I Hate Stainless!!!!!

[Monocrom]

And I never worry about rust since I don't abuse my knives. I seem to lose them more often than I like, but I don't abuse them.

Used to own a kabar knife made by Camillius. Got caught outside in a rainstorm. Tucked the sheathed knife into my pants and covered the handle with the sweater I was wearing. Took me quite awhile to get back home.

Anyone care to quess what happened with my carbon steel knife?

Yup, the black coating on the blade did nothing to prevent rust. Picture a badly rusted knife. Got that image in your head? Well, I'd rather have THAT knife; than the one I was holding in my hands! ..... I'm sorry, but I can't control the weather; and I honestly don't see how my example of a rusty blade would fall into the category of "abuse." :grumpy:

 

[SpyderJon]

Well, Barrabas, I'm not sure about the production market- though as was mentioned BM uses D2 on occassion. Microtech is also using a lot of D2 lately. In the custom realm I can point you to one knife, at least, that might make it and that's the Mike and Audra Draper folder called the "Cowgirl." Now, don't be obsessed with the name, they're actually VERY nice. They usually have natural materials in the scales, with Ti liners and a FORGED blade. Forged by a ABS Mastersmith no less. Very much worth the price, and not out of line with the Striders and Sebenzas.

 

[Boozoo Chavis]

Ok, I'm a fence rider - I like high Carbon/ and I like Stainless,
but to date I've not found a heavy duty carbon folder nice enough to displace my Strider / or a Seb..

This is really a plea to you carbon enthusiests : Is there such an animal?

Don't want to take this way off topic, but had to ask..

I'm not sure the Northwoods Scagel stag or Ivory reproduction would be a replacement for a Sebbie or Strider but it's a fairly large, stout knife made of 1095. (ain't too hard on the eyes, either)
http://www.vintageknives.com/tek9.asp?pg=products&grp=65

 

[buckg]

I never said I hate carbon steel. I don't hate it. I love it. I know that carbon steel is better. I LOVE KABARs. I also like my knives to be shiney. It's a cosmetic thing. I never said that carbon steel will rust or corrode to the point of suffering damage in one day, but it will discolor. Stainless steel is, well, stainless. I like my blades to have that polished look. Carbon steel has to be polished to look like that if it's exposed to nasty elements for more than a short time. I don't mean a little rain. I mean the nasty stuff where you're outdoors for a week and constantly wet. Maybe you've dressed an elk. These things will discolor your carbon blade. You'll have to polish it to get back to pretty. Wiping it down ain't going to cut it. Now maybe the problem is me. Maybe I just don't appreciate the "patina" that makes carbon blades beautiful in everyone else's eyes. I have my preferences. When I lived in Texas, I could easily keep carbon blades bright. Where I live now, I can't. I still take carbon blades to the field in the summer dry season, as long as I'm not going near brackish water. But in winter, I carry stainless.

 

[Thomas Linton]

. . .
Even morning dew will turn some carbon steel knives into rust buckets and dawn is when the french and indans attack

"Attack"? Well, maybe the Indians . . . . .


I have knives in "carbon" and "stainless" - fixed and folding, and I like them all. They just have different behaviors. Whatever works for you.


Trashing folks with diferent points-of-view? Well, maybe the French.

 

[Phil in Alabama]

I rather like stainless steels. Carbon knives are OK, but most all of them I've ever used or seen were caked with rust, inside and out. A little tarnish on the blades doesn't bother me much, but when it's all in the joints and backsprings, it's ruinous to a knife, they get get difficult to open and close, and the abrasive action of the rust in the joints loosens the pivots and the blades get too much play in them.

