Well I'm sure you THINK you can tell. How can you prove that?
This challenge would allow y'all "experts" to show that there really is a noticeable difference in the steels for standard applications like cutting, sharpening, whatever. Whereas I believe the differences are so slight as to be un-noticeable. I believe it's all marketing hype.
Look at my UKPK review again.
http://raum.10gbfreehost.com/Articles/UKPK.html
Note where I pounded all the knives into steel cored cable to observe how they failed at the edge and to what degree.
Compare the Mule (51200) to the others.
Is the difference in steel performance in this case negligible, or hype?
Look at H1. It doesn't rust. While some of the 420 and 440 series steels have good corrosion resistance, H1 is far superior.
If toughness and corrosion resistance can clearly be better or worse between different blade steels, why is there any reason to think edge holding would be any different?
If all you use a knife for is to open mail and cut your fingernails, you probably won't notice the edge holding difference. However, if you break down boxes all day, do renovation work, cut drywall, butcher meat for a living, use your knife for yard work or just find a lot of things to cut with your EDC each day, the difference will be more noticeable.
...I go to the extreme when I sharpen a knife and wont stop until I reach a super hair poping edge! Maybe s30v cant take take this type of edge...
I takes longer to grind than VG10 and others but it should reach that level of sharpness just the same. How thick is the edge on the S30V knife you are using?
This has been my experience. I couldn't wait till I got my new Native, my first s30v blade, home and test it against some of my other blades. I used the Native straight from the box with the factory hair shaving edge. I began cutting up old flyer magazines which were somewhere around 50 to 75 pages thick cutting them into strips. I tested the Native against a Benchmade made of 154cm which was equally sharp. I would make one slice with the Native, the next with the Bencmade so as to be fair in making sure each was cutting the same type of paper. Somewhere around the 10th magazine I stopped and tested their edges. BIG SUPRISE! The Native would no longer shave hair and the Benchmade was still slightly picking at the hair. It had lost some of its edge but was definatly still sharper than the Native. They both were still cutting but in my test the 154cm outperformed s30v. Now how is this possible? Maybe the "experts" can explain. I would like to know. Anyway, in my "true life lessons learned test" s30v sure didn't stand up its hype! Oh well live and learn! ,,,VWB.
PS- I regretted doing the test when I began to attempt to resharpen the s30v blade! The 154cm sharpened right up without much trouble as it always does for me!
Was the benchmade factory edge or self honed? How did you test the edges to conclude they were equally sharp? What types of edge finish did each knife have? How do the geometries of the two knives compare? Were you restricting cutting to a specified portion of the edge or the whole blade or whichever part you happened to use on a given cut? Did you do more than one trial? Did you do any other tests to compare your results to this test against?
I'm not trying to be a smart ass, just pointing out that such a test isn't very conclusive without knowing more of the variables, at least.
To everyone who says S30V is hard to sharpen, how often do you sharpen your knives? Do you sharpen when they stop popping hair, when they no longer scrape hair, when they no longer cut warm butter?
