CPM-M4 vs. CPM-S110V......GO!!!

sodak said:
If you are willing to live on the edge, you can get CPM 10V up to 64.5. I have one from Phil Wilson, and it is incredible. I have no idea if it is tough or not, but I don't care, as it's a skinner, not a chopper. I've got lots of choppers for chopping. ;)

It's not a small difference, it's a *very* large difference in edge retention cutting through abrasive media compared to D2, CPM D2, and most other steels. And I hold D2 in *very* high regard... M2 at 65/66 HRC is one of the few that can keep up, but the 10V comes out on top.

I haven't tested it yet against S90V, but I just got my Spyderco Mule, so will hopefully try those two out. Good stuff!

Edited - My remarks were for CPM 10V, not S110, sorry...
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Phil Wilson has talked very highly of S110V, basically like it is a stainless version of 10V because it can be brought up to 63-64 RC rather than the 61 max of S90V. I would love to try out Phil's S90V and S110V to compare to my Manix 2 S90V. I'm guessing since Phil can do small heat treat batches and goes for all out hardness his S90V should be real impressive compared to my Manix 2, which would make his S110V just incredible.

On the original topic, I love my M4, it gets incredible sharp and keeps that edge pretty darned good. It keeps it's extreme sharpness better than most every other steel I have tried, but for long term slicing ZDP 189 or especially S90V will out slice it. M4 took a pig apart for me easily and was still cutting nicely, and took no visible edge damage from bone impacts (no rolling or chipping visible on a 20-24 degree inclusive edge). The steel does now have some character color from that skinning session, which is fine by me as it is a working knife and keeping the finish perfectly pretty isn't important to me. M4 is great if you want pretty good toughness and edge retention with great sharpness capapbilities but can give up the corrosion resistance and ability to slice forever at a lower sharpness like the super Vanadium steels can. If you aren't big on wiping down your folders and don't like to sharpen them very often then S110V might be a better choice for you. S110V at 64 RC should slice forever, and even at a presumably lower hardness (has anyone RC tested a Shallot?) I'm sure it has very impressive edge retention as well. I know I am most likely going to get my S90V re-treated up to 61 RC for incresed performance. Going up the 2-3 points (I'll get RC testing results on it back soon to see what the factory hardness is) should make a nice difference in slicing performance.

Mike
 
Bump.

More info on S110V would be appreciated. It's hard to find a "comparagraph" featuring it with a more common steel such as S30V.
 
Now that Phil Wilson is playing with CPM M4 he may have it in the realm of the S110V's and 10V's of the world in edge retention since he is hardening it to 65 RC. He reported no noticeable wear after 100 cuts on 5/8" manilla rope, and I believe he said S110V goes about 600 buts before it needs 25 lbs. of pressure to make the cut. It will be interesting to see what numbers Phil comes up with once he has played around some more with the heat treat on CPM M4. I know I plan on having at least one folder re heat treated to 65 RC to get a hopefully nice bump in edge retention compared to 62.5 RC, which is plenty good.

Mike
 
D'ohboy said:
That would be good even the Interactive Knife Steel Chart doesn't have it listed.
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? I do list CPM S110V and all of the other CPMs that were ever used in the knives under CPM name or in their AISI name. Plus a few more looking very suitable for knives based on composition.

Anyway here's a query for CPM steels.


Royalmist said:
It's hard to find a "comparagraph" featuring it with a more common steel such as S30V.
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And here's S110v vs. S90v vs. S30v composition comparison graph.
 
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NP :). The table has ~310 separate steel records and over 1000 alternate names for them. Easy to miss things if you don't filter things out.

I'd be more interested to know if search didn't work as expected or what can be done to make it easier to use. So, if you have any comments, wishes or suggestions on that I'll be happy to hear them.
 
gunmike1 said:
Now that Phil Wilson is playing with CPM M4 he may have it in the realm of the S110V's and 10V's of the world in edge retention since he is hardening it to 65 RC. He reported no noticeable wear after 100 cuts on 5/8" manilla rope, and I believe he said S110V goes about 600 buts before it needs 25 lbs. of pressure to make the cut. It will be interesting to see what numbers Phil comes up with once he has played around some more with the heat treat on CPM M4. I know I plan on having at least one folder re heat treated to 65 RC to get a hopefully nice bump in edge retention compared to 62.5 RC, which is plenty good.