If a carbon steel blade were to be hardened up to or past RC 60, I might could see it holding a superior edge to a stainless blade hardened to only 55-56, but that is simply NOT the case with the vast majority of production knives, such as Cases CV or the much touted Schrade Old Timers. A steel hardened to 55-56 is a steel hardened to 55-56, and I've found zero differences in edgeholding. A carbon steel knife hardened to 55-56 will most assuredly hold a better edge than a poorly hardened 420J2 blade made for el cheapo products. I have stainless knives from Buck, Queen, Case, Boker, and Camillus, and carbon steel knives from Schrade and Case. The 420HC, 440A, and carbon steel steel blades have all performed similarly. The premium knives with ATS 34 or S30V blades have all exhibited better edgeholding. Even better, when I use the stainless knives for game cleaning purposes after hunting and get them all bloody, I can wash them out with hot water, and I don't have rust all in the pivots and backsprings afterwards. Don't have to keep them polished and bathed in rust preventatives either. I have two Queen knives made of D2, and these have not actually "rusted", they have some little black specklly pits that have appeared after getting them bloody and wet several times. I'd buy D2 before I'd buy plain carbon steel again, and I'd buy premium stainless over the D2. I'm as traditional a guy as can be, I dislike most "modern'' knives, stick to old timey slipjoints and hunting knives, but I see nothing advantageous to keeping the old rusty carbon steel blades. Even Case changed their backsprings to stainless over thirty years ago to get away from the rust in the springs problems. Actually, that a pretty fair comprimise, getting away from the internal rust, the blades themselves can be kept wiped clean and oiled. Cheap knives using inferior metals are not good tools, whether you prefer carbon or stainless. Cheap carbon knives are not any better than cheap stainless knives. And if the majority of folks were finding stainless steels to be so inferior to carbon steels in performance, 90% or greater of the knives being manufactured wouldn't be stainless. The only reason carbon steel knives are even still being made is to satisy the small demand for them from people who for whatever reason and tradition won't be satisfied with anything else.

 

[Phil in Alabama]

Edited to remove double posting, don't know why it put the same thing up twice?

 

[waynorth]

Phil, you make good points!
A lot of "like and dislike" is also in how much maintenance you want to do!

 

[me2]

How superior are some of the better carbon steels to the best stainless steels (s30v, D2, etc)? Will they take a vastly sharper edge? Be a lot tougher?

Marginally sharper IME, and a lot tougher. Dig around on rec.knives and Cliff's web site. That said, corrosion will dull a non-stainless (tool steel and carbon steel) knife and can require quite a bit of work to resharpen. Half of my current carry folders are stainless at present, but I'm trying to find a way to replace the blade in my BM 805 with O7, O1, L6, M2 or S7. I havent decided which yet. D2 for an 806 would be fine, but I cant get BM to email me back. I doubt they have any D2 blades left.

 

[FlyingMuskrat]

Ihave never found a stainless blade that would take an edge as well asthe carbon blades from my youth. Especially, I recall my father's Case knives I have mentioned. He always kept those blades where they would shave large patches of hair from his arm with one light swoop.I have tried to reproduce and never been able to... except with carbon blades.

I seem to have the exact oposite problem. I seem to be able to but an edge that will push cut printer paper on any piece of crap stainless I can get my hands on. But my old timer just won't get that sharp.

 

[ranger88]

I have often wondered how the human race survived prior to stainless steel. I can visualize some sailor weeping, his knife corroded into a pile of rust before his sailing ship was a day out of port; or a long ago butcher, cursing a smith's family for a hundred generations as his blades dulled instantly from all the corrosive fluids it encounterd from daily use. Poor souls! Knifeless! Victims of that dreaded rust! Suckers taken in by those wily bladesmiths.

Glad I wasn't a smith back then. I can just hear the crowd pounding on the shop door, shouting, "We want stainless! Give us stainless!", as I frantically slather oil on the door hinges / locks / latches / pintles in an attempt to save my life by keeping the iron from rusting away in minutes, allowing my furious customers in.

Rust is such a problem that I find it a continuing mystery in that I have not ever gotten a complaint from a customer that his knife had rusted beyond redemption... or even 'rusted' for that matter. They seem to like a bit of patina after a decade of using their knives, but apparently they don't know that the nice brownish color is 'rust'.

Ignore my ramblings, though. I'm a bit prejudiced.

Jimmy 'Old High Carbon' Fikes

A little rust is good for your soul.

 

[Keith Montgomery]

Stainless has its place, but to tell the truth, I don't really need it. The only time I have ever had a problem with a knife rusting was when I forgot my Moore Maker trapper in my jeans pocket when I was my pants. I hung the pants up to dry and then didn't wear them for a few weeks. Boy it was hard getting those blades to open. Other than that I have never had one single knife rust on me.

Besides that, my preference is for forged blades, and you don't find much forged stainless steel.

 

[Ebbtide]

Hmmmmm, first of flip, when I said BUTT, I meant Big Ugly Tall Texan...no worries, eh?

