A shot of the Forester alongside the Mt-151 :
Doing some searches, one of the main comments about this blade was the very thick edge and thus low cutting ability. Issues were commonly raised such as on the Dissappointment with Forester thread on the Spyderco Forum. To quote :
The edges were all shaving sharp, but so thick they were pretty worthless to me.
The hossom series does come with a ridiculously thick edge.
I thinned a dayhiker on a belt sander, still took many many hours (having to keep it cool took a lot of time), duno what I'm going to do with the forager, don't have the patience to go through that again.
This review consists of :
A few critical specifications :
This Forester was previously used and reground as the edge was initially too thick and the angle too high, a common complaint as note in the above. With the regrind the edge was made much more acute, the shoulder starts off at about 8.5 (5) degrees, the edge curves to about 12.5 (5) degrees at about 0.045" thick and there is very small v-bevel which is less than 0.005" thick which is difficult to measure but looks to be 15-20 degrees per side. This very wide bevel has however left the edge at an incredible 0.1" thick which will drastically reduce ease of sharpening.
As the edge is not stock it has to be kept in mind that the performance
is going to be significantly influence by the new edge angle
and thickness.
Starting off,
a nice pile of shavings is always useful when you have a wood stove
so the Forester was put to work on a piece of pine.
Reducing the
pine with a few hundred cuts shows solid cutting ability
which is comparable to a Mora, which would be expected as the edge was reground
to a very similar angle. The reground Forester
bites in well and has no problem removing a lot of work in a hurry.
Making finer cuts is just an issue of raising the angle and just
working more shallow to the wood.
However the grip was uncomfortable in a forward
grip because it is squarish at the top. The other issue was the front of the
choil ends in a very sharp point and will easily cut the skin with even
a light contact. Thus while it can match the raw cutting ability of the Mora
in actual extended use outside of a short cutting comparison, the Mora would
have a large advantage due to much improved ergonomics.
A quick check of chopping ability against the Mt-151
puts the Forester in the same class in regards to speed and number of
cuts. With the edge regrind it is definately thus above average
for a blade of its length and weight as the Mt-151
is a pretty solid performer due to the high flat grind and
thin edge. The Forester easily handled a wide range of woods of different
types and seasoning, from very fresh pine to well seasoned spruce. There
were no immediate and obvious problems and it was in general pleasing
to buck lengths of wood producing a nice pile for the
wood stove and a nice pile of chips for kindling.
The handle was also obviously
an iprovement over the Mt-151 which can be a bit slick in extended use
mainly because the checkering quickly wears smooth and there is little
taper or flare to the end to retain the grip. That being said, it is easier
to use the Mt-151 with an extreme far back grip on the end of the handle,
leuko style,
but that really needs a laynard to be functional otherwise the knife
is almost guaranteed to come out of the hand. The handle on the Forester
is obvious more durable as the rubber grip on the Mt-151 can get little
rips and tears even from minor contacts off of the sharp ends of broken
or cut wood.
A more detailed comparison against the Fiskars small hatchet, the 14" Sport model on the same spruce, pine and fir showed that the performance of the Forester was about 73 (4) % of the ability of the hatchet in terms of raw number of cuts used through 55 sections of wood cut with each blade. With this extended use and comparison there were a few problems which started to be noticed with the Forester :
Using the knife in the kitchen, a few things are evident :
A quick check against the
Junglas shows the Forester being out performed
easily 2:1 in terms of number of impacts needed to split a piece of wood.
The difference is so large that it does not need to be measured, it is
readily obvious that the Forester was
outclassed. The Junglas could process sticks from the same tree
relatively easily but the Forester would have difficulty with more pieces
from the same tree. However for those that like
more detailed statistics the histogram is shown on the right which
was generated
through 75 sections
of wood split with each blade.
The average number of impacts was 12 (2) with
the Forester and 7 (1) with the Junglas, a very significant and obvious
advantage for the Junglas. The main reason that the Forester needed
more impacts in general was that it would tend to wedge excessively in
the wood. On a bad piece of wood with twisted grain the Forester could
actually become frustrating to use, this was compounded by the vibration
in the handle which was at times became obvious that a heavy glove was
almost necessary.
The wedging was excessive because the primary grind is a v-taper but the angle is so low it is almost unground and flat like a machete. These parallel flats high on the blade cause it to have no wedging/splitting ability. The video on the right was intended to be a simple demonstration of splitting a piece of very wet wood to reveal a dry core but it turns into a frustrating exercise due to how badly the blade binds in the wood. The vibration is also excessive during impact work, this is due to the vibration balance points being poorly chosen and thus they create anti-nodes right in the grip and this is amplifed by a greatly skeletonized tang. Of course as noted in the video there are better ways to split such wood when the knife does bind excessively. In general just work down from the outside to the inside rather than trying to do it in one shot. This split was continued just as an example of how issues with design can turn a relatively simple task into a very frustrating one.
For clearing brush it is a fairly easy task to lash a blade to a stick and make a brush axe or billhook. With the curvature on the Forester it was a natural choice for such a tool which commonly have deep curvatures. However while lashing the knife was no problem almost immediately the knife glanced off of a rock in the brush, which is not that uncommon, however the resulting large chip revaled the problem with using such steels for such blades. High carbide steels like N690 are inherenly very brittle and will chip very easily and what is worse the high volume of carbides will lower the grindability and thus it takes much longer to sharpen. A simle steel like S1 would be much more resistant to damage at the same hardness but yet when overstressed would be so much easier to grind that it would sharpen in the fraction of the time.
