Recommendation? Fantoni S125V Issues

marrenmiller

marrenmiller

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Apr 6, 2017
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Have any of you used or sharpened a Fantoni knife in S125V? I have one of the limited edition HB-01 models in S125V, and I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong with it. Sharpening to the factory edge angle, I have found that the edge retention is atrocious. I love the knife overall, but it's just killing me that I can't get it to perform well.

Notes on the knife:
  • Sharpening is a little slow but not unmanageable using DMT coarse/fine/extra fine plates, and have a decent amount of experience sharpening and touching up high wear resistance steels and stainless steels of all sorts with these stones (even Maxamet/K390/4V/etc with no issues). The factory edge angle was around 20 dps so I left it alone.
  • It presents an incredibly stubborn burr despite my best attempts to use light, edge-leading passes alternating sides after each pass. I think that I'm getting rid of it with either copious stropping on 0.1m diamond paste on a leather strop, or with a couple of higher-angle passes with ~zero pressure on my extra fine stone, and it will shave on both sides of the blade, but I'll concede that I can't confirm this as I lost my magnifiers. If this isn't getting rid of the burr, then I don't know what I can do.
  • Doing cardboard cut testing, it goes from catching hairs on my arm when waved over my skin to not being able to shave after cutting a couple dozen feet of corrugated cardboard over a 2" section of edge. It still cuts cardboard and bites in easily, but it definitely lacks a fine edge after that test. My 204p Military did over 200 feet of cardboard in a 1" section of edge, for reference.
  • I've done this test several times in a row and have sharpened this knife half a dozen times at this point.
  • Cutting through non-corrugated compressed cardboard led to some tiny chips in the edge. It's a brittle steel and that's a difficult material to slice through, but none of my other knives exhibited damage after this.
Is this typical for Fantoni's heat treatment and/or the steel, or do I need some other tactic to get rid of the burr? I have never had something be so hard to sharpen yet offer such poor edge holding.

Edit for posterity: it appears that the company went out of business in January 2019 according to knifecommand.com. I doubt there is any way I can get help with this knife now, and it looks like I'm stuck with it.
 
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Definitely sounds like a burr issue.

I wouldn't use "copious" stropping, because you're likely to raise a micro-burr that will shorten the life of the edge keenest. If you can't match the edge angle with your strop, try keeping the angle a little low and use more pressure -- but only for two or three strokes.

And I wouldn't change stone angles to get rid of the burr, because you can just raise a burr on the micro-bevel.

What works best for me is to use light, very short (1/8 inch or so), leading-edge strokes to cut off the burr. If you continue the stroke, you'll just raise a new burr.
 
Twindog said:
Definitely sounds like a burr issue.

I wouldn't use "copious" stropping, because you're likely to raise a micro-burr that will shorten the life of the edge keenest. If you can't match the edge angle with your strop, try keeping the angle a little low and use more pressure -- but only for two or three strokes.

And I wouldn't change stone angles to get rid of the burr, because you can just raise a burr on the micro-bevel.

What works best for me is to use light, very short (1/8 inch or so), leading-edge strokes to cut off the burr. If you continue the stroke, you'll just raise a new burr.
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What you recommended for the burr sounds like what I tried several times before resorting to my more drastic measures, and is how I normally sharpen. I don't like to use a higher angle to cut off a burr, or even raise much of one at all while sharpening, but I literally can't find anything that works for this knife.

I've never heard of stropping actually creating a burr, but that's possible. I don't think I'm doing it enough to make that happen, though (20-25 passes per side on a small leather strop, a lot more than I typically do).
 
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marrenmiller said:
What you recommended for the burr sounds like what I tried several times before resorting to my more drastic measures, and is how I normally sharpen. I don't like to use a higher angle to cut off a burr, or even raise much of one at all while sharpening, but I literally can't find anything that works for this knife.
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S125V steel is tricky stuff. According to Alpha Knife Supply, it is so brittle in its annealed state, that it has to come clad with a thin layer of 304 stainless steel that has to be ground off to make the knife. It's also hard to roll, and comes in a sheet that is pretty rough.

That steel has so many carbides and strange qualities that lots of things can go wrong. When you look at the edge, do you see micro-chipping? I doubt it would roll.

I know you lost your magnifiers, but you might want to start there with a high-res view of that apex.
 
Twindog said:
S125V steel is tricky stuff. According to Alpha Knife Supply, it is so brittle in its annealed state, that it has to come clad with a thin layer of 304 stainless steel that has to be ground off to make the knife. It's also hard to roll, and comes in a sheet that is pretty rough.

That steel has so many carbides and strange qualities that lots of things can go wrong. When you look at the edge, do you see micro-chipping? I doubt it would roll.

I know you lost your magnifiers, but you might want to start there with a high-res view of that apex.
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It chipped while cutting non-corrugated compressed paper board and I've not yet seen it roll, so that checks out.

I'm just at a loss here. I might feel 99% certain it's completely deburred, and I may not be able to see one or feel one on my fingernail, but it will still act like there is a burr.

I'm looking for the magnifiers everywhere. If I find them, I'll report back.
 
Larrin said:
When I’ve had issues with burr removal it is from high retained austenite.
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I'd really like to know if anyone has ever used one of these knives. They're rare so I imagine not many people have. This is hyperbolic but it feels like I have a knife that didn't get heat treated or something.

I just went through it all again, being extremely careful to deburr every section of the edge with light alternating passes precisely at the edge angle, then lightly stropped a small amount for good measure. It cut a measured 30 feet of cardboard and has visible reflection and blunting along the edge where I did the cutting. It no longer shaves hair and it's difficult to cut anything with.
 
On a related note, if anyone knows if Fantoni is still in business or if there's someone I can contact about warranty support, I'm ready to send this in for them to look at.

Edit: seems like they went out of business as of January 2019, which is unfortunate. I doubt I'll be able to get any help with this now.
 
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I’ve never used that knife. My S125V CATRA Knife was not difficult to deburr.
 
Those knives were imported and sold originally by Hardheart. He is pretty knowledgeable and if anyone can advise you on them it would be him. He still posts here now and then. Try getting in touch with him.

Joe
 
The Mastiff said:
Those knives were imported and sold originally by Hardheart. He is pretty knowledgeable and if anyone can advise you on them it would be him. He still posts here now and then. Try getting in touch with him.

Joe
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Thanks, I'll see if I can reach him. Does he represent a company that I can look into?
 
Yet another test, yet another terrible performance. Achieved 10 cuts on a 2 ft section of cardboard before it stopped being able to cut hair properly.

https://imgur.com/a/0gJTVcL
G9G1t1a.jpg
 
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"Thanks, I'll see if I can reach him. Does he represent a company that I can look into?"

Not that I'm aware of. He did it as a knife knut / steel junkie best I could tell. He also funded some tests with prepared mules comparing steel performance . He just seems more like a person that doesn't know or accept that some things are impossible to do and goes about doing them. :)
 
To be honest very high carbide steels are just not designed for super high sharpness jobs like shaving or hair whittling. It may be just the nature of that steel. I'm no expert in all things S125V though. I used to have one of those Fantonis for a short time long ago. Never really used it much.

Joe
 
The Fantoni company is still in business as far as I know...however, I has just boiled down to Mr. Fantoni and he ships sporadically, only whats on his table at the moment, and as a retail store you cannot order anything specific.
I was just chatting with a friend of mine last weekend about this who owns a knife shop and receives Fantoni knives.
Hope this helps a bit.

Edit: Please see Mr. Wilkins post #31 as he has confirmed that Fantoni has closed their doors.
 
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No idea man. I have a HB03 in M390 love it no issues here with the heat treatment or overheated edge. The S125V being completely different could have been overheated during grinding given its tough to machine.

Here is their heat treat specs for it if you’ve not saw already.

To yield the maximum performance from the alloy Fantoni utilizes an exacting heat treating process. First the steel is brought up to 2050ºF (1121ºC) (Austenite) with a 15 minute hold to homogenize the material. An inert gas quench is executed to avoid surface oxidation. It is then processed through a freezing treatment of -176ºF (-80ºC) for three hours to maximize the transformation from an Austentic to Martensitic phase. Finally two complete tempering procedures bringing the blades up to 356ºF (180ºC) for three hours and back down to room temperature results in the final hardness of 61-62 Rockwell.
 
Shawn / Big Brown Bear has done more work with the really high carbide steels than pretty much anyone I know and I seem to recall him talking about S125V. He might be a good person to ask regarding what to expect from that particular steel. I'd recommend Dr. Larrin also depending on if he has done work with S125V. Both are excellent resources if you respect that they don't have unlimited time and resources and have families that rely on them. :)
 
Sharp & Fiery said:
The Fantoni company is still in business as far as I know...however, I has just boiled down to Mr. Fantoni and he ships sporadically, only whats on his table at the moment, and as a retail store you cannot order anything specific.
I was just chatting with a friend of mine last weekend about this who owns a knife shop and receives Fantoni knives.
Hope this helps a bit.
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Their website just times out and I can't find any way to get in touch with anyone there. Mind pointing me towards someone who can help?
 
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