Qualities of H1 steel

[Texas guy]

I purchased a Pacific Salt PE to be my "folding kitchen knife" due to it being so easy to clean, and not worrying about corrosion; the 4" blade also is a great size for cutting up food.
I noticed that I have been carrying it more and more often, cutting into my Para's pocket time, but not just because the lightness of the knife or the longer blade, but because of the awsome H1 steel.
Ok, S30V holds an edge MUCH longer, that was apperant immediatly upon using the two knives, BUT......... I can get that H1 steel super sharp, super easy. It seems like I can almost randomly rub the Pacific Salt on any stone and end up with a razor edge. On the other hand, the S30V takes meticolous sharpening to get sharp, and is extremly finicky about burrs and takes forever to get just right. The Salt knife stropes up BEAUTIFULLY on green chromium oxide, and will pop hairs easily off coarser grits. Even though the Salt dulls much faster, I can use it at work and literally steel it against the stainless counters, or agains anything hard, and the razor edge comes right back. I can carry the Pacific Salt, and literally keep it sharp with random things.
I'm losing my faith in "super steels", the other properties of H1 make up for its lack of edge retention 100x over.

[Hannibal Lecter]

My Dear Friend,

I'm losing my faith in "super steels", the other properties of H1 make up for its lack of edge retention 100x over.

I agree completely. The Tasman Salt has replaced my beloved Harpy as my primary EDC user. I believe that H-1 is still severely underrated and will come into its own as users become more educated as to its properties.

--------
Hannibal

[STR]

I've noticed that my Salt 1 PE is quite easy to bring back to a super sharpness with just a few strops also. It is super easy to resharpen.

I also noticed after reprofiling the tip on it to make it a point that about 1/3 of the knife holds an edge better than the other. I think I must have work hardened it because the tip stays sharp longer than the back now since the reprofile. Unlike when I grind on other blades to reprofile them I let this one get somewhat hot without dipping it in water to keep it luke warm. I didn't burn mark it or anything but just took my time and made it the way it looks now. It is noticablely different now for edge holding and I do like it better with a good splinter picker point on it.

Now it is more like a Delica blade with a 14 mm opening hole and non sharpened serrations for the thumb behind the opening hole on the spine.

STR

[Axlis]

I can't wait to get my Tasman! I have a couple of H1's, and they are SOOOO easy to sharpen. It's like I can't screw it up, it always gets sharp.

[Axlis]

I've noticed that my Salt 1 PE is quite easy to bring back to a super sharpness with just a few strops also. It is super easy to resharpen.

I also noticed after reprofiling the tip on it to make it a point that about 1/3 of the knife holds an edge better than the other. I think I must have work hardened it because the tip stays sharp longer than the back now since the reprofile. Unlike when I grind on other blades to reprofile them I let this one get somewhat hot without dipping it in water to keep it luke warm. I didn't burn mark it or anything but just took my time and made it the way it looks now. It is noticablely different now for edge holding and I do like it better with a good splinter picker point on it.

Now it is more like a Delica blade with a 14 mm opening hole and non sharpened serrations for the thumb behind the opening hole on the spine.

STR

You are my hero, thats really, really neat! What I like even better than the tip is the choil. I believe every model would benefit from a choil, especially the tasman.

[Andre V]

Ok, S30V holds an edge MUCH longer, that was apperant immediatly upon using the two knives, BUT......... I can get that H1 steel super sharp, super easy. It seems like I can almost randomly rub the Pacific Salt on any stone and end up with a razor edge. On the other hand, the S30V takes meticolous sharpening to get sharp, and is extremly finicky about burrs and takes forever to get just right. The Salt knife stropes up BEAUTIFULLY on green chromium oxide, and will pop hairs easily off coarser grits. Even though the Salt dulls much faster, I can use it at work and literally steel it against the stainless counters, or agains anything hard, and the razor edge comes right back.

