Advantages to composite blades?

K

KennyB

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Jan 19, 2010
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What are the advantages of composite blades? I've seen a lot of them from Kershaw, but I kind of wonder if there's a specific performance difference created, or if it's more along the lines of attaching a "super steel" to a base steel to make it more economic, or really just what the deal with them really is.

Couldn't you do something like make the edge steel a harder steel and the other half a tougher steel to have an blade with a really hard edge but that won't snap as easily, kind of like the differential tempering they do with Katanas?
 
thats basically the point, for example i have a blade with a vg-10 core and is sandwiched between two pieces of Damascus which definitely downed the price, same goes for the kershaw leek that has a D2 core and a 13c26 siding, the performance is also really based on the core so its the best of both worlds IMO
 
Adding an outside layer of steel like 420 adds both rust resistance and strength, while differential tempering just adds strength, so there's that.

Differential temperating does add cost, so I suspect you're right that price is another factor.
 
COMPOSITE BLADE not laminated

It cuts cost of using all one steel, gives you premium steel at a reasonable price.
 
Yeah its entirely for a cheaper price on premium steels. They only put the premium steel where the edge is at and the other half the blade is some cheapo steel. Pretty genius of Kershaw and other companies that do this.
 
kawr said:
Yeah its entirely for a cheaper price on premium steels. They only put the premium steel where the edge is at and the other half the blade is some cheapo steel. Pretty genius of Kershaw and other companies that do this.
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i thought they were sandwiched?.....:confused:
 
friedporkchop said:
i thought they were sandwiched?.....:confused:
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Those are laminated steels.

On their less expensive composites, they usually use something like d2 for the edge and sandvick for the spine. On their higher end models (volt, speedform) They use it for aesthetics in my opinion.

Plus, it looks pretty damn cool.
 
friedporkchop said:
i thought they were sandwiched?.....:confused:
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Some are "sandwiched." For example, this is the blade on my MCUSTA MC-54D, which is 33-layer nickel damascus over a VG-10 core (very sharp - literally and figuratively speaking):

IMG_6463auto.jpg

IMG_6459auto.jpg
 
link2derek said:
Some are "sandwiched." For example, this is the blade on my MCUSTA MC-54D, which is 33-layer nickel damascus over a VG-10 core (very sharp - literally and figuratively speaking):
Click to expand...

That is one very nice looking blade. Superb really and those pictures are far better than ones I have seen for that knife, those other pics didn't do it any justice.

Regards,

Rich
 
kawr said:
Yeah its entirely for a cheaper price on premium steels. They only put the premium steel where the edge is at and the other half the blade is some cheapo steel. Pretty genius of Kershaw and other companies that do this.
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Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that the only reason this idea didn't make sense to me was because of the "Volt", because it is an M390/CPM-D2 composite blade... Aren't those both premium steels?
 
The process to make a composite blade isn't free. I don't know for certain, but I doubt that Kershaw saves a lot of money - if any - using a small amount of "premium" steel combined with a larger amount of a less expensive steel, simply when you add in the cost (and time - and time is money) of what's involved in producing a composite blade.

I think the main advantage is that they look cool.
 
Some of the most expensive steels are $90 per pound which is expensive and much higher than most. That is $5.63 per ounce so let's call it $6. Some of the heaviest folding blades weigh 2 ounces but let's go with 3. The composite blades are joined before a bevel is ground so about half the weight is the edge, half the spine but let's say the expensive edge is only a third. So that means the edge is one ounce and the spine is two ounces of the cheaper steel. If they got the cheaper stuff for free that is $12 bucks saved on a super premium steel like Vanax 75 per knife and probably a fraction of that for a more popular blade steel. If you factor in the time it takes to make the blade using skilled labor and time on multiple machines that cost 100k plus the savings just isn't there.

To sum it up, like planterz said, it looks cool and is a technology that has been developed and perfected that probably didn't exist before. Sometimes when you can do something no one else can the bragging right are worth it alone.
 
FlaMtnBkr said:
If you factor in the time it takes to make the blade using skilled labor and time on multiple machines that cost 100k plus the savings just isn't there.
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You have to figure in what they save on there grinders also. I don't know
how many CB knives Kershaw sells a year but if lets say....they sell 30K
CB Leeks in a year and they save just $2.00 per knife, what's your savings
in 5 years? 10 years?..... That's just one knife. You don't pay for your
technology over night. You have to look down the road a bit to really
get a perspective of possible savings.

Like I said, I don't know what Kershaw's sells are in CB knives or the savings
per knife, but I'd say Kershaw took a good long look at the long haul.
 
To sum it up, like planterz said, it looks cool and is a technology that has been developed and perfected that probably didn't exist before. Sometimes when you can do something no one else can the bragging right are worth it alone.
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Tell that to the Japanese. They have been doing it for centuries.
 
Not to mention they do it because of the look too, that has a huge role to play in most of them. They have a distinct design to them. As a matter of fact both the volt and the speedform by kershaw are designed around this two tone pattern. I would say it really isn't about saving a ton of costs, because look at the speedform 2, that is all elmax in the blade. Plus I don't know, but I am sure binding the two steels together with copper might cost a little extra then just grinding down a stock piece of steel...
 
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