440C steel--- i think its about time

So then, if the 440 family of steels are a great steel, why is it that premium knife makers use other high alloy formulation steels in their high dollar products?
 
VorpelSword said:
So then, if the 440 family of steels are a great steel, why is it that premium knife makers use other high alloy formulation steels in their high dollar products?
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You answered your own question.

440 is not a premium steel, and would not be found in "high dollar" knives made by "premium" knife makers.
 
Hashishiin said:
Also, do you know Spyderco has a series of knives much cheaper than the Waterway, using LC200N, the Salt series? Mora is great, but these are too, absolutely rustproof, serrated or plain edge, hawkbill, traditional shapes, whatever.
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Yes I know but Waterway is the only LC200N Spyderco knife fulfilling the criteria to be my diving (spearfishing) knife. A bare minimum spearfishing knife should be a fixed blade, should have a narrow point for deep and easy penetration to a fish skull, a full size handle, plastic/kydex sheath and should not make a man cry if it get lost. Mora SS companion covers most of these. A perfect spearfishing knife for me would be made of LC200N with a blade shape similar to waterway in which penetrates fish skull easily and offers utility (i.e. fish cleaning/filleting) possibilities. Plain main edge and serrated cutting edge on the spine and blade and handle length inch shorter than waterway with more compact sheath. But Mora SS companion would do :) I just need a put secondary bevel on it as the zero scandi does not long. It is too fragile.
 
VorpelSword said:
So then, if the 440 family of steels are a great steel, why is it that premium knife makers use other high alloy formulation steels in their high dollar products?
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440 steel is fine, but no premium. The initial post asked to stop using 440C over 154CM, which is another steel of the same grade, a side grade, which doesn't make thing any better.
 
SS vs Carbon debate.

My understanding is (generally speaking) the chromium carbides in SS knives are tend to be larger than most other carbides which makes SS knives (having excessive amount of chromium carbides) brittle. But now we have SS knives with -nitrogen carbides (e.g. LC200N and Vanax) and vanadium carbides (e.g. MagnaCut). These carbides do not tend to be as large as chromium carbides making the toughness/ wear edge retention balance of these SS knives more or less similar to their Carbon knives equivalents. But yes, they are very expensive as a raw material and costly to heat treat compared to carbon knives.
 
VorpelSword said:
What stainless steel blade stock does Rsandall-Made use for their forged blades?
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Officially 440b, but someone asked Randall about this a few years ago, and the spec sheet on their 440b falls close to 440c. Randall, Hibben, and some of the older makers went with 440b and 440c because it was one of the easier hand forgeable stainlesses. Even today when people start talking about hand forging stainless, the 440 class steels are still recommended.
 
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murat1983 said:
SS vs Carbon debate.

My understanding is (generally speaking) the chromium carbides in SS knives are tend to be larger than most other carbides which makes SS knives (having excessive amount of chromium carbides) brittle. But now we have SS knives with -nitrogen carbides (e.g. LC200N and Vanax) and vanadium carbides (e.g. MagnaCut). These carbides do not tend to be as large as chromium carbides making the toughness/ wear edge retention balance of these SS knives more or less similar to their Carbon knives equivalents. But yes, they are very expensive as a raw material and costly to heat treat compared to carbon knives.
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I believe that you get it wrong a bit here. Nitrogen does helps in refinement, but Vanex and LC200N has very low amount of carbon, which already help to get finer carbides. The low amount of carbide also reflex on their lower wear resistance on Catra test. MagnaCut "secret ingredient", stated in Larrin's video, is more about Nitrogen than Vanadium.

High Vanadium is not that much different from Chromium when you reach similar carbine carbide volume. The better example would be Crucibles steels with V suffix (S60V, S90V, S30V, S110V, 15V). Not all of them are stainless, they have very high vanadium. For some of them, without the PM tech, they are unachievable because of huge carbide clumps. The "carbon vanadium" only have similar toughness to chromium stainless. As someone mentioned earlier, forging a PM steel will likely cancel out all of the PM benefit.
 
Sorry to keep beating on this, but I did find a knife nerds source here that also lists 440C and 1095 as having identical toughness. But 440C also has much higher edge retention, plus stainlessness. So again, it’s hard for me to see why I would choose carbon steel between these two. 440C is actually also cheaper, even if it is due to mass production. I understand I’m probably not going to get a handcrafted 440C blade for the same price I can get a handcrafted 1095 blade for, of course.

knifesteelnerds.com

Knife Steels Rated by a Metallurgist - Toughness, Edge Retention, and Corrosion Resistance - Knife Steel Nerds

Steel Metallurgist Larrin Thomas uses tests of knife steels to rate the steels and explains the factors that control performance.
knifesteelnerds.com knifesteelnerds.com

Edit: “Cheaper” probably isn’t right. Maybe “equal.”

Edit again: Poor reading skills on my part. 440C = 3.5. 1095 = 4.5. 4.5 is higher than 3.5. But 3.5 still doesn’t seem bad given much higher edge retention and stainlessness. Anyway, not here to beat up on 1095 or claim 440C is the best thing ever, just trying to understand.
 
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VorpelSword said:
So then, if the 440 family of steels are a great steel, why is it that premium knife makers use other high alloy formulation steels in their high dollar products?
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randall uses 440b for stainless cause it can be forged...and they do forged blade making. not all knife makers do forging.......a lot of stainless its stock removal setups..

randall could switch stainless but then would have to do stock removal methods and they don't do knives that way.
 
jbmonkey said:
randall uses 440b for stainless cause it can be forged...and they do forged blade making. not all knife makers do forging.......a lot of stainless its stock removal setups..

randall could switch stainless but then would have to do stock removal methods and they don't do knives that way.
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I really didn’t know what they used just that they make very good knives.
 
And now for a naive or noobee level question"

what makes other steels unsuitable for forging?

What makes such steels desirable for use by non-forging knife makers over the 440 family of steels?
 
VorpelSword said:
And now for a naive or noobee level question"

what makes other steels unsuitable for forging?

What makes such steels desirable for use by non-forging knife makers over the 440 family of steels?
Click to expand...
I'm no blacksmith or knifemaker....but I think it's not that it can't be done per say....... just different steels are harder to do than others....so cost and time issue. maybe also end results vs. effort applied. here's an article on forging and explains it in detail........

knifesteelnerds.com

Which Steels are Easiest (and Most Difficult) to Forge? - Knife Steel Nerds

Which steels are the easiest to forge? What factors control forgeability of knife steels? What temperature should high alloy steels be forged from?
knifesteelnerds.com knifesteelnerds.com
 
VorpelSword said:
Ok, now a naive or noobee level question:

What makes other steels unsuasible for forging?
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My understanding is that stainless has a much narrower temp range that it can be forged well at. If it's above or below that range, you get problems with cracking, etc.... Also it doesn't move/forge as fast as carbon steels do, so there's the question of time investment. Something like a power hammer helps speed things up. Forged stainless that you see from factories is 99.9% of the time drop forged, so it eliminates a lot of work, but isn't economical for most makers and many factories.
 
I see people here have great things to observe about 440c, I when only speaking of my own findings is that I dull the steel relatively quickly after few use applications and never can get it back up to a serviceable edge--- I also read its hard-er to sharpen
Sandvik 12C27 and 14C28N I have excellent time with
 
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