Kershaw Ken Onion Shallot (model 1840110V) CPM S110V
Folding Knife Review

I got two Kershaw folders in 2009. That was a double by and it's been a very long time since I have bought the last and the first Kershaw knife. I got the Ken Onion Shallot folders in CPM S110V and ZDP-189 steels. The only other folder I've had from them before was Kershaw Ken Onion Boa. I wrote about all that in a little greater detail in the ZDP-189 Shallot review. So, I'll skip the common stuff for the both reviews. Just for the statistics, those folders were part of the limited run, 1493 ZDP-189 knives, and 948 CPM S110V knives(598 plain edge blades and 350 partially serrated). In other words, those got picked out real fast and if you plant on getting one of those, ebay or knife exchange forums either on knifeforums.com or bladeforums.com are the best ways.

General

The thing is, as you might know, if you were following my blog or stumbled upon one of the threads on BF or KF about rehardened blades from me, I've never used this knife out of the box. I knew Kershaw was hardening ZDP-189 blades to 63-64HRC, and CPM S110V blades to 58-60HRC. While 63-64HRC is ok with me for ZDP-189, although I'd prefer 66 or even 67HRC in a folder blade, the composite construction of the ZDP-189 blades makes it impossible or close to that to reharden them. On the other hand, CPM S110V steel as I already knew from Phil Wilson and my upcoming Meadows Skinner, could be taken to 64HRC. If it was ok for almost 5" long fixed blade, then it was even more appropriate for 89.00mm(3.5") folding knife. Given all that I've removed the blade from the handle and sent it to Phil Wilson for rehardening. Considering that the whole story is rather long, I'll refer you to the complete article - The Importance Of The Knife Blade Hardness. Very short summary would be that the blade was rehardened to 64HRC, then I had to send it to one maker to clean it up and polish it, then to another, Tom Krein in particular to get the regrind done. It is flat ground blade out of the box and I wanted to optimize it for light cutting performance as much as possible given all the troubles I've had to go through. Therefore I've chosen hollow grind. Since it was my first experience with all those things, it took a lot longer to get things done had I have any previous experience.

Well, since we are on this topic, I'll give you few heads ups if you ever decide to go down that road. For one, keep in mind, rehardening means heating the blade up to very high temperatures, for high alloy blades it could be well over 2000F. It means the blade surface will be burnt and blackened real bad. On the photo attached here you can see the blades right after rehardening and as you can see they don't look pretty. The CPM 110V blade is on the top. Second thing to remember is that coated blades have really rough surfaces underneath the coating and that's because it helps the coating to adhere better to the steel, but after rehardening the coating burns off and you're left with really messed up blade. The only solution is to resurface the blade. In other words polish it. That is much easier before rehardening. All of that is kind of obvious, but I had no idea and I got rehardened blades, with rough surfaces. I've spent 8 hours myself trying to clean up M2 blade at 64.5HRC and it wasn't very successful operation :) CPM S110V blade was considerably harder to clean and smooth, but I wasn't the one doing it. So, good luck with all that. Ideally you need someone who can do the whole shebang for you. Later, I figure out Phil Wilson does the complete set, well he started doing regrinds himself and took care of bead blasting too. That was a lot faster second time with two Nimravi.

Blade

Sharpening

Handle

Usage

Testing was pretty much the same set of cutting that I did with Phil Wilson's CPM S110V Meadows Skinner and the test cut materials were the same. Still, it was quite surprising in the end :) In a positive way too. That surprise was the interesting fact that hollow grind edge, very thin edge at that did withstand push cutting the RG-6 coaxial cable. I thought it'd suffer damage, since the edge is really thin, but in the end it took the abuse just fine. I am not planning doing that again, it was just to test the limits of that edge and that's all to it. Needless to say the same edge had no qualms with wood whittling. I did the usual whittling, followed by twisting the blade in the wood. Insertion depth was about 1-2mm for several consecutive tests. In the end, like I said, the edge suffered no damage. The only time I have seen rolling of the edge above 63HRC was with Watanabe Kuro-Uchi Nakiri, which in itself is am amazing result. As usual, the edge chips instead of taking plastic deformation. Well, so far CPM S110V as neither chipped nor rolled in my tests. The other difference with Watanabe blade, besides it having Aogami I steel, is the edge angle. By now it's closer to 8°-9° per side, not 15° as the Shallot and Meadows Skinner. So... I can't make any definitive conclusions on that one. One(Aogami I) is the very pure, high carbon steel, not very alloyed either. The other(CPM S110V) is one of the highest alloyed, stainless steel on the planed :) My very limited guess is that CPM S110V is still more brittle, because of the much higher chromium content. On the other hand, it is hardly that simple, CPM S110V is one of the tougher steels amongst those high alloys. The simple tests I've conducted showed that quite clearly. Well, one way or the other, no chips, no dents, no rolls.

As for the pure edge retention tests, I just did cardboard cutting, which was about 400 inches, all that I had. That was not nearly enough to cause any significant edge degradation. The edge was still shaving real easy in both directions. For the record, cardboard was what I started with. And the edge initially was hair splitting, or hair whittling sharp. That hair splitting edge was gone somewhere between 100th and 200th inches of cardboard. Can't tell exactly when, I was testing sharpness between every 100 inches. Other than cardboard I did minor rope testing, which was minor because as usual when I started testing I was pretty much out of the test rope to cut and too lazy to get to hardware store or the supermarket to buy a new one. Whatever I had, was some leftovers of the nylon rope, about 1/4" thick. That thing isn't exactly peachy to cut, quite tough and slippery at that. You either need a very rough edge, 800 grit or so, to cut through it with relative ease, or a serrated blade. Or, alternatively you need a very sharp blade, other stuff, i.e. not so sharp rough or polished edges mostly slide over it. I already described the sharpening process of the edge in the sharpening section, so as you can guess it was very highly polished, super sharp edge initially. Except, by the time I got to the rope cutting, it had lost some of that sharpness already. I was just curious if it'd still cut with ease, or if I'd have to go back to sharpeners. Sadly, I never managed to get the suitable scales to measure the force required for the rope cutting. I keep promising myself I'll do that, but so far I've been bad. Anyway, whether I wanted or not I just had to do it the old way, gauging the force by hand or by me. I've tried to cut the rope which was laying on the wood using single forward motion cut. It worked, single slice, and as for me, I didn't have to apply excessive force, my guesstmate was light to medium :) Next few cuts I did both, forward and backwards, every time the blade went through the rope in a single slice. Well, that was it and I've decided to call it a day. There was no more cardboard or rope to cut anyway. Well, that was it for dedicated testing. Now, since it is a folder and CPM S110V performed superbly in both knives, I am going to thin down the edge on the Shallot to around 10° per side. I am quite confident, for light cutting it will be more than sufficient. As soon as I do that, I'll update the review.