I took advantage of a few brief minutes of sunshine to get a few photos up. Here's what I think so far:
First, these blade shapes are awesome. The clip is canted at a good angle for slicing bread, and presents the tip easily to plastic and packages without having to crook your wrist over. The spear presents the milimeter of cutting edge just under the tip to the work, just what you want for whittling or removing annoying bits of skin around nails. You can show a little more restraint about poking things than you can with the clip. Together, they make a great pair.
This isn't uncommon on a pocket knife blade this long, but the spear had an almost imperceptable difference in thickness right in the middle of the edge, which made putting the initial edge on unexpectedly tricky and time consuming. I don't like to lose a molecule off the breadth of the blade if I don't need to, and it meant more marking and inspection to get to a full length apex without grinding the blade narrower. As usual with GEC, both bevels broadened toward the tip, the spear much moreso than the clip.
I should mention that both blades came easy paper cutting sharp. Good factory work. I used the factory edge to cut threads and cord for my Halloween costume.
The handle is roomy and very comfortable, even moreso than my cardboard model predicted:
The blades don't get in the way when gripping for hard cuts. Instead, I found that the unused blade fell comfortably into the cleft formed by the first joint up from my knuckle, and helped me gain leverage with twisting motions. When pushing hard through wood, the unused blade squeezes in a bit, but never makes contact with any part of the blade well. No blade rap, no tip touching. No blade play up or down or side to side at all. That's very surprising, because the pulls are LIGHT. I'd call them a 4, if an oiled Swiss Army knife is a 5. This is good news to me, but will be bad news to some.
Another thing that will be bad news to some is the lack of half stops. To me, this is a safety feature that was part of the reason for biying this knife and phasing out my 74. I've had several incidents where the half stop made it difficult and unsafe to close the blade in a dangerous situation, and on one occasion the half stop snap did cut someone who wasn't expecting it. The half stop also makes opening the knife much more hazardous to my nails. The lack of half stops on these is a key feature, for me.
Here's the knife with a pocket slip I made:
I find the moose green very dark but very vivid. I like it.
About that 9 effort: the knife is finished very well, but what stand out to me are the pivots. They are uncanny smooth. I don't just mean not gritty. I don't just mean not slow. I mean the force needed to open the blade remains EXACTLY the same through the entire rotation of opening the blade. It's one of those satisfying mechanical feelings that feels physically pleasurable. The blades click sharply into place closing and opening.
Here's a photo of the knife next to my very used Schrade 881, for which I originally made the pocket slip.
You can see in this photo how spoiled we are for fit and tolerances by GEC. GEC on the left, Schrade 881 on the right. (Bought new in package by the way.)
The 81 is everything I hoped it would be, and will be replacing my 74 in my pocket.
