An ode to the death of H1

[Traditional.Sharpening]

the hollow grind on the h1 salts is one of the best things about them for me. that robust, maintenance-free blade is what makes them scream to be used and not babied.

Why do you feel the hollow grind makes them the best?

The hollow grind on them is one of my favourite facets of that model - cuts very well but still has plenty of material higher up the blade for robustness. The hollow grind makes rattling out feather sticks effortless too, which is something I do a lot for work.

Why do you feel this would cut better than a flat grind bevel of the same height that still leaves full thickness steel for strength? Do you feel that the thickness behind the edge is thinner because it's hollow?

[ladybug93]

ffg gets thinner toward the tip, making it less robust. the hollow grind maintains the full thickness almost all the way to the tip and also keeps thicker steel below the spine. it makes for a stronger knife. of course the pivot still keeps it from being really robust and capable of seriously hard use, but it's still more robust than a ffg. also, because of the concavity of hg blades, you can end up with a knife that's even thinner behind the edge than a ffg knife. the yojimbo is thinner behind the edge than the native, even though it's a much thicker knife. but like i said before, each of those will excel in different tasks.

[James Y]

Although I generally prefer FFG for most of the stuff i do, I've found there are certain tasks that a saber hollow grind works better at. For me, it's because due to its primary grind, the SHG wedges certain materials apart as they're being cut better than a FFG blade does.

I'm not sure if my description was worded clearly or not .

Jim

[JoviAl]

the hollow grind on the h1 salts is one of the best things about them for me. that robust, maintenance-free blade is what makes them scream to be used and not babied.

Why do you feel the hollow grind makes them the best?

The hollow grind on them is one of my favourite facets of that model - cuts very well but still has plenty of material higher up the blade for robustness. The hollow grind makes rattling out feather sticks effortless too, which is something I do a lot for work.

Why do you feel this would cut better than a flat grind bevel of the same height that still leaves full thickness steel for strength? Do you feel that the thickness behind the edge is thinner because it's hollow?

Experience at work (I run a Forest School) where I’m using my knives almost constantly all day. I’ve tried all of the different grind permutations I can get my hands on, from convex to HHG and even two kitchen knives with extremely thin BTH geometry - the convex plain edge is the best overall performer in wood, closely followed by a HHG, with chisel and FFG in a distant third place. Bear in mind I’m almost solely cutting either green wood/seasoned wood or pruning back fast growing plants like torch ginger.

YMMV, but for me HHG is an excellent grind on something like a Yojumbo and achieves my tasks an order of magnitude more effectively than FFG. I do use FFG knives, but I’ll usually convex them unless they’re really thin geometry.

[SaltyCaribbeanDfly]

the hollow grind on the h1 salts is one of the best things about them for me. that robust, maintenance-free blade is what makes them scream to be used and not babied.

I wholeheartedly agree! I love a hollow grind anyway, but stick an SE edge on one in a tough steel (ok, alloy ) and all of a sudden you end up with a dragonfly that thinks it’s a Husqvarna 372XP.

372xp…

[JoviAl]

the hollow grind on the h1 salts is one of the best things about them for me. that robust, maintenance-free blade is what makes them scream to be used and not babied.

I wholeheartedly agree! I love a hollow grind anyway, but stick an SE edge on one in a tough steel (ok, alloy ) and all of a sudden you end up with a dragonfly that thinks it’s a Husqvarna 372XP.

372xp…

It is one of my favourite saws to run ported, but my least favourite to take to bits and port Great saw!

[prndltech]

Need a h2 dragonfly SE to compare! It’s my most used knife and definitely my most used in the salt lineup at the moment. I have a feeling I wouldn’t notice a difference in steels though. I love being able to drop it in my pocket or shirt pocket in the shop at work. Sometimes I clip it to a shirt pocket. It’s a great knife for mechanics!

[JoviAl]

Need a h2 dragonfly SE to compare! It’s my most used knife and definitely my most used in the salt lineup at the moment. I have a feeling I wouldn’t notice a difference in steels though. I love being able to drop it in my pocket or shirt pocket in the shop at work. Sometimes I clip it to a shirt pocket. It’s a great knife for mechanics!

Are they available in the wild yet? I’m planning on buying a couple as gifts for people so may as well get H2 if it’s around.

[elena86]

Why do you feel the hollow grind makes them the best?

