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Noctis3880 said:
Yes, but I don't think a lot of production knives ever push steels anywhere close to the limit.

Even ZDP-189 with a max attainable hardness of Rc 67 is pushed down to Rc 65 in the Spyderco knives.

What I'd like to see is M390 in more mid-tech(semi-production "buy it now") "custom" knives. Grinding shouldn't be too difficult given the 4% vanadium content.

What's interesting is that Benchmade, with a reputation for running steels softer than any other company, still didn't get M390 below Rc 60. Which to me says something about the steel:thumbup:.


Also something I haven't seen a lot of is M390 with titanium. The Benchmade 730-101 has it, but I couldn't justify the price for the knife unless the blade was pushed to Rc 61-62. The BM 755 has it as well, but the ergonomics are far from functional to me. It's a premium blade steel, it should be housed in a premium package.

Though I do have the Torrent in pre-order with aluminum and carbon fiber, which I suppose is premium enough for me. And it's at quite an affordable price too for a gold class.
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I think we have to remember the production companies have to make a choice between chipping and rolling. They also know that the knives will go out to a lot of different types of people and some do stupid things with their knives. So most tend to be on the conservative side because of these things. The last thing any company needs is for a bunch of customers to going on the forums crying about chipped or broken blades bashing the company. All it would take is a few then others would start doing the same things to prove that it wasn't the company and then they would get the same results, broken or chipped blades. It would be a nightmare for the Customer Service departments and tech people.

Spyderco is usually on the cutting edge when it comes to performance because they push it by getting the steels right up there close to max hardness. But then Sal Glesser is a steel junky so we can expect top performance with all the testing they do to find the perfect range of hardness and toughness. :thumbup:

I doubt anyone with 2 brain cells would ever release a standard production knife in ZDP-189 at 67 HRC. I would guess they would be getting around half of them back with chipped or broken blades. Even 65 HRC is pushing it, but it's not too bad at that hardness.

S30V at 60 HRC is great as Spyderco has their HT recipe down.

S90V at 60 HRC is incredible and about the max for that steel and Spyderco's Heat Treater really knows what they are doing with S90V.

Thomas at Kershaw is practical when it comes to steels, but still gets good performace out of them.
 
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Noctis3880 said:
Doubtful. I feel Thomas draws a line between "premium" and "practical", and M390 would be overkill for a hard use knife(of which most Hinderer designs seem to be). Kind of like S90V in an XM-18 with a Spanto grind. The steel doesn't complement the ergos.
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Kershaw has used M390 before; it's certainly a possibility. I don't see how M390 wouldn't suit a hard use knife; toughness in a steel would be very desirable for that application.
 
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