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Knife steel
- Thread starter Chewy1
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Pinnah,
No one is arguing about whether a more premium steel or different steel is a desirable option for people who wants to owe it, I for one will also love to see more options from Victorinox, or same goes to Opinel, Mora and Buck. It is really hard to imagine a giant company like them don't know the pros/cons of making a harder blade or don't have the resources do so.
And if you are determined to call Victornox product inferior, or not having the technology, just because they don't use 'premium' steel or hardening to a higher HRC, you are certainly entitle to do that and just vote with your wallet. But it is essentially saying one of the(if not the) largest knife company in the world don't know about knife steel and what the market wants.
No one is arguing about whether a more premium steel or different steel is a desirable option for people who wants to owe it, I for one will also love to see more options from Victorinox, or same goes to Opinel, Mora and Buck. It is really hard to imagine a giant company like them don't know the pros/cons of making a harder blade or don't have the resources do so.
And if you are determined to call Victornox product inferior, or not having the technology, just because they don't use 'premium' steel or hardening to a higher HRC, you are certainly entitle to do that and just vote with your wallet. But it is essentially saying one of the(if not the) largest knife company in the world don't know about knife steel and what the market wants.
No I ment what I said. It would take less effort (fuel/energy) to leave the blade at 58 thus saving the company money in the long run.
Here is a link to a very basic tempering guide for common carbon steels
As you can see the lower the RC the higher the required temperature for the tempering heet soak. Considering the massive number of knives and multitools Victorinox produces each year I think it's safe to assume that cost savings would add up quickly. That said I think it is safe to assume that they picked the hardness they did for a reason.
My guess is that it is for user friendly sharpening. Victorinox seems to promote the use of a steel to maintain the edge on their knives this is easier/possible with slightly softer steel. It also likely reduces the amount of broken blades that occur allowing the knives to to slightly more springy and less likely to snap especially at the tip. Of course this is all conjecture, but it's hard to argue that the reason is cost or inability to produce a blade with harder steel once you understand the knife making process.
Apparently, for some unknown mysterious reason, millions and millions of people all over the world vote with their sometimes little bit of money they have, to buy Victorinox over any other three brands of knives. Millions every year, year after year. Are they all duped by marketing????
Can all those people from the African continent to Northern Europe, to the Canadian bush country to Southeast Asia all be totally ignorant of what works for them in the real world?
Apparently your idea of superior is a lot different than theirs.
It's like the guy from the Porsche club arguing that he doesn't understand why all those people are buying Toyota's and Honda's when they aren't near as fast or well handling as his Porsche. He just doesn't get it that they don't care. The Toyota or Honda gets it done very well for them.
Come on Dave. You've well established your anti Victorinox feelings way back, but to argue that they may not have the know how or equipment to properly temper their blades is just plain silly. As for them being "inferior", the whole rest of the world don't agree with you. The people of the world have voted with their wallets, and Victorinox has been made king. For whatever reason they put the RC at 56, I'm sure the Elsner's had a very good reason. These folks aren't newbs to the business.
How can you not like that thin full flat ground, highly polished beast of a slicer? In my opinion it is a great blade design that out-cut 99% of what I have tested.
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Rockwell hardness is used for QC to check for failure. You can not deduce the micro-structure of a steel by the HRc-hardness and it is the micro-structure of a steel that will determine how it will perform. So Victorinox may be consistently getting exactly what they want from the steel they use with their heat treat. And that happens to be around HRc56.
Hacked,
When I earlier said "heat treatment" I meant it as an umbrella term that encompasses the entire process, including both the heating and tempering. I think this broader term is consistent with how it's described in consumer level marketing literature (I'm a consumer, not a metallurgist), as in Buck's Bos Heat Treatment. It is also my understanding that it's not just getting to a higher Rc level, but how you get there matters if you want a blade that is both hard and tough and not brittle.
Victorinox lists their steel as X50 Cr-MO, which appears to be more of a family of steels with lots of variants. If I'm reading this correctly, this page suggests it can be pushed to 60Rc.
http://www.steel-grades.com/Steel-grades/Stainless-Steel/x50crmov15.html
Other sites (like zknives) suggest that its a very common steel with German knife makers, particularly for mid level kitchen knives and that the German manufacturers typically run it at 56Rc.
This is what I'm wondering - is there a good reason and if so, what is it?
Do you really believe that this type of steel is easier to sharpen at 56Rc than at 58Rc? My expectation is that something like 90% of Victorinox users never sharpen their knives at all. Perhaps just north of 5% use some sort of pull through sharpener and something like less than 5% put their knife on a stone or rod (or coffee mug). This said, the steels we're talking about (X50Cr-mo, 12C27, 420HC) all have fine carbides and comparatively little resistance to abrasion. Do you really experience them as being harder to sharpen by any method? If anything, I find these steels easier to sharpen when harder, not softer, since they burr up less. I'm just not buying the "it's easier to sharpen" argument.
My sense is there are 2 issues. The first is simple tradition, the same as with Case. 56Rc used to be considered really good for stainless and getting there reliably is well understood. My sense is that Victorinox is in step with traditional German and French makers, many of whom still run their fine carbide stainless soft and yes, in this sense, I think Buck, Mora and Opinel have broken rank by taking advantage of advances in heat treat/tempering.
The second issue is that I think huge numbers of Victorinox users don't use their cutting blade hardly at all and most of those who do, don't sharpen the blade ever - and instead unknowingly rely on the super thin geometry to get by. Case in point... I gave Victorinox Picnicers to my groomsmen in my wedding (Carl's head just exploded in shock, I think ;^). 20-some years later, I was helping my bro-in-law on his sailboat and found his in the clutter of his cabin. It hadn't been sharpened once in the 20 years he had it, and he's been through many wood working classes and has expensive carving knives and sharpening stones and he knows how to use them.
In contrast, I think Buck (hunters) and Mora and Opinel (workers) have more customers who use their knives hard and who regularly sharpen them and for their core customers, pushing these steels to 58Rc is something that matters more.
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Heya Carl,
You're right. Independent of the steel, Victorinox knives leave me cold. Personal preference right up there with beer and shoe choices. I've no problem sayin' that.
But on this issue, it's not about the knife - only the blade steel. If we were having this discussion in the Traditional forum, I'd be mentioning Case for exactly the same reason.
My EDC bowl currently has 3 knives in it that I've been rotating through most of the summer: my Opinel #9 Inox, my large Case Sodbuster and a recent Buck 110.
I have exactly the same frustration with the Case Sodbuster. It's a lovely knife and the design of the knife has really won me over in many ways. But the blade consistently dulls faster than the Opinel or the Buck, particularly when I use it on a wooden cutting board or when I use it for a carving project or cutting limbs. I have to sharpen it at a slightly larger angle to get reasonable performance from it, more along the lines of Opinel's similarly soft carbon. Ditto my Case 316-5. It dulls when I look at it sternly while a Schrade H-15 (1095 at >58Rc) cuts and cuts and cuts and cuts.
I just don't buy the "because it's easier to sharpen" argument. All of the steels we're talking about are easy to sharpen, ime.
I do think you've hit the nail on the head though. I think I've become a knife knut - a person who has a preference for how the blade behaves while the huge vast majority of Victorinox's customers are not. Their target market is the mass market consumer, not the knife knut and if they change from 56Rc to 58Rc, only a tiny fraction of their customer would notice.
BTW, I just purchased a Toyota! Second in the family now.
No, don't go with a larger angle, go with a smaller.
The Opinel is ground to a much thinner edge and is a convex ground blade. The Case is a flat grind with a secondary angle. Sometimes the at the factory get it right, sometimes they don't. Is the Case the True Sharp stainless or CV? Eother way, go to a lower angle on the stone, and go with a toothy edge and you'll e very surprised at how it performs. The Opinel is a great slicer, not many knives n the planet are going to perform with them. I've never faulted the Opinel in the cutting department. I just got weary of the finicky factor, and the water swelling factor. The Case does not have a blade near as thin at the edge as the Opinel. So you have to thin it a bit yourself. But my love is not for the Sodbusters thin blade slicing ability, it's the rugged reliable heavy duty nature of the knife. I'd rather carry a Case sodbuster than and Opinel because the sodbuster will stand up to a wide range of conditions better than the Opinel, including a watery environment like some of Maryland's Eastern shore.
Lower that edge angle on the sodbuster so it's more like the edge angle on a Eye-Brand sodbuster.
Don't confuse SAK buyers with knife nuts. The twain shall never meet. People who buy the vast majority of SAK's are the run of the mill yukkapuks who wander into a Dick's Sporting goods store or some backpacking store, buy some backpacking or hiking gear, and buy a SAK because it's one of the 'ten essentials' listed in the backpacking book they read. Or the kid gets one for Christmas from Aunt Agatha and he loves it so he's a sentimental brand loyalist from then on. If it ever gets too dull, odds are it will get a couple pulls through one those horrible pull through sharpeners, or some friend will take pity on him and give it a quick sharpening. In general, SAK users are not knife nuts. The exceptions see to be in the military. Most of the solders I served with like SAK's, and knew how to sharpen them. Most people in general don't know anayting about sharpening a knife. It's becoming a lost art.
SAK's have their place in the cutlery world, as does the other knives. It's all up to the end user.
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Edit to add: I forgot to address the issue do I feel that the little lower point of RC hardness makes for easier sharpening. Yes it does.
Dave, as you know from our many many discussions on the merits of the Vic classic, that I was and still am a fan of it. But one thing I do know, it is sooooo darn easy to touch up the blade when it does go dull. Over a period of years, I've used the little classic as my 'what the hell' knife. The little low cost expendable tool that if it breaks I don't care that much. Walmart, Target, Dick's, the REI store down the road, all have plenty of them. But my better half Karen truly excels at torturing the classic. ONce in a blue moon, I'll have to touchup mine, or Karen will ask me to do something abutter little one because it's not cutting anymore.
