Even “better” blade steels?

[jfk1110]

I don't think I'd buy a self sharpening steel!!! I enjoy the process of making my knives sharp and stropping even more so!!

Recently I got two knives in the venerable 440C, and I have to say I'd forgotten just how nice it is. In use as well as blade maintenance. Damn good knife steel!!

Since our species are a needy and wanting sort, there will always be someone complaining about something! And since we are smart and crafty too, someone will try to solve those wants!!! Also we as a species have a few lazy, sneaky and downright low examples of the species, so they will take advantage and cheat and steal and bait n switch their way thru. Happens in the knife world all the time!!!

 

[kobold]

Yer - so is it OK to wander off a bit? I'm new to posting...

If we look at blade geometry - is there a single ideal? The answer to that might enlighten my thinking about the ultimate blade composition.

If all the blade has to do is cut boxes (which is what most of mine do, if they are lucky to be taken out) then the profile is just going to be 'thin'. A plain Stanley knife is pretty good at that.
But that blade is going to be poor for carving wood or 'bushcraft'. For splitting, you need a bevel to separate the fibres. For feather sticks you need a bevel for control. People discuss the merits of scandi grind vs convex grind for a bushcaft blade - but what if you could have both?
So maybe the ultimate knife needs variable geometry. I don't want to go too sci-fi but what would the first variable geometry tool look like that had 'super steel' on the edge? Maybe Stanley-knife standard blades fitting into larger profiles for specific tasks. At the moment the idea doesn't excite me.
And if we come back to earth and agree you will always have different knives for different purposes - it is practical or even sensible to consider that there should be one ultimate blade material? Maybe: Hard, tough, stiff (may need to move away from steel), wear resistant, formable, low friction etc. Do you ever want a blade steel that isn't hard, tough, stiff... (flexible blades are usually just thin so the ultimate material can do that as well).

Virtuovice did asymmetric grinds for a perfect feathersticking tool on a Gunny Hunter IIRC.

But there are all kinds of complex grinds in existence.

 

[gdwtvb]

The thing about predicting the future is most predictions are fundamentally wrong. I started reading about the promise of flying cars in my grandfathers old Popular Mechanics Magazines in the 1970's...and the magazines were already old. It hasn't happened yet. That said, there will continue to be advancements in knives as long as humans need and use knives. In 100 years it may be that a knife is built into your cellphone and electronically separates matter on the molecular level using some as yet undiscovered methodology. Maybe like computing power, manufacturing power becomes ubiquitous and we all will grow our own knives in a personal replicator.

I think it more likely that stainless steels will continue to grow in popularity and performance, while non stainless steels will not. (kinda like being able to find a new vehicle that still offers an honest to goodness fully manual transmission. For all intents and reasonable purposes, an automatic transmission now bests a manual in just about every benchmark except it is a more complex piece of machinery.)

Probably only small incremental improvements, and as the time between needed sharpenings grows, I think we will see fewer and fewer people doing their own knife maintenance. Face it most people that buy Swiss Army knives never sharpen them, they replace them or use them dull in perpetuity. A knife that stays sharp for a year or more of general usage makes it less worthwhile to buy the tools and learn the skills to sharpen it. kinda like how few people change the oil in their cars compared to thirty years ago...How many cars on the road never even get an oil change?

Grizz

 

[c7m2p3]

Personally I just don’t get this quest for the ultimate (no need to ever sharpen) knife steel. What do you really need your knife to do that 420HC or 1095 won’t do? Yes you may have to sharpen it more but then I know how to put a proper edge on a blade and I actually enjoy it.

I think the "holy grail" here would be a steel that is easier to sharpen on the level of some more basic steels, but has properties that make it more resistant to edge wear than 420HC or 1095. This is obviously difficult to do given that the abrasion resistance properties that help a steel hold up to cutting material like cardboard are also the same properties that resist the abrasive used in sharpening stones.

For me, I would really like to see (if possible) a steel that is possible to be maintained with ceramic hones though has cutting performance at the level of some of the mid tier powder steels. Diamond and CBN are expensive and even still, things like S90v can be a pain to sharpen. Being able to throw an edge back on a pocket knife with sharpmaker rods and still have the confidence to take the knife on a 2 plus week trip without packing sharpening equipment would really be a nice combination.

