Is Steel Will using fake M390 and an unknown manufacturer?

If anything the stonewash would be more susceptible to rust than a satin finish. All in all it looks how I would imagine, other than the fact m390 stained at all... lol
 
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This is the blade from my 0620cf that I kept. Yes this blade is a few years old. And been through everything I described and more. Never a stain.
 
Being as I don't even have the 0620cf anymore I can do destructive corrosion test on this piece of m390. And mustard won't cut it lol I'll see if a straight salt solution will do the the deed.
 
Steel Testing Evolved: Condiment Test Results!

oMPkMOY.jpg
 
Soon we will be having to confirm the condiments in order to keep all tests equal, some mustards may not have the same batch ingredients as the next, but, I digress ;)

Seriously there can and probably will be flukes from time to time, if a company can be found to have strayed from their process, as the Bark River folks I believe have admitted to.
People make mistakes, so errors can happen, the issue is when it is made with the full intention of fooling the public by etching the flavor of the month steel on the side of the blade (see what I did there by using the word flavor, condiments...go figure... ;) )

G2
 
I guess in my mind this doesn't come down to a mistake. Nor do I think this is a result of malice. This comes down to poor supply chain management.

If you are contracting the manufacture of your knives to another company, you better damn well check that it is in tolerance, throughout the lifecycle. Its not enough to okay the first box as being made to spec, then assume every shipment after that is. Your companies reputation is at stake, not the contracted company.

I do not believe that a 1 off mistake of this sort happens with knives produced at scale. If one knife is bad, there are probably at least 100 more with the wrong steel, or an incorrectly heat treated steel. Any reasonably sized production knife company that cares about their name should be able to afford a Rockwell test and a steel test a random sampling of the products, especially at the prices some of these items go for.

Steel Will should be pulling a knife from every batch and verifying that what they ordered is what they got.

CRKT should have caught the fake S30V.

Bark River should have caught the A2 marked as CPM154.

Spyderco caught this on their Techno, and correctly marked the batch that came out with S30V.
 
Wow. This is... disturbing. I hope more people are able to subject theirs to testing, so we can get a sense of how widespread this is. I've not heard of this out of Maserin before. Hopefully they just put a few wrong bars on the wrong shelf.

I've never been so happy to have preferred the D2 version by a mile.
 
You guys crack me up. Now I want a hotdog.

Let's step back a bit - this is not a Boeing jumbo jet or a implanted heart device it's a knife for hobbiest.

Maybe they do post testing maybe they don't. Ill be honest I have no idea on the price point of these. I do know that all extra steps after a knife is manufactured are extra cost. I would guess very few send out blades post production for independent testing.
 
NickShabazz said:
Wow. This is... disturbing. I hope more people are able to subject theirs to testing, so we can get a sense of how widespread this is. I've not heard of this out of Maserin before. Hopefully they just put a few wrong bars on the wrong shelf.

I've never been so happy to have preferred the D2 version by a mile.
Click to expand...

Knive Gripes Episode 51: Companies, get your damn steel right!

:cool:
 
My view, it's a pocket knife sold at $140. That makes it a premium product. You are spending ~4 times the cost of a Rat in D2, or the D2 version of the same knife. The primary justification for the price of this particular knife is the steel.

Hopefully this is a wake up call for Steel Will and any other manufacturer who isn't doing some QC validation. Does it cost more? Yes! but I would argue that you can't afford not to. In the long run it is cheaper than having the community loose faith in your brand. Eat the cost, or pass it on to the consumer. Advertise it, say we verify our suppliers, tell us they open the boxes and look at a couple rather than drop shipping the lot to 10 different vendors.
 
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I put the salt solution on a modus m390 ,modus d2,spyderco m390,manly d2- the manly and modus d2 reacted very similar with some small corroded spots/clouding the solution,the modus m390 and the spyderco m390 both very,very small discoloration-also the modus m390 cut alot of cardboard about 100 7-8" cuts and was still cutting arm hair,catching nail,slicing phonebk. paper although a little less than the onset
 
I am sure M390 is quite stainless with 20% chromium.

If it gets stain quite easily, it must be either not M390 or prevented from passivation.
I don't know if bad heat treatment changes the stainless property (free chromium content) very much.
But I read somewhere that the surface of stainless steel should be cleaned and polished to remove free iron and heat tint to have its maximum stainlessness, as they may interfere passivation and initiate corrosion on the surface.
 
so I got some light staining on a few of them. the benchmade and reate, if it stained you could not see it because of the stonewash. the zt's were hard to take a photo of the stains and was minor. the real steel stained the most but was also more polished surface....

overall it was extremely minor.

https://s10.postimg.org/89dux2l2h/IMG_20180212_000244.jpg
https://s10.postimg.org/dksrhrzfd/IMG_20180212_000352.jpg
https://s10.postimg.org/9offlt1l5/IMG_20180212_000430.jpg
https://s10.postimg.org/en2y0bxo9/IMG_20180212_000543.jpg
https://s10.postimg.org/ni3satjvt/IMG_20180212_000604.jpg
https://s10.postimg.org/z77rys34p/IMG_20180212_000631.jpg

will m390 stain? in my experience it has lightly stained with mustard left on it for 24 hours.
 
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