I find that my Salt 1 seems to hold an edge about as long as any of my S30V knives. I was reading an article in a Tac knives magazine about H1, the rockwell hardness rating was at 57/58 (if i remember correctly). This is very similar to S30V. I have to admit that my Salt series knives dont see much pocket time, so my opnion may be incorrect.

I am going to the coast this december where my Pacific salt and salt 1 will be the only :spyder: i am taking maybe after some good use i will see some different results. In any regard its wonderful to have a knife that i can use in and around the sea.

[DAYWALKER]

Aloha Texas guy,

I agree here also...I managed to sharpen my Pacific on a stone I found on the beach in March. I just love this H1 steel...especially for where I live, it is a God send indeed! :)

Have fun with your H1 steel...I know I did, and will do so again!

God bless :cool:

[STR]

thats really, really neat! What I like even better than the tip is the choil. I believe every model would benefit from a choil, especially the tasman.

I know just what you mean. I had a Delica for years and loved it. (still do actually) It was one of the original integral clip models from like 1991 or 92. I still have one of each in SE and PE G1 steel and two Calypso Jrs, a gray and a burgundy in ZDP189. I loved things about both of them. Then when the Salt 1 came out I found that all three had things going for them that I just loved but wished I could find in one folder.

The CJ has that great choil that you like. I really missed that choil when I'd carry the Delica or Salt. But the tip down carry of the CJ is something I don't prefer. Then, the Delica has that great blade with the nice grind I like and the needle point for splinter picking or general poking around to open packages and such. The Salt 1 has that great 14mm opening hole and the non sharpened serrations but without the choil and a good point it wasn't quite right either.

So, when I rebuilt the body of the Salt 1 I just put what I liked from all three into this one folder. I have an adjustable pivot now and can go serrated or plain depending on my mood. The only thing left that it needed was the character of an old sailors knife so that explains the lignum handle scales. It also still had to be resistant to staining rust and the elements hence the titanium liners and hardware. Now I have the best of the Delica, the Salt and the Calypso Jr. all in this one folder.

Glad you like it. I do too. This one sees a lot of pocket time believe me :D

STR

[butch]

I've noticed that my Salt 1 PE is quite easy to bring back to a super sharpness with just a few strops also. It is super easy to resharpen.

I also noticed after reprofiling the tip on it to make it a point that about 1/3 of the knife holds an edge better than the other. I think I must have work hardened it because the tip stays sharp longer than the back now since the reprofile. Unlike when I grind on other blades to reprofile them I let this one get somewhat hot without dipping it in water to keep it luke warm. I didn't burn mark it or anything but just took my time and made it the way it looks now. It is noticablely different now for edge holding and I do like it better with a good splinter picker point on it.

Now it is more like a Delica blade with a 14 mm opening hole and non sharpened serrations for the thumb behind the opening hole on the spine.

STR

ok im nutz so i want to know how to harden H1 more i have a kiln and grinders
but also can i just burnish it and that will help
butch

[STR]

H1 is a mystery steel. The more you use it the better it gets. I can't say why. I read an article saying that it work hardens a while back and I just took that with a grain of salt (no pun intended) and moved on. It didn't make sense to me at the time because I'd never heard of such a thing. But then again we have never used such a steel as this before either.

I must say after owning my Salt 1 since they first came out that there is something to it. Just using the H1 blade is said to work harden it but grinding or sharpening it seems to speed it up a notch. I'm not suggesting you go grind off a big chunk and let the sparks fly if you are not confident with doing that. It isn't like that. I had a purpose in mind when I did my tip reprofile.

At first I thought it was my imagination when I was using it, but I'm now 99.9% sure its not. The tip cuts longer now compared to before I did that reprofile. I think I effectively took my Salt 1 blade from AUS6 performance up to VG10 performance levels for edge holding overnight. Maybe a metallurgist or someone more familiar with the steels properties can add more. I just know what I'm seeing cutting with it when I sit around whittling and carving with it, which is all the time. No matter what knife I have on me it whittles. I am one of those guys that literally is sitting in wood shavings all the time, its my wife's biggest pet peve about me.

