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Pros: Blade Material, Blade Sharpness, Ease of Opening, Handle Material, Lock Ease of Use, Lock Type, Overall Quality, Weight
Cons: Handle Feel, Pocket Clip
Solid knife with great cutting geometry
The Spyderco Bodacious is an evolutionary design that is heavily influenced by the Shaman, which is another really solid Spyderco design. The Bodacious, trades a bit of ergonomic flexibility for additional cutting edge, removing the finger choil found on the shaman and extending the cutting edge all the way up to the handle. This was the primary reason I purchased this knife, in addition to the fact that it's a fully serrated, DLC coated blade. The desire to purchase this knife was driven by my love for my fully serrated Spyderco Tenacious that I've been carrying at work for about a year now. I love fully serrated knives and find them useful and easy to sharpen on Spyderco's triangle sharpmaker. Sharp serrations cut extremely well through most materials and they hold up well to abusive environments. One of the big plusses of the tenacious is it's lack of a finger choil to get hung up on material during hard cutting tasks. This is a feature I grew to love about the knife and sought it on a blade with better materials. Enter the Bodacious. An American made, premium full size folding knife that delivers typical Spyderco quality and well made materials. Not only does Spyderco know their way around age geometry, their heat treats for their steels is second to none, especially in S30V. Many people will complain about how S30V is old news, but neglect to look at its actual performance in a pocket knife, and fail to understand that crucible designed the steel specifically for pocket knives. It's a very well balanced steel that has great edge retention, very adequate toughness and, in my experience, excellent corrosion resistance, especially when coated with DLC. The ergonomics out of the box are decent, with the only real gripe being the squared off, smooth G10 handles. I do not find the factory handles to be a good fit for a full size, working knife. My experience with the factory g10 scales is limited, as the day I got the Bodacious in hand, I swapped the scales for a set of AWT Aggressive Agent scales. The ergos improved dramatically, and so did the available traction, despite the AWT scales being made of type III anodized aluminum. The other component I swap out on every knife is the pocket clip. Almost always with a Lynch NW deep carry clip, and that is no exception here. The durability and warranty on Casey's clips is outstanding and the clips look great on almost any knife. The full flat ground leaf shape blade is stout, but an aggressive cutter. It does not get hung up on cardboard or other material, but instead pushes through difficult media with authority and control. The serrations are ground somewhat shallow in typical Spyderco fashion and I have always found them to be less prone to hanging up on whatever you're cutting compared to more aggressively cut serrations like those found on a Microtech. It makes sense, however, that Spyderco would know how to do good serrations, taking into consideration that they were the ones to invent the 2-step scalloped serrations that are so recognizable now. All in all, I'm giving this knife 4 stars out of 5. The only thing holding it back from a perfect 5 is the factory scales, which I think are not well suited for the knife. A more aggressively textured and slightly contoured set of G10 scales would have made this knife about as perfect as you can get out of the box. As a side note, Spyderco does not make deep carry clips for their knives as they do not want to cut into the market of aftermarket clip makers. This is a plus in my book. A symbiotic relationship between businesses, making good,, reliable tools. Well done, Spyderco.