Analysis of New Steel Bohler M398

Code of The West Survival said:
Wow!
What a friendly people...
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I'm going to take what you are saying at face value and just give you some background. The gold member that you are trying to educate is the son of one of the top knife makers in the country who is famous for making amazing stainless steel Damascus that was commercially available as a premium product for other knife makers. He is a working metallurgist and is involved in a variety of blade related research projects that involve many of the other makers on this forum. He is making this information publicly available and all of his articles have referenced material listed. If you have material that offers new insight into this subject everyone here would be eager to take a look at it. The other makers that are involved in this discussion with you are known for pushing the limits on their heat treatment well beyond anything commercially available. Its pretty obvious from your post that you have a intrest in knives and metallurgy. That said you are talking to the people who actually are capable of doing what you say doesn't work. Yes it would be difficult and that's why they are not doing it though perhaps D DevinT has. You have linked a thread of someone asking about it and then learning that he was over his head and something on YouTube. Yes what he was doing would not have good results but unfortunately there are things on the internet that are wrong. Because of that there is a strong need to know the source. And because of that you are receiving some pushback from walking into a new forum and trying to tell someone with a metallurgical degree what can and cannot be done. If you have reference material or actual cases to evaluate it would be nice to look at them. If not it's hard to just take your word for it and you will probably receive a pretty cold welcome from this forum.
 
We generally are a friendly bunch. We do de quite a bit of new people that come in with all kinds of advise that have zero experance. So if anything some of us are a little gun shy. We never want to run anyone off especially with a sour experance.
 
DevinT said:
For the record, I have forged for sanmai or damascus clad the following steels. 20cv, 204p, 10v, k390, vanadus 10, S90v, XHP, 40cp, V4E, Vanadus 8, B75P, cpm 154, S30v, spray form D2, cpm M4, cpm T15, PD1, 3V, and more.

Hoss
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Hey you beat me to it. I thought you might have. I received my piece of your Damascus from AKS and it is a beautiful thing. Knowing I can't get more is going to make reluctant to use it is the only bad thing.:oops:
 
Storm W said:
I'm going to take what you are saying at face value and just give you some background. The gold member that you are trying to educate is the son of one of the top knife makers in the country who is famous for making amazing stainless steel Damascus that was commercially available as a premium product for other knife makers. He is a working metallurgist and is involved in a variety of blade related research projects that involve many of the other makers on this forum. He is making this information publicly available and all of his articles have referenced material listed. If you have material that offers new insight into this subject everyone here would be eager to take a look at it. The other makers that are involved in this discussion with you are known for pushing the limits on their heat treatment well beyond anything commercially available. Its pretty obvious from your post that you have a intrest in knives and metallurgy. That said you are talking to the people who actually are capable of doing what you say doesn't work. Yes it would be difficult and that's why they are not doing it though perhaps D DevinT has. You have linked a thread of someone asking about it and then learning that he was over his head and something on YouTube. Yes what he was doing would not have good results but unfortunately there are things on the internet that are wrong. Because of that there is a strong need to know the source. And because of that you are receiving some pushback from walking into a new forum and trying to tell someone with a metallurgical degree what can and cannot be done. If you have reference material or actual cases to evaluate it would be nice to look at them. If not it's hard to just take your word for it and you will probably receive a pretty cold welcome from this forum.
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Thank you for your response.
I didn't try to impress anyone.
I said that it is a sin to hammer / forge a power steel.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Then it started...

To be honest, it makes no difference to me. I came in, I saw, I made my opinion, and will share my experience with others. No big deal.
I am not hiding behind my dad's success. I have my own life, opinion, and experience.
I travel a lot, see a lot of different steels, many good knives, and I know a tiny bit about metallurgy.
The rest I trust a manufacturer's test results, suggestions, and ideas.

It was my pleasure to chat with you. Thank you for sharing your story with me.

Enjoy the rest of your evening and stay safe.
 