 

[OrangeBlueOrangeBlue]

In terms of blade steels, do you think we’ve peaked or will we see better steels 50, 100 years down the road? I.e., more toughness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance (although LC200N is already pretty impressive). If I had to guess right now, I think we’ll see incremental improvements rather than drastic upgrades, although we might be surprised.

New steels will come out every couple of years or so. There's demand for steels in the manufacturing industry that would highly benefit of new steels, as are blades for the food industry. It will always get better and better, but costlier and costlier. Eventually will move to ceramic blades though, it's getting crazy what ceramics do.

I wouldn't worry about that though, we're coming to grim grim biblical times soon with Great Reset and China Rising.

LC200N and especially Vanax Superclean are really amazing rustproof steels with performance on par with some of the best mainstream knife steels (e.g. S35VN, M390). I don't know how much headroom steel chemistry has left for performance improvement, so the next leap may be to a different substance like ceramic or tungsten, where development is much less mature.

Those 2; you know they posted up a bunch of bad/false info here about other folks knives. Had to retract everything they claimed and then never came back.

I would suggest finding a chart from somewhere else to post.

Thanks for the heads up

I don't know about false info, but their chart appears to have cherry-picked the worst numbers from Pete's testing (Cedric and Ada on YouTube). The results aren't fabricated, but they definitely leave out context.
The summary of Pete's data gives more useful numbers on common knife steels.
The results they cite can all be found in the Cut Tests tab, along with some data they omitted:

• Spyderco VG10, 75 cuts - Row 3 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • A subsequent Delica got 115 cuts with a 17deg "polished" Lansky edge - Row 151
  • An Endura got 135 cuts with a factory edge and 260 with a 17deg "polished" KME edge - Rows 259 and 261
• CRK S35VN, 230 - Row 309 (factory edge)
  • Average for the steel is 200ish, going up to 325 with a KME edge
  • Pete got some truly terrible results with the Worksharp, averaging 144 cuts, while even the factory edge average was 213
• Opinel Carbon C75, 66 - Row 42 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • Another C75 Opinel made it to 110 cuts with a 13deg microbeveled Tormek edge (and a whopping 8 cuts without a microbevel)
• Lionsteel Niolox, 135 - Row 50 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • No other tests listed
• Spyderco CTS 204P, 321 - Row 61 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • No other tests listed, but result is noticeably worse than the average for M390 (470 cuts) and 20CV (355); his best result with M390 was 810 cuts (Steel Will Modus with 12deg Tormek edge - Row 186)
• Al Mar AUS8, 60 - Row 76 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • A subsequent test of the same model with a 13deg "polished" Tormek edge got 125 cuts
  • Average for AUS 8 was 81 cuts
• Boker D2, 208 - Row 112 (20deg "toothy" Worksharp edge)
  • Didn't really cherrypick this result, D2 average is 189, and only 77 for factory edges
  • Average with KME edge was 306 cuts
• Microtech Elmax, 320 - Row 121 (20deg "polished" Lansky edge)
  • Spyderco Mule Team in Elmax got 475 cuts with 17deg "polished" KME edge - Row 290
• Case Tru-Sharp, 60 - Row 147 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • Same knife got 65 cuts on two subsequent tests - Rows 148 and 149
• Benchmade S30V, 220 - Row 192 (17deg Tormek edge)
  • Overall average was 254 cuts, and KME averaged 319 cuts

Given the performance of their blade, which blew away every commonly-available steel, going out of their way to use skewed data seems a little unnecessary.
But, I guess marketing people gonna market...

 

[Bigfattyt]

Aways going to be something better. As science and understanding of materials improves, so do the metals.

 

[not2sharp]

Personally I just don’t get this quest for the ultimate (no need to ever sharpen) knife steel. What do you really need your knife to do that 420HC or 1095 won’t do? Yes you may have to sharpen it more but then I know how to put a proper edge on a blade and I actually enjoy it.

