Fallkniven F1: Was the change to laminated blades justified?

U

Ultraman

Joined
Oct 28, 2005
Messages
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My story may be wrong, but I believe the decision to change from solid VG-10 to the laminated variety was based on tests made that were posted online. I believe they were by Cliff Stamp (see http://www.cutleryscience.com/reviews/s1_f1_wm.html).

Shortly thereafter, the switch was made to laminated and Fallkniven even posted break test results where clearly, the laminated blades withstood more bending stress before failure. If I'm not mistaken, the laminated blades bend more, too. I am not sure if the switch was made due to these tests or from a different cause.

My take on this is that this was done because the F1 was meant to be a hard use survival knife (for air force pilots), so maybe that was why it may have been advantageous to switch.

Laminated or not, they are great knives, but do you think the switch to laminated was worth it? Are the advantages that great over the solid version?
 
I have and really like the F1 in laminated. I am guessing that 99.99% of us would never notice the difference....though it does look cool. I wonder if the laminated with 420j2 on the sides is actually cheaper than a solid vg10 blade? In any case, I am not going to lose sleep over it. The F1 is an excellent knife.
 
One way or another but laminated blades is a standard for all Japanese knives, so Fallkniven just follows the main stream here.

I rather like to see better steel in the core not VG10 and for US price - CovryX version they sell for around $1000 is may be OK for Japan but too much for US. And ZDP189 laminated blades here cost quite a bit less.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
bigbcustom said:
I have and really like the F1 in laminated. I am guessing that 99.99% of us would never notice the difference....though it does look cool. I wonder if the laminated with 420j2 on the sides is actually cheaper than a solid vg10 blade? In any case, I am not going to lose sleep over it. The F1 is an excellent knife.
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I was wondering about that too, using the principle that more VG-10 makes it more expensive. However, the economics of production is unknown to me because I'm wondering if extra steps are needed for lamination, leading to added production cost.

In any event, the laminated version appears to have the performance edge. I'll still keep my solid version , though. They're all cool.:)
 
nozh2002 said:
One way or another but laminated blades is a standard for all Japanese knives, so Fallkniven just follows the main stream here.

I rather like to see better steel in the core not VG10 and for US price - CovryX version they sell for around $1000 is may be OK for Japan but too much for US. And ZDP189 laminated blades here cost quite a bit less.

Thanks, Vassili.
Click to expand...

A ZDP189 laminated blade sounds heavenly, especially if the price can be made comparable.:)

Say, forgive me for bringing up a different topic, nozh, but I believe in a website of yours showing Japanese higonokami type knives (the widely available commercial ones sold in Japan), you showed what looked like caviar on sliced bread. It looked delicious! Could you tell me what sort of spread it's on? Was it butter or a type of cream cheese? Sorry again for being off topic, but had to ask, it looked appetizing. BTW, those higonkami type knives were just plain cool, I hope I could get similar ones if I can ever visit Japan again.

Back on topic, it would then appear that lamination was a superior design decision.
Best, Ultraman
 
They did come out with a better steel--the 3G stuff. It is awesome, but very expensive. I don't know how many of their knives it will eventually make its way onto.
 
ilbruche said:
I doubt they made the switch because of Cliffs review. I doubt they even know of its existence.
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I have discussed knives with Peter from Fallkniven many times including the reviews. He is well aware of them, but no I do not claim to be the reason he switched.

Ultraman said:
If I'm not mistaken, the laminated blades bend more, too.
Click to expand...

Yes, this would be expected.

Are the advantages that great over the solid version?
Click to expand...

Generally there is no need for anything but the edge of the knife to be full of carbides, if in fact they are needed there. Lamination is a way to reduce cost and improve toughness.

-Cliff
 
Thanks Cliff!

Actually I got through reading a previous thread on the break test between laminated and solid VG-10 (link: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226554).

So apparently, the solid VG-10 is stronger because it can take more force than laminated for the same amount of bend (strain?). The laminated blade has a higher tensile strength so it bends more and will catastrophically break at a higher load.

Didn't know that lamination was cheaper, that was illuminating.

Thanks again everyone.

Here are the graphs from Fallkniven's website:
eng-f1.jpg
eng-f1-lam.jpg
 
I think Cliff's reviews have a much bigger effect on the knife industry than even he suspects.
 
The entire knife industry, save for a few heathen rogues (damn them!), are awaiting Cliff's pen before committing their coveted designs to the latest steels................ their baited breath hangs heavy like the air on a warm, humid, summer's eve......






Anything's possible Cliff ((( :D )))
 
I suppose, since they're still God's children. Still, I'd kindly prefer they waited to hear what Cliff had to say.
 
Ultraman said:
Say, forgive me for bringing up a different topic, nozh, but I believe in a website of yours showing Japanese higonokami type knives (the widely available commercial ones sold in Japan), you showed what looked like caviar on sliced bread. It looked delicious! Could you tell me what sort of spread it's on? Was it butter or a type of cream cheese? Sorry again for being off topic, but had to ask, it looked appetizing. BTW, those higonkami type knives were just plain cool, I hope I could get similar ones if I can ever visit Japan again.
Click to expand...

I am not quite sure I follow what are you talking about - here that Higonokamy page and there is no sliced bread, caviar or anything of this nature.

http://playground.sun.com/~vasya/Higonokami.html

...
However usually the way to have caviar in Russia - bread + butter (not salted) + caviar or sometimes it was put inside half of boiler egg with yolk removed or it is rolled inside blin (Russian pancakes called here in I-Hope for some reason as Swedish pancakes) - but best I guess is eating it with big spoon from 3 liter jar... if you are visiting Volga delta in Astrakhan and know some local fishermen... Russian vodka is mandatory with caviar, but real Russian vodka - like "Jewel of Russia", "Russian standard" or "Czar's gold" - not Slolichnaya which brand now somehow owned not by Russians and which are made in Litva or Latvia (on the bottle they claim i was made from Russian spirit ... no world that it was done not in Russia).
...

BTW - Higonokami is widely available here:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=51165&cat=1,51222&ap=1

http://www.garrettwade.com/jump.jsp...RODUCT&iMainCat=0&iSubCat=0&iProductID=106053

and for European:

http://www.dick.biz

http://www.dick.biz/cgi-bin/dick.storefront/46d7a931002ba712273f50f336090622/Catalog/1219

So you may have them without visiting Japan.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
nozh2002 said:
I am not quite sure I follow what are you talking about - here that Higonokamy page and there is no sliced bread, caviar or anything of this nature.

http://playground.sun.com/~vasya/Higonokami.html

...
However usually the way to have caviar in Russia - bread + butter (not salted) + caviar or sometimes it was put inside half of boiler egg with yolk removed or it is rolled inside blin (Russian pancakes called here in I-Hope for some reason as Swedish pancakes) - but best I guess is eating it with big spoon from 3 liter jar... if you are visiting Volga delta in Astrakhan and know some local fishermen... Russian vodka is mandatory with caviar, but real Russian vodka - like "Jewel of Russia", "Russian standard" or "Czar's gold" - not Slolichnaya which brand now somehow owned not by Russians and which are made in Litva or Latvia (on the bottle they claim i was made from Russian spirit ... no world that it was done not in Russia).
...

BTW - Higonokami is widely available here:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=51165&cat=1,51222&ap=1

http://www.garrettwade.com/jump.jsp...RODUCT&iMainCat=0&iSubCat=0&iProductID=106053

and for European:

http://www.dick.biz

http://www.dick.biz/cgi-bin/dick.storefront/46d7a931002ba712273f50f336090622/Catalog/1219

So you may have them without visiting Japan.

Thanks, Vassili.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much Vassili. I was mistaken, the photos were not related to any higonokami, they were the other Japanese knives like the Takagi Ranbo, (http://playground.sun.com/~vasya/Takagi-Ranbo.html). In fact there's the caviar at the bottom photo! So that was butter!

Thanks again - the Takagi, Hitachi-Musachi, and Warikomi were the knives I had in mind, not Higonkami. Those were the ones I was admiring. :thumbup:
 
Cliff Stamp said:
Lamination is a way to reduce cost and improve toughness. -Cliff
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I absolutely agree about improving toughness. But Cliff, do you have pricing data for VG10 vs VG10 laminate?

I keep reading threads in which people say that laminated steel is less expensive than solid. I can understand this for laminates made in mass quantities. I can understand it for laminates made with centers of fiendishly exotic and expensive alloys.

I don't think a VG10 laminate fits in either category. I find it difficult to believe there is enough market for it to justify massive production, nor is it my impression that VG10 is expensive enough that its partial replacement offsets the cost of the laminating process, especially when a knife blade uses so little material.

Are you sure about VG10 laminate being less expensive?
 
knarfeng said:
I absolutely agree about improving toughness. But Cliff, do you have pricing data for VG10 vs VG10 laminate?

I keep reading threads in which people say that laminated steel is less expensive than solid. I can understand this for laminates made in mass quantities. I can understand it for laminates made with centers of fiendishly exotic and expensive alloys.

I don't think a VG10 laminate fits in either category. I find it difficult to believe there is enough market for it to justify massive production, nor is it my impression that VG10 is expensive enough that its partial replacement offsets the cost of the laminating process, especially when a knife blade uses so little material.

Are you sure about VG10 laminate being less expensive?
Click to expand...

The Japanese are very good at laminating steel and they do a lot of it. The traditional kasumi knives have been laminated by hand for hundreds of years. It is far less expensive than honyaki forging simply because the honyaki method produces a lot of failures as the blades are straightened after coming from the forge.

I don't believe laminating with VG-10 at the core is cheaper in mass production, however, but it isn't much more expensive for the Japanese factories which have been doing it for so long. The soft steel for the wrapper is a little less expensive but that is pennies per blade. The added process of laminating the blade is more expensive - probably a few pennies more than the cost savings of the steel.

"Warikomi" or sandwich laminations like those under discussion here originated by putting hard white or blue steel cores inside stainless wrappers in order to get the edge holding of the carbon steel along with the corrosion resistance of stainless. The lamination also improves toughness as mentioned above since white and blue steel are fairly brittle. As the harder "exotic" stainless steels were developed, manufacturers began using those in place of the carbon steels to reduce chipping. We now have stainless cores in the warikomi sandwiches that are as hard as the original carbon steels.

Some of the very exotic steels (ZDP as an example) are expensive and in limited supply so laminating does effect a meaningful cost savings as mentioned above. Why laminate VG-10? Good question but very likely it is because of tradition or simply a change in steel suppliers. Tradition is strong among the Japanese. Or it might be simply that the production line does it so they just use it. I doubt there is a meaningful cost savings as there would be with a more expensive steel. I doubt that the improvement in toughness, while real, would be terribly important either. Most likely tradition and/or marketing are at the root of it all.
 
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