The hollow grind on them is one of my favourite facets of that model - cuts very well but still has plenty of material higher up the blade for robustness. The hollow grind makes rattling out feather sticks effortless too, which is something I do a lot for work.

Why do you feel this would cut better than a flat grind bevel of the same height that still leaves full thickness steel for strength? Do you feel that the thickness behind the edge is thinner because it's hollow?

Experience at work (I run a Forest School) where I’m using my knives almost constantly all day. I’ve tried all of the different grind permutations I can get my hands on, from convex to HHG and even two kitchen knives with extremely thin BTH geometry - the convex plain edge is the best overall performer in wood, closely followed by a HHG, with chisel and FFG in a distant third place. Bear in mind I’m almost solely cutting either green wood/seasoned wood or pruning back fast growing plants like torch ginger.

YMMV, but for me HHG is an excellent grind on something like a Yojumbo and achieves my tasks an order of magnitude more effectively than FFG. I do use FFG knives, but I’ll usually convex them unless they’re really thin geometry.

Totally agree. Convex plain edges ground very thin and HHG are the best performers. My Opinels are the champions when it comes to slicing, feathering and carving. I only wish that spyderco releases more convex ground and HHG blades. Few people realize that Yojimbo is an awesome performer when it comes to mundane cutting chores just because is advertised as an MBC. That being said my ultimate blade would be a HHG in spyderedge all packed in a very tough steel. That’s why the SE H1 Dfly2 and the SE H1 Ark are so appreciated by the “connaisseurs”.

[Farmer]

ffg gets thinner toward the tip, making it less robust. the hollow grind maintains the full thickness almost all the way to the tip and also keeps thicker steel below the spine. it makes for a stronger knife. of course the pivot still keeps it from being really robust and capable of seriously hard use, but it's still more robust than a ffg. also, because of the concavity of hg blades, you can end up with a knife that's even thinner behind the edge than a ffg knife. the yojimbo is thinner behind the edge than the native, even though it's a much thicker knife. but like i said before, each of those will excel in different tasks.

This is a great summary of why I like the grind on the Salt 1 and 2 for the sort of things I find myself using them for. Typically that's cutting materials that don't have much depth (eg paracord up to 1/2" rope) where the shoulders of the grind don't really touch or interact with the material. On deeper materials, such as preparing food or carving wood, I'd much rather a thin FFG. Your point about the more robust tip is also spot on and it's definitely a bonus on knives that might have more sideways leverage applied to them than is ideal.

[prndltech]

Need a h2 dragonfly SE to compare! It’s my most used knife and definitely my most used in the salt lineup at the moment. I have a feeling I wouldn’t notice a difference in steels though. I love being able to drop it in my pocket or shirt pocket in the shop at work. Sometimes I clip it to a shirt pocket. It’s a great knife for mechanics!

Are they available in the wild yet? I’m planning on buying a couple as gifts for people so may as well get H2 if it’s around.

I have no clue

[HolySteel]

I’ve said it many times, but for me the PAC SALT is the absolute best, no nonsense knife that Spyderco makes. I love it and have several.

The Pacific Salt 2 (PE) in LC200N was my first Spyderco (not including 2 Byrds).

It was a significant purchase for me that I spent days agonizing over which knife I'd buy first. I was making the purchase as if I'd only ever get to pick up one decent knife in my life, so I wanted to make it count. Flirted with getting an Endela for a fair bit, watching reviews and videos. Then spent way too much time debating the Siren, like a lot. Even when I finally ordered the Pac Salt I was on the fence of whether I should have gone Siren or not. Anyways I love my green handled Pacific 2, and I stand by the decision that if I could only have one great knife, I think it'd be a perfect candidate for it.

Epilogue: next week I'll be getting an Endela and a Siren. Back on Thanksgiving 2022 BladeHQ had a combo deal on the pair of them, and well Santa is finally stopping by next week :)

I look forward to hearing your opinion of the Siren. I just received mine in the mail today, and I've never been more excited about a new Spyderco. It's basically a smaller Waterway, in folding form - as in, Spyderco has created a folder that looks, feels, and probably has close to the strength of, it's fixed blade counterpart. Really a great achievement. Of course, the first thing I did was to begin flipping it, which meant that I immediately bit my index finger - fortunately I had the knife angle such that it didn't draw blood. To me that was a surprising design flaw, but I'll happily deal with it, as I found no other issues.