I saw your YouTube video on m398, I see you're very excited about that steel and not getting the response you were hoping for.

The problem is there are plenty of other steels to play with and when you're on the knife making side of things you have more control over how the steel is expressed so it's not a huge concern to chase the newest thing especially when there are other steels that have better Performance.

BTW, Larrin doesn't live in his father's shadow. He went on to follow his own passion, talents and gifts.

I'm very thankful for Larrin's work for how it makes my life easier to make knives. I'm grateful and I don't appreciate anyone giving Larrin a hard time.






Code of The West Survival said:
Who is your daddy?
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DevinT said:
Larrin is not hiding behind his dad’s success.

Hoss
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I sure didn't mean to imply that. I just figured that maybe he learned a tiny bit about steel from his dad and that he it wasn't totally random to have a intrest in it now. I know that I at least picked up that I didn't want to be a electrician from my dad. I also learned that as a welder I could melt stuff and start fires with electricity. All that stuff that he tried so hard to keep from happening.:D looking at my piece of stainless Damascus I'm thinking that you might have learned one or two things about how all this stuff works. I have to say that I am pretty embarrassed about the the things I said a few years ago when I knew more about knives than anyone else I had ever met. Now after have been on this forum and reading anything I can get ahold of I have learned that I need to keep a open mind and to realize that I have so so much to learn. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a real thing and I have had a case or two in the past.
 
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The problem actually started when you claimed that “many knife makers” forge and ruin M390. You also included that makers here are doing that, when none of us here have seen that at all on the forums. Then you link a question from a 5 year old thread and a random Russian YouTube video as evidence that “many” people are doing this, not providing any names of the so called makers supposedly doing this.

That was the whole issue of that matter, that you basically made a statement that you couldn’t actually provide any real evidence for existing.

No one is trying to give you a hard time for being new here, but when you make broad statements that could potentially make knife makers here look bad you need real evidence to back that up.
 
Code of The West Survival said:
Thank you for your response.
I didn't try to impress anyone.
I said that it is a sin to hammer / forge a power steel.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Then it started...

To be honest, it makes no difference to me. I came in, I saw, I made my opinion, and will share my experience with others. No big deal.
I am not hiding behind my dad's success. I have my own life, opinion, and experience.
I travel a lot, see a lot of different steels, many good knives, and I know a tiny bit about metallurgy.
The rest I trust a manufacturer's test results, suggestions, and ideas.

It was my pleasure to chat with you. Thank you for sharing your story with me.

Enjoy the rest of your evening and stay safe.
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FYI any steel can be forge unless it won't be able to be rolled into a sheet.

There are numbers of makers who has been forged PM steel with success, mostly they are commercial damascus maker tho.

PM and most high alloy steel are difficult to move at forging, have narrow range of temperature and require full annealing after forging but it can be done. Please educate yourself before making a statement like that.
 
And I’m going to add if I may. Not only larrin is right, I am Russian and the video you see posted here of a guy forging M390, that guy is one of Russias top blacksmiths, one of the students of the late great Victor Kuznetsov a very well known old school Russian master blacksmiths
The M390 that the guy on the video forges produces the results that double or triple the number of cuts that the best heat treated but not-forged knives can get.
His forged K390 won Russian rope cutting competitions. I have one of his forged K390 which did 750 cuts of 36mm manilla rope, (under the rules where you can apply the most 7kg pressure) if it takes more than 7kgs of pressure to make a cut, test stops, and whatever number of cuts you got is the result..... hard to explain the rules in writing, but that doesn’t really matter.
So to put that in perspective, if everything is the same, the heat treat is the same, but only it’s not forged, it would normally cut 60, good ones would reach 150 to 200 cuts, he’s work reaches almost a 900 cuts. Yo do the math... I have picture of my knife and he provided the making of my knife video to me and the cutting test they did on my knife
The master I’m talking of in the video is Evgeniy Litvin and he is a badass
 
