old4570
Ray Mears
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2021
- Messages
- 488
- Reaction score
- 347
Columbia SA71 = $40 knife
A) Sheath is rubbish
B) Factory bevel was rubbish
Lets start with the factory edge/bevel . It was complete rubbish !
Both sides of the edge were at different angles . On one side with my guided knife sharpener set to 22 degrees . The sharpening stone was cutting the very edge . On the other side the stone was cutting the very shoulder of the bevel were it transitions to the main blade . We are talking whack ! I put my 60 grit wheel onto the wet stone grinder as I was looking at removing some 5 to 10 years worth of steel to correct what was a ridiculously bad factory grind ( bevel ) .
It was a lot of work and I had no intention of doing a 60 grit edge on this knife , but circumstances being what they are ! So after a lot of work , the SA71 wears a freshly ground edge / bevel ground with the 60 grit wheel . Looking at the pictures , there is still some tell tale black marker .
Tang ... It looks like the tang is about 35% of the blade ( can be clearly seen in the pictures ) ... I would not call this one a bushcrafty knife or a survival knife , but I might be tempted to throw around words like hunting knife . I dont know what the handle material is or how strong it might be , so I would not suggest this knife was a beater ! But for relatively sane low stress work it should be fine .
Yeah , it wears a 60 grit edge now ! I didn'y want that ... So rather than sharpening the knife - again ! I guess I will just have to slice rope as is , which will kind of FUBAR the point of buying and testing this knife . I may as well start at 60 and work my way up ( I suppose ) .