Thursday, February 26, 2009

Gossman Personal Survival Necker (PSN) Passaround Knife Review

Gossman PSN Review

I received Scott Gossman’s PSN knife (a new model to his line) to check out and review. Here are my initial thoughts and pictures.

The blade steel is CPM 154 and the scales are green canvas Micarta. It is a convex ground blade with a convex micro bevel. It measured 4.65 oz and the sheath was around 2 oz., 6 1/2" overall, 2 1/2" spearpoint blade, 1/8" thick by 1" wide

It came with a kydex necker style sheath which could be on your neck or in a pocket without any trouble.

I noticed a couple of small cosmetic issues. The kydex sheath seemed to be scratching the Micarta a bit on the first half inch of the handle. There were some small perpendicular scratches on the bottom of the choil.

I liked the sheath instantly but the inside edges could be rounded a bit more to keep from scratching the Micarta.

Carving

The past couple of days I have been sick and in the house so I did not get out as early as I had expected. I did keep using the knife! Food prep, opening the mail, and as sundry EDC type of cutting chores all of which I forgot to capture with my camera.

What I did manage to capture was the little carving I did in the basement. Here is my first attempt at a little figurine. I think it turned out funny but okay for a first attempt.

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Fire

I managed to get out in the backyard today to give fire starting a try. I did some light baton work with the little knife to make some feather/fuzz sticks. The first couple of sticks I was figuring out how to make finer ribbons. By this time, I was getting the hang of this knife which worked really well in spite of me.

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Now I have this little pile of wood on top of my tinder. I had some left over milkweed pods and a cattail as my tinder. I’m on top of a wet stump so I elevated the tinder with some small sticks which also helps air get to the fire.

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I tried to catch the spark that was thrown by the spine of the Gossman PSN from my Ferro but I can’t get the timing right with the timer on my camera. The tinder caught on the second spark! The edges of the spine are not as sharp as I would prefer for a dedicated bushcraft, but for the survival necker I think it worked really well.

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Here’s a shot of the blade after sparking the ferro rod.

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Here is a finer fuzz stick that I made after I had the fire going.

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Wrap up

Well after the fire was out I came back inside to do the final glamour pix. Here is one of the spine of the Gossman PSN showing where the two sparks had happened on the ferro.

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They came off with a little time on a green rouge charged strop. The blade wiped clean very effortlessly. I enjoyed the edge holding and overall performance of the Stainless steel. I stropped the edge while I had the strop out by habit. It really didn’t need it.

I really enjoyed getting to have this little knife along with me for the past few days. I tried the first night wearing it as a necker, but it put more strain on my neck than I could handle (I get head aches pretty easily), so I wrapped the cord up and made it a pocket carry sheath.

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The handle was very comfortable and filled even my gimpy hand well. It was long enough that I had all my fingers on it at the same time which is nice. My Krein PSK is not setup that way. My only suggestion to Mr. Gossman is to take the edge off of the kydex where the knife slides into the sheath and contacts the handle scales. Here are two pix you may be able to see the result of the kydex scuffing the Micarta ®

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This is a knife that I would recommend. It is a size knife that you can tell I prefer and it is very well made. For those of you who know me, I typically buy more than one of models that I like and this would not be an exception to my habit. I would be happy to own one in CPM 154 and one in carbon steel.

Again, my sincere thanks to Mr. Gossman for a fine product and the chance to check it out and review it. Thanks to all who have taken time to read my review.

Best wishes to all!

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About Me

Happily married to Jenn since 2001, currently driving a 1994 Jeep Cherokee Sport.