AEB-L & O1 Edge Retention

[jeffbird]

Lots of fanfare for AEB-L here but I know I am not the only one who does not like it for a hunting knife... I even make many knives out of AEB-L and 14C28N but if someone primarily wants the knife for game processing there are better steels.

The biggest animal I butchered from field to freezer was a free range heritage pig that weighed 560 pounds. The farm has swamp mud wallows so she was about as dirty as they come.

It was right after Magnacut came out so just used a single Magnacut knife, 63Rc, for testing. Yes it needed to be sharpened after I was done but still was able to slice newspaper. AEB-L would of not even came close to this level of performance.

I often get the feeling that the majority of people who hang out on forums like this collect way more than they actually use their tools.

Yes, easy to tell who has to clean lots of animals in these comments.

We only eat deer and wild pig meat. When we go grocery shopping for meat, time matters as there is plenty of work to do to get the meat out of the heat and onto the meat hooks and into the cooler. Edge retention matters. Toughness just never has been a factor for this work. The only problem ever encountered was S30V knife was prone to chipping, which the maker replaced. No issues with the replacement. The one and only AEB-L knife I ever owned was absolutely worthless for this work.

Here is the work of one knife for multiple deer without resharpening. This outing was done with a Kephart in 20cv by Paul Rasp aka CPE Knives.

 

[alphabetsoup]

It seems the really good qualities are only associated with really good heat treat. Commercial AEBL knives are often too soft or too thick to take advantage of the steel's full potential.
IF it's quenched hard enough and ground thin, then it should take a polished edge very well and quickly strop back to shaving sharp. Same goes for sister-steels like 14C28N.
Does that sum it up, or am I missing anything?