Spyderco Southard blade failure with pics

I have owned many Spydercos...have loved every one.
I've owned three satin, brown Southards, and just received my first black.
I really love the looks of that black. It's all personal opinion.

The failure was obviously metal fatigue or bad heat-treat, whatever. Somewhere in the manufacture process. As usual, Spyderco will take care of you. My favorite company, by far, for any folder less than $400.
 
Isolated incident. Buy with confidence knowing that Spyderco stands behind their products.
 
The key word is "technically". Spyderco will take care of manufacturing defects regardless of being taken apart.

All I'm saying is that it's not a rumor that disassembling your knife voids the warranty. How you want to interpret it is up to you, but they specifically mention that they prefer people not to do so.
 
The basic design of a flipper knife involves some small steel links between parts of the mechanism . It is just the nature of all flippers. How tough these small steel links is the question. Here is a good Youtube video explaining how a flipper works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-DNwgxFN4
 
All I'm saying is that it's not a rumor that disassembling your knife voids the warranty. How you want to interpret it is up to you, but they specifically mention that they prefer people not to do so.

Yes they prefer it. I have talked to them on the phone about it. It's part of the "stated" warranty.
 
Any update on this. I WANT to pull the trigger on a Southard bad but honestly sort of hesitant..

How many failure threads have you seen, be honest. One, maybe 2 if that? I only recall this one. I have a Southard and I've used it at work and around the house. I like it a lot, no complaints at all, no blade play, nothing just a well built knife. Buy one, you will be glad you did. :thumbup:

As for how flippers work, they are not for everyone. But it's pretty much a given how they work, at least for this crowd.
 
Yes they prefer it. I have talked to them on the phone about it. It's part of the "stated" warranty.

I'll choose to trust what Spyderco has in writing, which is that you should ask them directly instead of asking secondhand sources since it's often interpreted differently by different people.
 
I'll choose to trust what Spyderco has in writing, which is that you should ask them directly instead of asking secondhand sources since it's often interpreted differently by different people.

No skin off my back. If you ever feel up to it though, give them a call and ask. People seem to be spreading it around that spyderco will use that clause to void any warranty issue. Not true at all. Believe what you want but a stated warranty and the actual use of it are two different things.
 
I've seen a couple other Spyderco Southards with critical failures in the blade (AKA, they snapped in half). While this is anecdotal, I appears to me that this steel is fairly brittle. All the owners claimed to not have been abusing their knives. That being said, it is a very popular knife, therefore the probability that someone will snap their blade in half is much higher, just due to a large number of people using them. Perhaps some of these fantastic new supersteels aren't all that they've been hyped up to be. Just speculation.
 
Stop using your pocket knife for blocks of wood. We humans have made this wonderful tool for that: AXES.
 
Stop using your pocket knife for blocks of wood. We humans have made this wonderful tool for that: AXES.

lol seriously? stop using knives for anything, they are meant to be flipped around and looked at.

In this thread i saw screwdriver, axe, chisel, prybar, fixed blade etc., FFS this guy is just carving pine wood... Glad to see that Spyderco took care of the issue.
 
Any update on this old thread? Did the OP ever find out what was wrong in the case of his knife? Just unlucky? I know he got a new one, just curious if sending it back to Sal resulted in any findings..
 
about one year ago i saw another failure on a southard just like this,i remember thinking the guy must really use his knife hard!now i see the same thing has happened hear,probable cause would be a batch that was not heat treated properly got out the door!good thing spyderco has grate customer service,but i wouldn't go chopping any hard woods with this knife knowing its week points!i'll be using mine with care to be on the safe side.
 
One of the things I've always liked about Spyderco is that they don't over-design their products.

Looks like the Taichung factory just had a really bad day. Happens to everyone.
 
I think this style of stop pin is over-designed. What does it add to the design functionally? What is the expense? Seems like hogging out that blade tang would cost more money and possibly weaken the tang. Maybe I am missing the benefit. It is clever, it is an impressive feat in a production knife and it is aesthetically pleasing. Those are all things I can appreciate but not things i look for in a knife. I have just accepted it as a result of being a collaboration. You would have to expect some deviation from pure Spyderco design philosophy in a collaboration. However, I can see this style of stop pin moving into some of Spyderco's in house designs. To me that deviates from the no more than necessary, no less than perfect philosophy. I hope I am wrong. YMMV. ;)

I have a Southard. It is a work of art and the design is very impressive. If somebody wanted one I wouldn't try to talk them out of it but for me it misses in a few different areas.

I can appreciate the benefits of the internal stop pin in the Chaparral and Sage4 because it clearly enhances lockup in those backlocks and there is no place to put an external stop pin on a backlock. Plus, that pin is part of the tang (or pressed into the tang) and requires much less material to be removed from the tang. If I have to have an internal stop pin I will take the Chaparral style although it seems as though that style may require steel liners. The Nilakka is a liner lock with a stop pin like the Chap and Sage4 but it has steel liners. The Domino has a stop pin like the Southard and it has a Ti framelock.
 
speaking of this design,i wonder has any one head of a domino failing like this!i now the steel on the domino is CTS-XHP but its the stop pin cut out on the blade tang thats the same,just trying to narrow down the problem.:rolleyes:
 
So then the question would be: did this one fail due to a limitation in its design or a failure in its production?


That was kind of my reason for the bump. The OP said he was sending it in, I was curious of Sal's (or whoever looked at it)'s findings.
 
Any update on this old thread? Did the OP ever find out what was wrong in the case of his knife? Just unlucky? I know he got a new one, just curious if sending it back to Sal resulted in any findings..

How about this: pick up a Bladeforums membership so you can send a private message to the OP and wait for him to answer you directly. Judging from how long you've been asking about the knife, my guess is that you are a patient fellow.
 
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