CPM154 vs S30V

Josh K said:
If S30V was like AUS-8, why would they make S30V? Something isn't clicking in there, try as I might to get it to.

I'm sure Ankerson means the best, as does all knife testers. At the end of the day it comes down to your experience with your knives. I am completely happy with CRK's HT of S30V at 58-59 RC. Considering he helped design the steel I'm also more confident in his judgement then anyone else's.

I'm suspicious of anyone who says a steel has to hit a certain RC to become different. It doesn't. Frankly no numbers or other proof he provides will convince me his testing is correct.
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Ok, that's fair. I'll keep that in mind.
 
Josh K said:
If S30V was like AUS-8, why would they make S30V? Something isn't clicking in there, try as I might to get it to.

I'm sure Ankerson means the best, as does all knife testers. At the end of the day it comes down to your experience with your knives. I am completely happy with CRK's HT of S30V at 58-59 RC. Considering he helped design the steel I'm also more confident in his judgement then anyone else's.

I'm suspicious of anyone who says a steel has to hit a certain RC to become different. It doesn't. Frankly no numbers or other proof he provides will convince me his testing is correct.
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Just keep thinking that. ;)
 
kreole said:
According to the birth date cards I have, CRK aims for 58-59, not 57-58.
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Woops... lol... this beer is having an affect on my brain. I have the birth cards in front of me for both the S30V and the BG-42. S30V is 58-59 as stated and the BG-42 is 60-61. Thank you for the correction.
 
I guess my question has been answered. :D

Thanks for the testing that you do Ankerson. Gives as guys who don't have the resources and/or knowhow, valuable information that we might need to make our decisions.
 
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I'm suspicious of anyone who says a steel has to hit a certain RC to become different. It doesn't. Frankly no numbers or other proof he provides will convince me his testing is correct.
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Josh, not only does hardness change things like brittleness and edge stability, but different heat treats on the same steel used to get to those same final hardnesses can be used to enhance certain aspects of that steel like wear resistance, toughness, and corrosion resistance.

One manufacturer may heat treat his steel to RC 59 to get maximum wear resistance, another may use a different schedule to get RC 58 but enhance corrosion resistance and toughness. Same steels & pretty much same hardness but way different performance figures for the aspects of that steel.

Pretty much if you are seeing highest hardnesses for a particular steel it's going to typically give it's best wear resistance performance and edge stability at those hardnesses.

It's usually pretty easy to distinguish harder steels just by sharpening. Example, benchmade M4 feels different on the stones than spyderco's M4 knives.
 
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You gentlemen have covered alot of ground here. We developed CPMS30V in an attempt to make a tougher martensitic stainless knife blade steel - mission accomplished but plenty of room for improvement. Hence our next attempt CPMS35VN - again mission accomplished - tougher but with a slight loss in wear resistance, corrosion resistance the same.
CPMS30V is a great steel but difficult for the custom guys to work with - finish grinding etc.. So we wanted to offer a more user friendly premium grade to the custom guys so we introduced CPM154. Again - mission accomplished . CPM154 basically the same as RWL34.

CPM154 is easier to work with than CPMS30V. Both have similar corrosion resistance. CPMS30V has slightly better toughness and because of the vanadium carbides better wear resistance. As a few of you have mentioned heat treatment IS extremely important and many custom makers as well as production companies have developed optimum heat treat procedures with their heat treat houses.
 
tsdevanna said:
You gentlemen have covered alot of ground here. We developed CPMS30V in an attempt to make a tougher martensitic stainless knife blade steel - mission accomplished but plenty of room for improvement. Hence our next attempt CPMS35VN - again mission accomplished - tougher but with a slight loss in wear resistance, corrosion resistance the same.
CPMS30V is a great steel but difficult for the custom guys to work with - finish grinding etc.. So we wanted to offer a more user friendly premium grade to the custom guys so we introduced CPM154. Again - mission accomplished . CPM154 basically the same as RWL34.

CPM154 is easier to work with than CPMS30V. Both have similar corrosion resistance. CPMS30V has slightly better toughness and because of the vanadium carbides better wear resistance. As a few of you have mentioned heat treatment IS extremely important and many custom makers as well as production companies have developed optimum heat treat procedures with their heat treat houses.
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Thanks for ringing in. :thumbup:
 
Where would one class AUS8A, 440C, 154cm, VG10 in all of this? I assumed that VG10 would have slightly better wear resistance than 154cm, which in turn would do better than 440C, with AUS8A at the bottom.
My kitchen knife in VG10 (Spyderco) has better wear resistance than some old Gerbers I have in 440C (but not their models in M2).
I have a Moki in AUS8A, but haven't used it enough to know how long an edge will last.
It was my understanding that S30V has better wear resistance than VG10 (at the same RC), but I don't have any knives in S30V.
 
arty said:
Where would one class AUS8A, 440C, 154cm, VG10 in all of this? I assumed that VG10 would have slightly better wear resistance than 154cm, which in turn would do better than 440C, with AUS8A at the bottom.
My kitchen knife in VG10 (Spyderco) has better wear resistance than some old Gerbers I have in 440C (but not their models in M2).
I have a Moki in AUS8A, but haven't used it enough to know how long an edge will last.
It was my understanding that S30V has better wear resistance than VG10 (at the same RC), but I don't have any knives in S30V.
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They all are in the same general category (Not sure about 440C yet), my testing methods puts steels into categories by edge retention, we are looking for big differences, it doesn't rank them 1,2,3,4 etc. Once I release my data it will make more since.

To really get finial rankings the CARTA would need to be used testing to completely dull.
 
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The Mastiff said:
Josh, not only does hardness change things like brittleness and edge stability, but different heat treats on the same steel used to get to those same final hardnesses can be used to enhance certain aspects of that steel like wear resistance, toughness, and corrosion resistance.

One manufacturer may heat treat his steel to RC 59 to get maximum wear resistance, another may use a different schedule to get RC 58 but enhance corrosion resistance and toughness. Same steels & pretty much same hardness but way different performance figures for the aspects of that steel.

Pretty much if you are seeing highest hardnesses for a particular steel it's going to typically give it's best wear resistance performance and edge stability at those hardnesses.

It's usually pretty easy to distinguish harder steels just by sharpening. Example, benchmade M4 feels different on the stones than spyderco's M4 knives.
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I understand that.

Does this validate the claim that S30V doesn't have any appreciable edge retention difference until it hits 60 RC?
 
Josh K said:
I understand that.

Does this validate the claim that S30V doesn't have any appreciable edge retention difference until it hits 60 RC?
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What happens is the same as in other steels, the edge retention will get better as the hardness goes up. Now in that there are points that there are bigger jumps in performance. With S30V that is from 60 RC and up to 62 or 63 depending on HT and tempering.

So with that said there will be a very noticeable difference from 58-59 and 60-61.

Most production knives in S30V will be in the 59-60 range though.
 
Ankerson said:
What happens is the same as in other steels, the edge retention will get better as the hardness goes up. Now in that there are points that there are bigger jumps in performance. With S30V that is from 60 RC and up to 62 or 63 depending on HT and tempering.

So with that said there will be a very noticeable difference from 58-59 and 60-61.

Most production knives in S30V will be in the 59-60 range though.
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Why would they heat treat it to 58-59 if they are not hitting the prime hardness for S30V? What would be the factor in them not hardening the steel for optimum all around performance as you state? Not doubting you, so don't think that. I am just trying to understand the reasoning for the production companies not wanting to take S30V to it's optimum performance level which seems to be around 61 as you state, with no chipping. Is it just for your average Joe to sharpen easier?
 
Incahiker said:
Why would they heat treat it to 58-59 if they are not hitting the prime hardness for S30V? What would be the factor in them not hardening the steel for optimum all around performance as you state? Not doubting you, so don't think that. I am just trying to understand the reasoning for the production companies not wanting to take S30V to it's optimum performance level which seems to be around 61 as you state, with no chipping. Is it just for your average Joe to sharpen easier?
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They do it for the Customers as was pointed out before S30V is tricky to HT once you reach 60 RC and if the Tempering isn't right on it can get chippy.

So in an effort to give the customer a reliable product that won't chip out etc they keep it in the 59-60 range.


What good would it be if they hit 61 and the tempering process failed for 500 or 1000 blades, they could make boat anchors out of it maybe.
 
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Ankerson said:
They do it for the Customers as was pointed out before S30V is tricky to HT once you reach 60 RC and if the Tempering isn't right on it can get chippy.

So in an effort to give the customer a reliable product that won't chip out etc they keep it in the 59-60 range.


What good would it be if they hit 61 and the tempering process failed for 500 or 1000 blades.
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Speculating that knife makers can't hit a consistent temper. :rolleyes:
 
arty said:
Where would one class AUS8A, 440C, 154cm, VG10 in all of this? I assumed that VG10 would have slightly better wear resistance than 154cm, which in turn would do better than 440C, with AUS8A at the bottom.
My kitchen knife in VG10 (Spyderco) has better wear resistance than some old Gerbers I have in 440C (but not their models in M2).
I have a Moki in AUS8A, but haven't used it enough to know how long an edge will last.
It was my understanding that S30V has better wear resistance than VG10 (at the same RC), but I don't have any knives in S30V.
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www.bladeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?368100&postcount=35

Until Ankerson's tests are released, I found this post when searching for Spyderco's RC goals yesterday; Phil Wilson relates Spyderco's catra testing results for some of the steels you asked to be ranked:

Phil Wilson said:
HOB, Cliff, Thom, all

I have read all this with interest and I have to respond. I introduced S30V with a couple of articles in Blade magazine a few years ago so I am responsible for some of the “hype” being mentioned here. Some history; At that time Crucible was the only steel company out there that had any interest in making a new steel that had all the qualities of a good knife steel. They talked to several of us and came up with the criteria to shoot for. The main reason for this is that S90V (upgrade for S-60V) was tough to heat treat. The problem was if you wanted to take advantage of the high wear resistance of 90V you had to get it heat treated some where. Paul Bos declined most of the time because the temp required for it was in excess of 2100 F. That was at the upper end of what his furnace could do and still have decent element life. There were also a lot of complaints about how hard S90V was to finish. This is due to the very high Vanadium Carbide percentage in this alloy. With less carbide percentage, S30V is easier to work than S90V, no question about that. So S30V was developed to mainly solve these two problems. They hit the target on both of these in my opinion. It is easy to get RC 60 with S30V at about 1950 F. I think it is easy to heat treat but it does take precise equipment and attention to detail. There is a learning curve on all high alloy steels and things like decarb and quench rate can cause some frustration. It is easier to grind and finish than S90V and this makes it possible for large production runs. This is a bigger deal than most realize. There is now a CPM steel with 4% Vanadium that can be heat treated by most commercial heat treat firms and for any custom maker who wants to buy a furnace and learn to do it himself.
There are now thousands of S30V blades out there in use. Before the introduction of S30V, S90V was the only choice for a stainless CPM and a limited one at that.
The impact toughness and bending strength turned out be a little better than S90V. I have found that to optimize the toughness a heat treat on the higher end of the data sheet range and a subzero quench and temper in the range of 400 to 600 are required. The ideal hardness range is RC 58 to RC61, with 60 being ideal. With this heat treat I can slice thick cardboard, cut rope, fillet a fish (with a very long thin flexible blade), and field dress, skin and quarter and elk with out any noticeable damage to the blade. I like to grind blades thin (.010 to .015 at the edge) and sharpen at about 15 degrees. Sharpening medium can be Silicon Carbide Norton fine or medium stone or the green or red DMT diamond. Remove the burr with a loaded leather strop. I –have- seen fine edge chipping on S30V by whittling dry Douglass Fir and twisting the blade out of the cut. The same thing will happen with 154CM, S90V, ZDP189 (rc66) and BG42. I do not have any VG10 blades to play with so can’t comment on that steel. The edge holding on S30V at RC 60 and sharpened as above is more than 30% better than ATS34/154CM. S90V is another step up and 10V is in it own category. This is all based on rope cutting tests I have done with the knives of the same blade geometry and sharpened the same. My testing is not as precise as what Cliff is doing, but correlates with the data that Spydeco gets with the CATRA machine. Here is the order based on what Sal (Spyderco) has related to me..

440C 360-400
VG10 500-510
S30V 550-580
S90V 750
ZDP 189 750
S125V 1200
VG 10 is not available to the custom maker as far as I know so if we want a steel better than 440C/ATS34/154CM for some applications then it going to be CPM 154 or CPM S30V at this point. Crucible had good representation at the Oregon show this last weekend and they were interested in how the production and custom makers were doing with their steels. They were also prepared to help with any problems and were offering free advice to any who would listen. As has been said many times, the right steel for the application, IMO S30V makes a great cutting slicing type blade where corrosion resistance and edge holding are important.
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^^^^^^ And with that I will not say anymore at this point, I have said enough, maybe more than I should have so I will leave it as is. :)
 
Does this validate the claim that S30V doesn't have any appreciable edge retention difference until it hits 60 RC?
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Josh, I don't have objective data, only subjective impressions. I do feel that S30V performs better edge stability wise at the higher hardness. I like it better at RC 60-61 than at RC 58, but that's just me. It's not my favorite steel, nor is the class of steel it belongs too.

Abrasive and adhesive wear are different things though and I'm not sure how much difference there would be on a catra, for instance.

Sorry if that sounds mealy mouthed. :)

Joe/raleigh
 
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