Spyderco Green S110V

I got mine last night, the last delivery for the brown truck. The guy rang the doorbell and said, "here ya go, enjoy your Spyderco". :D It' s a great knife.

And apparently a great UPS driver! I can't believe they got such a nice finish on an S110V blade. The only thing I noticed on mine was some pivot wobble, which I eliminated by cranking the pivot all the way down. And that tells you something, I think - Spyderco seems to have mastered the production process for the stepped pivot (based on a sample of 2, yeah, I know...but I never took Statistics in school, so... ;) ).
 
Just got mine, and it's beautiful. The quality of construction is amazing. Excellent ergos. Centered blade with no play. A pretty sharp, toothy edge and evenly ground (14/17 degrees) with a perfectly sharpened point. 0.024 inches at the edge shoulder, so it's going to be a good slicer. Nearly perfect fit and finish.

The only nit I have is that the backlock is difficult to disengage. The latch has to be flush with the liners before it will release.

Ditto. Got my 2 today. One is perfect, but the other has the blade off-centered to the right by slightly less than 1 mm. This is my first spydie, out of >50, that is off-centered. Its OK as it will be an EDC. Rest of the F&F is the usual spydie high quality; no problems with disengaging the backlock. Will spray pivot with MoS2 to smooth the action even more and polish the edge a little with my DMT stones.
 
Well, I got mine too and I love it. It's my first Native and I am impressed. It is incredibly smooth!!! Excellent fit and finish, overall it is awesome!
 
man i need to pay attention when these runs are going on so i can get a cool knife.

Yeah...you definitely have to keep your eyes open and act quickly when the time comes. If I were you, I'd get in on the preorder for the upcoming peel ply cf/s110v version, same knife, different (some may say better...) handle material. I'm happy to have gotten one, it's my first experience with S110V as well as my first native5 (not my first native though) and so far I couldn't be more pleased.

There are a couple of spots that the scales don't quite line up with the liners around the lock release on mine, but they're not even noticeable unless you're REALLY looking and other than that, mine came perfect out of the box, centered, smooth, and solid in every direction.

It came fairly sharp too, but way too toothy for my liking, so onto the wicked edge she went for a reprofiling and polishing. Took it back to roughly 25° inclusive (we're gonna see what this steel is really about) and put a mirror polish (okay, so very near mirror, s110v sure doesn't like to polish up nice) on it up to 0.5 micron diamond spray on the balsa wood strops and now she's an absolute laser. I'm curious to see how s110v holds a fairly acute, extremely fine edge, whether it will hold a razor edge well for a long time, or whether it will lose said razor edge quickly like s30v, but hold a very serviceable working edge nearly indefinitely. Despite my urges to habitually sharpen every knife I can get my hands on, I'm gonna try to hold off on sharpening this one for a while and see just how well this steel holds up.
 
Got mine today, smaller than I was thinking. Anyone else get Mules that were dull?

I didn't get any mules, but I know what you mean about smaller than you were thinking. I already knew it coming in since I'd owned other natives in the past, but the native is a small knife, beefy, but small nonetheless. For some reason the size just isn't well conveyed in pics or even video to a certain extent. It's a wonderfully comfortable knife to use for its size though. I think the native really epitomizes spyderco's "little big knife" philosophy.
 
As far as size goes, the Native 5 is like a taller version of the Caly 3. This is one badass knife though. Carried it today and really enjoyed it.
 
Yeah...you definitely have to keep your eyes open and act quickly when the time comes. If I were you, I'd get in on the preorder for the upcoming peel ply cf/s110v version, same knife, different (some may say better...) handle material. I'm happy to have gotten one, it's my first experience with S110V as well as my first native5 (not my first native though) and so far I couldn't be more pleased.

There are a couple of spots that the scales don't quite line up with the liners around the lock release on mine, but they're not even noticeable unless you're REALLY looking and other than that, mine came perfect out of the box, centered, smooth, and solid in every direction.

It came fairly sharp too, but way too toothy for my liking, so onto the wicked edge she went for a reprofiling and polishing. Took it back to roughly 25° inclusive (we're gonna see what this steel is really about) and put a mirror polish (okay, so very near mirror, s110v sure doesn't like to polish up nice) on it up to 0.5 micron diamond spray on the balsa wood strops and now she's an absolute laser. I'm curious to see how s110v holds a fairly acute, extremely fine edge, whether it will hold a razor edge well for a long time, or whether it will lose said razor edge quickly like s30v, but hold a very serviceable working edge nearly indefinitely. Despite my urges to habitually sharpen every knife I can get my hands on, I'm gonna try to hold off on sharpening this one for a while and see just how well this steel holds up.
You put a 12.5 degree per side edge on it?
 
You put a 12.5 degree per side edge on it?

Yessir.

Please excuse the crappy cell phone pic...

20130727_014407_zps52164533.jpg
 
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Nice MK, I haven't got to it yet been busy since I received them but I plan on having a sharpening night with the S110v and K390 with some Maker's Mark to help me out.
 
Yessir.

Please excuse the crappy cell phone pic...

20130727_014407_zps52164533.jpg

Nice work. I can hand sharpen decently but can't get anything to look like llike that. The WE is out of my budget but I've thought about getting the Lansky but its limited to 17, 20, 25, and 30 degrees. I'm assuming that when the Lansky is used at the 20 degree setting its actually 40 degrees inclusive?

Not trying to get the thread off track.

The S110V blade is amazingly shiny..it could almost be used as a a mirror.
 
