Blade Rockwell?

[Richard B]

Sorry me again, second time today. ( day off )

I have been looking on the net at knives today. Not being able to source the Gerber BMF. I have seen a Aitor Bowie Nato it looks nice and has a Rockwell c55/58 hardness????? Is this good for a knife. It will be used for practical purpose's.

Thanks.

RB

 

[Keith Montgomery]

It really depends on the type of steel used. Aitor uses 440C on a lot of their knives and 55/58RC are normal values for this steel. I would prefer to have the blade be in the upper part of that range, but there are no guaranties of that. 440C is not the best at edge holding and I think 57/58RC would be hard enough to hold an edge pretty well, but not so hard as to be brittle. Overall though, I think that with the hardness range given you will be Ok.

 

[beluga]

Keith is absolutely correct. I just need to add a little fact though.

Knife is designed to do certain things, for example; a neck knife / an utility knife is used for cutting purposes. Meaning you need to have a good edge holding capability which requires an edge of around 60 Rc.

A machette/bowie is usually used for 'chopping' action, which means that you don't really need hard edge. The harder the edge the easier the blade to get chipped. So, in this case Rc hardness of 55 to 58 would be ideal.

So, it depends on what you intend to do with the knife.