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Pros: Ease of Opening, Handle Material, Pocket Clip, Blade Material, Overall Quality, Blade Sharpness
Cons: None
Well working and sharp consistent edge
This is one of my top two favorite knives. If I lost this knife I would order another today. My other favorite knife is the Case Marilla Flipper so I will compare the knife to the Case knife. The blades are very similar in both shape in size, but the Case is just a wee bit longer. The buck knife is wider. Sufficient force is required to break the friction holding the knife closed that when it does break, the blade comes all the way out every time. With the Case knife I need to flip the blade a bit to make sure the blade deploys. The pocket clip is much larger on the Buck knife, but the Buck knife does not allow you to flip the clip to the other side of the knife. My daughter mentioned that the Buck knife weighs more than the Case knife, so when wearing light weight shorts, I am more likely to grab my Case Marilla flipper; but I often do carry the Buck with my light-weight shorts. I find slightly prefer the handle feel on the Buck knife, but that is personal preference. My go to method of keeping a knife that I carry often is to use my Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker. It is very easy for an amateur to maintain the blade properly aligned while so you can consistently sharpen the knife. I often find that there are problems near the base of the blade (at the Choil / Heel). This is often especially pronounced when a knife has a Bolster, which this knife does not. It is common for the heel portion to slop away from the split, which is not really a problem unless you are trying to sharpen a knife on a flat stone (as opposed to a round rod or similar). I also often find that the angle changes as you move towards the tip or point. I think I have seen it stated that the tip is often wider so that it has stronger and holds up to abuse (stronger tip). So, I always look for these particular things when I first receive a knife. On delivery, the blade was so sharp that I opted to not sharpen it; a rarity for me. The primary bevel is 15 degrees on each side. After carrying the knife for a few months I finally decided to sharpen this knife so I checked for the problems I usually see. I free hand sharpened on the Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker and perhaps i am not perfect in how I do it; as opposed to say a wicked edge sharpener (that I do not own) or on one of the other things that I do own that may be more consistent. But for the most part, the edge was consistent at 15 degrees on each side. It was not perfect, but I was surprised and impressed at how close it was. Before I started, I threw the blade under a microscope and took some pictures. I was surprised at how coarse the edge was given how sharp the knife felt. Now, there is nothing wrong with a coarse edge, mind you, it was the standard coarse edge that I am used to seeing, and then I realized that the blade had a micro-bevel at what I believe to be 20 degrees. First, I checked to make sure that the blade was a consistent 15 degrees and I saw that the "medium" grit stone barely touched the ridges, so I used Cubic Boron Nitride (just a bit below diamond) to make things very consistent. This was pretty fast and it very much improved things, understanding that I have been using the knife for a few months without touching the edge; light use, but lots of cardboard.The problem was that this knife came with a micro bevel, which is easy to touch up, but it also means that sharpening at 15 degrees was not going to really make this knife sharp. After evening things out on the Cubic Boron Nitride, I did maybe 20 passes on the medium stone and that very rough edge that was there before was much better. Things were not nearly as nice as when the knife arrived, so I dropped in the fine stones for the Spyderco at 20 degrees per side for the micro bevel, did 10 passes per side and this knife was back to crazy crazy sharp. I could have skipped all those other steps and simply done that. I prefer to not use a micro-bevel, but there are many reasons that people use them (and many strongly prefer them) and I will not bother to remove the micro-bevel, but I might work on it when i am bored. And remember that this steel is pretty touch. If you want to do more than polish up that edge, be sure to go with something that can handle it.
