Pros: Weight
Cons: Finish, Overall Quality, Sheath/Scabbard
Not real impressed...
Even for the price, I am just not real impressed. I understand that this knife is only $25, and I don't want to be one of those guys that expects perfection for nothing, but this doesn't even meet basic standards in some ways. The real issues I have with my knife so far (bought it from Knife Center and received about 2 days ago): - The knife doesn't fit in the sheath - the blade is too wide to actually fit in the sheath - The blade is bent; probably warped in heat treat or was not straight prior to heat treat, either way, its bent in an arc from the tip to the heal. - The left handle scale has an odd grind mark up near the blade that in no way matches the left, or other Old Hickory handles for that matter. Not sure what happened here, but it looks like they had some kind of a slip when handling the machinery in the milling process. Other issues include things that I sort of expected from Old Hickory/ Ontario and for the price point: - The handles are not well attached to the blade (i.e. there are gaps between the tang and scales0 and are pretty roughly put together. They are surprisingly comfortable though. - the primary bevel looks like it was ground by a middle school kid. Some of this is because the blade is bent and probably was before the final grind was put on, some is just rough work. - the edge grind is really uneven, both in thickness (see previous comment) and in angle. Additionally, kind of like the RAT fixed blades, the blade came sharp, but ground fairly obtuse overall angle, so it doesn't cut well out of the box. Cutting apples was a bit of a chore as it didn't really cut, you had to push it through the peel and start to break the apple, then it would slide through the rest. Something that I didn't really expect is that the blade is thick for what is essentially an Old Hickory kitchen knife. They probably did this to meet the "hunter" or bushcraft crowd that this knife is geared at. Between the thickness and the edge angle, it probably won't serve either two of these markets really well, UNLESS you are one that likes to try and pound knives through logs frequently. Even for that use, not sure this is the best knife. My experience with 1075 would lead me to try and grind this a little thinner, and or put an apple-seed / slightly convex edge on the blade to improve cutting performance. I did the latter yesterday, and it works much better in the kitchen, haven't really tried it out on wood yet and plan on doing so this afternoon. I haven't decided if I want to thin out the primary bevel yet but am leaning towards trying it incrementally. I've ground harder 1075 to about 0.010 inch behind the edge and had good results, so may try it incrementally and see what happens. Essentially, this could be an ok project knife, especially given its price. There are better options out there for project/kit knives though. Bought this for the mountain man - trapper nostalgia and it does kind of fit that bill. For a project knife, I would definitely skip this and purchase any number of kit knife blades and scales available. Either way, I am pretty disappointed with the knife overall, even for Old Hickory and Ontario. If you can get a decent, usually more than decent, knife at this price point or less from Mora and Opinel, it does make me wonder why this knife is what it is...
(
