ELMAX: What's better?

[shqxk]

It sounds like you're interested in wear resistance, rather than toughness. There are actually a lot of super wear resistant steels out now, both stainless and non-stainless.

M390 is a great all-around steel. It's stainless.

S90V is a super wear resistant stainless steel with good toughness -- about as tough as regular D2.

S110V is even more wear resistant and stainless, and about as tough as regular D2 and S90V.

K390 is close to S110V -- reasonably tough, [edit: not stainless -- thanks Trevitrace] and super wear resistant.

K294 and 10V are in the general range of S110V and K390 for wear resistance, but not stainless.

M4 is another great all-around steel. It's not stainless, but in the powder D2 range for toughness (better than regular D2) and excellent wear resistance.

10V, S110V, K294, K390 should have the best wear resistance -- roughly twice as high as S30V, which is a great knife steel-- with S90V right behind those, M4 right behind S90V. Then M390, also pretty close to M4.

I have tried and tested so many blade made from these high carbide steel, majority from Spyderco product such as sprint model PM2, Mule team etc.

I wouldn't rate any of these as a "tough" steel except for CPM-M4. My blue and green PM2 both has numbers of chipped spot after carving some hardwood while my Mule B75P suffer zero damage doing the same.

The green PM2 does also chipped badly when I accidentally hit the edge to the glass table.. I'm sure other lower alloy won't suffer as much damage if it were hit in similar way.

 

[KennyB]

Well one thing that caught my interst about ELMAX was that it was apparently still really tough even at an Rc of 62. I think it was said it was as tough as S30V at 57 at that range.

I was thinking about tool steels that were high resistance, but also still very tough at higher Rcs. I had been thinking M4 since it was carbon and fgiured that would be the best bet to get more toughness, and it seems like custom makers have experience heat treating it.