A.G. Russell Acies 2 -- first impressions

Oh man,I think I see my next knife purchase!I love ZDP 189 steel,and that Acies 2 looks like the perfect size.:thumbup:
 
Acies2 got here Wednesday and wanted to carry and use first. Flash900 and caphid1 both of you are spot on. I like this knife a lot. Prefer your beadblasted clip but I can live with this. Cuts really well and I rate it an 8 out of 10. A 10 being what my small Sebenza is that has been reground by Tom Krein. The Sebenza is a real cutter and slicer but the Acies2 is very good. Let me add the Acies is verrrrrryyyy sharp.It is smooth and closes easily nearly feels a bit weak but I think this is the design purpose. Seems to be engaging about a third of the tang and if it stays at a half I will be happy.This a great job by Mr. Russell and Kershaw. BTW, carries great in the waist band which my preferred carry. Let me kown i f you have anymore input. Thanks.

RKH
 
Glad you like it! Now it's time for me to order one. The detent is also a bit soft on the full size Acies but man does it fly open with ease.
 
Let me add that I test how a knife cuts by slicing newspaper and to get more extreme slice cigarrette paper. Also, carving, slicing and whittling on Basswood. A knife must be very sharp to slice cig. paper which I am out of right now but the Acies2 sliced newspaper very well and did good on the Basswood. You would be suprised how many seemingly sharp knives will not slice but kinda skip over the Basswood leaving gouges instead of clean cuts. Now these things just test the edge geometry of the knife. To test edge holding I use rope such as Hemp. I was shocked to see how many knives would just slide over the rope instead of cutting when I first tried this many years ago. I think this is a trade off on the edge between a toothy edge and a smooth edge. Too smooth and it will not bite the rope. This is not my idea(rope cutting) but custom knife maker Wayne Goddard and knife writer Steve Dick. And I did not have any Hemp rope to try on the Acies2 but if a knife does the other things I mentioned here it usually will perform well on rope cutting.

RKH.
 
I just got mine today. Perfect fit and finish and very good edge but a few passes on a strop and it's perfect. I'll carry it tomorrow and see how well it cuts rope and boxes.
 
This is a nice looking folder and now on my short list.
Two questions please.
Is it end user serviceable? Meaning, can i take it down for periodic maintenance like say a Sebenza?
Also, how would you describe the action on blade deployment? Hydraulic, silky smooth, loose?

Thanks for the review flash900.
 
The Acies2 is as smooth as my Strider SJ-75 Baby Huey and Sage2. It's smoother than my wonderful Three Sisters Forge tactical. It's way smoother than a Grayman Dua I returned. And way, way smoother than a Jim Burke production Rockstar I've been trying.

As I noted earlier, it is not as smooth as my Sebenzas but what is? The Acies has gotten smoother with a bit of break in. I'd call mine very smooth. It's also easier for me to open one-handed than my Sage II or my small Regular Seb.

As to break down: it would be a shame if you couldn't do that with something as easy and fun to carry as the Acies2, wouldn't it? I haven't tried and defer to others or to A.G. himself, if he would care to jump in.

One note: The deep-pocket clip is truly a joy to use but it has two screws directly underneath the clip. So you would probably want a magnetic screwdriver or very good hands to put back those screws.

I love the aestheics of this A.G.-designed, ZT-manufactured folder. In looks, it rates as high as anything I own or have seen.
 
I sent my Acies2 back because I couldn't open it one handed. I tore out shreds of skin on my thumb trying and would have drawn blood if I could have kept going thru the pain. I said I thought the problem was two fold: the first quarter inch of travel was too stiff and rough, and the thumb studs seemed to be angled wrong. I asked them to replace it if mine was a fluke or to give me my money back if they were all like that. They sent me a knife that could have been the same one I sent them, and maybe it was. A very slight improvement in the roughness of opening but I still can't open it one handed consistently. If I open the blade 1/16th of an inch so it stays open, I can open it with no effort at all. It's that first sixteenth inch that's the problem. I have never had a knife that opens this hard one handed. Two handed works fine but I don't think I should have to do that with a three hundred dollar knife. No one else seems to have had this problem.