The blade goes farther between strops now and that is a good thing. If you have an H1 blade work it baby! It just gets better with age kind a like a good bottle of wine.

[saltydog]

You know I had started noticing that on the PE Pacific Salt - how the more I sharpened it and used it the longer it held its edge - and I thought I was starting to sort of lose my mind :o I'm a BIG fan of H1 and would love to see a lot more Spydies reissued with this steel....would have LOVED to see those new D'Allaras in this steel. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[gull wing]

I don't use a knife around salty water much so didn't consider the Salt.
I had no idea this H1 steel was so good. The Salt is a good looking knife, I think I will look into getting one.
Thanks.

PS: Like what you did with yours, STR!

[HoB]

Work hardening is really not much of a mystery really. Many metals can be workhardened. If you have ever worked with copper tubing for example: You can bend it once fairly easily, but if you try to bend it back, it is very difficult, and gets even more difficult the more you bend it. That is work hardening. What happens microscopically is you destroy glide planes in the crystal lattice. That means the following: if you have a perfect lattice, there is repetition in the lattice. Since all atoms in the lattice look exactly the same, the lattice doesn't really mind if you pull on the lattice such that the atoms glide along on of the symmetry planes, so that after you are done the atoms have moved essentially one space over. It is quite easy to do so. But if you destroy the symmetry of this perfect lattice and warp and twist the lattice so that there are never many atomes that can "glide (hence the name) one place over" and recreate the initial conditions, the lattice doesn't really like to be deformed. There are no glide planes anymore and the material get substantially harder to deform. The simple way to destroy those glide plane is by mechanically twisting, warping and generally beating the $&!+ out of the lattice. That is work hardening and occures to a degree naturally in forging of all materials. This is why wrought iron is much harder than "normal iron". It has been workhardened. In steel there is a separate mechanism that destroys the glide planes. By dissolving carbon in iron, the iron lattice gets warped twisted and stretched because the carbon atom is actually a bit too large to fit into the interstitial spaces (the "holes" between the iron atomes), of the iron lattice. They do not substitute for iron (well they do when forming FeC) but they simply try to squeeze themselves inbetween the iron atoms. And that breaks up the regularity of the lattice and therefore the material gets harder.

Obviously, there is much more to this, but this is essentially the fundamental bases of work hardening and hardening by tempering. And depending on the constituents some materials respond much more to workhardening than others. It appears that the main part of an H1 blade gets hardened during the rolling process, but since it responds so strongly to workharding, the part of the blade close to the edge seems to further harden by the vibrations (a vibration is essentially nothing but a twisting back and forth) of the grinding process. My guess is that that effects only the material on the edge itself and maybe a bit behind the edge aswell, but my guess is as good as yours. It makes sense though, since the edge bevel of a SE edge is wider and the blade thinner than on a PE and the SE edges have been test, according to Sal, a few points higher than the PE.

To draw a conclusion from this, you should be hardening the edge further, everytime you sharpen it. On the other hand you remove at the same time the harder material and expose less hardened material. So I would figure that there is a limit of how hard you can get by sharpening. On the other hand, if you decrease the edge angle (and thus increase the edge bevel), you are working the edge region with out removing the edge itself. I would assume that this generates a harder edge than a large edge angle. Just speculation of course, but it would explain why H-1 works so well: At small angles you need a harder edge to support the more accute edge and you get it automatically. Of course you can not play that game forever. At some point the edge becomes probably thin AND brittle at the same time, but in the range of the most common edge angles H-1 seems to hold up very well. I took my Pacific down to 12 deg per side and I am quite happy with it performance.

