IS Cold Steel's Carbon V brittle?

[Tom271]

You found one?! Good on ya!

Recon ScoutS
Or just the infamous nutnfancy recon scout?

Steel isn't brittle.
Heat treat is the determiner.

There is a video on YouTube of someone breaking their scout in about the same location nutnfancy's friend broke.

 

[Tom271]

I wouldn't pay a "vintage collectable " premium for Carbon V for a user knife . I have cut down 5" hardwood trees with my O-1 Trailmaster and Gurkha Kukri with no problems whatever (to the knife, me was tired and sore) .The edges stayed sharp , no chipping or folding . I personally dislike the old black coating and prefer the bare O-1 with patina .

I like the fact that the old carbon v blades are made in the USA. Also they don't make an ODA in O1. If they did it might be a different story...

 

[Tom271]

I did some more digging and found this thread: http://www.bladeforums.com/threads/coldsteel-srk-vs-sog-seal-pup-elite.705633/. A Carbon V SRK. You can see some radiusing at the transitions, but the tang fractured behind that area, so who knows what went wrong? Again, this is one of a very few instances I've seen of old Carbon V blades breaking, so I don't think it's an issue worth worrying too much over, but I thought it was worth including.

Good find! It seems like CS changed the radius of the blades at some point. My srk is also a second but as I said before it has been used to baton logs. Even during the winter in temps below freezing and I have had no problems.

 

[The Whip]

Nonsense. Lyn Thompson had nothing to do with developing the heat treat.

When Carbon V blades were produced by Camillus, Dan Maragni, the Camillus metallurgist, both modified the alloy from what had been originally used and and developed the heat treat.

It's not nonsense. Thompson and Maragni collaborated for over a year on the development of the Trail Master. While I have no doubt that Maragni supplied most of the input on heat treatment (he was consulted for his expertise, after all), Thompson was hardly illiterate on the subject.

This is from Maragni's current bio on the Ontario site:

My commercial production experience was a direct result of my high quality custom work and led to my 25 year relationship with Cold Steel, Inc. I began consulting on steels, heat treatments and edge geometries and then spearheaded their move to US production and the commercial use of high performance carbon steels. My responsibilities included every aspect of production from rough drawing to finished knives and included training operators and quality control personnel, designing and making fixtures and gauges and establishing manufacturing procedures.

It doesn't mention anything about his ever having worked at Camillus, let alone acting as the company's metallurgist. Was he employed by Camillus, or was he employed by Cold Steel to oversee Camillus' production of Cold Steel's knives?

This is what Lynn Thompson wrote about Maragni in 2003 on the twentieth anniversary of his association with/employment by Cold Steel. Note paragraph three.

Thompson fully acknowledges Maragni's contributions. While they are obviously significant, it's disingenuous to imply that Dan Maragni did all the work and Thompson just took all the bows. That doesn't seem to be a proper characterization of their relationship.

It seems that most of the problems are with the recon scouts. It's hard to find any info on the less popular models like the bush ranger and the oda, which I'm thinking about buying

As Scott pointed out early in the thread, you can find examples of broken knives of every stripe all day long.

Are Busse knives brittle?

Before considering heat treatment as the deciding factor, you might want to examine what you intend to use your knives for. The ODA (in all its forms, including the original Randalls it's patterned after) is first, last, and always a fighting knife design. In that role, it will serve well. Likewise, the Bush Ranger may perform yeoman's work in the woods, but it was really offered as a lightweight fighting bowie, not a bushcraft knife. The Trail Master and Recon Scout are better bets if you want a heavy-duty woodsman's knife.

In my experience, Cold Steel's Carbon V is excellent steel.

-Steve

 

[knarfeng]

You know that Phil Gibbs was a designer at Camillus. Perhaps you will take his word for it...

Carbon V is a proprietary steel formulation created by Dan Maragni for Cold Steel.
When Camillus purchased it, a whole "heat" had to be purchased, approximately 40,000 lbs.
It was NOT 1095CV.
It was not 50100-b.
It did not come from Sharon Steel, they were already already out of business.

Carbon V definately came first. It was the brainchild of the Metal God, Dan Maragni, & was, in my opinion, what put Cold Steel on the map all those years ago.

When Cold Steel came to Camillus to make their carbon steel knives, they did not want to pay for the vast amount of steel that had to be purchased in order to have a custom steel made to their specifications.
Consequently Cold Steel agreed that Camillus could also use the steel (& pay them a royalty, I believe) but could not call it Carbon V.

I came up with the name 0170-6C, based on an almost close (but NOT) steel produced by Sharron Steel called 0170-6.

All this is historical trivia.

The real issue for those who understand is Heat Treatment!

The reason that the Camillus Beckers perform so well is that Dan Maragni set up a system of heat treatment at Camillus for the Cold Steel knives, & oversaw almost every batch of knives produced. What we learnt about heat treating Cold Steel seeped over to the Becker knives.
All that is now lost forever!

In my humble opinion, the values of the Camillus Beckers may not rise significantly in the collector market, but for those interested in a high performance user, get them while you can. Without Maragni's methods, I don't care what a future maker of Beckers uses, they will just be well designed carbon steel knives covered in powder coat!

I dearly hope I am wrong & the new maker will consider trying to improve their methods. Time will tell..............

 

[The Whip]

Thanks for the posts. I had seen them before, but I was glad to read them again. I'm not questioning the fundamental significance of Dan Maragni's part in the formulation of Carbon V. Lynn Thompson said pretty much the same thing in the article I supplied. I'm simply saying that I believe Maragni was working for Cold Steel, not Camillus, and that Thompson's role was not merely that of pitch man, as he's so frequently characterized around here. Lynn Thompson has been every bit as much of a hands-on, driving, creative force for Cold Steel as Sal Glesser, Al Mar, Pete Gerber, or any founder you can name has been for his respective knife company.

-Steve

 

[Alberta Ed]

Lynn Thompson is one of the most innovative knife designers and producers of the last 20 years. Maybe 30. I have bought maybe a dozen or more of his knives over the years and have yet to find one that did not perform as advertised. Lynn Thompson is welcome at my campfire any time.

 

[knarfeng]

I agree that DM may have been working for Cold Steel. Certainly he worked wherever Cold Steel was having Carbon V blades made. (Alcas, Ontario, Camillus)

My point was that Thompson had nothing to do with setting the heat treat parameters as was implied in the original post to which I responded. He may have asked for a specific Rockwell hardness, but that would be as far as his input would have gone.

 

[Armadew]

Lynn Thompson is one of the most innovative knife designers and producers of the last 20 years. Maybe 30. I have bought maybe a dozen or more of his knives over the years and have yet to find one that did not perform as advertised. Lynn Thompson is welcome at my campfire any time.

What knives did he specifically design?

 

[tltt]

I wouldn't call Thompson innovative as a designer. Where his vision lies is that he's willing to take chances, and put into wide scale production designs that were mostly dead or usually in the realm of just custom makers. He does deserve a lot of credit for that.

 

[Tom271]

Here is an oda with the handle removed. Has a slight radius where the tang ends.