Using the Forester for some limbing, it had no issues working
on even the hardest and driest limbs. Of course with the edge
almost 1/8" thick there was no risk of damage to the primary
grind. However it is always a useful check on the durability of the
very edge as limbing dried woods is among the hardest wood cutting
which could be done with a blade. In fact when axes were used to process
woods then fellings axes would never be used for it because it would
take too heavy of a profile, dedicated limbing or "swamping" axes
were used.
Upon checking after an hour or so of the work
was completed there were multiple flat spots on the edge.
Under magnification this was again seen to be micro chipping.
This could easily be fixed by just increasing the edge
angle until it stopped, but of course as the edge angle is increased
then cutting ability is reduced. This chipping is just caused by the
high carbide volume in the steel.
As a quick check on edge durability with the reground profile the Forester
was used to cut up a few plastic bottles and make an acordian out of a
pop tin. This is not by any means a heavy test, the plastic bottle cutting
is similar to cutting zip ties or other thick plastic. Given the edge
thickness and angle it would not be expected that this would cause any
problems but it is useful to check some low level work before seeing
where the edge fails in general. Note the problem with this type of
cutting is that the stress it places on the knife is directly relation to
As a tougher check on the edge durability, the Forester was compared to a Mt-151 cutting up some asphalt shingles. Aside from a general check on edge durablily and providing a basis for sharpening, pieces of asphalt shingles burn very well and release fairly thick black smoke which can be useful fo fire starting and signaling, expecially in the winter. As noted in the video the Mt-151 does cut a lot smoother with less force and this is just due to the edge being much thinner. Both edges were fairly blunt which is not unexpected but the real difference is seen in sharpening. The much higher grindabilty of the 440A steel on the Mt-151 and its much thinner edge allows it to sharpen many times faster than the Forester. This is again one of the advantages of a high grindability steel (low carbide) on extremely hard cutting because such work will dull any steel regardless of type and the low carbide steels will simple sharpen much faster.
As a much harder check on the edge, the Forester was used to chop through a Fibreglas dowel, the edge damage was fairly signficant as noted in the video to the right and the Junglas was uneffected, however the edges were not equal so this was not by any means strictly a steel comparison between N690 and 1095 (Junglas). To be specifics :
The Forester was reground and the cutting was repeated, specifically :
The real downside though is that the high carbide volume
gives the steel a very low grindability and thus damage takes a long
time to remove when it does happen.
Hitting an inclusion is a real possibility when doing heavy wood cutting
either chopping into a rock covere by brush, or as
common locally, kids spiking wood with nails such
as shown in the image to the right.
Now if the Forester chips readily on such work as noted in the above
what would happen with a heavy chop into such a piece of wood which
contained the nail and how long would it take to grind out.
If instead the knife was made out of a steel like 440A or ideally
12C27M then it would not only take less damage it would repair
much faster.
A quick check on the edge retention was made by slicing through one inch
thick used poly rope. The edge wore down smoothly with no significant
or obvious problems. The blunting started off fairly rapidly and then
slowed down significantly as it continued which is the nature
of high carbide steels as once the edge thickens to the point that the
carbides are stable and most of the steel has worn away then the
edge is mostly carbide which is much harder than steel and thus has
a much slower rate of wear. The recurve of the Forester also makes such
rope cutting effective, especially if the edge is left relatively coarse
so to improve the slicing ability.
A more detailed comparison was made against the Mt-151 on the same rope and as expected the higher carbide steel was shown to have a significant advantage in the long term.
The Forester was also compared to a Farberware Chef's knife cutting cardboard and the results agreed well with the work against the MT-151 showing the same pattern.
The Forester has a combination of properties which make it difficult to sharpen for any kind of jig/rod system :
As a quick check on the corrosion resistance, the Forester
was soaked in a super saturated solution of salt water alongside
a Mt-151 (440A).
The rust which was evident on both blades
easily wiped off with paper towel, no abrasive necessary.
Note that this was a worst case scenario for 440A :
The handle is Hossom's general style, it is very clearly based on his grips.
In general it is decent but has a few issues :
A quick check on the handle reveals the expected, as shown in the picture on
the right, the handle is heavily skeletonized. This is done simply to reduce
weight, and that is not a bad thing as different people are comfortable
with different weights. The problem is that this is simply a way to cut cost
over milling a tapered tang. Simply drilling holes in the handle, leaving
lots of square edges does nothing productive besides generate lots of
stress risers in the grip and multiple points of vibration. This is one of
the main reasons that the shock is so uncomfortable through the handle
with any heavy impact.
The Forester has a number of really positive features and looks to be a fairly accurate representation of one of Hossom's designs. However it has a number of issues which cause the performance to significant suffer :
In short, the performance is significanty behind blades like the Ratweiler so much so than on many tasks as noted in the above it actually is frustrating to use.
Comments can be emailed to Knife Review : Syderco Forester
Or YT playlist.
Most of the pictures in the above are in the Forester
album at PhotoBucket.
| Last updated : | 11:29:2011 |
| Originally written: | 11:29:2011 |