The
below ia a brief account on my testing of the SN1 at a nearby island around my place.
Singapore is a place located at the equator and is surrounded by the seas on four sides. Coconut trees are abundant as they grow best near the sea shores and my tests are carried out on these coconut trees.
The SN1 is strong enough to chop off the bark of the coconut trees as easily as an axe would have done it.
After chopping it for sometime, I had the edge inspected visually and was glad to find that it still
retained the same sharpness as when it was first delivered to me. Let me remind you that I had choosen an extremely old coconut tree that had weathered many storms and the saltish sea splashes over a long period of time. This combined effect of the weather and sea water has toughened the bark significantly as compared to those trees can can be found inland elsewhere. The
coconut tree had evolved over many years to beat the Earth natural forces in order to survive but it's still no match for the SN1!
Later that day, I had also plucked a few coconuts from other trees and then used SN1 to cut them open. Cut is
an understatement because I should say that the SN1 had the husk SCLICED off easily without much effort. The only mistake I made though was to use a granite stone as a chopping block. Initially, I had applied
too much chopping power to the SN1 when cutting the coconut cause I thought the coconut was tough. When the blade sliced through effortlessly, it also hit the
granite rock, causing the perfectly curved edge to suffer a minor chip. This chip however was later smoothen by some simple filing. Other than that, the
SN1 is still in excellent condition.
The only thing that needs to improve is that due to the humid environment in Singapore, things tends to rust easily just over a few days. It would be better if the blade is treated with some chemicals to prevent
rust at some stage during the forging of the blade. However, the above problem can be easily solved by applying a thin layer of oil and then have the entire blade wrapped in thin plastic foil.
During maintenance, I had used a very fine grain sand paper to sand away specks of rust on the blade. However, I realised that no matter how fine my sand
paper is, it still will scratch the surface. These scratches although cannot be seen visually, it still can result in stains attaching themselves onto these
scratches during chopping and cutting. Is there any way that I can have the blade surface fully restored back to original?
