kel_aa said:
As a generalization, do you think the average non-forum Delica/Endura user is harsher on their blades than the forum users, or at least expect more from their $40/50 blade of any given design?
In general, yes. While I have a reputation as an abuser of knives, most people I know are far less discriminating of their pocket knives than I am. They would readily take a pocket knife and use it to scrape the paint off some concrete for example without any hesitation, yet it is common here for people to be concerned about scratching a blade when sharpening. You can't cut any amount of cardboard of any used material without the finish on any blade getting significantly degraded.
By expecting more, take for example something like digging with the point in wood: if a forum member shares his experience of having the tip break, would the forum reaction more likely be "this shouldn't be done with such a knife with a vulnerable tip" verses the independent conclusion the "unconnected" user might arrive at, namely that the knife failed?
Bladeforums is currently very biased towards makers/manufacturers in that the burden of proof for critism is much higher than the demands placed on makers/manufacturers for promotion. Cashen has discussed this in detail on Swordforums noting how readily people accept claims from makers which have no basis at all in metallurgical fact and never even ask for any proof at all, even when the claims are extremely high.
Witness for example the arguement made by Stewart in regards to the failures of the tangs on the Cold Steel knives which is in fact in opposition to basic physics and of course ignores the fact that people do the exact same thing to other knives without harm. Many of the discussions betweens makers and users over such issues would run very differently on neutral forums. Try taking some of the same arguements about abuse for example to rec.knives where users and makers are treated with the same demands on arguement.
Such an enviroment is never productive for determing the truth which will only come out if everyone has equal requirements for proof and critically necessary for both condemnation and praise.
So I guess the question is do we actually use the versatility, does the forums promote proper tool selection and technique verses a degenerative conditioning of what you are limited to doing with your knife and also a blanket pushing of certain products (most prominently the Delica/Endura, although it it is not exactly the knife's fault or Spyderco's own doing)?
The forums is a large collective and the popular opinion now is readily swayed readily by a maker/manufacturer. However there are those that will point out failure rather than accept accuses for poor performance. I will gaurantee that you will see the following trends which are highly promoted by current makers but will shortly be recogonized as far from optimal. This will be a move away from high primary carbide fraction steels, a realization that wear resistance tested on large blocks does not equal superior cutlery steels, a move towards harder tempering and away from the "60 HRC is the ideal knife hardness" viewpoint, and towards much slimmer geometries, to the idea that you can not simply say one steel has better edge retention than another as there are simply too many variables (edge angle, grit finish, cutting media, type of cutting, etc.), that much of the hype about convex profiles is just that, and that "ease of sharpening" does not equal high grindability and is much more dependent on geometry and the type of knife than the steel, that is to say a steel can be very easy to sharpen in one knife but not in another if the grind is sub-optimal and/or the steel just not well suited to that type of knife.
Contending these ideas now can get you branded with extreme labels as these ideas are pushed very hard by makers and even several metallurgists so you would have to be insane obviously to say they are wrong. However more and more people are being made aware of the work done by Johnston, Verhoeven, Landes, Cashen, Wilson, Busse, etc. and in the end the truth will always come out. What I am personally interested in is how those with the earth is flat viewpoint react when prevailing opinion switches. With more makers like Jeff Check and Me2 becoming aware of such issues the days for the flat earth viewpoint are numbered. There are more and more user as well like Sodak and Thom discussing problems with the current viewpoints and it is only a matter of time before this gets enough voices to mean it can't be ignored any more.
How many people now can openly discuss the extreme benefits of forging which commonly used to be promoted by Fowler and other makers ever since Cashen has been publically vocal that there is no materials data to support such a viewpoint and that in fact there is much to support how easy it is to degrade the steels. You simply can't try to run with that arguement any more because all someone has to do it link to Cashens article and the relevant thread on Swordforums to point out the flaws. Since Cashen is a maker himself this negates the ability of the other makers to get users to disregard his comments.
Unfortunately Landes isn't well known in North America, and makers like Johnston are not UBB active. But there are makers aware of the work and some of them like Devin Thomas are very vocal about the misrepresentation of steels like AEB-L which for a long time was ranked as a low end steel simply because of the viewpoint of regarding steels simply on primary carbide fraction. Unfortunately Thomas isn't very vocal on the forums either, but again this doesn't matter in the long run because eventually the exposure will become wide spread enough.
The same thing happened with S30V. Early critism of it was very hard because of the massive push from makers and crucible for it as the ultimate blade steel. However as more people reported problems with chipping it became more easy for people to discuss it as it became then an accepted issue. There is also a guy selling M2 blades on rec.knives for extremely cheap and Alvin is doing his best to get people to make knives out of them and people are doing it. You really don't want a bunch of people armed with the experience of 66 HRC M2 evaluating ATS-34 class knives as cutting tools, but again it is starting to happen.
-Cliff
