An observation & A question

mitch13 said:
I like the fact with traditional slippies & lockbacks easy to use, good slicers & cutters & easy to maintain.
I like to sit of a night And hone up the knife I've used or am going to use the next day, part of the enjoyment of using a knife, well me anyway
As I'm partial to European & custom knives like laguioles & regionals. You get the option of carbon or stainless, easy to use & maintain.

I'm always looking at the possible next knife, I find the new breeds of Lionsteel, Fox & Viper
interesting as they look good. They all seem to favour M390 blades,

Qustion?
Why do slippies need a blade steel of 59 to 61Rc?

I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I've always been satisfied with carbon, tru sharp or 12c27 and the like. It's just something I've observed & curious what others think.
Cheers
mitch

P.S if this is controversial, sorry.
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No i don't find it controversial at all.

If I can find a traditional design I like in modern steel and heattreatment, I'll go for it.
The difference as I see it is showed in the below pic:

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A wellused old but soft Remington(I think it is) in carbonsteel and a Northwoods IRJ in modern CPM 154 powdersteel.
Give the IRJ the same amount of years & use and I believe it will have a lot more blade left than the Remington.

Regards
Mikael
 
IIRC someone who works at GEC said 1095 puts far less wear on their equipment than stainless and that strongly factors into their decision to use 1095.

1095 takes a great edge and looses it immediately. As a 1095 edge rusts it acquires micro serrations, which fools some folks into thinking it's still sharp as it will still cut if you are used to a dull knife. A2 or D2 are much better in my experience. Bought a Lionsteel and flipped it right away, didn't care for the rounding of the components nor the screw construction. Felt machine made opposed to handmade, not for me.
 
Hard or soft, a knife by definition of what it is, is a semi disposable piece of gear. If you use it a lot, you'll have to sharpen it a lot, no matter what super steel you have. In fact, the more you use a knife, you may want an easy replaceable knife.

We've all seen those picture of old knives that are worn down to sharpened toothpicks. They were used hard by hard working people who never saw the inside of an office cubicle. I think it was Remington, that did a survey in the 1930's, when they were making pocket knives, that the average expected life of a pocket knife was like 2 years. A knife was excepted to do a job, an when it was no longer capable of doing that that job, it was discarded and a new one bought. Most working guys didn't spend a lot on a pocket knife as it was like car tires or flashlight batteries; expected to be replaced periodically. I don't think there were many knife nuts in those days that obsessed over their knives.

I'd rather a little soft than too hard. I think most people are the same. I used to watch my dad with his ritual of stropping his Case peanut in the morning after he finished his morning coffee. And it was a ritual. He started his day with what he knew was a sharp knife, and it was easy to keep it that way. That was a great thing about the old 1095, it was super easy to put a cutting edge back on it. Like the modern SAK, almost any material will do to strop it up on, like a coffee cut, piece of broken pottery, smooth rock from a creek, back of a belt, cardboard on back of a legal pad. Whatever.

Its a modern trend to have the super duper wonder steel of the month, but the truth is, aside from the fanatic obsessed knife nuts on a knife forum, most people who do bother to carry a knife don't care. If the knife gets dull, they want it easy to put it back into operation again. I think this is some of the factors of why the replaceable blade folding utility knife is so popular. We are the few, the fanatical, the obsessed. Most of the rest of the world just doesn't care, so most the rest of the world just buys whatever cheap knife is in the kitchen utilities isle of the grocery store and their life goes on. Even the tradesmen out there doing kitchen and bath remodels are carrying Husky, Stanley, and Milwaukee brand folding utility knives with replaceable blades from Home Depot or Lower.

Give me easy to sharpen steel any day over a super steel. My life is getting too short to spend a lot of time sharpening when theres fish to catch, Guinness to drink and beer cans to plink with my granddaughter who's turned into a crack shot with a .22 Marlin.
 
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Chief said:
IIRC someone who works at GEC said 1095 puts far less wear on their equipment than stainless and that strongly factors into their decision to use 1095.
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This is true, and why they don't do 440C anymore. We could easily assume that D2 won't happen either. GEC has a reputation for doing their process "old school" which is part of the attraction. They also just do a darn fine job of it.
 
jackknife said:
.................... when theres fish to catch, Guinness to drink and beer cans to plink with my granddaughter who's turned into a crack shot with a .22 Marlin.
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- now, how's that :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: I am most envious, particularly the granddaughter who goes a plinkin' with you, so cool :cool:
 
Part of the charm of a GEC is the 1095 steel and how it ages.

However, even 420 or 440 is enough steel for pocket knife tasks.

I feel like the covers will fall off my Bladeforums Buck 301 before the blades need sharpen. Way better steel than needed for a slip joint pocket knife, and something more high tech than CPM154 seems a little silly.

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Everyone absolutely needs a knife !
whether they choose to carry one like they should is up to them, super steels are a different matter.

I don't need or want super steels because I like the ability to touch up my blade in no time on a basic stone or bottom of a ceramic mug, but I wouldn't fault anyone who wants it.
I don't think super steels are necessarily too much for a slipjoint at all, it's not like every person who carries a slipjoint only opens letters and cuts fruit.
For the average person a slipjoint will do and probably does do everything those big beefy modern folders that often use these steels can do.

