Spyderco Vesuvius Knife C66PBK

Reviewed by corwin99 on February 1st, 2009

The Spyderco Vesuvius is one of the few FRN handled Spydies to have a smooth contoured handle, which I really like. It is also designed by Frank Centofante, which I was a bit surprised about. The design is much more in-house looking to me, but either way, I love the look and feel!

I bought my Vesuvius around the day it came out, and was one of the lucky ones to get it with the compression lock, which was discontinued on this model due to problems with lock failure. Spyderco has had occasional problems with reliability of some models with compression and ball bearing locks, but these are relatively rare. This problem on the Vesuvius was serious enough that it warranted a complete redesign of the knife with a lock back, making the compression lock version something of a collectible.

My Vesuvius with the compression lock did not have any problems, though I did not hard use it. The knife has FRN handles on the outside with stainless liners hidden inside to support the compression lock, which is kind of neat. It has the feel of FRN, with the heft of stainless. Not that the feel of FRN is especially good, but it is much warmer feeling than steel, and cheaper to manufacture.

I really like the silver spider that’s painted onto the FRN handles. It feels painted, rather than an inlaid steel spider, but that’s just an assumption. Pocket clip on this one is reversible for tip up and tip down carry, which also apparently had an impact on lock reliability. Some people experience lock failure only when the pocket clip was installed for tip down carry, which might be because the screws in the liner holding the pocket clip somehow strengthened the compression lock.

Blade on the Vesuvius is ATS-34, with a nice hollow grind and has a swedge on the top. If you look closely at mine, you will notice the grind of the swedge was done poorly, and actually goes too far on the front side, making it actually cut into the primary edge bevel. This doesn’t really affect the usability of the knife, but it is a manufacturing defect that somehow passed QC, and probably shouldn’t have.

Either way, this is a pretty sweet knife, and I really like how polished the knife looks and feels. The compression lock on mine seems to work really well and the weight and balance of the knife is great. Screws are Torx, and nothing is pinned, giving the knife that professional look that older Enduras just didn’t have. Great lines on this one too, Mr. Centofante did a fantastic job.

Blade Steel: ATS-34
Handle Material: FRN
Blade Length: 3 1/8″
Overall Length: 7 5/8″

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