A shot from the Fehrman Knives website :
The review consists of :
The Extreme Judgement weighs 560 g and has a blade heavy balance. It is ground from 1/4" CPM-3V with a full flat grind and a slightly recurved edge. The blade swells out to over 2" wide at the max. The edge thickness ranged from 0.027-0.028" and was ground at 15-16 degrees per side.
The Extreme Judgement was used first to split a lot of rounds for the wood stove with the aid of a smaller stick as a baton. It was fairly cold during the work -15 F to -20 F. Through the first hundred rounds, fairly clear wood, it worked well, no flex, no excessive shock and no damage to the edge.
Using Roselli axe as the baton, the knife was hit hard enough to cause the coating to shatter off the flats from the vibration. There was no spine mushrooming, however the edge took damage on the harder knots, 0.1-0.2 of a millimeter deep, under magnification they were clearly fractures.
The initial edge was rough which weakens it in regards to impacts, it was resharpened to a high polish. More wood was split for about an hour. The edge still chipped but smaller, no longer visible by eye but felt by thumbnail. On one six inch round with heavy ring knots the edge rippled. The blade took a bend about 1/2" in length and up to 0.05" thick on the primary grind, twice the edge height.
As a check on edge durability it was also lightly chopped into a concrete block. Just wrist pops which induced cuts a fraction of a centimeter into the block, the edge fractured readily.
The handle was a step up from the similar grip on the Steel Eagle, the same basic design with a couple of much needed improvements. Removed are the hand mangler serrations along the top and the index finger groove is more rounded and comfortable. However it is a still flat along the top and bottom. The index finger cutout on the blade however is decently well rounded, one of the better jobs seen in that regard.
During some of the wood work, rawhide gloves were worn and the handle was problematic as the index finger groove was too small for the heavy glove and the handle as a whole was cramped so there were some impacts off of the end hook - which is however nicely sloped. In general grips without such shape specific designs tend to work better. The feedback was solid, much less feedback than the Ontario RTAK , similar to the Ratweiler.
The Extreme Judgement came with a thin (0.08") Kydex sheath. It was difficult to draw from and wore on the coating with each draw. The knife also cut into the Kydex readily and on the draw took pieces away from the inside of the sheath.
The Extreme Judgement was initially sharp but the edge roughly finished which lead to poor edge retention and durability in wood working due to fractures. The edge chipping continued after a light sharpening and was readily evident with just light impacts on concrete. The edge also ripplied on harder batoning. The grip was above average in some respects but had ergonomic issues in others. The sheath also had problems in wearing the coating and abrading the edge.
In regards to the edge denting, other knives such as the Heafner bowie in D2 have seen far greater edge strength in the same work splitting large knotty rounds. The Extreme Judgement was returned with either a request for a refund or replacement if this behavior was not to be expected, especially in regards to edge chipping. A refund was given on a credit card with no communication from the maker.
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More information can be obtained at the
Fehrman Knives website
| Last updated : | 05 : 25 : 2005 |
| Originally written: | 01 : 04 : 2005 |