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Ontario GEN II SP46 Review

The Ontario GEN II SP46 is a fixed blade knife in Ontario Knife’s Spec Plus line of knives designed by Dan Maragni. As GEN II name suggests, the SP46 is now in its second generation, and is quite an excellent knife for the price.

Ontario SP46

Ontario’s Spec Plus line of knives is their “value” line of affordable knives. The second generation Spec Plus knives feature hardened 5160 steel that is American made, with black texture powder coated blades and Kraton rubber grips that are really great looking.

Specifications

Edge Type Plain
Overall Length 11.098″
Blade Length 5.574″
Blade Material 5160 High Carbon Steel
Blade Grind Flat
Blade Thickness 0.18″
Blade Color Black
Handle Color Black
Handle Material Kraton

Blade

The SP46 blade is flat ground and made from a 5160 high carbon steel that is hardened to 54-55 on the Rockwell C scale. Mine came relatively sharp out of the box – sharp enough to cut paper. The blade has a black texture powder coat that looks great and seems to wear well in my testing.

Handle

The SP46 handle is Kraton, which some love and some hate (I like it), that really feels good in your hand. It provides a good comfortable grip and the handle really seems to fill your hand well.

Sheath

As with all Spec Plus knives, the SP46 sheath is definitely the low point. The sheath is functional, but the fit is horrible. I have several GEN II Spec Ops knives, and no matter what size of blade they all seem to come with the same sheath. So the sheath for my SP46 is 2-3 inches too long. Even worse, the knife doesn’t fit securely, and rattles audibly in the plastic insert. There really isn’t much good to say about the sheath in my opinion.

Impressions

The SP46 is one of my favorite medium sized fixed blade knives for under $100. As mentioned, the only miss by Ontario is the sheath. It just plain sucks. The good news is that you can either modify the sheath to make it suck less, or you can make your own sheath out of Kydex. Perhaps I will make a Kydex sheath and do a follow up post on how it works out.

As for modifying the existing sheath, you can remove the plastic insert and use a hair dryer to slowly heat up the plastic to allow you to mold it to the knife blade, giving a more secure fit and removing the rattle. This is cheaper than building a Kydex sheath, but not nearly as fun!

Wrapping Up

I definitely recommend checking out the SP46 if you’re in the market for a medium sized survival/camping knife. The knife is simply outstanding, and even though the sheath could be better, it’s still a great value for the money that is really hard to beat.

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