Companies need to start issuing verified third-party HRC tests.

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Mrs_Esterhouse said:
Suppose someone buys a $7000 watch that is rated to a 1000M depth. The watch maker knows 99.99% of their customers will never go past 200M so they go cheaper on the case tolerances and water seals to save on production costs. They calculate if that rare 1 in 10,000 customer actually pushes the watch to its limits an it fails, they can simply eat the replacement cost and still end up way ahead of actually making the watch consistently withstand 1000M of depth. So, if you were in the market for a high end watch or had already purchased one and then discovered this was a standard industry practice, wouldn't you be a little pissed? This is pretty much what's happening with HRC and knives, but you have so many people saying: oh, you'll never notice the difference anyway or oh, no one pushes M390 to it's limits so it doesn't matter. I think if makers are stating 59-60HRC it damn well should be in that range. What we mostly have instead is: oh, you caught us. Here, have another knife on us; now please go away.
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While I hear you, at the end of the day, it's cheaper to do exactly as you describe. Furthermore, I think it would shock and disgust you to find out exactly how many companies across a countless number of industries do this exact thing. It's simply cheaper, and again, if your product fails, they can just replace it with one that doesn't. And again, we're talking about pocket knives. Where are all the people who are using M390 bladed knives and oh gee, if only it'd been four points harder, it wouldn't have broken, or gotten dull? Does anyone have an objective metric on how long between sharpening an extra four points gets you?

I mean, objectively I know the answer is "No, no I don't, because there are simply too many variables to correctly ascertain what you're asking for", but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.
 
sharp_edge said:
I agree.

Your post (as well as many recent ones by others on this subject) makes me question the rationale of me paying more for the so-called super steels like M390 while in reality VG-10 and S30V shall be sufficiently good and a normal user may not even be able to tell the differences between these steels. If more and more people are thinking this way and acting accordingly, wouldn't we see a quick decline of sales of super steel knives? And how would that affect the knife industry in general?
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How do you know it's really VG-10?
 
Comeuppance said:
I contest the “think of the masses” argument when companies are advertising steels and HRC values to people who spend the extra money for those properties.
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Yeah but you've presented that kind of like a sort of dichotomy, either they're "in the know" or they're not. It really is a spectrum, so they're aiming for "people that know but don't really know" which is to say they know M390 is a hot steel, that it's "the best", but they don't know the science behind it, the effect of heat treatment, geometry to match the chemistry etc.. They're aiming for the people right in the middle with these knives, right at the big fat meaty part of the distribution. $$$$$$
 
Quiet said:
Gotta say, my honest response to the OP is this: Companies don't need to do jack ish. They don't owe anyone anything. Providing some chart that roughly 0.000001% of their customer base can even correctly interpret? What company would waste their time doing that? That's why they don't do it now. There aren't even any objectively right answers, because every steel is good for something and there's no one steel that's the best at every single quantifiable/qualitative metric.

It's just such an entitled thing to demand. Heh, I can just imagine Sal Glesser seeing this thread and thinking "Heh, these guys are high, anyway here's a question: WHO'S UP FOR ANOTHER PM2 SPRINT RUN IN AN AWESOME STEEL?!!!!! WOOOOOO!!!!!" then he throws up the deuces and walks out of the conference room.
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In on one.
 
danbot said:
A Timex Is probably just as reliable for keeping time as a Rolex, but the heart wants what the heart wants. ;)
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It's probably more reliable but it's resale value isn't going to skyrocket the way a Rolex will.

I don't have a Rolex but I do have a Timex. Over ten years that cheap quatrz watch has kept on ticking accurately without even a battery change. Meanwhile my more expensive watches like TAG go to the service center regularly for changes, pressure checks, new o-rings, new batteries and the last time the guy said he's surprised it's still working as well as it does.

Both watches were bought to tell time. The less expensive one for where if you bang the crystal on your nice watch you'll be unhappy. Kinda like knives, common sense says the less expensive one gets used when the chance of damage is higher.

Like knives there are watches out there that maybe aren't as good as others. It feels like some of these new companies that are trying to shove their way in for a place at a crowed table by offering a hot super steel at way less that other brands are the equal to a Rolex from a table at night market in Hong Kong. It might look good for an IG pocket dump. I'm sure not going to feel sorry for anyone who believed the hype and is now feeling ripped off.
 
HRC is one important parameter... but actual steel composition is another
How do you know that your s35vn knife is actual s35vn ?
 
Mrs_Esterhouse said:
This is pretty much what's happening with HRC and knives, but you have so many people saying: oh, you'll never notice the difference anyway or oh, no one pushes M390 to its limits so it doesn't matter. I think if makers are stating 59-60HRC it d*mn well should be in that range. What we mostly have instead is: oh, you caught us. Here, have another knife on us; now please go away.
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Thing is, It's not difficult to obtain that range of hardness. Mistakes can and do happen I'm sure, but it would actually cost more (probably less than a penny per blade though) to draw back the hardness to say, 56-57HRC. It's a higher temp and/or a longer soak in the oven.
It doesn't really make any sense to lie about it and risk your reputation over a few points on the Rockwell scale.
 
