Blade steels... Are we suckers?

[evosbu1]

what's the job consist of? I kinda doubt the real knife users are prestige posting on internet forums, which is to say laborers, welders, pipefitters, carpenters, electricians. Those people usually can give a rat's ass about the 'super steel' brouhaha and actually prefer cheap garbage they can just replace whenever. My dad, a welder, has used a 440c Griptilian for like 10 years and still shits his pants when he loses it because it cost him 70 dollars a decade ago. That's the reality of this "job selection" bullshit, which is totally in-congruent with the marketing fantasy.

Does your job mean cutting your finger nails, rubbing your thumb across the edge to test sharpness, opening packages from Amazon and cutting twigs? That's what this airy "tool" language is really talking about, and when it takes itself seriously it looks like the biggest douchebag.

Long live the budget Griptilian, because 20 dollar knives really are pieces of shit.

 

[GatorFlash1]

That's a really cute way of saying Sal is a good businessman.

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With a ton of OJT (on the job time/training).

 

[knifehunterdustin]

Many steels may have the same name but are not the same steel.
Take 1095 for example.
Many production knife companies ruined 1095's reputation in the past because they did a piss poor job heat treating it, and bought the lowest quality sources of it for as cheap as possible.
That's not 1095's fault. It's the fault of the idiot who ruined the steel making it and turning it into a knife. Many people blame the steel and not what the maker does to it.
In my honest opinion, 1095 can perform much better than most "super steels" if it came from a quality source, and it was heat treated to perform above and beyond. All steels have their "sweet spot temper", which brings out absolutely the best that steel can offer, if not more. ESEE is one company who can make 1095 some of the most pleasurable steel to put in your hands.. Mora knives are in many cases 1095 heat treated to its best. It cuts forever, and in my experience, Moras can be phenomenally tough to wear out or break for their size and stock thickness. ML Hand Forged Knives is another custom maker who'se 1095 absolutely shines with strength and edge holding ability. But take a cheap truck stop knife in 1095, and you will be cursing that steel forever. It's just a natural reaction to blame the steel only. But there's always more to it.

 

[knifehunterdustin]

Don't blame the steel if there are problems with it. 99.999.9999% of the time a knife fails to perform to your standards, either
A) The knife was poorly heat treated
B) The knife was being pushed past it's structural capability
C) The knife was made from the lowest quality sources possible
D) ALL OF THE ABOVE

Oh and I almost forgot.....it might not have been heat treated worth a damn.

 

[22-rimfire]

I think the super steels give some improvement in performance over the older better steels like D2, A2, and 01. I often question if the relative value is there.

 

[nick21]

I think every steel has it's benefits. Ones like 8cr13mov, 420hc, AUS-8 are simple to sharpen while ones like s30v, ZDP-189, ELMAX keep their edge for a long amount of time. It mainly depends on preferences.

My favorite blade steel is VG-10. It's right in the sweet spot of holding an edge for a moderately long amount of time and being easy to sharpen. A jack of all trades steel.

 

[sodak]

Most users, even knife knuts, probably couldnt tell the difference in most steels and wouldn't know otherwise unless they were told.

Then they're not knife knuts. I find it very easy to tell the difference in a lot of steels.

So, back when I very first got into knives, I spent a lot of time researching why people cared about which steel something was (other than carbon vs stainless, that was intuitive in terms of corrosion resistance). And one of the best explanations I saw was that with "better" (tougher/stronger at least) steels, a knife could be thinned out, and have the edge geometry much thinner than a knife out of "worse" steel, while retaining most of (if not all) the same overall strength/toughness.

I had a thread roughly about this a few months ago here in general that was about if you could build a knife like the Becker BK16 out of CPM-3v and make it out of 1/8in stock (instead of 5/32) while retaining the same type of durability. And the response was more or less yes, yes it was possible. That the change in steel would allow for better geometry (thinner blade stock, as well as much thinner behind the edge) while still keeping roughly the same overall strength/toughness/use characteristics.

So in that sense, steels are interesting to me, as they allow you to get the same robustness, but with better cutting performance. Any thoughts on that part?

You're exactly right. This is one of the main reasons I love the newer steels. Performance.

I will take ease of sharping over edge holding every day of the week. to me it does not matter how long a knife stays sharp, because sooner or later you have to sharpen them

I will take both. It is completely untrue that you have to choose between the two. I have several knives that hold their edges easily 10X longer than some of the lower end steels, and they sharpen up much faster also, 3 - 5 minutes max. You can have both.