OK,Got er done.
The SOD is stripped,satin finished & mirror convex edged.The Hook is factory.Both edges were touched up before the chopping with a ceramic rod & sliced paper.
Found a good seasoned log on the verge of being punky but was solid.


First the Hook,114 whacks.


Then the SOD,110 whacks



And just for S&G my old $5.00 machete with a filed edge,104 whacks.





A little baton work.Oddly enough the Regs only took a couple of whacks to split the same straight grained peices of wood as used for the SOD & HOOK,but the SOD & Hook took several more hits to split them.






So,the Sod has a convex edge & bounced out quite a bit & the Hook has a factory edge & bit deep & had to be pulled out a few times.
I guess the convex edge helped push the wood away from the blade & not hold it in.
So I suppose if the Hook had a convex edge it would have gone through with fewer whacks.
All in all I'd say if you have a Yard Guard you don't gain much if anything by switching to a SOD.
And the Hooks/Guards look better while doin' the job at hand.


Oh & BTW I managed to whack my hand with the hook while messing around after the work was done.It's a nice clean cut to the bone on the knuckle.Took a vicadin so all is good with no more pain for now.
At least I will have a good pic for the scars thread.

Nice review. Sorry you damaged yourself. Not sure if its any better or worse that the fighter of the group is the one that zinged you. Is it your impression that if both had the same finish and convexed edge they would have been even closer together in performance?

I have often wondered a bit at convex edges. There seems to be quite a large proportion of people on the boards who say it is the end all be all of edge treatment. Convex edges would be ultimately stronger and can be very sharp. I just wonder if V-grind can be made sharper overall because it has less blade material behind the very edge (not counting the transition to the secondary grind and all that).