Gentlemen, I like to use my knives in the field before I start to make statements on performance. I have not used CPM M4 yet but here goes anyhow. I have covered some this before so forgive the redundancy. CPM S90V goes back a while. It is still a very good steel for a light use hunter or even a fillet knife. It is best at RC61 but most times it shows up at 58 or so. This is a good compromise and favors a tougher blade for a wide range of users. CpmS110V was introduced as and upgrade for S90V. The improvements are in corrosion resistance and obtainable hardness. The addition of Niobium and Cobalt makes a very fine hard complex carbide. This steel shows up at around 58 RC-- at least the blades I have tested-. Mainly for the same reasons as S90V above. I have pushed it up to 64. At that hardness it seems about the same toughness as S90V at 61. I used a S110V (RC 64) knife on an Antelope hunt this fall. It held a scary sharp edge thorough the field dressing, skinning and quartering of 4 animals. I have a lot of experience with CPM 10V in the field both myself and feed back from others. As Sodak says this is the datum that I compare all others to. 10V is still my favorite for a utility hunter where use is not around salt water or very humid climates. My S110V hunter performed in the same category as 10V based on this one field experience. When pushed to the high hardness (64) there is some loss in corrosion resistance and toughness. This is illustrated on the Crucible data sheet. I left this same knife outside in the rain a couple of days and have not seen even a hint of rust. The conclusion so far is that it has adequate corrosion resistance to be equal to CPM S30V or S90V or example. I have not experimented with S110V at a lower hardness but feel confident at this time that even at 64 it has adequate toughness for a slicing type use. I would not try to chop or pry-- that is a whole different story and not the steel for that application. My cutting tests on rope show that S110V out performs S90V. This is logical-- 61RC vs 64RC. The downside of S110V is that it is pretty hard as supplied in the annealed state. Eats drills and belts up pretty quick. Grinding seems reasonable with the right abrasives. Finishing in the hardened condition is also probably worse than 10V. I believe it is in short supply, Crucible I think only made one heat and it is pretty much all gone. I have enough to last a while and hope there will be more offered in the future.
I just started working with CPM M4. The first blade came out at RC65. This is with high heat at 2160 and a 1000 temper. I do not have a handle on this blade yet. -Next few days- but did do some slicing on rope with a taped up tang. It looks to have great edge holding-- others have said here it is not as good as S110V but I don't know what hardness ect they are working with. Have to compare apples and apples. My sense so far is that it will cut about the same, have good toughness but the trade off will be corrosion resistance. Not a steel for wet climates. I also noticed that preliminary sharpening indicates this stuff will get very sharp. I hope next year to use a CPM M4 blade on a hunting trip and then can be more specific on how it works out... Phil
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Phil, I really look forward to your real world performance with CPM M4 at 65 RC. Thanks for the great insight into these high end CPM steels that seek the ultimate in cutlery performance. I know at 62.5 RC my CPM Spyderco Mule has been extremely impressive on the 2 pigs I've dressed out. The smaller sow was pretty easy, but the 400 lb. boar I got was a good test of the blade. We're talking extremely thick hide with some seriously abrasive fur, and lots of it. Tons of cutting including lots of bone contact when cutting off the legs at the knees and cutting off the head. No chipping at all, and still serviceably sharp and ready to skin something else. At a thinner edge than the .018" edge on my Mule that bone contact is not adviseable, in fact I kind of cringed when we were doing it, and I was pretty amazed that a blade sharpened at an acute (10-12 degrees per side) angle avoided chipping with such bone contact. I would prefer the edge thinner, steel harder, and an appropriate tool besides my skinning knife to do that bone area cutting. CPM M4 gets sharper than any other steel I have treid. Even at coarse grits it starts to split hairs easily, the stuff is really amazing. Tom Krein first told me about it and I got my first CPM M4 knife from Tom (it's around 63 RC and a great little slicer with a .007" full height hollow gound Caper). CPM M4 takes a polished edge unlike any other steel I've seen, just amazing in sharpness. I really look forward to trying it at even higher hardness than my Mule and the Krein Ultimate Caper, as I feel it will just make the properties I value in M4 shine even more: the edge retention and sharpness (it will probably burr even less than the extremely minimal burring I get now during sharpening, making getting extreme sharpness easier). Sure it will give up a bit of toughness and corrosion resistance, but I'm not worried about those issues right now (use mineral oil on the blade, and use the knife for slicing, not twisting out of deep, hard cuts). Maybe I need to save my coins and place an order with Phil for one of his great hunting blades in CPM M4. I would pretty much be in knife heaven at that point.

