<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Steve Harvey:
CPM420V, BDS, and Stellite are a tie. They all cut for precisely one half hour before the tester gets bored and goes into the house for a beer. </font>
Amazing. I have knives in these three materials as well, and my results to date have been exactly the same.
One little thing I learned, from my hopelessly flawed attempts at definitive testing, was that edge geometry has more to do with cutting efficiency--which certainly affects edge retention--than the blade material, and heat treat/hardness can also be a defining aspect.
I have an ATS-34 blade from a well-known custom maker that would shave cleanly, but to get through a 1/2" sisal rope with his "out of the box" edge, I had to saw back and forth five or six times. At the outset of the tests I mentioned above, I put that knife aside, figuring I'd demonstrated for myself all the bad things I'd heard about ATS-34.
Later, after being tutored by His Eminence Jerry Hossom in the fine art of applying polished convex edges, I remembered that ATS-34 blade, sitting at the bottom of a long-forgotten drawer. I retrieved it, and after a few passes on a belt grinder, that same knife would go through the same rope with one push cut...so, now what?
Hey, Steve--let's go get another beer and discuss it...
