Moine said:
...not immune to marketing and such idiocies.
Yes, the point there though that it was the reverse, now a lot of people think it is "cool" to be native in that respect while the natives themselves have moved on because they are thinking of function only, dog teams vs snowmobiles for example.
Does it really matter if you have to sharpen a knife every 5 minutes ?
Well yes, you would not be getting much work done. If I plan on spending a day in the woods I will sharpen my axe and long blade at lunchtime, not every time I cut down a tree or limb it out otherwise I would spend more time sharpening than actually cutting. In reality I have really high end axes and blades and don't sharpen them at all for several days, and even then they are just at the point where they will start to lose the ability to slice paper and do other fine work.
Similar for most tradespeople, you just don't have time to sharpen that frequently, cutting insulation for example I never saw anyone stop to sharpen. It gets well over 40 C in an attic in the summer when you are insulating it, and in a crawlspace you don't even have any room to sharpen anything and you are certainly not going to be crawling in and out every five minutes to sharpen a knife because you would not get anything done. The solution there is to carry essentially many knives and replace them.
IMO, a soft steel is more reliable than those overhardened high end alloys.
Many of the larger blades are made out of something like ATS-34 and compared to that the softer stainless can often come off better for most work, I'd take something like the Mora 2000 as well vs those types of steels for the same reasons you noted. But if you compare them to actual steels designed for that type of work (high toughness tool steels) the low HRC stainless are softer, weaker, and more brittle and harder to grind all at the same time.
A tramontina machete is the perfect example of that. It's a cheap piece of very soft steel, but it works. I had mine for decades and it's seen hell, and it's still going strong. So why bother ?
With better materials - because you can build a better blade. A tramontina bolo is one of my favorite rough wood working blades, but a much harder tool steel blade would be able to hold a much thinner edge profile and thus cut better for longer and be easier to sharpen. It isn't just about edge retention. You however are not going to get that for $5 of course. You can also get much more efficient designs, instead of a flat stamped blade get something with a full primary grind with proper tang taper and you get a stronger blade with better cutting ability and less vibration. But again you are not getting that for $5 either.
In terms of performance/price it is hard to beat a tramontina/martindale/barteaux machete + mora or wetterling + opinel. You can get better performance, often significantly more so, but the price skyrockets. Ray Kirk would make you one hell of a wood working large blade, but for the cost of it you would buy many tramontinas and moras.
-Cliff
(gloat mode on) I recently found a box of 12 six-inch boniing knives for 69 cents each at a inventory overage store. (gloat mode off) I picked them up for knife handle mod practice and destructo testing when summer arrives.
