Curious about TOPS blade steel... the 1095 ???

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FliGuyRyan

Joined
Dec 2, 2005
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What is your experiences with this blade steel. Their website says it's ranked at like Rc58, but I've never really heard of it. What's it compare to and how does it perform? How is the blade retention?

Thanks,
-Cleary

P.S. In general, are TOPS knives pretty good and reliable. I'm looking mainly at their fixed blades.
 
It's a pretty tough steel.I have 5 Ka-Bar knives,an Ontario machete and a Tom Brown Tracker of the same steel and you can beat the hell out of it.It stains quickly however if not properly taken care of.
I live in a wet area(swamps,lots of rain ect) and I spend a lot of time outdoors hiking and camping and 1095 performs superbly.
 
1095 is one of the most popular non-stainless knife steels of the 20th Century. It is a very simple steel, capable of being very tough though it starts getting brittle as it rounds 60RC. Can be hardened up into the mid sixties, though, if you don't mind getting some brittleness in exchange for superior edge retention. At 58RC, it'll be reasonably tough, sharpen easily, and hold an edge very well.
There are many that are better in specific areas, but 1095 is a great jack of all trades steel. You can get lots of basic steel info from Joe Talmadge's steel faq:
http://bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=368828
 
I've always stated that TOPS knives have some of the most Micarta handles, I have a Large hand and even the Wolf Pup XL feels good in my grip. The thing I like most about 1095 is it's ease of Sharpening, great for folks like me who are not Sharpening Gurus, and the hair popping edge it takes.
 
FliGuyRyan said:
P.S. In general, are TOPS knives pretty good and reliable. I'm looking mainly at their fixed blades.
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There's nothing an Ontario knife can't do just as good for a fraction of the price.
 
It has been observed that TOPS knives are a bit pricey considering their use of 1095 steel. 1095 is a good steel, but also very cheap, and it is hard to justify TOPS prices for knives made of 1095. Kabars and Ontario knives are also made of 1095 steel, and they are way less expensive.
 
I have a few Tops. I carrried a Steel Eagle in Iraq and never had any problems with it.
 
t1mpani said:
It is a very simple steel, capable of being very tough though it starts getting brittle as it rounds 60RC. Can be hardened up into the mid sixties, though, if you don't mind getting some brittleness in exchange for superior edge retention. At 58RC, it'll be reasonably tough, sharpen easily, and hold an edge very well.
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1095 hits a toughness minimum at 60 HRC where the impact resistance and ductility are really low, both actually increase as it is hardened further (by lowering the tempering temperature). As you go below 60 HRC it increases in toughness but you have to drop way to to ~55 HRC to reach similar toughness as it has at ~65 HRC and by now the yeild point is really low, <%50. This behavior is common in most carbon and low alloy steels, O1 has the same tendancy for example. As steels are alloyed this behavior gets more complicated.

A2 for example behaves as most would expect, and steels are commonly described, it gets much tougher as you soften it with tempering and hits a decent compromise of strength/toughness at ~60 HRC, it also has a fairly wide plateau of tempering temperatures that hit this spot where steels like 1095 are heavily peaked, if you miss the temperature even a little you can lose 50% of the toughness. This is probably why some of the cheaper 1095 blades can vary massively in performance.

You can see most of this if you look at the TTT curves and think about the four stages of tempering and how they will be influenced by the curves. How the steels are quenched is very critical as well because simply because a steel can harden in air doesn't mean you should, slower hardening can induce carbide precipitation during the quench which can induce massive brittleness, a common problem with stainless steels.

Anyway specific to TOPS, 1095 is a decent blade steel for light cutting knives, temper at 325 F, for heavy use knives for impacts you need to drop it way down to <55 HRC, or use a bainite heat treatment and get ~58 HRC with massive toughness, or do a martensite/bainite blend by quenching to ~350F and holding, or better yet use a more suitable steel like L6 in the first place.

-Cliff
 
Cool! I had no idea the curve turned back around in the 60s as hardness climbed higher. I learn something new everyday. :)
 
As you start tempering 1095 the martensite loses its carbon which initially forms transition carbide which is good, the steel gets stronger and tougher and more wear resistant, but as you increase the temperature further the transition carbide starts to transform into cementite which is softer and tends to lathe along the austenite grain boundries which reduces the steels impact toughness and ductility.

The other concern with 1095 is that since the carbon content is so high it will form a significant amount of plate martensite which is inherently more brittle than lathe martensite. With steels like 52100 you can prevent this by adjusting the soak time to reduce the amount of carbon which is dissolved into the austenite, however since 1095 has such a short soak time due to lack of alloy carbides this is difficult/impossible to achieve.