You seemed to have answered your own question. The quest for a super steel seems to be driven by a fear of sharpening knives. The ideal for this subgroup would be to find a knife that can be used for years without sharpening and then periodically sent back to the manufacturer for a "beauty treatment." Sharpening is part of using knives, if you have the right knife you can restore a working edge with just a few swipes; usually, the process is fast enough that most users are barely aware that they have momentarily stopped. A hair splitting edge is rarely required and your game is not going to get up and run away. Accept that a few scuffs on a user knife is normal mark of experience, and no matter how pretty it looks it will always be a used knife.

n2s

 

[OrangeBlueOrangeBlue]

I think the "holy grail" here would be a steel that is easier to sharpen on the level of some more basic steels, but has properties that make it more resistant to edge wear than 420HC or 1095. This is obviously difficult to do given that the abrasion resistance properties that help a steel hold up to cutting material like cardboard are also the same properties that resist the abrasive used in sharpening stones.

For me, I would really like to see (if possible) a steel that is possible to be maintained with ceramic hones though has cutting performance at the level of some of the mid tier powder steels. Diamond and CBN are expensive and even still, things like S90v can be a pain to sharpen. Being able to throw an edge back on a pocket knife with sharpmaker rods and still have the confidence to take the knife on a 2 plus week trip without packing sharpening equipment would really be a nice combination.

What do you consider a mid-tier powder steel? S30V and its successors work fine with the medium Sharpmaker rods unless you're trying to reprofile. The medium rod is around 10 micron / 500 grit ANSI. M390 and its offspring are generally hardened to a similar HRC as S30V, so they should also sharpen fine.

 

[Danke42]

LC200N and especially Vanax Superclean are really amazing rustproof steels with performance on par with some of the best mainstream knife steels (e.g. S35VN, M390). I don't know how much headroom steel chemistry has left for performance improvement, so the next leap may be to a different substance like ceramic or tungsten, where development is much less mature.





I don't know about false info, but their chart appears to have cherry-picked the worst numbers from Pete's testing (Cedric and Ada on YouTube). The results aren't fabricated, but they definitely leave out context.
The summary of Pete's data gives more useful numbers on common knife steels.
The results they cite can all be found in the Cut Tests tab, along with some data they omitted:

• Spyderco VG10, 75 cuts - Row 3 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • A subsequent Delica got 115 cuts with a 17deg "polished" Lansky edge - Row 151
  • An Endura got 135 cuts with a factory edge and 260 with a 17deg "polished" KME edge - Rows 259 and 261
• CRK S35VN, 230 - Row 309 (factory edge)
  • Average for the steel is 200ish, going up to 325 with a KME edge
  • Pete got some truly terrible results with the Worksharp, averaging 144 cuts, while even the factory edge average was 213
• Opinel Carbon C75, 66 - Row 42 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • Another C75 Opinel made it to 110 cuts with a 13deg microbeveled Tormek edge (and a whopping 8 cuts without a microbevel)
• Lionsteel Niolox, 135 - Row 50 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • No other tests listed
• Spyderco CTS 204P, 321 - Row 61 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • No other tests listed, but result is noticeably worse than the average for M390 (470 cuts) and 20CV (355); his best result with M390 was 810 cuts (Steel Will Modus with 12deg Tormek edge - Row 186)
• Al Mar AUS8, 60 - Row 76 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • A subsequent test of the same model with a 13deg "polished" Tormek edge got 125 cuts
  • Average for AUS 8 was 81 cuts
• Boker D2, 208 - Row 112 (20deg "toothy" Worksharp edge)
  • Didn't really cherrypick this result, D2 average is 189, and only 77 for factory edges
  • Average with KME edge was 306 cuts
• Microtech Elmax, 320 - Row 121 (20deg "polished" Lansky edge)
  • Spyderco Mule Team in Elmax got 475 cuts with 17deg "polished" KME edge - Row 290
• Case Tru-Sharp, 60 - Row 147 (20deg Worksharp edge)
  • Same knife got 65 cuts on two subsequent tests - Rows 148 and 149
• Benchmade S30V, 220 - Row 192 (17deg Tormek edge)
  • Overall average was 254 cuts, and KME averaged 319 cuts

Given the performance of their blade, which blew away every commonly-available steel, going out of their way to use skewed data seems a little unnecessary.
But, I guess marketing people gonna market...

