420J2 in a kitchen knife?

G

GarageBoy

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May 23, 2003
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How would 420J2 perform in a kitchen knife? I've been meaning to get a chef's knife around $20 and Kitchen Aid knives came up at Target for that price. Thanks
 
It won't be very hard or wear resistant, so the edge retention will be poor. Toughness, corrosion resistance, and ease of sharpening will all be very high.
 
We might crap on 420J (and rightfully so) for EDC pocketknife use, but 420J really isn't too bad for kitchen use, and will be much better than cheaper knives. If all the knives in my kitchen were 420J, it'd be a serious improvement. You can do better of course, but not for $20.
 
my tiny 420J2 Buck Metro keyring knife was the only knife other than my Spyderco Pacific Salt to survive my "salt spray corrosion test" torture test unaffected

420J2 may suck for edge retention and durability, but it's corrosion resistance is almost as good as H-1 steel....
 
Usually cheap kitchen knives are made out of "mystery metal" or "surgical stainless", but Rada Knives freely declares that it is made out of T420 alloy. When I looked that up it has somewhere between .15 and .4% carbon so it qualifies as 420-J2 (more or less). When I looked at a steel company's website (I forget which one) it seemed like they thought that .38% carbon was their nominal concentration. They expected T420 to be hardened up to the 56 RC range.

http://www.radaknives.com/KnifeConstruction.asp

I got some Rada paring knives at a garage sale. I was surprised by how hard the blades were. I would easily believe that they were in the 55-56 RC range. The other thing that was funny was how the alloy felt when I sharpened it. I'm used to soft alloys feeling kind of smooth when sharpened. It's hard to explain, but I guess that it is a little like the feel of sanding wood. You don't really feel like you are cutting anything, you are just rubbing and feeling drag. With this hard T420 I felt more like I was cutting away metal. It reminded me a bit of the feeling of filing on brass.

The above is pretty subjective. In contrast I happened to run an experiment back about 5 years ago. A guy on the forum complained that he was having trouble sharpening a really dull Rada knife with his Sharpmaker. Normally I don't tackle a really dull knife with a ceramic rod sharpener so I thought I'd try it. I took a Rada and dulled it by sawing the edge into a medium grit aluminum oxide hone. I got it good and dull. Then I went back and sharpened it using only my Idahone ceramic V-rod sharpener. It took something like 40 minutes to get the edge back that way.

So some 420 can actually put up a fight and likely hold an edge for a while. Here is a source for a cheap Rada chef's knife:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4451076544

The cast aluminum handle means that these actually survive a long time around dish water and dishwashers.

PS. These are actually made in America.
 
Thanks! I prefer a synthetic handle for kitchen knives though. What else is availible for that price? (dexter russels?) Has to be SS, my mom is pretty abusive
 
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