[STR]

Nice summary. I would have to compare the work hardening of the H1 to brass. I've hardened brass just from polishing it with a high speed buffer. I suspect that this can be done to H1 also. H1 seems to react more than I've ever noticed in any other steel I've worked with. I've stropped it many times and it just keeps coming back and always cuts very well. I've had nothing but good impressions from this steel. The no rust thing is what lured me to it but I really didn't expect it to hold its own with the other steels in my knives. Surprisingly it does and has earned its way into my top three picks for EDC on any given day. That says a lot when you have several hundred knives to chose from.

STR

[Texas guy]

Thanks for the great description HoB, finally get to use some of that chemistry I took three semesters of.
Even since starting this thread I have been carrying my Pacific Salt more, its ironic that I bought it for occasional use, but now carry it more than my Para. When I used it at work for the very first time on a few boxes the edge instantly dulled, but now weeks later it performs quite well. This knife surprises me everyday. My Pacific Salt is also my first frn Spydie, and I must say that I thought frn knives were "cheap plastic" before owning one, now I love the easy to clean, light, strong and comfortable frn (in bright yellow of course)
I am really starting to prefer my $47 frn Pacific Salt over my $120 Para in S30V and G10, enough said, this knife is fantastic.

[OutofGum]

I think there was a thread in BF about this... is linking to posts over there allowed?

[zenheretic]

More Chemistry! I remebered this old post that pretty much says what has already been said here (great post Hob) but in different words. The post is by Ed Schempp (designer of the Persian) regarding how/why H1 strengthens in use:

VG10 is a very good steel. It behaves somewhat like high carbon non stainless. You can restore the edge with steeling or stropping. It sharpens easily and is fine grained and will get wickedly sharp. My EDC Persian proved to be the sharpest knife at the SHOT show. I had tuned the knife on the sharpmaker, and was tested on CATRA's new sharpness machine.

S30V and H1 gain strength and hardness from Nitrogen. I think I have an understandable explanation from a lay-metallurgists point of view. At the crystaline level steel, is a cube with 8 iron corners and a Carbon atom in the middle in the interterstal space inside the iron cube. The Carbon holds onto 3 of the iron atoms of the 8 but in such a confiration that it forms the cube of steel. Introduce Nitrogen into the cube in the interterstal space by the Carbon, the Nitrogen will bond with 4 of the iron atoms and initially be the same iron atoms that the Carbon is holding. As this material is worked these Nitrogen iron bonds shift to the iron atoms that had no bond and were in the low energy state of a cube. The material basically changes from Fe4CN to Fe5CN to Fe6CN to Fe7CN. Each of these stages is progressively harder and stronger. Fe7CN is technically a ferro-nitride a ceramic. As you own and use S30V and H-1 this process is on going. This is particularly the case with H-1 and to a lesser degree S30V. I think it is pretty cool that after you buy a knife of this material that it will improve, especially for the stuff you do with it. DISCLAIMER: I'm not a metallurgist, this information is from my research and validated by my experiences. I have been experimenting the last year or so with Nitrided,Carbonized powder Damascus. This material is very interesting...Ed

[zenheretic]

I think there was a thread in BF about this... is linking to posts over there allowed?

I link stuff all the time and no one has chastised me. :)

[frank k]

I couldn’t get H1 to rust even in after an extended soak in a mixture of bleach and salt water. And a serrated H1 Atlantic Salt held its edge as well as a VG10 Rescue cutting cardboard - pretty impressive stuff.

Here’s a link:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showt ... p?t=372653

As much as I like VG10, I wouldn’t mind at all if Spyderco replaced it with H1 for the full serrated blades....if the edge holding is about the same, might as well get the added corrosion resistance.




- Frank

[999]

I have a SE Atlantic that I carry left front pocket for work and it gets more use than the Delica in the right. Time to swap them around maybe?

I have had similar experiences to the 'sharpen/strop it on anything' camp-last week I stropped it on some corrugated card as its performance seemed to have diminished. A couple of strokes each side and it was back as it was before.

It is very nice not to have to worry about preventative care for the knife either. I think the Salt series are pretty bomb-proof, and they would be what I recommend to someone considering purchasing their first or only decent knife.