- Joined
- Sep 12, 2023
- Messages
- 68
Excerpt from the full review:
His design was quite basic: it consisted of a mere 4 parts: the wooden haft (what we now call the handle) with a slot cut down one side, a thin and narrow carbon steel blade, a steel axle that connected the blade to the haft through a hole in the blade tang, and a metal ferrule that acted as a supportive bolster for the haft as well as a reinforced connection for the blade tang to the haft axle. His knives were easy to manufacture and equally easy to sell.
Joseph was an excellent marketer of his products. He upgraded his factory, he added an emblem that appealed to local pride with a reference to the town’s storied history, and he took all the best examples of his company’s work displayed in an ornate display case to an international exhibition where he was awarded the Best in Show gold medal. He used this as just another steppingstone for building his company’s reputation and brand awareness.
This all sounds really great, doesn’t it? Hmmm…
Opinel likes to boast that “link removed ” with their knives over the past 135 years. But that’s not actually a boast. That’s more a confession of guilty negligence and indifference to their customer market.
The numbered series of knives (from No. 2 through No. 13, except that No.11, and for that matter No. 1, both of which were discontinued back in the 1930s), still use the same blade design and materials as the original, and given its age, it looks much more like a relic from history than a modern pocketknife. It’s as if the Model T was still being sold right next door to a BMW dealership. You can almost feel a sense of vicarious embarrassment.
The blade is made of XC90 high-carbon, low-alloy steel, a very basic steel that only incorporates 0.9% carbon, 0.3% manganese, 0.25% silicon, with the base iron element. Oh, yes, there’s also phosphorus and sulfur, both of which are considered unintended impurities that most steels have long eliminated, as they are detrimental to the performance of the blade. And speaking of performance, the archaic XC90 as a choice of blade steel in the current world of modern steel metallurgy is ludicrous.
In terms of link removed in the toughness category, XC90 ranks at 4.5 out of 10 – sub-par mediocre, but not fatally bad. But that’s as good as it gets.
Edge retention ranks 1.5 out of 10. A properly heat treated high-carbon steel is too soft to hold a sharp edge for long, so it requires constant stropping and sharpening to have a useful edge. And a properly heat-treated carbon steel, as Opinel claims for their XC90 blades, is 57-59 HRc. Unfortunately, the Opinel XC90 carbon steel has a reputation for being unusually soft, with some claiming the hardness is actually in the low-to-mid 50s, which would negatively affect edge retention. The blade softness accusation reflected my experience when testing the cutting edge. The Carbone blade is just too soft to keep a sharp cutting edge, as the edge rolled over very quickly when cutting single sheets of paper. XC90 is quick to sharpen, but it’s equally quick to dull again.
Then there’s the issue of corrosion resistance, especially oxidation. XC90 ranks an absolute 0 out of 10. It’ll rust just from humidity in the air. While you can do your best to keep the soft blade steel oiled up, the real problem is when moisture causes the blade tang to rust inside the wood haft’s slot, where it’s held in place by the rivet-headed axle rod passing through the steel ferrule. And ever since 1955, when Opinel added a steel locking ring over the ferrule, it became all but impossible for most folks to disassemble their Opinel knife to resolve the otherwise unreachable, rusty blade tang.
Lastly for the blade, there is only 1 opening method on this knife. It has no thumb studs, no flipper tab, no opening hole, nor any blade lock assist. The Opinel knife only has a small, single-sided nail nick. That’s all. It takes 2 hands to open it, and 2 hands to close it (assuming one used the super-basic, twisting lock ring blade lock). And due to the steel-on-wood blade action, the friction is already pretty high (this blade has no drop at all), but that friction will get exponentially worse when the blade tang rusts.
Otherwise, unlike modern pocketknives, there’s no pocket clip, no backspacer, no lanyard hole, no scales with fasteners to dissemble the knife for cleaning & maintenance. But in that respect, we can celebrate that the haft is a genuine integral. Well, instead of being a titanium integral, it’s an integral made of little more than a broken off piece of a broom handle. Meh.