Yeah weird how Cedric and Ada stuff was awesome, everyone else's was sub par; definitely not marketing on their part.

And then they folded their tents overnight and scrubbed their footprint. The big knife companies must have sent Moose and Rocko over to scare them out of town.

 

[c7m2p3]

What do you consider a mid-tier powder steel? S30V and its successors work fine with the medium Sharpmaker rods unless you're trying to reprofile. The medium rod is around 10 micron / 500 grit ANSI. M390 and its offspring are generally hardened to a similar HRC as S30V, so they should also sharpen fine.

Sharpening steels with high % of vanadium carbides isn't necessarily about hardness. When you start getting high quantities of vanadium in the steel you will get carbide tear out when using abrasives that are not hard enough to cut and shape them. This really only comes into play with grits higher than 400 grit. At 400 and coarser you are really just shaping steel so ceramics, SIC, and even some Alum Oxide are going to be fine on even super steels at 400 grit and coarser. The problem is anything over that. You start finishing and honing the edge on something not as hard as the vanadium carbibes and they are simply going to be torn away from the edge.

This leaves an edge that often feels sharp initially but has no staying power since its the carbides at the edge that are doing the bulk of abrasion resistance.

Long story short: You may be able to do some light maintenance work on S30V and S35VN with the medium ceramics but anything past that and you will need diamond or CBN.

Some interesting developments in the future could use some other form of carbide or nitrogen based steel like Nitro V or Vanax that might be able to be shaped and cut on ceramic easier than Vanadium can.

 

[Easyrider]

I have recently started rethinking my attitude towards blade steels. I am not so sure that I need some sort of super steel. I was carrying slipjoint s for the last several years before buying my current EDC, a CRK Mnandi, and I lived with 1095 steel from Great Eastern Cutlery, ATS34 from Schatt & Morgan and D2 from Queen Cutlery and they all performed excellent. My Mnandi uses S35v and it is easy to sharpen using Spyderco ceramic stones or my Worksharp sharpener. I guess based on my recent slipjoint ownership I don’t see a need for a super steel that takes diamond rods/stones to sharpen. Always looking for the next new super steel is a carousel that I am stepping off of.

Give me an easy to sharpen blade steel in a patten/design that I like and I am happy. I doubt that I will be adding to many in the way of new knives anyway. The 4 or so favorites of mine will last me my lifetime.
Just my opinion, YMMV.

 

[OrangeBlueOrangeBlue]

Yeah weird how Cedric and Ada stuff was awesome, everyone else's was sub par; definitely not marketing on their part.

And then they folded their tents overnight and scrubbed their footprint. The big knife companies must have sent Moose and Rocko over to scare them out of town.

What do you mean "everyone else's was subpar"? All of the results I linked and cited were from the same person's testing (Pete, the guy who does the Cedric and Ada channel).

Sandrin is still around (not sure if they've abandoned BF or not)
They just released a new knife, which has been widely panned for having made some very questionable aesthetic choices in an attempt to lower prices.
It looks like a Milwaukee utility knife, and has a horrible blade (non)finish.

Sharpening steels with high % of vanadium carbides isn't necessarily about hardness. When you start getting high quantities of vanadium in the steel you will get carbide tear out when using abrasives that are not hard enough to cut and shape them. This really only comes into play with grits higher than 400 grit. At 400 and coarser you are really just shaping steel so ceramics, SIC, and even some Alum Oxide are going to be fine on even super steels at 400 grit and coarser. The problem is anything over that. You start finishing and honing the edge on something not as hard as the vanadium carbibes and they are simply going to be torn away from the edge.

This leaves an edge that often feels sharp initially but has no staying power since its the carbides at the edge that are doing the bulk of abrasion resistance.

Long story short: You may be able to do some light maintenance work on S30V and S35VN with the medium ceramics but anything past that and you will need diamond or CBN.

Some interesting developments in the future could use some other form of carbide or nitrogen based steel like Nitro V or Vanax that might be able to be shaped and cut on ceramic easier than Vanadium can.

It's pretty much agreed at this point that carbide tearout doesn't happen until you're in at least the sub-3 micron range (Vanadium carbides are in the 1-2 micron range), and the Ultra Fine Sharpmaker rods are right at 3 microns.

This article shows the carbines in Maxamet being very resistant to "tearout"
https://scienceofsharp.com/2019/11/03/carbides-in-maxamet/

 

[Danke42]

What do you mean "everyone else's was subpar"? All of the results I linked and cited were from the same person's testing (Pete, the guy who does the Cedric and Ada channel).

Sandrin is still around (not sure if they've abandoned BF or not)
They just released a new knife, which has been widely panned for having made some very questionable aesthetic choices in an attempt to lower prices.
It looks like a Milwaukee utility knife, and has a horrible blade (non)finish.

It's pretty much agreed at this point that carbide tearout doesn't happen until you're in at least the sub-3 micron range (Vanadium carbides are in the 1-2 micron range), and the Ultra Fine Sharpmaker rods are right at 3 microns.

This article shows the carbines in Maxamet being very resistant to "tearout"
https://scienceofsharp.com/2019/11/03/carbides-in-maxamet/

I'm not sure I understand you.

Are you saying their results were trustworthy?

 

[OrangeBlueOrangeBlue]

I'm not sure I understand you.

Are you saying their results were trustworthy?

I'm saying the results Sandrin used in that table came from an independent source (Pete), not from Sandrin. They were very selective about what results they cited in the table, almost always picking the worst result for a given steel, but the results were from actual tests that really happened. I think they cited those results to make the performance of their knife look better, which could be considered intentionally misleading or just normal marketing, depending on your views.

Most, if not all, of Pete's tests, including the Sandrin Torino test, are on video; he's been putting them on YouTube for years. I've never heard of anyone suggesting that his results weren't trustworthy (in the sense that the results are manipulated or "faked"). Maybe not rigorously scientific (which he freely admits), but they're fairly consistent with what is expected in terms of relative performance, particularly once he switched to the KME.

 

[c7m2p3]

What do you mean "everyone else's was subpar"? All of the results I linked and cited were from the same person's testing (Pete, the guy who does the Cedric and Ada channel).

Sandrin is still around (not sure if they've abandoned BF or not)
They just released a new knife, which has been widely panned for having made some very questionable aesthetic choices in an attempt to lower prices.
It looks like a Milwaukee utility knife, and has a horrible blade (non)finish.

It's pretty much agreed at this point that carbide tearout doesn't happen until you're in at least the sub-3 micron range (Vanadium carbides are in the 1-2 micron range), and the Ultra Fine Sharpmaker rods are right at 3 microns.

This article shows the carbines in Maxamet being very resistant to "tearout"
https://scienceofsharp.com/2019/11/03/carbides-in-maxamet/

I don't think it is at all agreed that tear out is not a problem until under 3 micron. A good resource on this is of course Dr. Larrin Thomas seen here every once in a while and the section labeled "Abrasives vs Carbides" of this article are the most useful https://knifesteelnerds.com/2019/07/15/carbide-types-in-knife-steels/

Essentially VC (Vanadium Carbides) are harder and stronger than abrasives found in ceramics and at higher grits, are not going to be able to get the job done. You will instead be tearing these out and see diminishing returns in edge performance.

 

[OrangeBlueOrangeBlue]

I don't think it is at all agreed that tear out is not a problem until under 3 micron. A good resource on this is of course Dr. Larrin Thomas seen here every once in a while and the section labeled "Abrasives vs Carbides" of this article are the most useful https://knifesteelnerds.com/2019/07/15/carbide-types-in-knife-steels/

Essentially VC (Vanadium Carbides) are harder and stronger than abrasives found in ceramics and at higher grits, are not going to be able to get the job done. You will instead be tearing these out and see diminishing returns in edge performance.

The source you cited doesn’t talk about “tear out.” In fact, it says the opposite.

“However, if the abrasive size is larger than the carbide size then the abrasive is able to pull out the steel and the carbides together so that the carbide hardness isn’t as important.”

