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Heavy-Use Steel
- Thread starter Dash Lambda
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- May 21, 2000
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Sure, S7, L6 and 5160 will work and do make incredibly tough blades, but the price you pay is mediocre wear resistance of the edge.
Knives are meant to cut things, and the largest factor in high-performance cutting is edge and blade geometry. The new powder steels are better than ingot steels. 3V will be tougher than all but the shock steels, offer better wear resistance and allow the user to adopt thinner edge and blade profiles for any given task. For any given heat treat, they are likely to be harder and stronger than their ingot counterparts. The primary advantage of ingot steels like L6, O1, S7 and 5160 is their ease of grinding. It's cheaper and easier to make a knife out of them.
The other advantage of powder steels is that they are cleaner. We had a thread recently about a heavy duty chopper make out of 1075, a very tough steel. But it broke in the center mass of the big blade. The owner was sharp enough to take a photo of the break, not just the blade profile. The break appeared to start from a large inclusion. Cleaner, fine-grained steels are less likely to suffer inclusions. A similar thread, but without the photos of the break, showed a large, cheap Kershaw chopper breaking in the center of the blade, not where it was struck. Although we don't know for sure, that break, too, was likely to be caused by an inclusion in the steel.
The OP wanted not just toughness, but also good wear resistance. For that reason, and others, 3V would be better than S7, L6 or 5160.
Knives are meant to cut things, and the largest factor in high-performance cutting is edge and blade geometry. The new powder steels are better than ingot steels. 3V will be tougher than all but the shock steels, offer better wear resistance and allow the user to adopt thinner edge and blade profiles for any given task. For any given heat treat, they are likely to be harder and stronger than their ingot counterparts. The primary advantage of ingot steels like L6, O1, S7 and 5160 is their ease of grinding. It's cheaper and easier to make a knife out of them.
The other advantage of powder steels is that they are cleaner. We had a thread recently about a heavy duty chopper make out of 1075, a very tough steel. But it broke in the center mass of the big blade. The owner was sharp enough to take a photo of the break, not just the blade profile. The break appeared to start from a large inclusion. Cleaner, fine-grained steels are less likely to suffer inclusions. A similar thread, but without the photos of the break, showed a large, cheap Kershaw chopper breaking in the center of the blade, not where it was struck. Although we don't know for sure, that break, too, was likely to be caused by an inclusion in the steel.
The OP wanted not just toughness, but also good wear resistance. For that reason, and others, 3V would be better than S7, L6 or 5160.
Big Mike and others.
In Post #65 I say:
"REvdevil,
3v is Awesome. OP presents a very extreme environment/conditions. From my point of view.....old school shock steel seems a better choice for his stated requirements, that's all. Now as for your insults......I believe you know what to do with them. Thank you !"
3v is awesome steel....that's a fact. My opinion of OP's thread topic/question is that he is looking for a very hard use knife. I don't think he would consider whacking Satan over the head with anything but a fixed blade....and a damn tough one(S5,A8,3V,L6) at that. Your reading retention is lacking to say the least.
In Post #65 I say:
"REvdevil,
3v is Awesome. OP presents a very extreme environment/conditions. From my point of view.....old school shock steel seems a better choice for his stated requirements, that's all. Now as for your insults......I believe you know what to do with them. Thank you !"
3v is awesome steel....that's a fact. My opinion of OP's thread topic/question is that he is looking for a very hard use knife. I don't think he would consider whacking Satan over the head with anything but a fixed blade....and a damn tough one(S5,A8,3V,L6) at that. Your reading retention is lacking to say the least.
I'd have to disagree that wear resistance is all that helpful in terms of a hard use knife. My hard use knives rarely dull by wear. They get used for things that will dull any steel. In between these uses, their wear resistance is adequat to keep a cutting edge for weeks or maybe months, depending on how picky I am at any given time. Even if I get 100% more wear over my 1055 hard use chopper, that means I get 10 minutes of root cutting/deweeding/brush chopping instead of 5.
Cleanliness is not a feature of the powder processing. There are ingot steels that are as clean or cleaner, and they have a price to reflect it.
Cleanliness is not a feature of the powder processing. There are ingot steels that are as clean or cleaner, and they have a price to reflect it.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2006
- Messages
- 5,611
9V is brought up often. Next time you look at the chart look at the hardness mentioned in the test. Probably no higher than rc 54. Essentially too low hardness for knife blades.
Joe
Uddeholm third generation Superclean powder

Maximum cleanliness and a minimum powder size. That’s the success of Superclean3 – the Uddeholm third generation of powder steel. The improvements are significant – fewer non-metallic inclusion means even cleaner powder metallurgical steel. Smaller grain size and carbides give a more uniform structure resulting in a unique, homogenous steel.
*
Clean, cleaner, Superclean3

Most knife steel producers achieve level one. Some even manage to produce steel of level two quality. Uddeholm has steel that matches the highest demands. That’s why we call it Superclean3. For knife manufacturers it means steel that enables sharper edges, tougher blades and trouble free production with excellent grinding and polishability.
http://www.uddeholm.com/knife.htm
What is Dvalin™?
Dvalin™ is the name of an exclusive process used by Erasteel since 2005 in Soderfors, Sweden for the manufacturing of gas-atomized metal powders. The Dvalin™ process includes an Electro-Slag Heating (ESH) tundish metallurgy and gas-atomizing process to refine the molten steel, resulting in the removal of most of the melt-related oxide inclusions. After atomizing, powder is protected during handling to prevent the powder oxidation or the introduction of extraneous sources of foreign material into the process. Thanks to the Dvalin™ process, the number of large non-metallic inclusions has been reduced by 90% compared with the previous process and the steel offers a cleanliness level approaching the levels of traditional remelted steels.
This cleanliness provides improved fatigue properties, as well as toughness, polishability, and EDM consistency, compared to other process routes for PM steels.
http://www.erasteel.com/content/powder-metallurgy-faq
The results of ten years of experience aimed at continuously improving the quality of powders for
forging applications are reviewed. An automated image analysis procedure for inclusion assessment is
described which evaluates the inclusion content of samples and defines fragmented inclusion clusters on
the basis of a concept of near neighbor separation. A task group approach was used for cause-and-effect
analysis to determine the source of different inclusion types and eliminate and/or reduce their incidence.
The benefits of this approach are demonstrated by the significant reduction effected in inclusion levels.
http://www.gkn.com/hoeganaes/media/... Intended For Powder Forging Applications.pdf
Right, but the fact that they are making powder is incidental. The steel could be just as clean were it an ingot steel through the same various remelting and ladel/tundish cleaning methods. What is the inclusion content of these powders vs. something like Hitachi White or Blue steels?
I have seen some references to the various powder steels (mostly 3V in this thread) having very fine grain size. Anyone know what the sizes are? My previous searches have not turned anything up. There is a lot about carbide size, but not grain size.
I have seen some references to the various powder steels (mostly 3V in this thread) having very fine grain size. Anyone know what the sizes are? My previous searches have not turned anything up. There is a lot about carbide size, but not grain size.
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2014
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Popsickle
Gold Member
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- Jul 25, 2010
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I second this. Show us your work or just please god shut up lol
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2014
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- 11
I wasn't sure about 3V, but...
Well damn.
If you can use a 3V knife as a chisel without turning the edge into rubble, multiple times, splitting concrete blocks...
Then I got nothin'
All of you have convinced me, 3V is the god of steels. Let us all boy down and worship it.
Well damn.
If you can use a 3V knife as a chisel without turning the edge into rubble, multiple times, splitting concrete blocks...
Then I got nothin'
All of you have convinced me, 3V is the god of steels. Let us all boy down and worship it.
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2014
- Messages
- 816
To be honest I didn't like 3V at first. I had some chipping and rolling issues with my Bark river bravo 1 and fehrman last chance. Until I tried Koster and Survive! Knives with a much thinner edge geometry without any of the issues mentioned. I learned that even if you have the HT down, it's the process after that can make or break a knife.
The problem for small knifemakers is finding S5 or Caldie or Unimax. They will only sell custom order flat stock in these grades of several thousand lbs. What you can realistically buy in small quantities is S7,3V,A8. I think 10 or 20 guys here at BF should form a pool and order some S5, Unimax or Caldie flat stock and split it up.
Nobody cares. If you want it you can find it. Why don't you go and just make some knives YOURSELF (Instead of having others make your designs for thousands of dollars...) Then you can TEST those knives (Wait, you don't do that, I know... and yes it's been 2 weeks bro...)
THEN, you may speak about steels. You have absolutely 0 real world "hard use" experience and should not take any manufacturers or other claims you read about on the internet.
Simply said: D2 with a proper heat treat and the correct geometry will OUTPERFORM any of the steels you have listed that have a crappy heat treat or some non-working geometry.
Why would a knifemaker make knives out of something that is virtually impossible to get? I Googled "Caldie knife", "Unimax knife", and "S5 knife". S5 is the only one that returned any hits, and even then what I found is that S5 is so difficult to get and so cost-prohibitive that no one uses it. Why would they when other premium steels are readily available?
Nobody cares. If you want it you can find it. Why don't you go and just make some knives YOURSELF (Instead of having others make your designs for thousands of dollars...) Then you can TEST those knives (Wait, you don't do that, I know... and yes it's been 2 weeks bro...)
THEN, you may speak about steels. You have absolutely 0 real world "hard use" experience and should not take any manufacturers or other claims you read about on the internet.
Simply said: D2 with a proper heat treat and the correct geometry will OUTPERFORM any of the steels you have listed that have a crappy heat treat or some non-working geometry.
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