Spyderco Watu CPM20V Compression Lock Knife Discussions | Drop

Dec 10, 2020

Man, that is one ugly knife 🤢 Looking at this thing really does highlight the absurdity of keeping that stupid hole on every single model, even when it reallllly doesn't help the design of the knife. Not sure what's worse; that sharp, angular peak above the off centered hole? Or showing off all that wasted space in the handle when the knife is closed by giving it those 4 large lint trap holes?

Dec 10, 2020

KavikAnd what is that pointy bit sticking out over the lock on image 3?

Looks like the heel of the blade is poking through the lock release in a poor 3d rendering lol

MManalang

189

Dec 13, 2020

KavikI know what you mean, but I think it was suppose to be a folding version of this traditional African knife.

Dec 13, 2020

MManalangAhhhh. You know, I'll admit it - I didn't even read the description on this one lol

MManalang

189

Dec 13, 2020

KavikThe strange design caught me by surprise too!

Dec 15, 2020

Kavikhonestly, if this wasnt in s30v, and i didnt just buy that other knife, i would be all over this. i'm a fan of ugly but functional blade shapes, which spyderco gets right. sadly, i dont really like the steel or the price point. (too many knives in s30v and s35vn) actually now that i think about it, my first knife had a blade shape similar to this, except it had a 20degree edge. i needed a stab/pry knife that would spread the material for leatherwork.

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Dec 15, 2020

method_burger20CV it turns out. Weird little package. I like the brutalism but the ergos look uncertain

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Dec 15, 2020

KavikThe lint trap holes are for firestarting and when combined with precise angle of the wire clip and a weighted lanyard form a crude but usable sextant. also the exact right shape to wrench open a distributor cap on most models of Land Rover

Dec 15, 2020

reswrightThe other thing about the two hole design is it can hold two lit cigarettes at once

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Dec 15, 2020

reswrightHmmmmm.... Land Rover... Spyderco..... Highly functional, ugly, and always priced an order of magnitude above the competition. I'm sensing a collaboration opportunity 😂

Dec 15, 2020

KavikWhen used properly the two holes allow solar eclipses to be safely viewed, and when you position them just right in the wind it makes a noise a little like a didgeridoo. Erich von Daniken wrote a book about how he thinks people built wooden structures that fit the two holes in the Watu handle exactly and allowed them to be fit with sails that could have allowed early Watu users to explore further and faster than natives using Para 3s

Dec 15, 2020

KavikOh, Spyderco does that these days. A fed different models are available where in one way or another you can actually see honed edge right there in the compression lock well. In each case they say it wasn't an issue in testing and honestly I'm sure it wasn't. Just because you can see the edge doesn't mean you can get your fingers to it. But a lot of people skip those models and generally speaking I am one of them.

Dec 15, 2020

reswright😳 For real? That's insane

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Dec 15, 2020

reswrightoh weird... i remembered this incorrectly. its literally in the name lol

Dec 15, 2020

KavikYeah. I would have been all over the Tropen but....

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Dec 15, 2020

Yeah, there's a number of them now like the Rhino and the Shaman and the YoJumbo, not just the Watu, that stick the corner of a flipper tab right there in the groove for the compression slot and it's theoretically possible that something in your pocket could get up on the edge of the knife, but the Tropen actually exposes the heel of the blade as you can see. A lot of folks were astounded by that coming from Spyderco. They say it's not a problem. I think most of us were just as astounded at that. I think the only way I'd ever buy this knife is if I were handing it directly to a bladesmith and saying 'right, make that into a full choil'. I don't care if it'd be really hard to cut yourself on it as is -- I wouldn't want to have that in the back of my mind every time I reached for my pocket knife.

Dec 15, 2020

reswrightYup, that's absolutely crazy! Forget having to think about it when reading for your knife... What about when reaching deeper into your pocket for something else and NOT thinking about being careful of an exposed blade.....hellllll no.

Dec 16, 2020

KavikIt's too bad, too. In design there are a number of things they'll tell you never to do, even though it's reasonable from a design standpoint, because it looks bad to a majority of consumers. I can only presume that the decision to leave the edge right there when the knife is closed makes some form of design sense. In terms of materials and design research Spyderco is kind of the Mercedes Benz of the knife world, and this is a wave opener AND a compression locker which means it's ticking off just about all the boxes for me... but even with the Spyderco name on it, their record of bringing things to market and and all the R&D and testing they do and all else that's implied by that brand name, I have left this one well enough alone.

Dec 16, 2020

reswrightyeah, i think its an design issue on the compression lock itself. because to get the 'best' lockup, the stop pin needs to be on top of the pivot, and then you have the compression lock. so to design a blade to fit that, you have to have to shove the choil quite high on the blade itself, and many compression lock knives opt for the forward finger groove design, like the shaman, which would likely have the same issue as the tropen, if it didnt add a forward finger groove this however really messes with the lines on the tropen, since it does not incorporate a forward finger groove. whereas in the yojimbo, they just extended the scale in the front part of the pivot so they dont have to do a forward finger groove, while maintaining compression lock safety. i really like the tropen design overall, but wish it was in a liner lock

