H1 steel - spyderco exclusive?

From what I understand it's not exclusive to them and they use it for saltwater applications because it is supposed to be 100% resistant to staining and I think that steel was also tested by someone who put it in saltwater for a really long time I think it was a year or something like that.

The bad about H1 from what I have is it doesn't hold it's edge very well at all even thought I have heard the edge hardness can be around 65 hrc,the good thing's about H1 is that it sharpen's fast's and takes a sharp edge.

With H1 being a stainless steel that's were the poor edge retention comes from,just look at S110v if you put a polished edge on it and I have and used a Suehiro 15 and 20K stone plus diamond paste and polished the crap out of the edge and it was never as sharp as M4 or M390 but still really sharp none the less and the edge just fell off pretty much right away,now you give it a toothy edge that's where it shine's and will hold it's edge.
 
From what I understand no it is not exclusive to them but I could be wrong,ask at the spyderco forums and see what they have to say but I'm 99% certain it not a steel made just for them,I know it's a Japanese steel.
 
wade7575 said:
From what I understand it's not exclusive to them and they use it for saltwater applications because it is supposed to be 100% resistant to staining and I think that steel was also tested by someone who put it in saltwater for a really long time I think it was a year or something like that.

The bad about H1 from what I have is it doesn't hold it's edge very well at all even thought I have heard the edge hardness can be around 65 hrc,the good thing's about H1 is that it sharpen's fast's and takes a sharp edge.

With H1 being a stainless steel that's were the poor edge retention comes from,just look at S110v if you put a polished edge on it and I have and used a Suehiro 15 and 20K stone plus diamond paste and polished the crap out of the edge and it was never as sharp as M4 or M390 but still really sharp none the less and the edge just fell off pretty much right away,now you give it a toothy edge that's where it shine's and will hold it's edge.
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The high hardness is only the serrated models. The steel is amazingly tough, but relatively soft otherwise. I think it's in the ballpark of a 420HC, AUS-8, etc for edge holding. Not great but serviceable and it can take a lickin'.

OP, I've not heard of others using it but it's not exclusive to spyderco. Howevere, there were a few makers mentioned in this thread that use it. Sounds like BM used to use it on a dive knife. I think you would need to look into dive/saltwater use specific knives to find someone who would use it. Spyderco has a bit of a niche there with their salt series.
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/does-anyone-makes-h1-steel-knives-beside-spyderco.425215/
 
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