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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Cliff, can you give us
- Thread starter Ben Dover
- Start date
Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
M4 is a high wear replacement for M2. The high speed steels tend to make nice knives for precision cutters sort of by default as the optimal steels are not commonly used. The high speed steels have a lot of alloy in them to give them high heat resistance for tools which run at high speeds and thus have a lot of friction heating, so much so they actually turn red with the heat, hence the name "high speed steel".
This property "hot hardness" is not needed for knives which are used by people because you simply can not move a knife fast enough to cause it to get that hot. The rope and such you were cutting would actually catch fire if the steel got that hot. Better steels would be F2 and similar which give a very high wear resistance and hardness but without all the alloy to give the hot hardness. This means they are cheaper and much easier to heat treat.
S90V is a very high vanadium steel by Crucible, designed again to give very high wear resistance, similar to ZDP-189 by Hitachi which is also a powdered metal. In general most of the new super steels just have a very high carbide volume which gives them a lot of wear resistance, but quite frankly this has always been around in steels like D2. The P/M versions however do offer advantages to knife makers as they are easier to machine, grind and more consistent in hardening responces. They are also tougher at a similar alloy content as there is less carbide segregation.
However if you want high wear resistance, then just get a D2 blade from Tom Krein and have it ground very thin at the edge and it will slice aggressively for a very long time. If however you want a fine push cutting edge then most of the new super steels are not well suited and you want much simpler alloys like 1095, 420HC, and AEB-L. The hardness is very important especially with the low carbide steels. Commonly most are leaving these very underhardened which is why steels like AUS-4A have a horrible reputation as knife steels even though metallurgists like John Verhoven will advocate them as ideal for knife makers.
-Cliff
This property "hot hardness" is not needed for knives which are used by people because you simply can not move a knife fast enough to cause it to get that hot. The rope and such you were cutting would actually catch fire if the steel got that hot. Better steels would be F2 and similar which give a very high wear resistance and hardness but without all the alloy to give the hot hardness. This means they are cheaper and much easier to heat treat.
S90V is a very high vanadium steel by Crucible, designed again to give very high wear resistance, similar to ZDP-189 by Hitachi which is also a powdered metal. In general most of the new super steels just have a very high carbide volume which gives them a lot of wear resistance, but quite frankly this has always been around in steels like D2. The P/M versions however do offer advantages to knife makers as they are easier to machine, grind and more consistent in hardening responces. They are also tougher at a similar alloy content as there is less carbide segregation.
However if you want high wear resistance, then just get a D2 blade from Tom Krein and have it ground very thin at the edge and it will slice aggressively for a very long time. If however you want a fine push cutting edge then most of the new super steels are not well suited and you want much simpler alloys like 1095, 420HC, and AEB-L. The hardness is very important especially with the low carbide steels. Commonly most are leaving these very underhardened which is why steels like AUS-4A have a horrible reputation as knife steels even though metallurgists like John Verhoven will advocate them as ideal for knife makers.
-Cliff
Good info to know! I'm already the world's biggest fan of D2, so I guess I'm half way there already!
Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
If you want long lasting slicing aggression, then D2 pretty much sets a benchmark, combine that with an optomized geometry and few people would complain.
-Cliff
-Cliff
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2005
- Messages
- 1,373
?
cliff what about infi
Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
D2 is a high specialized steel, designed for high wear resistance. INFI will not be able to compete with D2 in that area, however INFI is much tougher and will outperform D2 as well in holding a high polished edge, especially at lower angles.
-Cliff
-Cliff