Mike
 
More on CPM M4---- Still experimenting with heat treat and different tempers. My goal is to get the hardness as high as I can for edge holding and still have reasonable toughness for real world field use. Others have optimized this steel for rope cutting contests (chopping). I now have blades at RC66,65 and 64. The 64 blade shows no tendency to chip when whittling fir and twisting out of the cut. Steel thickness at the edge is 0.008. It was sharpened with a green dot DMT. Shaves hair against the arm and is a very impressive slicer on rope. I checked with my tool steel consultant, Ed Severson who used to work for Crucible. Early on he gave me a lot of good guidance on heat treating and I always like to check with him on what I am doing with a new steel. He related that tempering below 1000 F, can result in some chippy ness when used as a high speed cutting tool. The RC 66 blade was tempered at 1000 or a tad less, the latest 64 was tempered at 1025. Things get a little tricky here since thermocouples can vary as much as 2% even when brand new. This is a whole other story on thermocouples, controllers, hardness testing ect and not the subject here. Chippy on a machine cuttting tool may not mean chippy on a knife blade, we shall see. I left the finished blade out on the table in back of shop for 4 hours yesterday. 100% RH and light misty rain. It had "target shaped" rust spots with center pits all over the blade. I could not sand the pits out with 220 SC paper so will have to go back to the grinder to clean it up. As I said before this is not a steel for wet climates. There was earlier mention here on this thread of you just have to take care of your knife. Clean it and dry it and oil it and it will be fine. My experience is that one day you will be hunting a snow storm with a stiff wind, field dress an animal just as it is getting dark, your hands are numb with cold an covered with blood. You wipe the blade down and put it in the sheath and drop it in the pack. You get the picture-- . Just don't forget to clean up the knife when you get back to camp... This looks like a great steel just have to be ready to trade off some attributes to get others... Phil
 