The design of the Opinel knife is a classic. In 1890, it was a top-of-the-line product built with good materials using modern industrialized processes. Cool! But that was 135 years ago. The world has changed enormously since then. Even the traditional American standard knife-makers Buck and Case are now making knives with modern super-steels, incorporating modern handle scales with screw fasteners rather than pinned construction. They offer modern blade opening methods, modern locks, pocket clips and modern styling (well, for Buck and Case, anyway). You can still buy (if you really want to) the old-fashioned Buck 110 or the Case XX slip-joint Jack knives if that's what you want, but thankfully they offer the modern knives as well. Even Opinel customers are taking to designing their own 3D-printed handles to replace the antiquated wood hafts with modern materials and design sensibilities. But the Opinel company seems inextricably mired in 1890, as if the original knife design is somehow an inviolable tradition from which they cannot escape.
In the introduction to this article (so far back!), I said I wanted to test my old assumptions that the Opinel pocketknife is little more than a cheap wooden dowel handle with a soft, rust-prone blade. I happily acknowledge that the Opinel is very much an important historical artifact in the development of modern pocketknives. It’s a genuine throwback to the way pocketknives used to be. Unfortunately, its antiquated, 135-year-old design and the archaic materials used in the knife make it little more than a novelty to most modern knife aficionados, aside from a few pennyfarthing fanboys who, for reasons unknown, love that old stuff to the exclusion of all else. I honestly have no idea why. After handling, thoroughly examining, and working with the Opinel No. 9 Carbone, 19 years after my first encounter, it still has no appeal to me. Enjoy!
Verdict
The Opinel No. 9 Carbone knife is a contraption right out of history. It was designed 135 years ago and has remained largely unchanged ever since. In fact, the Opinel No. 8 is the oldest, continuously built knife model that is still sold today! The other Opinel numbered series of knives are design derivatives of the original No. 8. Joseph Opinel, the founder of the company, came from several generations of metal workers who created iron-based products on a forge, ranging from basic nails to edge cutting tools. Our Mr. Opinel was interested in the path of his father and grandfather, but he was also a modernist, a visionary, who wanted to manufacture such products using the latest industrialized manufacturing machinery and techniques so he could create fine products at scale. While his father did not approve of his son’s ideas, Joseph went ahead, deciding to make folding knives as his product of choice.His design was quite basic: it consisted of a mere 4 parts: the wooden haft (what we now call the handle) with a slot cut down one side, a thin and narrow carbon steel blade, a steel axle that connected the blade to the haft through a hole in the blade tang, and a metal ferrule that acted as a supportive bolster for the haft as well as a reinforced connection for the blade tang to the haft axle. His knives were easy to manufacture and equally easy to sell.
Joseph was an excellent marketer of his products. He upgraded his factory, he added an emblem that appealed to local pride with a reference to the town’s storied history, and he took all the best examples of his company’s work displayed in an ornate display case to an international exhibition where he was awarded the Best in Show gold medal. He used this as just another steppingstone for building his company’s reputation and brand awareness.
This all sounds really great, doesn’t it? Hmmm…
Opinel likes to boast that “link removed ” with their knives over the past 135 years. But that’s not actually a boast. That’s more a confession of guilty negligence and indifference to their customer market.
The numbered series of knives (from No. 2 through No. 13, except that No.11, and for that matter No. 1, both of which were discontinued back in the 1930s), still use the same blade design and materials as the original, and given its age, it looks much more like a relic from history than a modern pocketknife. It’s as if the Model T was still being sold right next door to a BMW dealership. You can almost feel a sense of vicarious embarrassment.
The blade is made of XC90 high-carbon, low-alloy steel, a very basic steel that only incorporates 0.9% carbon, 0.3% manganese, 0.25% silicon, with the base iron element. Oh, yes, there’s also phosphorus and sulfur, both of which are considered unintended impurities that most steels have long eliminated, as they are detrimental to the performance of the blade. And speaking of performance, the archaic XC90 as a choice of blade steel in the current world of modern steel metallurgy is ludicrous.