For these and other reasons most knife makers will prefer various low alloy tool steels for knife materials even the ones that praise it strongly and most of them tend to be very low volume heat treaters. 1095 is very cheap though, easy to machine even when hardened, and requires very short and not very hot soak times, all of which makes it very easy to produce a lot of blades in a short period of time, quality however is a different matter.

-Cliff
 
I think his point is that people should understand the characteristics of the alloy at a certain hardeness. I wouldn't read into it anymore then taht.
 
DaveH said:
I think his point is that people should understand the characteristics of the alloy at a certain hardeness. I wouldn't read into it anymore then taht.
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i've heard some praise them and some say they are over-priced (hyped) for a knife made from 1095. I haven't heard anyone mention that they ever broke one in normal use.

I just wish he would get to the point of his opinion for the persoon who isn't that familiar with metallurgy.
 
Redhat said:
So is your point that TOPS knives are low quality?
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No, I was talking about the characteristics of the steel in general, not TOP's knives specifically, if I felt TOP's knives were of low quality I would just say it, I don't have a problem doing this in general, Ontario knives for example are of low quality.

TOP's used to be the worst speed hole designed knives on the market, and were lambasted on Bladeforums as they looked to be designed to pack as many "features" (notches, grooves, saws, etc.) as possible on a knife. Now however they feature many clean designs like :

http://store.yahoo.com/topsknivesstore/bushranger.html

The main problem that comes up is price, it is hard to argue for that knife for example when you can buy a Bandicoot with the same blade design and size for half the price in a "better" knife steel. For ten dollars more than that TOP's knife you can buy a Ratweiler with a 7" differentially tempered blade :

http://www.swampratknives.com/images/ratweiler.jpg

There are other non-favorable comparisons as well, Becker vs TOP's for example is a huge lopsided price difference, but would anyone argue the performance of the TOP's blades significantly exceeds the Becker ones of similar design?

-Cliff
 
Oh yeah Ontario again...as I recall you never did produce your references for the supposed high failure rate on the RAT knives, but I see you managed ti insert SRKW into the thread again.

I thought this was about TOPS 1095?
 
Redhat said:
Oh yeah Ontario again...as I recall you never did produce your references for the supposed high failure rate on the RAT knives...
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I'm no apologist here; but a large number of Ontario blades use 1095. That would be a fairer comparison than a comparison of D2 to 1095.
 
Redhat said:
I just wish he would get to the point of his opinion for the persoon who isn't that familiar with metallurgy.
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Of course, one might question what a persoon disinterested in a metallurgical discussion is doing on a thread that is discussing the properties of a *ahem* metal, but oh well.

No, TOPS are not bad knives. Yes, they are an awful lot of money for being laser-cut out of an inexpensive steel and given a fairly straightforward heat treatment. That said, they're rugged tools built like tanks, and if they float your boat, then by all means snag 'em.

No, 1095 is not a bad steel--if done correctly, it can be a very good steel--but it has its drawbacks just like any steel does.

And as for Ontario, here's my own thread for my RAT-7's tip flattening out in wood from a couple years ago:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=292258

I will say (as I also say in that thread) that both Jeff Randall and Ontario were extremely quick to contact me and eager to resolve the situation. I don't think this was typical performance at all from the RAT series as I have used some since and been nothing but safisfied, but I do think that the lesser-priced Ontario knives do not get the careful attention to QC that the higher grade ones do. I have used several Ontario AFSKs over the years (picked several up at a PX that was clearing shelf space for next to nothing) as truck/toolbox/workbench knives, and two of those had serious problems. One broke a couple teeth while I was trying to notch some wood while camping with my nephew (and those are substantial teeth), and the other snapped off at the handle/guard juncture when I was trying to open an ammo crate. To clarify--that's 1X pine held on with industrial staples, and I wasn't pushing that hard. In contrast, my Camillus version of the same knife has been with me for years (it was the knife I bought when I entered the Army, since it was the same as what my father had carried in Vietnam), is still going strong, and has been used for much worse. Given the response I got on my RAT-7, I now feel that Ontario probably would have happily replaced or refunded these problem knives, so I'm not questioning their integrity in the least. I don't know how much I would have trusted the replacements, though.
 
I think Cliff has encountered some Ontario knives which were poorly heat treated and broke easily. He posted about this quite awhile back.
 
t1impani,

I didn't say I wasn't interested, I said not familiar. I have yet to try and open (nor have I seen anyone try) an ammo crate with a knife. What type ammo was that?

Back to TOPS, I think you need to listen to the folks who actually have used them.

Good luck
 
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