Cool, I've been quoted!
No need for any little competition, I'm sure that a well made forged carbon steel blade would most likely outcut just about any production grade stainless blade. Now I didn't necessarily say that I didn't like carbon steels at all, just that in general, I do prefer stainless. If you have any spare New York Knife Co. slips laying around all lonely and unused, I'll take 'em, and polish and baby them, and use them and enjoy it.
There are many different knives, many different blade materials, all serve a purpose, even if but a small niche. I'm a general purpose knife user. For my needs and uses, the stainless blades, good ones, not Pakistan or China flea market blades, serve just fine. I don't need knives that are suitable for rope cutting competitions, splitting firewood, or fighting it out with Nazi werewolf zombies, just sharpening pencils, cleaning fingernails, opening packages and boxes, picking splinters, scoring plastics, and if I've been out hunting, I want one that'll skin and gut whatever it is I've shot and killed. I'd really hate to imagine what a finely made beautiful hand forged knife would look like after being submerged in blood and guts, then sloshed in a creek to wash off the crud and stuffed back in the sheath.
I still have some carbon steel knives, and I take good care of them. But one example of what can happen to carbon steel knives: My grandfather died in 1954. I was born in 1965, so we obviously never got to meet. We inherited the old homeplace from my grandmother, did a bunch of repairs and redecorating, and moved in during the middle of 1998. While going through all of the junk in boxes, cartons, and drawers on this place, I found an old knife that had belonged to my grandfather. It is a Pal Blade Company scout knife, and it has the patented Remington 2 piece can opener in it, with yellowish bone sides. The problem is, it was rusted shut, and caked inside and out with black and brown rust. The bolsters and liners were steel, as were the blades, so it was all rusted. The knife is ruined for further use, but since it's a keepsake, I wanted it preserved at least enough to look at for rememberance. I had to soak it for weeks in oil before it would even open. Took a lot of work with fine sandpaper, rust remover,etc, before it looked even presentable, and there's still brown oily glop that runs out of the pivots when it's opened. Stainless wouldn't have been like that.
The whole point of the beginner to this thread was a comment biased against and criticizing stainless steels. All I wanted to point out was that in my experiences, using the commonly available production grade knives, that the stainless steels have proven to cut and hold the edge as long as any carbon I've experienced, without any corrosion. Now if anybody wants to actually pit a custom forged high grade carbon steel knife against a production grade medium quality stainless slipjoint or small hunter belt knife, go ahead and let 'er rip, it'd make interesting reading if nothing else, even if it had no relevancy to a real world average knife user. I said it before and I'd have to say it once more, if stainless steels were so bad and carbon steels so wonderful, then the stainless blades wouldn't be on 90% of all knives being sold and carbon steels on 10%.
Bet I can take my Schrade 25OT Hunter out and pit it against my Case 6265SS, and find not a shred of discernable performance differences. I have only one blade in S30V, a Buck Signature 805, but it sliced up a few rabbits and squirrels last year without getting unseemingly dull, so maybe stainless is OK??????????Compared to the Schrade Old Timer Sharp Finger, it was considerably better cutting and easier to use. But whadda I know!:foot:
