze, iron, steel, serrations, etc.

sal

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"Knife afi's are far out, Steel Junky's are farther out still, but Edge Junky's are just nuts"

Sal, if it's anywhere around 0.010" on the edge and high hollow then I think it will be a great knife
My h1 salt that I converted to a flat is one of my fav folders. Making it a little hollow would just make it that much easier to maintain by hand over time

Alvin Johnson favored this grind quite a bit. IMS his reasoning was that allowed for easier maintenance on the thin/high-hardness blades he advocated. I think most of his stuff was being used for skinning - so both of what Kylie and Sal have to say makes a lot of sense. First knife company thing I've seen in a while that excites me.

tarantella,
Yeah, Alvin Johnston is also smiling down from heaven. I wish I could have used one of his knives also. This and CPM MagnaCut are the two things that excited me also, I have been pretty bored as of late.

I’m waiting for this with baited breath. It will be a nice compliment to my reground saber grind Delica and Wharnecliffe Endura.

Hadn’t heard of this, it’s interesting though. But I’ve been missing having an FRN Native since I gave mine to Cliff several years ago, so I ordered one of them in the SPY-27 steel. I doubt I’ll be able to tell any significant difference between it and S30V or other things in that class of materials, especially since I have almost exclusively gone to diamonds for apexing and light shaping, but it was interesting enough make me want to try it.

Hi Ryan,

We created SPY27 because we felt the Cobalt based ally would have a characteristic of getting very sharp. Sticky sharp. So you may want to play with a finer grit to bring out the edge.

sal

Sal, why would the cobalt give the steel that kind of property or ability, and how much sharper do you mean?

My limited understanding of what cobalt would do for a knife like this is that, in high enough quantities in the alloy, it would help prevent the steel from being burnt during post-HT processing.

I say that because it’s generally used in HSS Alloys in industry, it’s included in the alloys to prevent the loss of the HT during hot work, if I remember correctly.

So, in similar quantities in a knife steel like SPY-27, it should also help prevent, for example, the edge from being burnt during the knife making process. Which would, indeed lead to better/higher initial sharpness, assuming that the same processing on another steel would get it burnt.


This is just off the top of my head, I could be misremembering the properties given to an alloy by the addition of cobalt, but I think this is accurate. I think, but I don’t know.

Hi Ryan,

We use a lot of VG-10. Probably Takefu's biggest customer in that alloy. When I was speaking with the President of Takefu some years ago, he said he believed that Cobalt enhances the properties of most of the alloys in the mix. I thought to take a chance on his personal experience. Sometimes the opinions of some with experience is worth listening to.

I also wanted a US made Cobalt based steel. So we began with the chemistry of VG-10 and went from there. Powdering the material helped and tweaking the mix also helped. Bob Skibitski, the metallurgist I worked with at Crucible, is a very bright guy and we worked on the mix for several years.

sal

Oh interesting, thanks for the information, Sal. ????