For Cliff Stamp, re: D2

t1mpani

t1mpani

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Cliff,
I know D2 is far from the best material for a heavy use/chopping knife. What about medium-sized, fighting-type blades like Bob Dozier's Ranger? That's a 6 inch blade at 3/16, so will it have the strength to be decently field reliable (general utility, no chopping), or is D2 really only suitable for skinners? Thanks,
Warren
 
i have used D2 for many differnt camp/hunters. it will work fine for your 6" for your desired use. for me 3/16" is a little thick for a 6" that you are not listing chopping as a use for. i use 5/32" for that line and they can handle some chopping at that thickness.i am sure cliff will chime in here. hope my 2 cents is helpful.
 
Originally posted by RHINOKNIVES
hope my 2 cents is helpful.
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It most certainly is, thank you. :) Some very nice knives on your site!

Edit to add: I didn't mean to imply that I only wanted Cliff to answer, I just wanted to make sure he saw the thread.
 
D2 is designed for high wear resistance in applications that don't require significant ductility or impact toughness, skinning being almost an ideal task as D2 also has decent corrosion resistance. Can it be used for such a blade as you describe, yes, however it isn't a role which well suits the properties of D2, unless you intend to just use the blade for light cutting on abrasive materials, ie., as a skinner.

I have an excellent small blade in D2 made by the late Mel Sorg, it works great as a light utility knife. It is both very hard (62 HRC) and extremely wear resistant so it will stay sharp for very long unless the edge is chipped, which will happen quite easily with D2. Note that for those applications, CPM-10V is a direct upgrade for D2, and is much more expensive.

Of course you can leave the D2 soft to increase its toughness but then the edge retention suffers because of the drop in hardness and the machinability is still low. So in short, no, I would not want a D2 blade for that class of knife, there are far better steels for that class of use.

-Cliff
 
Originally posted by Cliff Stamp
So in short, no, I would not want a D2 blade for that class of knife...
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Not even if it was really neat looking? ;)

Thanks again for the reply.
:)
 
Originally posted by t1mpani
Not even if it was really neat looking?
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Are you looking to use the knife or only admire it?

For use, there are much better steels.

For admiration, that's up to you to decide.

Among the stainless choppers, steels like AUS-6, AUS-8, and S30V may be desired. For non-stainless, there are more choices than there are flavors of Skittles. Probably the same with stainless, too.
 
Originally posted by t1mpani
I know D2 is far from the best material for a heavy use/chopping knife. What about medium-sized, fighting-type blades like Bob Dozier's Ranger?
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If it is the Ranger you like, it's a nice knife, big hand filling handle (I have medium sized hands), cadillac feel, hefty but not a sharpened pry bar, a nicely designed knife.

Dozier will now do, at least his fillet knives, in S30V also. I don't know if he'd do the Ranger in S30V, call and ask. He'll also do them in A2, which is roughly twice as tough as D2, but less corrosion resistant of course. A2 isn't as wear resistant as D2 but it still makes a good overall knife blade for a cost effective steel. A2 is surpassed in most ways by CPM3V at a much higher cost, and don't know that Dozier offers 3V either.

If it were me, and I wanted a Ranger in A2, I'd try to talk Bob into a flat grind... but I know he'll do a convex grind also. Call and ask for a price quote.

http://www.crucibleservice.com/datash/dsA2v12.pdf
 
Sure D2 isn't the best at any one thing but it has a great balance of performance. I think you would be very happy with that knife in that steeel. D2 works and works very well for mid sized knives.
 
A2 would be the minimum I would want in regards to toughness and ductility, CPM-3V is indeed much better at both at a similar hardness based on what I have seen with both. I would be really curious to get ahold of one of the older A2 Busse blades as the performance described is better than what I have seen with A2.

As with Rob, I would also not want a hollow grind on that style of knife, flat would be preferred. Full convex is only really functional on readily machinable steels like 52100 as you are full polishing the blade with every sharpening. I did that with the D2 blade in the above just to see how bad it would get. It is by far the hardest blade to sharpen I have ever seen (because of the full grind - it becomes trivial with a secondary edge bevel).

-Cliff
 
One factor that should be kept in mind with respect to any Dozier knife is that Bob Dozier is considered by most to be the "High Priest" of D2 and his heat treatment has been refined over the years and is thought to be superlative.

Other than pointing that out, I agree with the above comments.
 
so what steel would be best for light chopping 5 inches and under 3/16 thick? That had good corrision resistance
 
FWIW, IMHO a 5" blade is way too short for any type of chopping, regardless of the steel type or thickness. A small sturdy knife like a Fallkniven F1 can be used with a baton or heavy stick to split wood and chop saplings, but there's really no substitute for blade length when it comes to serious chopping, IMHO of course.

Just my thoughts,

Clay
 
With a blade that small you really can not get any amount of power on the swing so chopping has to come from efficiency of profile which means the blade should be really thin. I would suggest something like the Mora 2000. It can be used effectively with a baton, and is a very corrosion resistant stainless steel which is also somewhat tough (for a stainless steel).

Db :

D2 isn't the best at any one thing but it has a great balance of performance.
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D2 is a completely unbalanced steel. It was designed for very high wear resistance, it ignores ductility, impact toughness and corrosion resistance, all of which are really low but of no consequence as for how it is usually used - but can be of significant influence on the performance of various knives. Its only downside cutting wise in industry is galling against high Cr metals as you can get same content wear and D2 is really high in Cr - on those types of metals you will usually see other steels used like M2.

-Cliff
 
so what would be the minium length blade you would use for light chopping than? thanks for the replies clay and cliff
 
You need a decent blade length to just get some power on the swing. About seven inches should give you half the penetration ability of a decent hatchet (Wildlife from GB), this assumes a 2" wide blade, 0.25" thick, balance at least 1"+, full flat grind to a thin and acute edge. Of course you can get decent chopping ability on a 5" blade if you make it 3" wide out of 3/8" stock.

-Cliff
 
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