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Sal Glesser Shares a Piece of Spyderco History on the Forum

April 6, 2020

The Spyderco Forums are a special place for many reasons, not least of all because members of the Spyderco crew often post and interact with fans on there – and one of the most vocal members is company founder Sal Glesser himself. Last week, Glesser hopped on to share a fascinating bit of history regarding the origination of the company’s particular SpyderEdge serrations that opened a window on the early days of the company as a whole.

These days, the SpyderEdge is one of the most recognizable elements of Spyderco’s design language, right alongside things like the Round Hole and the Bi-Directional Texturing. Glesser traces the origins of the alternating big/little serrations to German knife design of the 40s, but says that he and wife Gail Glesser first encountered them in the 70s.

At this time the Glessers were still living a nomadic salesperson lifestyle, pitching products at fairs and other big gatherings. A fellow pitchman named Ronny Popeil came up with the Feather Touch kitchen knife, which leveraged that serration pattern to great effect in the kitchen. The knife was a popular product for pitchmen to sell and, eventually, another entrepreneur conceived of a similar knife, made to a more affordable price tag; according to Glesser, this one became the most popular with pitchmen, who began selling them all over the country,

Eventually this serration concept made it to the big time with the debut of the Ginsu Knife on home shopping TV, establishing a line of cutlery that persists to this very day. Meanwhile, the Glessers began their study of serrations, which lead to the development of the Utility kitchen knife and, eventually, a multitude of other fixed blades and folders with the SpyderEdge configuration.

“We continue to study serrations and we’re still refining them,” Glesser concludes in his post. “In my opinion, a serrated Spyderco, sharpened a few times with a Sharpmaker is the best performing serrated edge on the market.” He then opened the floor for questions regarding the story and the SpyderEdge’s history. This thread went up recently so, if you have a question for the head honcho himself, now’s a good time to head over and see if you can get it answered.

Knife in Featured Image: Spyderco Para 3 Lightweight

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