Dec 16, 2020

method_burgerYou know, I have issues with the way they did the 'button compression lock' for the Spydie Smock -- namely the way the button takes an odd angle as it follows the lockbar's range of motion. But I think it's a good fit for this knife and would solve most of their problems. Another one would be the 'stop lock' they put on the Parata. I'm sure a good liner lock works here but as someone who likes wave opening knives I find that there's a relatively disappointing number of models on the market that have a next gen lock of any sort. There's those Spyderco models that put a wave feature on a compression lock.... and that's pretty much it, right? Everything else is a frame or liner lock. I can't think of a crossbar locking wave opener unless you count knives with aftermarket wave features put on them. Certainly can't think of an Axis locking wave knife. All ZT's Emerson Wave knives were liner or frame locks. My Rike M3 and Alien 2 are frame locks. All my Fox wave karambits are liner locks. And my Emersons and Kershaw Emersons are frame or liner locks as are all the ones I've ever seen. My DPx is a frame lock. The Dagger Pelican is a liner lock. The Brother Watchman wave opener I have (that I cannot recommend) is a liner lock. The QSP Woodpecker I have with a wave feature -- again, kudos to QSP for even incorporating one into an existing model, because that's more than any other major Chinese manufacturer has done -- that's a frame lock. My BRS Fragment, which I suppose can be seen as a pocket draw knife is a frame lock. My Krudo karambit has a pin to faciltate the pocket draw -- frame lock. Someone comes up with a decent plunge lock wave opener, a crossbar lock wave opener or basically anything newer or more interesting than those so long as it comes with a wave feature and it's instantly going into be in the running for 'Favorite New Thing' and quite possibly something that ends up spending a lot of time in my pocket for years to come. Alas, the world is reluctant to produce such things for some reason.

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Dec 16, 2020

method_burgerJust putting this comparison out there:

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Dec 17, 2020

reswrightnow that you mention it, why are button locks so uncommon? arguably it is easier to make, since it only requires precision manufacturing on the button, spring and cut on the knife, but those parts you can get mass manufactured. whereas a liner lock requires precision on the lock face and liner that you likely have to do some of it in-house. someone in knife manufacturing, please comment =)

Dec 18, 2020

method_burgerI'd love to hear someone inside the industry chime in, too. Most automatics are plunge locks, right? Automatics are everywhere these days - what's so hard about building one without that additional spring? Like you say, it seems simple -- yet lots of evidence suggests that it's hard to get right. The Ferrum Forge guys talking about how they needed to get the plunge lock just right before they rereleased the Mordax -- which is regularly out of stock at Drop even though it's probably $40 too expensive. The fact that Protech is only able to release miniscule runs of their own manual plunge locker, the Malibu, compared to their autos, despite clear demand for them -- yours truly has been looking for one for months now and they always sell out before he finds them in stock anywhere. Real Steel has been talking about rereleasing the Griffin since at least 2018 but it keeps hitting the back burner. Plus, look at the market. Going to BHQ's folding knife selection as a quick and dirty breakdown:

6800 frame locks
4689 liner locks
1319 back locks
323 plunge locks (most of which are actually automatics, not manuals)

That's a hell of a drop off. We are a push-button kinda race, humans, so this discrepancy is hard to explain just based on the face of things. As far as other fidget friendly lock styles like axis and compression locks? That is to say, in 2020, there are roughly equivalent numbers of button locks - a non-patent-protected, non trademark protected lock that has been glamorized as part of the traditional switchblade knife for over a century - on the open market than there are compression lock and axis lock knives combined even though those latter both have trademark protection and the compression lock still has patent protection. So what gives? If I had to guess based on my own limited experience fiddling around with plunge locks, I would say it's a combination of three things. The first is that it's probably hard to find that magic tolerance where the plunge lock works smoothly but it locks up without either wobble in the button or play in the blade -- maybe it's easier with the automatic spring bracing the pivot, maybe that helps eliminate what would otherwise manifest as wobbly construction, and with a manual it's just got to be perfect. Second is that while I'm sure they're just making the buttons out of round stock, they do have to machine the lockfaces into the tangs and it's gonna be easier to machine a flat lockface than a perfectly circular one. The third is that having had a few button locks all the way apart I can tell you that they are a cast iron bitch to reassemble correctly, you want to have like four hands to do it and you swear a blue streak the entire time. And it's mostly the button assembly that's the root cause. That spring is basically the same spring you see in ballpoint pens, and it just loves to go flying places when you're trying to assemble the knife. Keeping the button assembly straight is worse than having a stop pin that wants to keep falling out of joint when you're trying to fit the frame back together. The E series Griffin just about took a year off my life trying to fit it back together. Fiddly plus precision tolerances equal massive pain in the ass. Now, I know in a factory they're putting it together on a jig that makes it a lot easier -- at least I hope they are! I hope they're leveraging machinery and tooling to make it all scalable. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that knife makers have to spend a lot more hands time making plunge locks than frame or liner locks, even with a jig and specialized tools and whatnot - that and I bet it takes a bit more senior of a laborer to get it right. All this is me just spitballing though and I don't know what I don't know. If anyone from the industry wants to shed some light on the reason plunge lockers are so comparatively rare compared to liner and frame locks, I'd be grateful and I think a bunch of people might find the reasons interesting.

(Edited)

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Dec 18, 2020

reswrightyeah, maybe its because for liner and frame locks, all you need is a cutting disc, whereas a button lock you need a metal lathe, which cost more time and money to operate and make the buttons to tolerance, on top of assembly costs. i remember the process for making a liner lock by a custom maker and all he uses is a dremel, drill and a jig for the the lockface on a grinding wheel. just spitballing here too. but on that note, if they make the button hollow to begin with, and then put a cap on it for your finger, then couldnt they get away with putting the spring inside the button rather than on the outside, making assembly easier while maintaining rigidity of the lock?