After playing with it a while I did some googling to see if others had found the same issue with cutting their index finger. I was really surprised at some of the negatives in various reviews. For the most part, the things that others did not like about it, were the same things I loved. But I also wondered about complaints of it being dull out of the box, unfinished hole and blade top, and other things - mine had no such issues, so maybe some of the initial knives that went out were not as great as mine.

Anyway, I've rambled - enjoy your knives. I need to go find something worthy of my Siren's first cut.

[Senfkarte]

You’re right. H1 is such an awesome alloy( I don’t think it qualifies as a steel).

......

I have to ask, why do you think, it's not a steel?

As far, as I know a steel is a material, that is mainly iron, has a carbon content under 2% and has other elements in the mix, but still is mainly iron.
The 2% carbon is not a hard limit but in general that is the limit.

H1 and H2 both fit this "definition" by being mainly iron and have a carbon content of 0.15% or 0.09%.

Serious question, I'm interested in this topic.

[LeDe]

You’re right. H1 is such an awesome alloy( I don’t think it qualifies as a steel).

......

H1 and H2 both fit this "definition" by being mainly iron and have a carbon content of 0.15% or 0.09%.

Serious question, I'm interested in this topic.

Isn't it a big difference? I thought they were pretty much the same, just manufactured in different places.

Total newbie here.

[Senfkarte]

Isn't it a big difference? I thought they were pretty much the same, just manufactured in different places.

Total newbie here.

That are the numbers Spyderco lists for these two steels.

If the difference is big or not is not something I can say. I don't know, how big the variance for the elements in the steel is. Even if the list states, that the steel has 0.15 % carbon, I am pretty sure most of the steel has a carbon content around 0.15 %. So within the deviation, the difference in this case might be negligible.....or maybe not, I am not qualified to say for sure.

[LeDe]

Ok thanks. Not that I'd make the difference in use or sharpening. Just curious as I am a Salt only guy for now.

[sal]

Hi HolySteel,

Welcome to our forum.

sal

[HolySteel]

Hi HolySteel,

Welcome to our forum.

sal

Thanks Sal. As a lurker I've enjoyed reading the Spyderco info you've provided. I look forward to many more years of it.

[SchoonerBum]

My H2 Atlantic Salt is every bit as good as my H1 version. The only difference I've seen so far is the name of the steel stamped on the blade. It sounds like some folks on the forum got a little skittish after reading Larrin's article about H2, but as I read it he was just asking some reasonable scientific questions, not saying that H2 would be a bad steel.

that's good to hear. i am one of the skeptical ones as a lover of h1. it's what brought me back to spyderco as well. my pac salt is my most carried pocket knife, even though the manix is my favorite model.

I've been quite impressed with Spyderco's integrity - they took the time to get Magnacut really dialed in before putting it out when they could have probably made a lot of money pumping out less than perfect blades much sooner. I can't imagine that a company willing to do that would put out H2 without being equally thorough about testing it. It will be interesting to see if anyone finds any noticeable differences between H1 and H2 - in my experience so far I can't tell them apart in use.

do we really know that's the reason? are we to assume all the other companies that have been pumping magnacut out don't care about proper heat treatment or their customers? i have a hard time believing that and it seems it would be really bad for everyone involved to have magnacut make its debut in a bunch of garbage knives that only hurt the steel's reputation. is this really an integrity move, or is spyderco just bogged down with production of other knives and building a bigger facility to the point that they are much slower to the market with magnacut? (that's not to say they don't have integrity... i'm just questioning if that's really the motive here.) and there was lots of reason to be skeptical of h2. it was announced with very little real information. whoever wrote that marketing was perhaps trying too hard to be vague and didn't instill much hope of what we should expect with the new steel. with the fan base h1 has, it would've been nice to see some testing by users on the forum to compare the two leading up to the switch, but instead, the whole thing looked like spyderco was caught off guard by the h1 discontinuation almost as much as we were.

Ooof. I phrased that poorly. I hadn't meant to imply that anyone was putting out less than good Magnacut, just that I was impressed that Spyderco hadn't rushed their own process. (I have a Magnacut fixie from Bradford and it's also quite good.)

You could very well be right about Spyderco being caught flat-footed by the H1 discontinuation, but if that's the case I'm pretty impressed that they were able to pivot to H2 so quickly. I agree with you that extensive testing (by someone smarter than me) is definitely in order, but my casual experience so far with H2 feels really promising.

[40mm]

H1 is awesome. This knife is all I have/use.