If you lay my knife clip side down and blade tip pointing toward you and figure the pivot end is pointing north, my thumb stud ramp is angled at about 355 degrees. This makes no sense to me since when you start to open the blade you are pushing west, so to speak, or 270 degrees. It is hard to tell from the few pictures I see online where the ramp on the thumbstud is pointing. Some look the same as mine, some seem to be angled more like 315 degrees or north-west, which makes more sense to me. I don't even know how the thumb studs are attached and whether they could be angled differently.

This is truly a nice knife aside from not being able to open it one handed. My thumb really hurts from trying. Very disappointing. I see videos of people opening theirs with no effort, smooth as can be. Any advice or suggestions?
 
Natch,

Sorry for your troubles and it's good that you called it to A.G.'s attention.

I liked my Acies2 enough to order a second. Both were pretty stiff out of the box. The first was quite stiff.

After break-in, they became smooth -- and are getting smoother with use. I'm very happy and like the Acies2 even more than the original.
 
flash900 said:
Natch,

Sorry for your troubles and it's good that you called it to A.G.'s attention.

I liked my Acies2 enough to order a second. Both were pretty stiff out of the box. The first was quite stiff.

After break-in, they became smooth -- and are getting smoother with use. I'm very happy and like the Acies2 even more than the original.
Click to expand...

They are stiff out of the box, but one thing I've quickly learned (and verified at the AG Russell booth at Blade) is that the thumstuds are angled upward because the design of the pivot is one in which you apply pressure to the thumb stud in a line that is parallel to the knife, not out away from it. When I push straight up, my blade deploys with ease. If I push straight out (perpendicular to the knife body) like most other folders require, it's much harder to open. But combined with changing my thumb pressure direction, and the break in my Acies 2 has gone through, it deploys very easy and smoothly now.
 
Thanks to both of you. It helps to know that someone else knows what I'm talking about, helps to know that the problem will hopefully disappear over time. That thumb pressure direction is so counter-intuitive that I'm surprised they don't include some instruction with the knife. Even more surprised that they didn't pull my coat when they sent me back a knife with the same problem as the one I returned. Was I the first one to have that much trouble? Anyway, I'm working the knife with two hands like one of AG's testing machines while my thumb recovers. Thanks again.
 
More adventures with this knife. I have probably opened and closed the blade back and forth thru its first inch of travel a thousand times or better, and it has continued to improve as far as being able to open it one-handed. This is the only knife I have ever had to do that with but so far I'm saying it was worth it.

The knife came to me with the clip attached blade tip up and pointing right. I normally carry my clip pocket knives in the left hand corner of my left front pants pocket where it is most out of my way. I looked at this knife as I kept working the blade to make it open easier and I thought, hmmm, you know if that blade came open in my pocket and I reached in the pocket, I could end up with a hundred stitcher in my hand. But I didn't have a wrench handy to swap ends so I put it out of my head. I was going to visit a friend and I thought I'll just tuck this knife in my pocket to see how it carries. Two hours later I was standing at the sink running water over my pinkie knuckle while my friend dug out some first aid supplies. I have never ever had a knife come open in my pocket like that. I've carried my work knife tip up like that for years but it has a strong spring holding it shut. Live and learn. I shudda listened to myself.

So the next day I decided to move the clip to the other end, which not only puts the tip down, but puts the blade against the left side of my pocket where I carry it. I'm thinking I'm giving new meaning to the word "fool-proof" but I'm not done yet. The clip is held on with two small Torx screws which were in pretty tight and had Loctite or some such in the threads. So I put a little drop of Permatex Blue in each hole at the other end and fastened the clip back down after I figured out that you had to push the screw into the Torx bit to hold it while you worked it thru the little holes in the clip.

Worked great, clip was still too strong, but one thing at a time. There was now no conceivable way I could draw more blood in my pocket so I went back to working the blade back and forth two-handed to loosen it up more. Strangely enough it slowly started to get tighter. Hmmm. I worked it some more and the more I worked it, the tighter it seemed to get. Hmmmm. Finally it dawned on me that the screw holes I had put a drop of thread tightener in went all the way thru the frame and ended up right on the pivot. Back to my shop.

