Review from a knife friend who I sent a ProCut to for testing. I dont think he mentioned in his write up but he did use the knife enough to sharpen it twice.
After receiving this knife from @A Seedy Lot I have daily carried it for the last 30 days to get a feel for it and see how it stacked against other low alloy steels. There are two variations of heat treat put out by Larrin, a toughness one and one designed for maximum edge wear. The difference is at higher heat all the iron carbide is gone aka tougher. This example is the toughness ht at 64.5 hrc, I prefer this because with all low alloy steels you end up on the lower end of edge wear so maximizing the attributes of low alloy aka lateral breaking strength and high edge stability makes the most sense to me.
To start the edge has held up very well in all uses ranging from kitchen use to cutting metal straps, zero edge damage (no rolls or chips of any kind). As expected the sharpness doesn’t last forever but is an improvement over any other steel in this class I have used, it even edged out my previous favorite of high hardness 52100. From a toughness standpoint it was more than enough, I don’t tend to do things that people do on YouTube when they try to destroy things. When it comes to corrosion resistance the only thing that had a huge impact was cutting meat which turns any low alloy steel rainbow colors. I had no rusting and have not applied any kind of oil to the knife (it came oiled from Scott and I immediately removed it). As far as sharpening goes it took a burr very easily and the edge that came up using only a 600 grit Ultrasharp diamond plate was perfectly fine for my tasks.
This is an example of one but at this point I am confident in saying Procut is the new king of the low alloy steels. I see no reason to use anything else as long as Pops can keep the quality up and manage the supply. I can’t speak from the makers stand point but in talking to Scott one of the best things about Procut (from a makers standpoint) is it is super forgiving in heat treat, so those guys trying to ht without an oven or cryo can make a very high performance knife.
Cliff notes version Procut is good.
Edit:
D dial1911 was kind enough to send me some flint to test and I was unable to get a spark by striking the spine of this knife with it.
Overall my preference for knife steels is still the 8% chromium tool steels (I think they offer the best balance of attributes in a knife) but this is solid at a MUCH lower cost.
After receiving this knife from @A Seedy Lot I have daily carried it for the last 30 days to get a feel for it and see how it stacked against other low alloy steels. There are two variations of heat treat put out by Larrin, a toughness one and one designed for maximum edge wear. The difference is at higher heat all the iron carbide is gone aka tougher. This example is the toughness ht at 64.5 hrc, I prefer this because with all low alloy steels you end up on the lower end of edge wear so maximizing the attributes of low alloy aka lateral breaking strength and high edge stability makes the most sense to me.
To start the edge has held up very well in all uses ranging from kitchen use to cutting metal straps, zero edge damage (no rolls or chips of any kind). As expected the sharpness doesn’t last forever but is an improvement over any other steel in this class I have used, it even edged out my previous favorite of high hardness 52100. From a toughness standpoint it was more than enough, I don’t tend to do things that people do on YouTube when they try to destroy things. When it comes to corrosion resistance the only thing that had a huge impact was cutting meat which turns any low alloy steel rainbow colors. I had no rusting and have not applied any kind of oil to the knife (it came oiled from Scott and I immediately removed it). As far as sharpening goes it took a burr very easily and the edge that came up using only a 600 grit Ultrasharp diamond plate was perfectly fine for my tasks.
This is an example of one but at this point I am confident in saying Procut is the new king of the low alloy steels. I see no reason to use anything else as long as Pops can keep the quality up and manage the supply. I can’t speak from the makers stand point but in talking to Scott one of the best things about Procut (from a makers standpoint) is it is super forgiving in heat treat, so those guys trying to ht without an oven or cryo can make a very high performance knife.
Cliff notes version Procut is good.
Edit:
D dial1911 was kind enough to send me some flint to test and I was unable to get a spark by striking the spine of this knife with it.
Overall my preference for knife steels is still the 8% chromium tool steels (I think they offer the best balance of attributes in a knife) but this is solid at a MUCH lower cost.
.......I like.....
............
