Originally Posted by
spyderco monkey
Well the two biggest factors are:
-Will this knife be used around Water?
-Does the user know how to sharpen knives? And if so, how do they sharpen?
If the knife is being used around / under water, then I like serrations. There's something about 'wet' material, especially things like wet rope, that can make Plain Edge(PE) kind of 'slide off' the material as opposed to cutting it. SE, due to the little spikes, tends to grab into even whet materials and help initiate the cutting process, preventing the blade from sliding off wet materials. Obviously PE will cut wet materials, but its a faster and more reliable process with the SE.
When I got my cousin a knife for his entrance into a diving based military, I made sure it was a SE Pacific Salt for that reason.
The other factor is, does this user know how to sharpen knives? If the answer is No, then SE all the way. A SE knife will be able to still cut through materials quickly and aggressively for years in between sharpenings. I got my friend a SE Native when he went off for a 1 year trip to India for that reason. When I caught up to him a few years later, he was still carrying the knife. It was 'dull' by my knife OCD standards, but for him, it was still easily cutting through boxes / cord/ food, and he still though it was quite 'sharp.'
Likewise, I've bumped into other friends and acquanitences carrying PE knives that were just straight up Dull AF- like as dull as a typical $1 kitchen knife. They don't know how to sharpen, but since the knife can still open a amazon box, its still 'sharp'...they would have been much better off with a SE knife.
The last wildcard is the H1 steel used in the ARK. H1 steel is 'work hardening,' which means that the process of grinding the knife actually hardens the edge. The result is that PE H1 knives have a RC hardness of ~57, while the extra work hardening of grinding the Serrations bumps the SE H1 hardness to RC 63-64. So the SE H1 will hold its edge much longer between sharpenings.
Now for the flipside, my personal use.
I don't work around/under water. And I know how to sharpen knives to 'hair popping' levels of sharpness, and I make sure to touch up my knife every few months so they are always sharp.
For me, its PE all day everyday. On dry land, a properly sharpened PE blade with good blade geometry (full flat ground with thin edge) will outperform SE. The PE knife glides more easily through thick cardboard, and slices through thinner cardboard and plastic without tearing or snagging.
More importantly, if you know how to sharpen, a PE blade is much, much easier to sharpen and maintain. 2 minutes on a Lansky V sharpener will return a PE blade to hair shaving sharpness. With SE, you need a Spyderco sharpmaker, and even then the SE will never really quite get back to 'factory fresh' sharpness. For that reason I typically will just use a SE blade for ~ a year then send it back to Spyderco to have it resharpened by the factory for $5.