Why do I like the Aqua Salt?SaltSerious wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 5:03 pmWhat about the PE Aqua Salt makes your list?
I have one and am not able to keep it as sharp as I like. Have not reprofiled but have tried your coasre edge recommendation. Your 2 cents is greatly appreciated.
- Lighter than most knives in its class, so a good hiking fixed blade
- Rust proof
- Incredibly tough. It'll chop, baton, pry off chunks of wood on stumps to access fatwood, you can hammer the butt end of the handle to drive the tip through things, etc.
- Great sharpening response. Sharpens FAST and easy.
- Pretty much perfectly sized for my hand and my uses. 4.25-5" is my favorite size range for fixed blades. I don't care for the 6-10" range much outside of the kitchen, I'm more of a 4.5" belt knife + hatchet / machete / folding saw kind of guy. Choppers suck in comparison, IMO.
As far as sharpening goes, three tips:
- I get better edge retention from H1 running it closer to the 8-10dps range vs the factory edge.
- Steels with very low carbide volume but high toughness like H1 PE benefit greatly from coarse edges in my experience. While I do keep one Aqua Salt polished for wood carving, the rest of mine I run in the 180-300 grit range, then give them a single feather light stroke on the fine sharp maker rods at 15dps to refine the edge a bit without removing the micro serrations.
- With any composite sheath you want to draw and re-sheath the knife with a bit of pressure being applied towards the spine so you don't drag the edge along the glass fibers embedded in the plastic. You'll see a lot of complaints regarding boltaron soyderco sheaths, secure-ex cold steel sheaths etc. dulling knife edges. Apparently a lot of people haven't figured out if you don't drag the cutting edge on the sheath, it can't dull your blade
Here's a post where I show a few different Aqua Salt edges.
viewtopic.php?p=1734536#p1734536
The satin finished one I've been abusing since the 2000's. No issues with edge stability at all and I've been intentionally rough with it. For perspective the top aqua salt was dropped down to 15 dps and the bevel looks tiny compared to the satin.
https://www.harborfreight.com/4-sided-d ... 92867.html - I typically finish my H1 knives on the 200 or 300 grit edge of this stone and I get excellent edge retention with that coarse of an apex + the thin bevel. My H1 knives sharpened this way will out cut S30V as sharpened by the Spyderco factory and it isn't even a close comparison (of course S30V will outcut H1 in most applications given the same edge).
Hope some of this helps you to get better performance out of yours.