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AEB-L vs 14C28N for a kitchen knife
- Thread starter Barmaley
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It would vastly depend far more on the heat treatment and the processing of the knife by the manufacturer than the name of the steel on the blade.
After that, It would largely depend on your sharpening ability, how you use the knife and your cutting board.
Does any of those steels achieve better results with the best heat treatment for that steel?
I heard a lot of good words about AEB-L but it looks like there are more offers for 14C28N and it is suppose to be very comparable.
How do I know if the manufacturer did the best treatment to the knife I am going to buy?
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If you care that much about the details buy a custom knife.
Look for makers that do their own heat treatment and use cold treatment and that make knives of obvious good quality in design and fit and finish.
Instagram is currently the best place to find and interact with custom knife makers.
You can also reach out to custom knife makers on Bladeforms in one of the sub threads to see what they can do for you.
Good luck.
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14C is more stainless, so that would be the obvious choice for me. I don’t see many kitchen knives in this steel, which always confounded me because it seems like the perfect choice. On the other hand you see VG10 everywhere, even tho it’s probably more expensive to purchase.
I care about only one detail - the edge! I was thinking about making it myself buying steel from Steel Barrons in NJ but I found that heat treatment at Peter's Heat Treat will cost me $70-100 so I decided to buy a ready made knife.
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Well there's a hidden cost of things.
When you're paying a quality maker for a knife, you're not just paying for the materials, you're also paying for the 100,000 of hours put in to be good at it.
However, I would never discourage anybody from making their own knife, none of us were born doing this and we all had to start somewhere.
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AEB-L and 14C28N are going to be functionally equivalent to one another in most real world use conditions and while there are differences on paper it's something few end users are going to be able to perceive readily, since other differences are going to have much more impact. The main reason AEB-L isn't used more, to my understanding, is that unless something has changed recently, it's only sold in roll format, meaning it has a "memory" of being coiled, and has the tendency to warp in heat treatment if not fully normalized.
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Benjamin, it comes in sheet format so it's not all on thin coils that get annealed in coil form in a giant furnace, some is left as thicker, wider sheet and is cut and sold in sheet and flat bar.
I worked with Spyderco on the heat treatment for the AEB-L mule team fixed blade knife, we didn't see any significant problems with warping during processing.
Normalizing is strictly for lower hardenability carbon steels which require rapid quenching in water/oil to harden and don't harden in air.
Normalizing is usually used after forging to bring the steel back to a more "normal" state to then further anneal and harden from.
When we normalize carbon steel, we still have soft ferrite and carbides however in air hardening steels like AEB-L would basically harden with attempting to normalize them like carbon steel due to the higher hardenability thanks to the chromium.
Should also be noted the alloy carbides are very stable at higher temperatures and they don't readily dissolve like the cementite in carbon steels, in fact, some air hardening steels having stable alloy carbides even in melted liquid steel.
Figure 1. Thermocalc showing phases at equilibrium for RWL-34. The "Acm" like we see on carbon steel does not exist since we have two phase austenite (FCC_A1) all the way to liquid, meaning there is no single phase austenite to normalize to due to stable, primary alloy carbides shown as M7C3 ( K2 chromium carbide)
So with air hardening steels heated past Ac1, we would bring things back to soft ferrite and carbides by using a temper anneal or a transformation anneal. No normalizing step is needed and it may be detrimental if used.
However, the as supplied condition should be fine.
If anything is done it would be a stress relieve which is under A1.
I'm not sure why it's not used more in production knives, but it is used significantly in the custom knife world. When I talked to Brad at Peter's Heat treatment at Blade Show 2021, he said it was the most heat treated blade steel they run for heat treatment at the blade division.
I speculate many production companies perhaps don't distinguish AEB-L from 420HC which is unfortunate since the characteristics of the material have been known and made famous by both the work of Dr Verhoeven and Roman Landes since at least 2005 and it's very different from 420 HC as we know.
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Things must have changed in the past handful of years, as that was the explanation I'd seen given previously. At the same time, there was a point not long ago that A8Mod was only available in 1/2" thick or thicker and it's now available in knife-sized stock, if a bit spendy.
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Well, for all the things that change, somethings don't. I think that Rinaldi American boys axe is my favorite axe. Hope all is well.
Several years ago, CKTG was selling their house brand "Artifex" in a 240mm gyuto (Japanese pattern general purpose chef's knife). The price was quite good. It was made of AEB-L steel with a composite (Western style) handle of some sort.
I used mine for several years and really liked the performance. It's pretty thin and holds an edge quite well. I tried to thin out the blade a bit, Murray Carter style, by grinding the entire sides of the blade on a 1k water stone. This produced extremely ugly hazy scratch patterns and did nothing to actually thin the blade. I was very mad at myself for following Carter's advice on a "good knife" that was not really designed for that type of thinning operation.
Some months later, after I gained some proficiency with my 1x42 belt sander, I decided to get rid of the scratches. I got rid of all the scratches from the 1k and left it around a 320 grit finish, which looks somewhat like the scratch pattern on a factory blade. That was pretty satisfying.
The unexpected part is, some combination of the thinning I did with the *sander* and the polishing has resulted in even better performance. I'm quite impressed with this knife and use it a lot. I think AEB-L is a fantastic steel for a kitchen knife. The edge holding is quite good and it achieves really nice sharpness, easily filleting paper and doing all my kitchen tasks with the kind of easy that makes me smile.
