- Joined
- Apr 20, 2001
- Messages
- 18,423
Decided to find out for myself if 420hc was OK or not, so I got out a Buck 450 that I bought several months ago on clearance for 12.00 and gave it a test today.
First off I tested the edge out-of-the-box, and it wouldn't really shave arm hair that good.
Next came a sesson of carving and hacking into a piece of dried maple. This esxact same peice of maple broke the tip off my Queen D2 Mountain Man fodler 3 weeks ago, but performing the same gouging and twisting motion didn't phase the 420hc at all.
Next came a session of sharpening a "spear" on the same piece of maple, around 3 inches in diameter. The 450 ate it up!
Next came a session of fire making with a magnesium fire starter. We have had 3 days of rain here, so I gathered what dry stuff I could find, and went to work. After several rounds lasting a total of 30 minutes, I had scraped off quite a bit of magnesium with the edge of the blade, and made several scrapes on the flint rod with the edge also, held at a 90 degree angle for both.
The blade was now almost black on one side from the sparks and flames from the magnesium and had been scraped across dozens of times.
After:
First the black scouring wiped right off completely and no scratches were left visible on the blade.
Second the edge was dull and would not shave at all, but had no "chips" or "nicks" in it at all.
I then sharpened it in the manner Buck recommends on their website, on my DMT diamond hone. In just around 1 minute total for both sides of the blade, it was now hair poppin' scary sharp!
Overall, I think I can live with 420hc.
First off I tested the edge out-of-the-box, and it wouldn't really shave arm hair that good.
Next came a sesson of carving and hacking into a piece of dried maple. This esxact same peice of maple broke the tip off my Queen D2 Mountain Man fodler 3 weeks ago, but performing the same gouging and twisting motion didn't phase the 420hc at all.
Next came a session of sharpening a "spear" on the same piece of maple, around 3 inches in diameter. The 450 ate it up!
Next came a session of fire making with a magnesium fire starter. We have had 3 days of rain here, so I gathered what dry stuff I could find, and went to work. After several rounds lasting a total of 30 minutes, I had scraped off quite a bit of magnesium with the edge of the blade, and made several scrapes on the flint rod with the edge also, held at a 90 degree angle for both.
The blade was now almost black on one side from the sparks and flames from the magnesium and had been scraped across dozens of times.
After:
First the black scouring wiped right off completely and no scratches were left visible on the blade.
Second the edge was dull and would not shave at all, but had no "chips" or "nicks" in it at all.
I then sharpened it in the manner Buck recommends on their website, on my DMT diamond hone. In just around 1 minute total for both sides of the blade, it was now hair poppin' scary sharp!
Overall, I think I can live with 420hc.
