Do you prefer rolling or chipping?

[Cliff Stamp]

Those steels are very similar in that regard, I would not consider any gain in toughness to be significant in regards to chosing among them. Most of the differences often noted tend to be because of the geometries or choice of heat treatment. Often you can have a poor perception of a steel to a flawed piece this can be hard to avoid unless the maker/manufacturer is really aggressive behind that not being the expected performance. If you are having problems with edge chipping in general the first thing to do is contact the maker/manufacturer to make sure you are seeing the expected performance, then recut the edge on the knife to remove any issues with decarb or over grinding, then apply a dual edge (high relief / obtuse secondary bevel), to try and raise cutting ability and chip resistance. You can also compensate for lower edge retention if you drop to a softer and tougher steel like AUS-8 by adjusting the geometry (slight recurve) or really leaving the edge coarse for high slicing aggression, or using a nice serration pattern.

-Cliff

 

[Nimravus Nut]

Cliff, why is it that many people say fallkniven's vg-10 at 59hrc is tougher than BM's 154-cm at 60hrc? Does 1 point of hardness difference make that much difference that people can actually tell the difference or is it vanadium doing the work?

By the way Cliff, this will be my last question in the thread for you and thank a bunch for the knowledge.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Does 1 point of hardness difference make that much difference that people can actually tell the difference or is it vanadium doing the work.

Vanadium in small amounts keeps the grain of the steel small, which increases toughness but not dramatically and is more to make heat treating more forgiving. In large amounts it adds to wear resistance.

Yes, even small changes in hardness can make massive differences in toughness. Just 1-2 points can make a steel change by 50% for example, however that isn't the major difference between those two steels.

There are many reasons why ATS-34 has become known as a brittle steel and VG-10 tough, mainly due to the ATS-34 blades being sold as tacticals while the VG-10 knives were more cutting tools.

Benchmade also left their ATS-34 vs hard, there were several HRC tested by users who got ~62 HRC, and there were also comments by others linked to Benchmade who noted they tempered hot to give the steel heat resistance to allow for grinding after hardening.

Stainless steels tempered so as to generate a secondary hardening hump can have issues with embrittlement due to Cr K1 carbide precipitation along grain boundries so it is probably best avoided for heavier use knives, for fine cutting tools it is however likely the best option.

Note Fallkniven also laminates their VG-10 which makes it *much* more resistant to imacts and flexible. So it isn't a pure VG-10 blade, the sides are much softer and out of a lower alloy steel to give it greater toughness.

-Cliff