Nice MK, I haven't got to it yet been busy since I received them but I plan on having a sharpening night with the S110v and K390 with some Maker's Mark to help me out.

Nothin like a little glass of maker's to calm ya down and steady the hand, a little good smoke helps too... ;)

Nice work. I can hand sharpen decently but can't get anything to look like llike that. The WE is out of my budget but I've thought about getting the Lansky but its limited to 17, 20, 25, and 30 degrees. I'm assuming that when the Lansky is used at the 20 degree setting its actually 40 degrees inclusive?

Not trying to get the thread off track.

The S110V blade is amazingly shiny..it could almost be used as a a mirror.

Correct, the 20° setting on the Lansky would be 20° per side, or 40° inclusive. The wicked edge, in combination with a digital angle cube, really is the best system out there for reprofiling, but to tell you the truth, once I've set my initial bevel, I usually do touch-ups freehand.
 
Nothin like a little glass of maker's to calm ya down and steady the hand, a little good smoke helps too... ;)



Correct, the 20° setting on the Lansky would be 20° per side, or 40° inclusive. The wicked edge, in combination with a digital angle cube, really is the best system out there for reprofiling, but to tell you the truth, once I've set my initial bevel, I usually do touch-ups freehand.

Yeah unless my eyesight fails due to old age or whatever I don't think I will ever give up hand sharpening..its almost zen like:cool:

That WE system is tempting but OuCh! the price:eek: I think I might get the Lansky this year and save up my moola and get the WE system next year..I could probably learn a thing or 2 using the Lansky before moving on to the WE system which is the same concept just a lot more advanced. I thought that's how the degree settings worked on the Lansky but wasn't sure..I am now. Thanks.

It will be interesting to see how that S110V holds up..S30V is a good general purpose knife blade metal but S110V should be on a whole other level compared to S30V..maybe 2 or 3 levels:)
 
I've been using the Gatco as an entry level sharpener and it works pretty well. If you're going to do re-profiling on the harder steels, get their diamond stones. The natural stones will work, but you could be spending days to change the angle on S110v. I got some natural stones to supplement the diamond set, because the jump from "fine diamond" to their included ultra-fine white stone was too large. I go from the fine diamond to a medium stone, then fine, very fine (whatever they call it) and finally the white stone for polishing the edge. This system works well enough, but the WE or EP are both better to work with as far as stability & finish. the Gatco is "the best a little money can afford" for now.
 
Yeah unless my eyesight fails due to old age or whatever I don't think I will ever give up hand sharpening..its almost zen like:cool:

That WE system is tempting but OuCh! the price:eek: I think I might get the Lansky this year and save up my moola and get the WE system next year..I could probably learn a thing or 2 using the Lansky before moving on to the WE system which is the same concept just a lot more advanced. I thought that's how the degree settings worked on the Lansky but wasn't sure..I am now. Thanks.

It will be interesting to see how that S110V holds up..S30V is a good general purpose knife blade metal but S110V should be on a whole other level compared to S30V..maybe 2 or 3 levels:)

I used the Lansky for years and found the angle to be adjustable outside the numbers on the bracket by bending the "soft" steel guide rod.
 
Got mine today, smaller than I was thinking.
For many years my primary EDC had 3.5" blade and I always considered 3.5" is the perfect size for my EDC need. I started to EDC Native5 about a year ago, rotating with Caly3.5 as a second knife in addition to micarta Persian, which was my primary carry. Ergos of N5 and feel in the hand when you use it are fantastic and very soon Caly3.5 was dropped from rotation. Also I realized that my hand is reaching for Native5 much more often than for Persian, probably 10 to 1 ratio. For few week I was carried N5 alone and never felt underknifed. But felt guilty to see Persian left alone on the counter. I EDC both of them now, but use Persian quite rare.
Believe me, Native5 is very capable knife.
 
Yeah unless my eyesight fails due to old age or whatever I don't think I will ever give up hand sharpening..its almost zen like:cool:

That WE system is tempting but OuCh! the price:eek: I think I might get the Lansky this year and save up my moola and get the WE system next year..I could probably learn a thing or 2 using the Lansky before moving on to the WE system which is the same concept just a lot more advanced. I thought that's how the degree settings worked on the Lansky but wasn't sure..I am now. Thanks.

It will be interesting to see how that S110V holds up..S30V is a good general purpose knife blade metal but S110V should be on a whole other level compared to S30V..maybe 2 or 3 levels:)

I agree that freehand sharpening can be very zen-like. I cook professionally, and as such, have amassed a nice collection of high end kitchen knives in addition to my pocket knife addiction. With those, freehand on Japanese waterstones is the only way to go, and as I mentioned previously, once my bevel is set, most of my sharpening of my pocket knives is done freehand as well. If you're looking for a WE substitute that's not so hard on the pocket book, I'd go with the edge pro, it's less than half the cost of a decked out WE, although than the EP can get costly too depending on how nuts you go with the accessory stones (chosera stones aren't cheap...).

With regards to grinding s110v, I'm glad I was using diamonds. Even with the diamond stones, the stones felt like they were just skating across the surface. S110V is some pretty wear resistant stuff, I'm just curious to see whether the edge stability is high enough to hold a 25° inclusive edge. Overall it's performance should far exceed s30v, but what I want to know is if it shares s30v's trait of losing its hair whittling edge rather quickly but holding a working edge almost indefinitely. Due to the large carbide size and volume in s110v I'm assuming such will be the case, it my not whittle hair forever, but it'll eat cardboard for lunch day after day after day without batting an eye.
 
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