Phil Wilson said:
More on CPM M4---- Still experimenting with heat treat and different tempers. My goal is to get the hardness as high as I can for edge holding and still have reasonable toughness for real world field use. Others have optimized this steel for rope cutting contests (chopping). I now have blades at RC66,65 and 64. The 64 blade shows no tendency to chip when whittling fir and twisting out of the cut. Steel thickness at the edge is 0.008. It was sharpened with a green dot DMT. Shaves hair against the arm and is a very impressive slicer on rope. I checked with my tool steel consultant, Ed Severson who used to work for Crucible. Early on he gave me a lot of good guidance on heat treating and I always like to check with him on what I am doing with a new steel. He related that tempering below 1000 F, can result in some chippy ness when used as a high speed cutting tool. The RC 66 blade was tempered at 1000 or a tad less, the latest 64 was tempered at 1025. Things get a little tricky here since thermocouples can vary as much as 2% even when brand new. This is a whole other story on thermocouples, controllers, hardness testing ect and not the subject here. Chippy on a machine cuttting tool may not mean chippy on a knife blade, we shall see. I left the finished blade out on the table in back of shop for 4 hours yesterday. 100% RH and light misty rain. It had "target shaped" rust spots with center pits all over the blade. I could not sand the pits out with 220 SC paper so will have to go back to the grinder to clean it up. As I said before this is not a steel for wet climates. There was earlier mention here on this thread of you just have to take care of your knife. Clean it and dry it and oil it and it will be fine. My experience is that one day you will be hunting a snow storm with a stiff wind, field dress an animal just as it is getting dark, your hands are numb with cold an covered with blood. You wipe the blade down and put it in the sheath and drop it in the pack. You get the picture-- . Just don't forget to clean up the knife when you get back to camp... This looks like a great steel just have to be ready to trade off some attributes to get others... Phil
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It will be real interesting to see how your harder CPM M4 Blades work, as if you can push 66 RC without being overly chippy at .010" or a tad under it should really have impressive edge holding. On my last hunt with that massive hog I got I let my buddy gut the animal with my Spyderco CPM M4 Mule and he washed off the blade with water but didn't really dry my well before he sheathed it. It ended up with some rust spotting, but no pitting. This is CPM M4 at 62.5 RC, so I imagine the harder ones are even more ready to pit. If I would have had the brains to double check my own blade after getting it back from my buddy only the discoloration from the blood would have been there after the skinning, and not the rust spots from the knife being sheathed with water not completely taken off of it. I agree that out in the field it certainly can be hard to keep your knife clean and dry, but I like the all around excellent performance of CPM M4 so much that to me it is worth the trouble. I would imagine the performance of CPM M4 gets a good bit better with your heat treatments than what I am used to, and it will be great to see your testing results. As much as I love CPM M4 I do think a good stainless hunting knife is a requirement for serious hunters because when the rain comes your non-stainless knife will suffer some. As long as it's only a bit of surface rust a tad of corrosion is OK with me, but pitting like you suffered is always a possibility if for some reason your non-stainless blade gets inadvertantly left wet and it's a pain to remove that pitting.

Mike
 
D'ohboy said:
That would be good even the Interactive Knife Steel Chart doesn't have it listed. However, you might want to look at the data for s90v since s110v is an upgrade of s90v.
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SPXTrader said:
Here's Crucible's Data Sheet on S110V and S30V. I'm sure if you dug around their site a little, you might get some additional info.

http://www.crucibleservice.com/datash/Datasheet CPM S110V Rev 1.pdf

http://faq.customtacticals.com/datasheets/s30v.pdf

I have the 110V Shallot, and its right behind my favorite, ZDP, as the best all around folder steel you can find!
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Gator97 said:
? I do list CPM S110V and all of the other CPMs that were ever used in the knives under CPM name or in their AISI name. Plus a few more looking very suitable for knives based on composition.

Anyway here's a query for CPM steels.




And here's S110v vs. S90v vs. S30v composition comparison graph.
Click to expand...


And thank you Phil Wilson.

It seems my S110V blade will be a dedicated slicer.

Besides that, I've always believed that stainless is the way to go because of the threats of acidic foods edge wear and also oxidation that occurs at the edge.
 
i really enjoy the experimentation some of our members are committed to.a careful look at Interactive Knife Steels as downloaded from Gator will amaze many members at the plethora of exciting alloys [according to composition]. many of these to my knowledge have never been used in knife formulation. a fact i'm trying to convey is some of the most pedestrian alloys with a complex heat treatment can out perform the super cpm steels.certainly i am for the experimentation our guys are doing. my point is that composition takes a back seat to heat treatment. perhaps 90v & 110v with multiple tempers, extended tempering soaks & even longer times at the hardening temps may give results that border on the amazing.Ed fowlers work with 52100 & some makers bringing 1095 up to 66r.r. without brittleness are examples of simple steels that can perform on a level = to or greater than many super alloys that are on market at present. just look at busses infi & what it will achive. whatever may come from extensive tweaking of the more complex alloys will only be achived in the private sector by custom makers dedicating much time & effort if so desired. the commercial sector will probably not have any interest in moving in this direction. the nexus of this is if complex alloys are going to surpass some of the tweaked simple steels it will only occur from hard working custom makers.
 
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