For most people it's a luxury and a want not a necessity but there's nothing wrong with liking such things if that's your choice, I mean owning more than say a pocket knife and a belt knife is a luxury but we all know none of us here limit ourselves that much do we.
 
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The choice today is tempting and alluring :cool:

But it's also amusingly paradoxical: old school soft steels can be touched up outside on all sorts of things, handy in the field eh? Yes but they need to be able to be touched up a lot and frequentlyo_O There's also a lot of potential for rapid wear and blade loss ( especially if you only have one knife...but who dares have that nonsense here?:D)

More modern harder steels are also attractive-provided they arrive properly sharp in the first place:rolleyes: Keeping them in that state isn't difficult and does not need to happen very much at all:thumbsup: Last year's Forum Knife has not needed even stropping yet and I use it a lot. Carbon knives that are not even used seem to go dull, odd, perhaps it's surface rust on the edge?

Multi blades? OK to have softer steel you've got 2-3 choices and don't want to spend an age resharpening them. Single blade? I want a better steel please:thumbsup:

But then, pocket knife tasks are not that arduous are they?? Depends on the pocket and the tasks :D
 
bikerector said:
This is true, and why they don't do 440C anymore. We could easily assume that D2 won't happen either. GEC has a reputation for doing their process "old school" which is part of the attraction. They also just do a darn fine job of it.
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Yes Bill Howard and GEC sure knows how to deliver 1095 with a truly great heat treatment!
 
jackknife said:
Even the tradesmen out there doing kitchen and bath remodels are carrying Husky, Stanley, and Milwaukee brand folding utility knives with replaceable blades from Home Depot or Lower.
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Until recently that was my profession.
I have now quit proffessional kitchen makeover because I'm getting too old to cope with the tempo needed today.
I will soon start a new job in a differrent branch.

Tradesmen over here do have utility knives too, but fixed blades like Mora and Hultafors are more common than any folders. When dull & chipped they are tossed for a new one. I don't as I resharpen my workknives and keep them going. My favorite is 30+ years and still going strong.

Regards
Mikael
 
Maybe a proper modern 2 blade pocket knife needs a blade of 1095 and a blade of CPM154.

A modern hybrid all rounder.
 
Thanks for all the insightful posts:thumbsup:
I will admit I do have most of the popular steels in 1 knife or another. From A2 through to S35v.
I just found interesting & was curious as to what other knife minded enthusiasts thought that like to carry traditional style. As we all probably know someone that reckons "nothing beats carbon":D

Thanks
mitch
 
Hickory n steel said:
That's me !
I'm fine with the stainless , but I love patina and hold carbon knives a bit high since I can really only buy them online.
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ou
I'm hearing you.

All my knives are bought online, only retail option is overpriced sak or leatherman. Always looking for a bargin online:cool:
 
mitch13 said:
ou
I'm hearing you.

All my knives are bought online, only retail option is overpriced sak or leatherman. Always looking for a bargin online:cool:
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There are a few staples from Buck available at Walmart for the lowest price around but I've bought them already, so it's pretty much online for me now.
 
mitch13 said:
Most stainless laguioles and similar. are around 56rc for ease of maintenance.
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A steel, stainless or carbon, hardened at 56 RC isn't easier to maintain than the same steel at 60 RC; it's marginally easier to grind but it's much harder to get rid of the burr you get at the apex. The cost of the heat treatment is the reason for which a maker will harden at 56.

kamagong said:
Slipjoints don't need blades with an Rockwell hardness of 59-61.
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Whittling wood requires strength and strength is related to the hardness. 59-61 is the right hardness for such a task with a slip joint.


There are no "super steels". There are steels which behave differently according to the material which is cut. Carving wood isn't cutting cardboard which isn't cutting acidic fruit.

What makes an edge dull?

Mechanical forces which, by lack of strength, will deform the edge (rolling), or which , by lack of toughness, will chip the edge. Typically whittling wood.

Abrasion. Tearing of steel particles by hard materials. Typically cutting cardboard.

Corrosion. Destruction by chemicals. Typically cutting fruits.

The presence of carbides in some so said super steels doesn't change anything to the process where mechanical forces are involved. Only strength and toughness of the steel matrix will matter and therefore the amount of carbon and the heat treatment. There where carbides are of a great benefit is when cutting abrasive stuff, they are harder than the abrasive particles. For the corrosion it takes something like 13% of free chromium to qualify a steel as being stainless.

All in all the high alloy steels could be said better than a simple carbon steel but it's not that simple. There are some drawbacks. Let aside the difficulty of the maintenance, diamond plates solve the problem. You can't get with carbides in large amount the fine edge you get with carbon steels or low alloy tool steels. You can't sharpen at a low angle to increase the cutting ability. Many users have reported the difficulty to sharpen and the lack of edge integrity of high alloys at less than 15° per side; the reason being the carbides are too weakly tightened to the matrix at low angles. That is a limit for some tasks like wood whittling.

So it all comes to the use you have of a knife, but please, don't speak of "super steels" or of "modern steels", there are no such things.

Dan.
 
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