The shape and thinness of the blade are not to be underestimated. The best steel with the best heat treat with a poor geometry will perform poorly. A cheaply made thin blade will tend to out perform an expensive thick one.
Brian.
I used mine for several years and really liked the performance. It's pretty thin and holds an edge quite well. I tried to thin out the blade a bit, Murray Carter style, by grinding the entire sides of the blade on a 1k water stone. This produced extremely ugly hazy scratch patterns and did nothing to actually thin the blade. I was very mad at myself for following Carter's advice on a "good knife" that was not really designed for that type of thinning operation.
Some months later, after I gained some proficiency with my 1x42 belt sander, I decided to get rid of the scratches. I got rid of all the scratches from the 1k and left it around a 320 grit finish, which looks somewhat like the scratch pattern on a factory blade. That was pretty satisfying.
The unexpected part is, some combination of the thinning I did with the *sander* and the polishing has resulted in even better performance. I'm quite impressed with this knife and use it a lot. I think AEB-L is a fantastic steel for a kitchen knife. The edge holding is quite good and it achieves really nice sharpness, easily filleting paper and doing all my kitchen tasks with the kind of easy that makes me smile.
The shape and thinness of the blade are not to be underestimated. The best steel with the best heat treat with a poor geometry will perform poorly. A cheaply made thin blade will tend to out perform an expensive thick one.
Brian.
I agree 100% that a custom knife is 1000% better than "a knife". The same as a custom made car is 1000% better than an off a shelf Mercedes S580. However, while it is possible to built such car it costs $5 000 000 and some people do quite well in a Toyota Camry.
For you guys who love your tactical knives your knives are your toys. You polish them, you decorate them, you pet them to show off and to be proud of your knives. That is your hobby. I have a different Hobby - I love to eat. It is not that I love to cook, I like the result of cooking. That is why the chef knife is a utility for me, not a toy. However, a dull kitchen knife irritates me. That is why I am looking for a Toyota Camry in kitchen knives: lasts forever, no maintenance, and bring me from the point A to the point B, most likely without excitement or feeling special but also without irritation. That is why I don't care if my knife's handle made of Ash and not olive wood or whatever their handles Custom Knife makers brag about, the blade has scratches and the spine has manufactured defects. But the edge has to be made right to cut beautifully through tomatoes and cucumbers.
And no any doubt that custom made knives bring lots of excitement for knife enthusiasts and worth any penny they spent on them.
UncleBoots
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Given your priorities, you should be asking about grinds first, heat treats second, and steels third.
I have similar priorities for my kitchen knives, but a really good knife makes it more of a pleasure to cook. Sharpening pleasure also figures in, which is why almost all of my kitchen knives are carbon steel, not stainless.
There is no such thing as a "no maintenance" kitchen knife. You have to sharpen, and after you have sharpened enough times, you have to thin it, to maintain the same performance.
Thank you very much for informative reply. May I ask you to tell more about 3 things:
a)
b)
c)
Thank you in advance
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You want thin behind the "bte". .015" or less. A thin knife stays sharp longer.
It's simple physics, less force pushing through object, less drag.
Low angles, less than 15 degrees per side
Hard knives 62-66HRC knives that are of tough steels have edges that won't crumble.
Carbides aide in edge retention..... Many people aren't concerned with edge retention on kitchen knives.
There are great steels in both stainless, and nonstainless.
It's simple physics, less force pushing through object, less drag.
Low angles, less than 15 degrees per side
Hard knives 62-66HRC knives that are of tough steels have edges that won't crumble.
Carbides aide in edge retention..... Many people aren't concerned with edge retention on kitchen knives.
There are great steels in both stainless, and nonstainless.
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- Jun 29, 1999
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Bradford makes a number of kitchen knives in AEB-L, Magnacut and a few other steels. Worth checking out.
I have a Bradford M390 kitchen knife which is the same design of their AEB-L knife. I love this knife and it is one of a very frequently used knives in my kitchen. I think that $300 was a fair price for it. However, I do not understand $250 for a AEB-L knife considering that a blank steel costs around $10 and heat treatment is about $3 per blade if you do it in mass.
I bought yesterday a cheap Cangshan 14C28N knife to test the blade. I was a bit befuddled by the note: HRC 59 +/- 2. Is not 4 point dispersion is a bit too obscure?
I bought yesterday a cheap Cangshan 14C28N knife to test the blade. I was a bit befuddled by the note: HRC 59 +/- 2. Is not 4 point dispersion is a bit too obscure?
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aebl is what's much more commonly used on custom high end kitchen knives, however like other have said the two steels are essentially identical, they are variants of the same steel with minor tweaks, in real world use one is going to be a bit more stainless. you can also find some production knives in aebl as well, such as for instance the miyabi koh. zwilling also made a kramer branded stainless version which was also aebl. others have mentioned other stuff. sometimes it's called "Swedish steel" in Japanese knives and is popular there as well. my biggest issue with all of these is the standard hardness of 61 rc makes it generally not that compelling to me, you have to go into custom knives to find it run at 63+ rc and in that case it is one of my, if not the, all time favorite kitchen knife steels. superb stuff. the best edge stability. you can get the finest edges with little concern for edge failure or microchipping. sharpens like a low alloy steel but obviously with a lot of more retention. excellent stuff. it's not bad at 61 rc, in all those mass produced knives, but unless for some reason you need a lot of toughness in a fine kitchen knife, something more common with a lot more edge retention like vg10 is a better choice imho.