Oregan Duck wrote:
>As long as there are different job or mission requirements for knives there will be no one steel across all
>knife types that is best suited to all possible missions or jobs
Totally agree. Witness just the differences of opinion on this thread. Some people love 440V and its edge holding. Others, like Cliff, want greater toughness, presumeably so he can put a thinner higher-performance edge on the steel, and he doesn't mind resharpening now and then provided he gets the performance.
For utility folders in particular, I used to strongly favor edge holding over toughness. But having chipped out too much ATS-34 and even Gin-1, I'm re-thinking my priorities. I've come to love super thin super high-performance edges, and I'm beginning to favor tougher steels provided I can take the edge thin. Edge holding is still important to me, but provided the knife can get through at least a weekend's worth of hard use without resharpening, I want toughness for that thin edge.
Bill, in my opinion, trying to come up with some definitive ranking for all uses and preferences is the wrong way to try to understand steels. For simplicity's sake you can come up with a list (memnoch's is a reasonable general list), but if you don't really understand each steel on the list, you can make pretty bad mistakes. Given Cliff's preferences, he might put 440C above every steel mentioned so far!
Joe
jat@cup.hp.com