- Joined
- Jun 29, 1999
- Messages
- 9,941
A few years ago Cliff Stamp and I swapped blades for evaluation. He sent me his H1 and I sent him my Roselli erapukko. Here are some of my comments from that test: The H1 is smaller than I had expected, but it is still a hand-filling chunk of a knife; it gives confidence just holding it. It has a full tang which extends from the butt as on the Fallkniven F1, so you can pound on it. The blade is 4 mm or .2” thick at the spine, almost twice as thick as the Roselli, and about 4” long. It has tough, 420-J2 slabs wrapped around a VG-10 core. These laminated blades are supposedly even stronger than a non-laminated VG-10 blade. (Fallkniven posts the results of independent tests on VG-10 on its website.) VG-10 is one of my favorite stainless steels; it seems to have more ‘bite’ than ATS-34, for instance. My buddy and I once skinned a black bear, me with my F1 with the older, one-piece VG-10 blade and he with a Cold Steel/Red River Elk Skinner in Carbon V. Gritty black bear hide, or moose for that matter, can take an edge off like sandpaper. To my surprise, the VG-10 held up just as well as the Carbon V, though it took a bit longer on a DMT hone to re-sharpen. The H1 obviously had been put to a good test; there were bits of crud sticking to the sides of the blade and a few minor red spots along the spine. A few swipes with a Scotchbrite pad and some dish soap left the blade looking almost new. The lamination line is clearly evident about 3/16” back from the edge and the blade is perfectly ground (to my eye), compared to the Roselli’s forging and hand grinding. Falkniven notes that the H1 is a specialized blade designed for ‘experts’, whom I take to mean, ‘people who do not need finger guards to keep from gashing themselves’. I’d call it a good all-round knife, a variation of the tried and true puukko, rather than a specialized blade. Like the Roselli, its edge extends right up to the grip, with a small notch before a narrow ricasso. It looks a bit like a CS California drop-point on steroids. The Kraton grip has no guard other than a small lip, but it is well shaped and textured. It feels a little harder than the Kraton on my Master Hunter and SRK, and almost as firm as the Thermorun on the F1. On a draw cut or slice, which is what this blade is mainly designed for, I don’t see the lack of a guard as a problem, even if you’re running the blade forward edge-up to slit the hide of a game animal. If you were to stab it into something hard, you might run your hand onto the blade, in which case you would no longer qualify as an ‘expert’. If you need to drive the H1 into something hard, say, to split the pelvis of a big game animal or a leg bone to get at the marrow, the tang extends a bit beyond the butt for precisely that purpose. If I have any criticism of the H1 grip, it is that it is a bit short if you’re wearing heavy gloves. The H1 came with an open-top swinger sheath of good thick black-dyed leather, fitted with a hard plastic liner. This is a huge improvement over the usual Scandinavian and Finnish sheaths in my experience. The ones that came with my Helle Eggen as well as the Roselli were made of thin, flimsy leather, albeit the Roselli did have a hard plastic liner. I used the original sheaths as patterns to make sturdier ones with substantial welts out of heavier, latigo leather. The H1 sheath, at least, this one, doesn’t grip the blade particularly tightly; you can draw the knife with one hand. There is a lined lanyard hole in the butt so you could tie it down for more security. The H1 came sharp enough to shave with a bit of pressure, but not scary sharp. There were a few tiny chips toward the base of the blade. Ten minutes of work on a DMT red (medium) hone, stroking backwards to maintain the convex edge, followed by the same on an ultra-fine (green) DMT hone and a bit of stopping on a chromium oxide impregnated leather strop brought it to scary sharp. It seemed to sharpen more easily than my F1, possibly because of the softer 420-J2 side panels. It’s not a paring knife, but the thick blade works well in the kitchen preparing vegetables. It tends to pop apart hard veggies like carrots, but will slice softer fruit like tomatoes, no problem. It worked great on dismembering chickens, and the blade is long enough for that most useful survival exercise, scraping peanut butter from the bottom of the jar. It also was handy in the garden, cutting tough, dirty vines and digging into old wood. In short, a handy, all-round knife, not too big to tuck into the back pocket of your jeans, and big enough for about any task for a hand cutting tool. The VG-10 edge lasts and lasts and lasts, and a few licks on a DMT ultra-fine hone bring that scary sharp edge back fast.
