Microtech Socom Elite M390 edge retention testing, is their heat treat still just average?

all right guys what are we talking about this time it's a microtech socom elite i did show this one so everybody could see what it was on the military 204p video this one is in m390 was made in may of 2018 and i'll go ahead and point it out because you can see it if you look back here there is actually a dip in the grind kind of like the one lightweight pair of three that i did and the bevel actually gets a good bit skinnier right in this portion where i'm running my thumb over and i don't know if you'll be able to see it but the tip where it's sharpened is perfectly centered down the down the split in the scales and i did measure up here the blade is perfectly centered there is some extra material left on this side of the grind up by the tip not a big deal just figured somebody sees it may as well go ahead and point it out now this was also sent to me by josh just like in the 204p video i will put his information down below in the description i have tested quite a bit of m390 i it's been a while since i've counted i want to say somewhere in the over 60 to maybe 70 different examples of m390 itself i have tested some you guys haven't seen yet so there will be more that are currently not on the spreadsheet and i still have some of my own that i just have not been able to get to yet was curious about this one when josh said he would send it to me because i did test an ultra tech that ended up being 60 for a hardness and it did a little over 200 feet total i mean a little over 200 205 210 maybe so go ahead and watch the cutting for this believe it's about a minute and 15 minute and a half if you want to speed through it do that now and we'll come back and talk about this [Music] all right now that we saw the cutting and guillais decided he's going to invade this video a little bit too so there he is and we're going to go ahead now and talk about how this microtech m390 dead come on buddy i need you to get out of the way come on all right so how this microtech i'm 390 dead josh did tell me that he had sharpened this once and just to be on the safe side i did go ahead and put three edges on it i tested on what i knew to be the fourth edge so on that edge that would be my first test 147 feet fine edge another 94 feet working edge for a total of 241 feet it's a little bit more than i was honestly expecting i don't know what the hardness is on this one yet it has not been tested but i do know that some other socoms have been tested in m390 and one was very soft so i went ahead and sharpened it same way 15 degrees per side 1500 grit 631 micron five passes per side came up pretty good it deburred okay not as good as i would have liked to see but it was okay the edge comes up nice not as nice as the 204p on the military but it still comes up pretty good the second test 143 feet fine edge another 90 feet working edge for a total of 234 feet don't really know what to say about it guys it um i guess just for what you pay for these i would have expected the heat treat to be a little bit better i knew that some had tested soft in the past i know that some got tested after i did that actually i think all the ones that got tested were after the ultratech that i sent because that was over a year ago now but i'm going to go ahead and guess that this one's probably going to be around 60 also it just doesn't quite it may maybe it'll be different i don't know i just know that no matter what the hardness on this is compared to josh's military in 204p this just just a hair underdone compared to that but it is a nice knife i do like the socom i haven't owned one i've handled plenty i borrowed a couple i like the knife overall i just would like to see a different steel used in this model they use i believe it's a hundred and eighty thousands blade stock they do grind it pretty good as far as geometry it does thicken up rather quick but it starts out pretty good but for what this knife is based for external thumb studs aluminum construction i mean it's it's rock solid in every direction i'd love to see them go towards something else that would have the same performance as this but be better suited to the knife crew wear or z-ware would be a great choice at 62 hrc crew wear has a better fine edge than this did and about eight to ten percent better working edge than this does i know that microtech uses 3v they could have gotten the edge retention would have been a little bit less but i think that 3v would be better suited for this particular style knife 4v would have also been a great choice 4v you're getting plenty of strength and you're getting way better edge retention than this at 64 to 65. they they could have run the 4v soft and and got better edge retention than this they could have run it around and a half 63. what i'm getting at is i haven't seen too many people talk about that in the past and i just don't think that the m390 20 cv 204p that these come in is the right steel for the intended purpose behind this particular design and like i've talked about before you guys can go watch bj's video where he did the 59 and a half hrc m390 versus the 62 hrcm 390 for impact toughness and he hammered it through some different things to see how the edge held up and i know it seems counterproductive but you always hear about a softer steel being tougher and as a few people say that's absolutely not the case you can see that on dj's video the harder m390 took a lot less damage than the softer one did i don't know how this one would fare it's not my knife i'm not going to do that to it but if i do run into one of these it's mine at some point i will go ahead and do that against one of my harder m390s but all in all it's a good knife i don't think the performance is there for what it costs but i do like it and i maybe want to trickle through here one day i don't know but that's all i have any questions comments anything you want to talk about put them down below i don't always get to respond to every single one but i do see them all sometimes life just gets in the way and i don't get back to them so that's all i have as always i appreciate your time and thanks for watching

Channel: Outpost 76

Views: 963

Rating: 4.9080458 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: SiU9fGURc-4

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020