This thread shows the rabbit hole we go down when you begin questioning the honesty and practices of the companies. We start with companies having bad results on HRC and now we are questioning their steel. I know some companies have been caught with having wrong steel but at what point are honest mistakes and mix ups being treated as malicious intent?
 
There are absolutely bad apples but lets not spoil the hole bunch on a few. You also have issues like BM and their soft 3V, I think it was 3V, that they said was soft to make it easier to field sharpen and make it "tougher"/more chip resistant. We all know that they were running 3V too soft but they landed it in their listed range so while stupid they were honest and that is what we should want from the companies. We want a listed range and we want them in that range if we take issue with that range then we can simply not buy. I still would expect companies to on occasion have one leave the factory that isn't in the range. I wouldn't expect to see a 52 when target range is 58+ that is probably a bad batch that got through w/o any testing.
 
I’m honestly surprised there seems to be pushback on the idea I put forth (or demanded, depending on how you look at it)

A lot of the rebuttals seem more rooted in skepticism than anything else, though, saying the test results would be of little value due to batch variability / potential dishonesty.

I don’t know much about the details of heat treatments, but, isn’t it a process that can be made into just a rote and mechanical sequence? Temperature, duration, etc - If all the blades are roughly identical, and the process is routine, I wouldn’t expect there to be significant variability between or within batches. Perhaps my ignorance is showing here.
 
This is like saying some people drink and drive so all cars should have a breathalyzer ignition lockout standard.

Secondly; assuming something is simple on the basis that you "don't know much about the details" is going to lead to problems.
 
Comeuppance said:
I’m honestly surprised there seems to be pushback on the idea I put forth (or demanded, depending on how you look at it)

A lot of the rebuttals seem more rooted in skepticism than anything else, though, saying the test results would be of little value due to batch variability / potential dishonesty.

I don’t know much about the details of heat treatments, but, isn’t it a process that can be made into just a rote and mechanical sequence? Temperature, duration, etc - If all the blades are roughly identical, and the process is routine, I wouldn’t expect there to be significant variability between or within batches. Perhaps my ignorance is showing here.
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You're vastly oversimplifying a relatively complicated process. Go look into the heat treat threads about target hardness in some of the shop talk subforums. They can have issues hitting a target Hrc on a single blade with a small oven where hot or cold spots are less likely to be an issue. Now imagine magnifying those issues by a batch of several hundred blades. That's the whole reason that when companies do offer information on Hrc they give a range.
 
Comeuppance said:
It is no longer impressive that a company claims to use S35VN, M390, etc - the heat treatment is so vital in bringing out the advantageous qualities of modern steels that it seems ludicrous that this information isn’t already widely available.

With so many companies showing lower-than-advertised HRC values, it would be in the best interests of the consumers and the companies to establish a sense of trustworthiness by having independent testing, perhaps even batch-to-batch sampling.
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Comeuppance said:
I’m honestly surprised there seems to be pushback on the idea I put forth (or demanded, depending on how you look at it)

A lot of the rebuttals seem more rooted in skepticism than anything else, though, saying the test results would be of little value due to batch variability / potential dishonesty.

I don’t know much about the details of heat treatments, but, isn’t it a process that can be made into just a rote and mechanical sequence? Temperature, duration, etc - If all the blades are roughly identical, and the process is routine, I wouldn’t expect there to be significant variability between or within batches. Perhaps my ignorance is showing here.
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I guess I'm wondering if this is that big of a problem? Would it be worth the extra cost? I joked earlier about testing every knife, but if we truly care about this, shouldn't you want the knife in your pocket to be tested? Where does it end?
 
craytab said:
You know nothing of this community. @DocJD and me are best buds :D:eek:
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I know more about the board than my join date will tell you.

Insipid Moniker said:
You're vastly oversimplifying a relatively complicated process. Go look into the heat treat threads about target hardness in some of the shop talk subforums. They can have issues hitting a target Hrc on a single blade with a small oven where hot or cold spots are less likely to be an issue. Now imagine magnifying those issues by a batch of several hundred blades. That's the whole reason that when companies do offer information on Hrc they give a range.
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Well said. Process tolerance and accuracy are things that have to be considered.
 
craytab said:
I guess I'm wondering if this is that big of a problem? Would it be worth the extra cost? I joked earlier about testing every knife, but if we truly care about this, shouldn't you want the knife in your pocket to be tested? Where does it end?
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If a consumer is paying a premium for a blade steel because of the stated properties - typically, wear resistance - then it is a big deal if the company cannot reliably produce blades that fall within spec.

I don’t think testing each blade would be necessary, but I honestly wouldn’t object. Batch testing would suffice and would also drastically reduce the potential loss of sales due to people finding out they are getting poorly-treated blades.

I’ll answer the cost question with a hypothetical situation question: Imagine you are deciding between two knives that are equally desirable to you, and have the same premium steel.

One brand claims a range of 58-62 and costs $240, and the other brand charges $250 and states they have their knives independently tested and have verification that their knife is 61HRC. Assuming you will certainly buy one of them with intent on using it frequently, which do you buy?
 
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Aitor, a Spanish company used to -not sure if they still do this- test all their blades, and even advertised it. I would not mind knives that showed a test dimple which shows that they where tested, and within HRC specs.
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