This says that “soft” abrasives are effective at removing both the carbides and the steel matrix as long as the abrasive size is larger than the carbides. Since Vanadium carbides are in the 1-2 micron range, you have to get pretty fine before a softer abrasive will stop cutting. It doesn’t say anything about finer abrasives being able to separate carbides from the steel matrix. The link I posted clearly shows that tear-out isn’t really a thing, even at finer grits.

Maxamet sharpened on 8K Shapton Glass, with carbides clearly visible where they’re supposed to be. No “craters” visible where they’ve “pulled out” of the surrounding steel.

 

[Hal]

I have recently started rethinking my attitude towards blade steels. I am not so sure that I need some sort of super steel. I was carrying slipjoint s for the last several years before buying my current EDC, a CRK Mnandi, and I lived with 1095 steel from Great Eastern Cutlery, ATS34 from Schatt & Morgan and D2 from Queen Cutlery and they all performed excellent. My Mnandi uses S35v and it is easy to sharpen using Spyderco ceramic stones or my Worksharp sharpener. I guess based on my recent slipjoint ownership I don’t see a need for a super steel that takes diamond rods/stones to sharpen. Always looking for the next new super steel is a carousel that I am stepping off of.

Give me an easy to sharpen blade steel in a patten/design that I like and I am happy. I doubt that I will be adding to many in the way of new knives anyway. The 4 or so favorites of mine will last me my lifetime.
Just my opinion, YMMV.

I hear ya brother!
Remember about 18/20 years ago here - Walt Welch & Talonite?
The stuff Ada & Cedric up above are pitching reminds me of that.

Then of course, there was Kevin "Mad Dog" McClung & his super duper hide it from the metal detectors" ceramic blades for serious doubt naught spies & mall ninja's (all us other mere mortals had to settle for the model with a wire in it so it would set off the detectors )

OTOH through - the really, really, really great news is that so many of the fines steels from 20 years ago are considered budget or junk these days & you can get very nice - very usable knives for not a lot of money.

 

[Chapp]

Who needs style when you can have a pocket lightsaber ?

This is the way (forward).

 

[c7m2p3]

The source you cited doesn’t talk about “tear out.” In fact, it says the opposite.

“However, if the abrasive size is larger than the carbide size then the abrasive is able to pull out the steel and the carbides together so that the carbide hardness isn’t as important.”

This says that “soft” abrasives are effective at removing both the carbides and the steel matrix as long as the abrasive size is larger than the carbides. Since Vanadium carbides are in the 1-2 micron range, you have to get pretty fine before a softer abrasive will stop cutting. It doesn’t say anything about finer abrasives being able to separate carbides from the steel matrix. The link I posted clearly shows that tear-out isn’t really a thing, even at finer grits.

Maxamet sharpened on 8K Shapton Glass, with carbides clearly visible where they’re supposed to be. No “craters” visible where they’ve “pulled out” of the surrounding steel.

That is exactly the point. If the abrasive is larger than the carbides it will remove the steel and the carbide. Which is what is happening at 400-500grit and coarser. Those are larger abrasives that are just ripping everything out of the edge. That is fine for setting your bevel which is exactly what I said earlier. You can absolutely use Alum oxide, SIC, or ceramics at 4-500 grit. However, once you get higher than that grit, the abrasives that you are using are now going to just be ripping out carbides.

If you are getting fine results with Maxamet, thats fine good on you and dont change the way you maintain your blades if you are getting good results. That being said, there has been a lot of writing substantiating carbide tear out in high vanadium steel at higher grits both here on the forums from people actually making these abrasives like FourtyTwoBlades over at Baryonyx and Larrin Thomas.

 

[Diemaker]

I would expect that with finer soft abrasives you would see the steel "eroding" around the carbides, like in Todd's photo, and once the carbide is exposed enough then it would "tear out". I would expect the real limit here is just how fine of an edge you can get this way, as in no finer than the size of the carbides. It is also a very slow way of sharpening.

I am always looking for a better steel and look forward to what develops. As for predictions, I would look to ceramics. There are already, and have been for some time, some very interesting ceramics used in metal cutting lathe inserts, and even some end mills. They are for cutting hard metals where tungsten carbides don't hold up.

As for it being hard to sharpen I haven't found that steel yet. Maxamet sharpens as easily as anything with the right stones.