I think we need to define 'badly rusted'.
Badly rusted for me would be the crusty orange/red stuff that you can scrape off with a fingernail. YMMV

This is my Dad's knife...

He carried this for years, I was born in '56 and remember it from when I was a kid. He relagated it to drawer duty when I got him a SAK in the mid 80's. He sold the house, we moved and I thought the knife was gone for good. It turned up last summer in my unheated, damp garage in a bag of stuff, that he kept in his car, to tend the family cemetary plot. It prolly sat in that bag, since '88 when Mom passed on. In my garage for 7 years.
No care.
It didn't rust away. It had some powdery orange on the blade where it stuck out of the handle. (I think that could be caused by the celluloid breaking down). It rubbed off with some nose grease and a rag.
The hinge was smooth, a drop of oil had it slick as can be.
This photo was taken after I rubbed it down with some 400 grit paper

I ocean fished with a Schrade Sharpfinger for years. Used it to cut bait, line, lunch and clean the fish. It looked like an old hammer and only rusted once. And that was a powdery film that came right off with some WD40.
That happened when I went fishing on Saturday and remembered the knife on Tuesday. Out on the water it got a wipe on my pants leg and a saltwater rinse if cutting bait or cleaning fish.

This isn't a which is better kind of topic. There are quality steels on both sides of the fence. I have both and like both.
I don't mind the patina on a carbon blade and haven't had one rust away yet.
Then again my CRKT Mirage Wharnie got carried for a year and never touched a stone. It lived to cut paper and boxes. I'd strop it on the box I cut up and maybe a couple of licks on the strop when I walked by my workbench. And that is supposed to be lesser stainless...440A IIRC.
Here are my kitchen knives

Is the bottom one rusted or patina'd?
I get a kick out of watching the pattern change after every meal. And that one really did rust when my girls left it in a plate of water over night and the next day. A little scotchbright and steel wool and all was well with the world.

They are just knives, enjoy them

 

[Monocrom]

A little rust is good for your soul.

It's not my soul I'm worried about. (Although I probably should be).

When I said my Camillius-made kabar knife was rusted; I meant a thick layer of orange had covered the entire blade! Ever owned a fixed-blade with a thick, black powder coating on the carbon steel blade? Well; imagine if that coating was rust-colored orange, instead!

That's what I ended up with, on the ENTIRE blade! (Honestly, I had never seen rust THAT thick before)!

 

[WadeF]

I might have to pick up some more carbon steel blades just to play around with them. Which carbon steels are the best to look for in a knife blade?

I know a lot of my straight razors have carbon steel blades and I need to keep the dry and oiled. The carbon steel razors require less stropping and honing to get sharp.

All I know is I have split a hair 3 ways with a stainless blade, and my Spyderco Calypso with ZDP-189 was so sharp out of the box that I only had to give it a couple of licks on the strop and it was catching hairs well above skin level and cutting them. Stainless may take more work to get sharp, but with today's sharpening aids it really isn't an issue for me. The Edge Pro with it's aluminum oxide stones have always quickly reprofiled any blade I've taken it too, and will put a scary sharp edge on them. I usually maintain my knives on a Spyderco Sharpmarker. A few swipes and my SS blades are hair popping sharp again.

 

[WadeF]

When I said my Camillius-made kabar knife was rusted; I meant a thick layer of orange had covered the entire blade! Ever owned a fixed-blade with a thick, black powder coating on the carbon steel blade? Well; imagine if that coating was rust-colored orange, instead!

Hey Monocrom! Up late too? Did your Camillis Kabar have a black coating on the blade? If so, I think I have the same knife. Mine is carbon steel, but it's been kept dry, so I haven't had any rust issues. However, the blade is very rough on the sides, so if it got wet, it would trap a lot of water and it would just breed rust.

 

[Monocrom]

Hey Monocrom! Up late too? Did your Camillis Kabar have a black coating on the blade? If so, I think I have the same knife. Mine is carbon steel, but it's been kept dry, so I haven't had any rust issues. However, the blade is very rough on the sides, so if it got wet, it would trap a lot of water and it would just breed rust.

Yup, I'm a night-owl.