Strangely enough, this is the first knife I have ever had to take apart. I had visions of when I was a kid and took my New Departure bicycle brake apart for the first time and all the discs and pieces fell out on the floor. As it turned out it was simple enough. There are two screws holding the whole knife together, the pivot screw and one at the other end. With those out a little judicious wiggling and prying with a screwdriver lifted the whole frame side off the big pin that acts as a stop for the blade when it closes. There were no springs, no bearings, no little parts, just the blade slipped over the pivot post with a thin washer which appeared to be made out of brass on each side. This is truly a minimalist knife in its design, very impressive.

And yes, there was a film of drying thread locker on one of the washers. Some scrubbing with an alcohol soaked cotton swab took care of that. Now when this knife had been giving me so much trouble out of the box, I had resorted to oil to loosen things up. Several applications as it turned out. It would seem to help for a bit and then go back to resisting me. Looking at this simple pivot design it seemed to me that it would probably work better without oil, at least while it was being broken in, and that oil might just pull in a bunch of dirt and whatever else it could attract. So I cleaned up the whole pivot area with the alcohol as best I could and put it back together. Worked better than ever.

In tightening the pivot screw I determined that it was adjustable. Making many micro adjustments I found a place that was probably even tighter than out of the box but I could still work it with my thumb and I thought it would break in even better as long as I could move it. Those brass washers are surely not as hard as ZDP-189. In taking it apart I had discovered that what was holding it closed and resisting the initial opening was a tiny little ball embedded in the end of the frame lock which fits into a corresponding tiny hole in the blade when it is fully closed. You can see the other end of the hole that holds the ball in the end of the frame lock next to the pivot. I don't know if it rotates like the ball in a ball point pen or is fixed. Somehow knowing what I was overcoming when I pushed on the thumb stud made it easier to work the knife.

So today the knife has been much friendlier to me. It's a keeper, tho I think I had determined that when I put it in my pocket knowing it would be getting its first scratch. I could loosen up the pivot pin a smidgeon to make it look more like the videos when I open it but I think it will wear in better this way. If I was in close quarters and needed to cut something, I could open it one-handed today. It still isn't pure fun but I can already tell that this knife is going to keep on growing on me and will probably end up being my favorite knife. I'm sorry I missed out on its big brother tho this one might be the best compromise if you had to end up with just one knife. But dang, my thumb still hurts.
 
Natch, are you pushing forward now, or still out?
 
Natch,

I am truly stunned by your adventures, considering how quickly -- and smoothly -- my two broke in.

That said, it is good to know how truly minimalist this knife is. Did you take any photos while you had yours taken apart?
 
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Natch,

I am quite concerned about the knife opening in your pocket. Every one I have handled has had such a positive detent (the ball bearing and hole it fits into) that I would have thought that it was impossible to happen. I am going to ask Phil, our engineer, to look into this. Phil thinks every knife should be carried tip down, I much prefer tip up so that I can grip the clip with my last two fingers when I open the knife. I am going to do a u-tube vidio showing how I snap the knife open safely. Please be careful as if you are not you can cut yourself.

A. G.
 
MVF, pushing forward. It also helps to hook my forefinger around the end of the knife to as a counterforce to push against. Even tho I tightened up the pivot a bit, it is opening progressively easier at the beginning, which is where the problem was. It occurs to me that it is possible I was slightly pressing on the lock bar with my forefinger while opening before I started hooking my finger around the end. If so, that would have pressed the little ball in the end of the lock bar into the blade hole even tighter than the normal spring action. No way to know that now.
 
Natch said:
MVF, pushing forward. It also helps to hook my forefinger around the end of the knife to as a counterforce to push against. Even tho I tightened up the pivot a bit, it is opening progressively easier at the beginning, which is where the problem was. It occurs to me that it is possible I was slightly pressing on the lock bar with my forefinger while opening before I started hooking my finger around the end. If so, that would have pressed the little ball in the end of the lock bar into the blade hole even tighter than the normal spring action. No way to know that now.
Click to expand...

This (accidentally pushing on the lockbar with fingers on opposite side) is the cause of a lot of difficult openings, especially on a smaller knife like this. Being aware of that also helped me adjust my grip to allow for easier blade deployment. In the first few days of having this knife, I caught myself inadvertently pressing the lockbar a lot, making deployment more difficult for me.
 
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