Spyderco Delica K390 FRN Blue Folding Knife 18

Just incredibly, breathtakingly sharp. Perfect size.

I have one of these and love it. I am a fan of tool steels anyway, a bit of a D2 addict. However, the K390 is really nice. I'd love to see a UKPK in K390 that I could EDC. This Delica showcases the steel nicely- it's hard and takes an edge like a lightsaber.. and keeps it. It's not actually too hard to sharpen, a Sharpmaker with white rods of different grits will do the job- just don't expect a pristine edge in seconds from wiping it on a kerbstone. This is a practical knife, for using- it's not pretty, it's all business. My only slight niggle is that the design of the pocket clip makes it sit a little high- aftermarket clips can solve this.

I love K390, it’s my favourite tool steel next to good old 01 how ever a lot of knife makers are not heat treating O1 properly as it’s a very old tool steel and takes a little more effort to coax the carbide homogenisation and carbon face-centred-cubic (gamma-iron) form into martensite and people make the mistake of trysting it like a simple low carbon steel which leads me onto K390 and at work we love this stuff, we call it O1 on mega steroids in fact it’s more closer to a HSS than a die and stamping steel. We use it for all sorts of things at work. We’ve used this stuff as scraper blades on hand flattening work bench’s and it blows O1,O2,O6 and 7 all of the “W” range and D range in fact in terms of alloying bad performance it’s closer to high speed steels and it holds its edge for longer because it’s tougher than HSS and we find it easy to machine on a mill to make the scraper blades and it’s very easy to heat treat and we usually go for 63-64 HRC. It has a million and one uses in a machine shop how ever it’s far far more expensive than O1 but lasts far far longer and does not chip anywhere near O1 as it’s tough almost in like the S range of steels but with and edge that lasts for ages, I’ve also got to correct the errors when people say Particle metallurgy but Bohler uses powder metallurgy and it’s methods they way they make it are different than crucible or carpenter. So overall in essence what I’m saying is that K390 is the best state of the art tool steel for knives available today and you should buy it because it is very hard to get old of spyderco knives in K390 because every one buys them up, because of its performance and you’ll see why when you get yours but remember it’s a tool steel extremely high in carbon so a coating of oil must be kept on the knife if you do not want moisture and rust to form on the steel. Look after your tools and they will look after you........and your bank account

Poor build quality, unacceptable blade movement.

Why did I spend £150 on a Delica, because I'm crazy, and so are you, so get it you know you want to.