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Zackali said:
And I’m going to add if I may. Not only larrin is right, I am Russian and the video you see posted here of a guy forging M390, that guy is one of Russias top blacksmiths, one of the students of the late great Victor Kuznetsov a very well known old school Russian master blacksmiths
The M390 that the guy on the video forges produces the results that double or triple the number of cuts that the best heat treated but not-forged knives can get.
His forged K390 won Russian rope cutting competitions. I have one of his forged K390 which did 750 cuts of 36mm manilla rope, (under the rules where you can apply the most 7kg pressure) if it takes more than 7kgs of pressure to make a cut, test stops, and whatever number of cuts you got is the result..... hard to explain the rules in writing, but that doesn’t really matter.
So to put that in perspective, if everything is the same, the heat treat is the same, but only it’s not forged, it would normally cut 60, good ones would reach 150 to 200 cuts, he’s work reaches almost a 900 cuts. Yo do the math... I have picture of my knife and he provided the making of my knife video to me and the cutting test they did on my knife
The master I’m talking of in the video is Evgeniy Litvin and he is a badass
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Do you have a link to show these results? That is a huge variability in performance. I don’t want to start another argument, but that kind of difference in results is very unusual. We often see 10-25% improvements with focused heat treat, but several hundred percent would be remarkable, if all else is the same. If the geometry is different, that alone can make that kind of difference.
 
Zackali said:
And I’m going to add if I may. Not only larrin is right, I am Russian and the video you see posted here of a guy forging M390, that guy is one of Russias top blacksmiths, one of the students of the late great Victor Kuznetsov a very well known old school Russian master blacksmiths
The M390 that the guy on the video forges produces the results that double or triple the number of cuts that the best heat treated but not-forged knives can get.
His forged K390 won Russian rope cutting competitions. I have one of his forged K390 which did 750 cuts of 36mm manilla rope, (under the rules where you can apply the most 7kg pressure) if it takes more than 7kgs of pressure to make a cut, test stops, and whatever number of cuts you got is the result..... hard to explain the rules in writing, but that doesn’t really matter.
So to put that in perspective, if everything is the same, the heat treat is the same, but only it’s not forged, it would normally cut 60, good ones would reach 150 to 200 cuts, he’s work reaches almost a 900 cuts. Yo do the math... I have picture of my knife and he provided the making of my knife video to me and the cutting test they did on my knife
The master I’m talking of in the video is Evgeniy Litvin and he is a badass
Click to expand...
 
Zackali said:
And I’m going to add if I may. Not only larrin is right, I am Russian and the video you see posted here of a guy forging M390, that guy is one of Russias top blacksmiths, one of the students of the late great Victor Kuznetsov a very well known old school Russian master blacksmiths
The M390 that the guy on the video forges produces the results that double or triple the number of cuts that the best heat treated but not-forged knives can get.
His forged K390 won Russian rope cutting competitions. I have one of his forged K390 which did 750 cuts of 36mm manilla rope, (under the rules where you can apply the most 7kg pressure) if it takes more than 7kgs of pressure to make a cut, test stops, and whatever number of cuts you got is the result..... hard to explain the rules in writing, but that doesn’t really matter.
So to put that in perspective, if everything is the same, the heat treat is the same, but only it’s not forged, it would normally cut 60, good ones would reach 150 to 200 cuts, he’s work reaches almost a 900 cuts. Yo do the math... I have picture of my knife and he provided the making of my knife video to me and the cutting test they did on my knife
The master I’m talking of in the video is Evgeniy Litvin and he is a badass
Click to expand...
Is there a site where we can see his work?
 
shqxk said:
PM and most high alloy steel are difficult to move at forging, have narrow range of temperature and require full annealing after forging but it can be done. Please educate yourself before making a statement like that.
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Low-temperature forging ? And can someone explain what kind of quench is that he is doing on 3 min. on this clip ? I have to learn Russian :)
 
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