best production edge retention

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scrappy

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Jul 7, 2007
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I own a lot of knives and am partial to high quality production knives. I own kabar, Becker, cold steel, camillus Becker, falkniven, bark river, mora, and rat. I was going to carry my rc 3 more as a permanent edc but I was surprised to read the hardness is 57. I usually equate hardness with edge retention. What production knives have amazing edge retention?
 
Sounds like you want a fixed blade EDC? It is a little easier to find folders with 'super steels' but I'm sure someone can recommend something if you let us know a little more about what you are looking for. Size? Price? What type of use? etc.
 
Look at the spyderco mule team project, I have the first 3, #1 was 52100 @62rc, #2 was CPM-M4 and #3 was CPM-S90V. There are many more steels now and some currently available, but if you can find a M4 snatch it up. All steels have best available HT's as these are for testing so no worries there.

They make a great user blade and are probably your cheapest option for EDC fixed blades with high end steels.
 
scrappy said:
I own a lot of knives and am partial to high quality production knives. I own kabar, Becker, cold steel, camillus Becker, falkniven, bark river, mora, and rat. I was going to carry my rc 3 more as a permanent edc but I was surprised to read the hardness is 57. I usually equate hardness with edge retention. What production knives have amazing edge retention?
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Edge retention is affected by hardness. It is also affected by alloy.

At the same hardness, 1095 has about the same edge retention as AUS8. Any 1% carbon stainless steel will hold an edge better than 1095 if both are at the same hardness.
440C, N690, VG1, VG10, 154CM/ATS-34/14-4CrMo would all be candidates.

S30V is superior to those in edge retention. So is D2.

For an outdoors knife, I like S30V.

I have heard amazing things about CPM M4.
 
For me, at the top of the list are ZDP-189, and the above mentioned CPM M4.

I've also been very impressed with the Fallkniven 3G (SGPS/VG-2 laminate).
 
IMO, top three steels in edge retention are S90V, CPM-M4, and ZDP-189, you can get M4 on the spyderco gayle bradley, the zdp-189 on the stretch 2, as well as several other models. S90V which has the best edge retention I think, can't really be found in production models besides the occasional sprint run like the manix 2, a military, and the above mentioned mule team fixed blade. There's talk of an upcoming sprint run of the not yet released spyderco paramilitary 2 with Carpenter's version of S90V which should be interesting, but if you do decide to go with that I'm sure they'll go extremely fast.
 
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