In terms of link removed in the toughness category, XC90 ranks at 4.5 out of 10 – sub-par mediocre, but not fatally bad. But that’s as good as it gets.
Edge retention ranks 1.5 out of 10. A properly heat treated high-carbon steel is too soft to hold a sharp edge for long, so it requires constant stropping and sharpening to have a useful edge. And a properly heat-treated carbon steel, as Opinel claims for their XC90 blades, is 57-59 HRc. Unfortunately, the Opinel XC90 carbon steel has a reputation for being unusually soft, with some claiming the hardness is actually in the low-to-mid 50s, which would negatively affect edge retention. The blade softness accusation reflected my experience when testing the cutting edge. The Carbone blade is just too soft to keep a sharp cutting edge, as the edge rolled over very quickly when cutting single sheets of paper. XC90 is quick to sharpen, but it’s equally quick to dull again.
Then there’s the issue of corrosion resistance, especially oxidation. XC90 ranks an absolute 0 out of 10. It’ll rust just from humidity in the air. While you can do your best to keep the soft blade steel oiled up, the real problem is when moisture causes the blade tang to rust inside the wood haft’s slot, where it’s held in place by the rivet-headed axle rod passing through the steel ferrule. And ever since 1955, when Opinel added a steel locking ring over the ferrule, it became all but impossible for most folks to disassemble their Opinel knife to resolve the otherwise unreachable, rusty blade tang.
Lastly for the blade, there is only 1 opening method on this knife. It has no thumb studs, no flipper tab, no opening hole, nor any blade lock assist. The Opinel knife only has a small, single-sided nail nick. That’s all. It takes 2 hands to open it, and 2 hands to close it (assuming one used the super-basic, twisting lock ring blade lock). And due to the steel-on-wood blade action, the friction is already pretty high (this blade has no drop at all), but that friction will get exponentially worse when the blade tang rusts.
Otherwise, unlike modern pocketknives, there’s no pocket clip, no backspacer, no lanyard hole, no scales with fasteners to dissemble the knife for cleaning & maintenance. But in that respect, we can celebrate that the haft is a genuine integral. Well, instead of being a titanium integral, it’s an integral made of little more than a broken off piece of a broom handle. Meh.
The design of the Opinel knife is a classic. In 1890, it was a top-of-the-line product built with good materials using modern industrialized processes. Cool! But that was 135 years ago. The world has changed enormously since then. Even the traditional American standard knife-makers Buck and Case are now making knives with modern super-steels, incorporating modern handle scales with screw fasteners rather than pinned construction. They offer modern blade opening methods, modern locks, pocket clips and modern styling (well, for Buck and Case, anyway). You can still buy (if you really want to) the old-fashioned Buck 110 or the Case XX slip-joint Jack knives if that's what you want, but thankfully they offer the modern knives as well. Even Opinel customers are taking to designing their own 3D-printed handles to replace the antiquated wood hafts with modern materials and design sensibilities. But the Opinel company seems inextricably mired in 1890, as if the original knife design is somehow an inviolable tradition from which they cannot escape.
In the introduction to this article (so far back!), I said I wanted to test my old assumptions that the Opinel pocketknife is little more than a cheap wooden dowel handle with a soft, rust-prone blade. I happily acknowledge that the Opinel is very much an important historical artifact in the development of modern pocketknives. It’s a genuine throwback to the way pocketknives used to be. Unfortunately, its antiquated, 135-year-old design and the archaic materials used in the knife make it little more than a novelty to most modern knife aficionados, aside from a few pennyfarthing fanboys who, for reasons unknown, love that old stuff to the exclusion of all else. I honestly have no idea why. After handling, thoroughly examining, and working with the Opinel No. 9 Carbone, 19 years after my first encounter, it still has no appeal to me. Enjoy!
Last edited by a moderator:
