- Joined
- Jul 9, 1999
- Messages
- 3,316
Are you one too?
This insidious ailment grabbed me in my knife nut infancy and has grown like an out of control cancer ever since. How did this happen to me?!
Oh, it started innocently enough.
Years ago, I was in the Marine Corps doing my tour of duty like a good Marine and found that I was starting to like knives more than guns and started to collect knives.
Like many of you, I was buying and using some pretty cheap stuff and began noticing the cheap stuff just was not holding up under use as well as I would like it to.
So I started looking at the heart and soul of the knife. It's blade and the composition thereof.
I started researching into the types of steel used in knives and tried to acquire some different types to see what worked best.
Not an easy task on the salary my Marine Corps was paying me, but you make do with what you've got if your a Marine, and I did.
I was finding that the type of steel used in a knife made a great deal of difference in the way the knife performed it's given tasks. Back then, it was widely accepted (as far as I could tell) that carbon steels always were the better choice over the pooh-poohed stainless varieties to be found from factory sources.
Custom makers were using the state of the art steels but I couldn't afford their wares and made do with what I could find.
As time wore on, I said goodbye to active duty and assumed my roll in civilian life as a responsible member of our tax paying society, still enamored of knives and still trying to scratch that annoying itch of finding a better blade steel on a knife.
By this time, I decided that the Buck 110 was using the best stainless under the sun for people like me who were not the fortunate rich and could afford to buy custom made knives.
For a while I ceased the search and went on to other things.
Then came Spyderco. A friend of mine introduced me to their product and that damned itch re-asserted itself back in the late 80's. And ever since that time, I have been acquiring more and more knives searching for that holy grail of knife steel nirvana. I've gone thru so many types of steel I'm hard pressed to name them all.
GIN1 or AUS 8A had me giddy when I got that steel in my hot little hands. I remember a time when I was elated to find a knife that had 440C as it's blade steel. Sanvik 12C27 looked like a great possbility for knife steel nirvana and proved to be pretty good. At that time ATS34 was an unobtainable dream of mine. But, someday, I would have a knife made with ATS34. Oooohhh yes...
Then came a laundry list of "have to have" new steels that had my head swimming with guilty pleasure: Damascus, A2, D2, M2, VG10, CPM440V, 52100, the return of 154CM, BG42, Talonite. And the list goes on and on, as does my desire to own knives in all the great cutlery steels of this age. I own samples of most all of the cutlery steels I've mentioned above, BTW, with the exception of Talonite. There are sooo many great cutlery grade steels that I cannot list them all, and they all have their place in the Kingdom of Cutlery.
My point in all this is that I've noticed that now I look down my nose at knives that have the 440 Stainless stamp on them or any knife that I have deemed to have "inferior" blade steel. I wouldn't dream of throwing my money away on 420J2. I'm even finding myself questioning my reasoning for buying a knife made from 440C or even ATS34. It was a real leap of faith for me to buy a knife recently that is made from Sandvik 12C27.
As my rant wears down, finally, I'm left wondering "Where does it all end"?
Is there a cure for this seemingly never ending quest to find the best cutlery steel wrought by the hands of man and do I WANT to find the end?
Do you?
------------------
My new bumper sticker:
Let me tell you about my SIFU!
This insidious ailment grabbed me in my knife nut infancy and has grown like an out of control cancer ever since. How did this happen to me?!
Oh, it started innocently enough.
Years ago, I was in the Marine Corps doing my tour of duty like a good Marine and found that I was starting to like knives more than guns and started to collect knives.
Like many of you, I was buying and using some pretty cheap stuff and began noticing the cheap stuff just was not holding up under use as well as I would like it to.
So I started looking at the heart and soul of the knife. It's blade and the composition thereof.
I started researching into the types of steel used in knives and tried to acquire some different types to see what worked best.
Not an easy task on the salary my Marine Corps was paying me, but you make do with what you've got if your a Marine, and I did.
I was finding that the type of steel used in a knife made a great deal of difference in the way the knife performed it's given tasks. Back then, it was widely accepted (as far as I could tell) that carbon steels always were the better choice over the pooh-poohed stainless varieties to be found from factory sources.
Custom makers were using the state of the art steels but I couldn't afford their wares and made do with what I could find.
As time wore on, I said goodbye to active duty and assumed my roll in civilian life as a responsible member of our tax paying society, still enamored of knives and still trying to scratch that annoying itch of finding a better blade steel on a knife.
By this time, I decided that the Buck 110 was using the best stainless under the sun for people like me who were not the fortunate rich and could afford to buy custom made knives.
For a while I ceased the search and went on to other things.
Then came Spyderco. A friend of mine introduced me to their product and that damned itch re-asserted itself back in the late 80's. And ever since that time, I have been acquiring more and more knives searching for that holy grail of knife steel nirvana. I've gone thru so many types of steel I'm hard pressed to name them all.
GIN1 or AUS 8A had me giddy when I got that steel in my hot little hands. I remember a time when I was elated to find a knife that had 440C as it's blade steel. Sanvik 12C27 looked like a great possbility for knife steel nirvana and proved to be pretty good. At that time ATS34 was an unobtainable dream of mine. But, someday, I would have a knife made with ATS34. Oooohhh yes...
Then came a laundry list of "have to have" new steels that had my head swimming with guilty pleasure: Damascus, A2, D2, M2, VG10, CPM440V, 52100, the return of 154CM, BG42, Talonite. And the list goes on and on, as does my desire to own knives in all the great cutlery steels of this age. I own samples of most all of the cutlery steels I've mentioned above, BTW, with the exception of Talonite. There are sooo many great cutlery grade steels that I cannot list them all, and they all have their place in the Kingdom of Cutlery.
My point in all this is that I've noticed that now I look down my nose at knives that have the 440 Stainless stamp on them or any knife that I have deemed to have "inferior" blade steel. I wouldn't dream of throwing my money away on 420J2. I'm even finding myself questioning my reasoning for buying a knife made from 440C or even ATS34. It was a real leap of faith for me to buy a knife recently that is made from Sandvik 12C27.
As my rant wears down, finally, I'm left wondering "Where does it all end"?
Is there a cure for this seemingly never ending quest to find the best cutlery steel wrought by the hands of man and do I WANT to find the end?
Do you?
------------------
My new bumper sticker:
Let me tell you about my SIFU!
