old4570
Flashlight Enthusiast
I do love small light easy to carry pocket knives . I have several .
Recently I had an itch to try the Mini Dozier and I purchased one out of the USA .
A) Looks great 8/10
B) Feels Great 8/10
C) Bolted together great 9/10
D) Edge retention not great 1/10
For edge retention , 1 out of ten is the lowest possible score .
I have tested a lot of knives and for 2021 I am starting fresh with the video's I am posting .
The knife :
Physically speaking , I have no complaints what so ever . The mini Dozier fulfils all my expectations for a Ka-Bar , except in edge retention . Here unfortunately the blade performs at a level I personally like to think of as bottom of the barrel . My test is simple and repeatable . I have some rope that is run over some pine board ( cutting surface ) and I cut rope . The results are consistent and repeatable making the results comparable to my other tests ( other knives ) . As an example I have 2 knives ( the same ) branded differently ( but the same knife ) and they be 420 SS . Both knives deliver 140 slices of rope and have done so over repeated testing ( repeatable and consistent results ) . These sorts of results give me a base line from which to work from when calling something good or bad .
Mini Dozier AUS8 blade :
After some 30 slices of the rope the edge began to vanish ( not a good sign ) and by the time I got to 50 slices ( my base line for rubbish steel ) I was pushing the knife hard . And it did fail on the paper cut test , both ways / with the grain and against the grain of the printer paper . Can I say how disappointed I am ? 2020 ripped me a new one on blade steel ( so much bad steel ) and looks like 2021 is going to do the same .
The edge - I use a guided knife sharpener and put down a 22deg bevel until I get a bur and then slowly work the bur away and then strop to finish with and without polishing compound ( I have 3 different strops of varying leather hardness ) . So I do try to put down a decent edge . So I was a little surprised the edge began to vanish after 30 slices .
The good news ? might be that edge maintenance is easy . I put the knife to the strop after the test and the edge came back really strong cutting / slicing paper with the greatest of ease . Only thing is the lack of edge retention ! ( Which is a little annoying ) .
Conclusion :
Love everything except the blade steel - so obviously I hate the knife ! The knife is only as good as it's blade steel , so if the blade steel is rubbish so is the knife . There we go , another knife for the junk knife box .
2nd Chance @ the rope
Yep , when a knife fails . I give it a 2nd chance to not fail so badly .
This time around using my whetstone grinder , I put a new edge on the mini Dozier .
I also gave it a few passes on the stropping wheel to remove the high spots on the grind .
In a nutshell , I doubled the edge holding with the rougher finished edge .
When the test was done , a few passes on the leather strop had the edge back
Anyways , I really like the ground edge as edge maintenance is rather good . ( Easy )
So original test , after 30 slices the edge began to vanish
After being machine cut / ground the edge was still cutting rope at 90 but failed on the paper slice .
But that fail on paper could be simply the rough edge ...
I think putting a fine finish on this one is a waste of time and hopefully it might be ok around the house as a general purpose light duty cutter .
We will see . Still dont recommend it !
