edge holding Vs sharpening

J

jackG

Joined
Oct 20, 2000
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I've got one of Wilson's fillet knives. The blade is S90V. Compared to anything I've ever used before the edge holding is incredible, and I've owned a bunch of fillet knives. Trust me on that.

Despite the almost impervious edge, the knife is easy to sharpen using a medium Spyderco 8" stone. In fact at the last stage you've got to use almost no more pressure than the weight of the knife to get it right. How can the blade simulaneously retain its edge so well and still be easy to sharpen?
 
My guess would be that since it's a fillet knife it's very thin, especially at the edge. This means that very little material has to be removed when sharpening to get the edge back to razor sharp, thus the apparent ease.
 
I agree with Blues. I also believe that S90V (CPM-420V, if I'm not mistaken) came about because of some issues with S60V, which is CPM-440V.

That is, while 440V is great stuff, it's brittle, hard to sharpen and can chip. I think Crucible took another kick at the cat and corrected some problems.

Really none of this stuff, until S30V, was really concocted for cutlery steel. Most of the stuff we love as knuts is really ball bearing steel.
 
jackG :

How can the blade simulaneously retain its edge so well and still be easy to sharpen?
Click to expand...

Because the steel is chosen to well suit the task as is the heat treatment of the steel and the geometry of the blade. Removing steel due to wear is minimal, you are talking microns of steel which can be achived by just a few passes on a suitable clean and sharp hone. Unless you chip out the edge on that knife you will have a very easy task to sharpen it.

Blades are hard to sharpen when there were poor choices made in the design leading to edges which suffer extensive deformation, chipping, or rolling. This turns sharpening into a chore of heavy machining. But this isn't an inherent flaw in the steel - it just isnn't being used where its performance would be optimal. Unless you of course like to sharpen a lot.

-Cliff
 
Don't forget the choice of heat treatment and the final hardness which can also have major effects. An example is Spyderco's reduced hardness on S60V blades, which relies on the vanadium carbides for superior cutting while avoiding the chipping problem. I have several knives with S60V blades that perform beautifully in rough EDC applications. I keep on top of them and never let them get very dull, so sharpening is no problem. My prime example is a Military that has been my EDC for over 7 months, I use it an a variety of applications, from cutting boxes to slicing plastic, to opening letters, digging out splinters cutting up veggies and generating kindling. A great steel and a great knife for the money.
 
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