The Camillius version of the classic kabar knife comes with a carbon steel blade (1095 I believe). And always with a rough, black coating. (I swear, if that coating was any thinner; it would be arrested for indecent exposure). :thumbdn:

That horrible experience, and a few good ones with a couple of AUS 8 bladed tactical folders, convinced me not to spend my $$$ on carbon steel ever again!

 

[Redguy]

As a rule of thumb, I like my folders made from some good stainless, and my fixed blades in toolsteel. Since I live in an urban environment, I don't need really big knives, but if I ever will buy one, maybe it will be from 5160 or similar.


Hair,

I always enjoy reading your answers. Respect. :thumbup:

 

[Thomas Linton]

Hey, Ebbtide, that's a "fishing" knife, complete with scaler, and they sure did come in carbon steel.

Later, they switched to soft SS, and I can recall one of my uncles, after misplacing his carbon-steel model, complaining that the SS replacement wouldn't hold an edge.

Where did he fish? His favorite spot was the beach in Balboa, CA. - surf-fishing.

He was SO happy when the old CS model showed up under his car seat.

He had some knowledge of steel being a master machinist.

His favorite fixed-blade fishing knife was made of some kind of SS. Made it himself from bar stock and used the eqpt. at work to heat-treat it and Rockwell test it. Damn hard, but he liked it without any flex. (Also made a couple of 30.06 bolt-action rifles. He's long-dead now so Uncle Sugar can't punish him for that transgression.)

 

[OleyFermo]

I rather like stainless steels. Carbon knives are OK, but most all of them I've ever used or seen were caked with rust, inside and out. A little tarnish on the blades doesn't bother me much, but when it's all in the joints and backsprings, it's ruinous to a knife, they get get difficult to open and close, and the abrasive action of the rust in the joints loosens the pivots and the blades get too much play in them.

If a carbon steel blade were to be hardened up to or past RC 60, I might could see it holding a superior edge to a stainless blade hardened to only 55-56, but that is simply NOT the case with the vast majority of production knives, such as Cases CV or the much touted Schrade Old Timers. A steel hardened to 55-56 is a steel hardened to 55-56, and I've found zero differences in edgeholding. A carbon steel knife hardened to 55-56 will most assuredly hold a better edge than a poorly hardened 420J2 blade made for el cheapo products. I have stainless knives from Buck, Queen, Case, Boker, and Camillus, and carbon steel knives from Schrade and Case. The 420HC, 440A, and carbon steel steel blades have all performed similarly. The premium knives with ATS 34 or S30V blades have all exhibited better edgeholding. Even better, when I use the stainless knives for game cleaning purposes after hunting and get them all bloody, I can wash them out with hot water, and I don't have rust all in the pivots and backsprings afterwards. Don't have to keep them polished and bathed in rust preventatives either. I have two Queen knives made of D2, and these have not actually "rusted", they have some little black specklly pits that have appeared after getting them bloody and wet several times. I'd buy D2 before I'd buy plain carbon steel again, and I'd buy premium stainless over the D2. I'm as traditional a guy as can be, I dislike most "modern'' knives, stick to old timey slipjoints and hunting knives, but I see nothing advantageous to keeping the old rusty carbon steel blades. Even Case changed their backsprings to stainless over thirty years ago to get away from the rust in the springs problems. Actually, that a pretty fair comprimise, getting away from the internal rust, the blades themselves can be kept wiped clean and oiled. Cheap knives using inferior metals are not good tools, whether you prefer carbon or stainless. Cheap carbon knives are not any better than cheap stainless knives. And if the majority of folks were finding stainless steels to be so inferior to carbon steels in performance, 90% or greater of the knives being manufactured wouldn't be stainless. The only reason carbon steel knives are even still being made is to satisy the small demand for them from people who for whatever reason and tradition won't be satisfied with anything else.

Hi, Phil

Tried to email ya (but you don't accept email) about maybe you and me having a little cutting competition of our own... your stainless blades against my old won't-cut, rust-bucket, high carbon, pathetic attemps at making something with an edge... with a wager on the outcome just to make things fun. And another little wager... your stainless against a blade forged by my wife, Maggie. If ya want to pick up some real easy cash, email me at OleyFermo@aol.com and let's work out the details. I live in Jasper, so we're not that far apart. I may even be able to bring along Don Fogg and ya can really clean up.

Mods... if this is out of line, just delete and I'll reword.

Jimmy Can't Cut Worth Flip Fikes