Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
This is essentially an Endura, a well known Spyderco pattern, with H1 steel, which is totally resistant to corrosion in any normal enviroment. The Endura is well known and this knife has been reviewed in detail and is generally very well respected for a FRN folder. It has a solid level of cutting ability and versatility with a decently secure and ergonomic grip. The back lock is both strong and secure and the only real issue is white knuckling so take care to evalute normal grips used and check the lock stability in that orientation.
Basically compared to something like the Paramiliary, the Pacific Salt's more rounded tip profile gives you more prying strength for things like opening pain cans and wood working. The trade off for this is point penetration, pressing both knives into a phone book for example the Salt only gets about half the raw penetration of the Paramiliary. There are also issues with precision point work like coring vegetables, trying to remove a spliter or similar.
The biggest two issues with the steel are corrosion resistance and edge retention. The corrosion resistance was well covered by frank k, who basically showed that the steel is pretty much immune to rust and that it isn't a concern. In regards to edge retention Frank also compared H1 vs VG-10 and found a significant difference on cardboard. The steel is softer and will wear faster.
The upside of this is that it does respond well to honing, Carl has talked about this on rec.knives and that the steel even though is soft, doesn't have much of the problem that some soft steels have which is that they can develop significant burrs which prevent a high level of sharpness. The steel's level of hardness seems well matched by its machinability.
I checked the edge retention on used carpet and found in agreement with Frank that there is a pretty big difference between H1 vs S30V. This can actually be compensated by using a very coarse finish on the H1 to enhance the cutting ability and edge retention for slicing, and of course by using a serrated version which will give very high edge retention.
The other large difference is that H1 is fairly flexible, which is to be expected given the lower hardness, and thus this knife tends to work well in really hard work which could chip or break some of the harder stainless blades. The ease of machining also enhances this type of use because it allows quick repairing of an edge which was heavily blunted from digging in rocky soil for example.
Ref :
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/knives/pacific_salt.html
-Cliff
Basically compared to something like the Paramiliary, the Pacific Salt's more rounded tip profile gives you more prying strength for things like opening pain cans and wood working. The trade off for this is point penetration, pressing both knives into a phone book for example the Salt only gets about half the raw penetration of the Paramiliary. There are also issues with precision point work like coring vegetables, trying to remove a spliter or similar.
The biggest two issues with the steel are corrosion resistance and edge retention. The corrosion resistance was well covered by frank k, who basically showed that the steel is pretty much immune to rust and that it isn't a concern. In regards to edge retention Frank also compared H1 vs VG-10 and found a significant difference on cardboard. The steel is softer and will wear faster.
The upside of this is that it does respond well to honing, Carl has talked about this on rec.knives and that the steel even though is soft, doesn't have much of the problem that some soft steels have which is that they can develop significant burrs which prevent a high level of sharpness. The steel's level of hardness seems well matched by its machinability.
I checked the edge retention on used carpet and found in agreement with Frank that there is a pretty big difference between H1 vs S30V. This can actually be compensated by using a very coarse finish on the H1 to enhance the cutting ability and edge retention for slicing, and of course by using a serrated version which will give very high edge retention.
The other large difference is that H1 is fairly flexible, which is to be expected given the lower hardness, and thus this knife tends to work well in really hard work which could chip or break some of the harder stainless blades. The ease of machining also enhances this type of use because it allows quick repairing of an edge which was heavily blunted from digging in rocky soil for example.
Ref :
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/knives/pacific_salt.html
-Cliff