With a Vic, it's a matter of 30 seconds, literally, on the bottom of a coffee mug to nice slicing agains. I've done this so many times, that I've come to love the Victoriox SAK's for that reason amount others. Like on vacation in Key West. I had shipped a recruit down to myself where we were staying. For several days, the recruit was my only knife while I was over a thousand mles from home, fishing, partying, kayaking the mangroves, more partying
Anyways, the guest house where we all wee staying had a full kitchen area, but few utensils. Plastic disposable forks and spoons and knives. My recruit made salads, sliced up meat for a beef stir fry, and slice limes for the cold Corona's and gin and tonics. The day I went bone fishing out on the flats, the vic started to not cut the squid and eel bait well. Kind of sliding on the rubbery eel. The motor was raised up, and boat was being poled through the shallows. I touched up the edge of the knife on the small diamond hone I carry in my wallet, and in less than a minute, I had a knife that was slicing eel as nice as a new SAK. About 30 seconds a side in a small circle way of honing,and it was good to go.
Even my daughter, from years of watching me, keeps her little pink Classic on her keys sharp by once in a while stropping on the bottom of a coffee mug. It's so easy a girl can doit.
Yes, a SAK is easier to sharpen up than most other knives.
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Pinnah,
I think you are over looking the point, and at the same time highlighting the general misconception about the overall heat treatment process. A lot of folks think that it is a very close guarded complex process, it's not. But the difference between the Heat Treatment and the Tempering process is important to understand in this case. So in very simplified terms we will say that Victorinox Heat Treats a blade. This means that they heated it up to whatever the critical temperature of the steel is and cooled it as specified by the steel manufacture. At this point the blade will be somewhere in the mid 60s on the RC scale or well above 58 RC. They then run it through the specified number of heat soak cycles for a given amount of time and at a given temperature to soften the steel and draw out the brittleness. The higher the temp generally speaking the softer the blade will become. This is the Tempering Process, without it the knife would likely be prone to chipping at the edge and snapping under stress. So it's not that Victorinox can't bring the steel up to a higher hardness it is that they have deliberately chosen to bring it down lower on the RC scale. I assume since they need to use higher temperatures and thus more energy to do this that they have a good reason.
To answer your question yes I do find my victorinox easier to sharpen. The two knives I use the most are a Victorinox Pioneer and a Mora Classic #1. Both have their advantages. For general day to day use I find the Vic adequate, probably not the best but as you pointed out the excellent blade geometry goes a long way. If you find that you are creating a bur constantly then my guess is you are using too much pressure or to high of a grit. I typically do a few light passes on either the bottom of my coffee mug with a little water or 600 grit sand paper. The last couple of passes are just the weight of the blade and when I'm done it has a good functional edge, it will shave but not "pop" hair or whatever. I don't go too crazy over having high polished atom splitting edges.
I did also bring up blade toughness or resistance to snapping as a possible reason for leaving the steel soft. Not unusual for knives that are known to be abused and neglected to be left softer for this reason.
As a real world example of this logic it is a know fact in the world of knife making that back springs for knives like Victorinox, Case and other slip joints must be made softer than the other components such as the blade. This is because they would be far less springy and more prone to snapping otherwise. This is a real world example of why harder steel is not always better, and why a manufacturer would chose to go with a lower RC.
At the end of the day we would have to ask Victorinox why they chose to go with 56 over 58 RC. But their is simply no way to say it was due to cost or capability.
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I'd like to address Dave's point about SAK people almost never sharpening their knives.
For some odd, unexplained, reason that crosses over the border into out and out weird, it's true to a large degree. A knife nut, will obsess over how sharp his or her knife is, while the non knife nut will not care less. It seems like as long as it saws through whatever box top, plastic blister package it's put to, it' fine. My better half is a very prime example of that.
My little classic has seen heck of a lot of use, and I admit, abuse. It's been resharpened many times in it's many years life. But Karen's little SAK has not. To me, it feels a little dull, but when I ask her if she wants me to sharpen it, she says no, it's fine. Sometimes her keyring will be laying there and I'll pick it up and feel the SAK blade thinking I'll just take my diamond hone in my wallet or a coffee mug bottom and give it a quick hone. But then Karen will see me chicken eyeing her knife and she gets a bit alarmed, tells me to put it down, it's fine.
It's weird, but to me it seems dull, but it still opens mail, opens boxes, and saw through jute twine. No, it won't just go through the twine we use on the tomato plants with a tiny flick of the blade like mine will, but it cuts it just fine with a little sawing motion. Maybe SAK people that are not knife nuts are bit weird, or maybe the Swiss mountain gods gave the SAK a bit of juju so it doesn't really have to be sharp. It still opens packets of freeze dried food for back packers, opens mail for non knife nuts, and other stuff.
Two classics with a difference;
As you can see, my red classic has been sharpened so many times over the years that there is some blade loss. On the other hand, Karen refuses to let me sharpen her's, so it's like new but dull, but still performs for her on what the normal edc stuff a small knife is used for; mail, packaging, twine, plastic wrap on cheese and then he cheese, and whatever. But the darn thing still works I'm not sure I'm smart enough to figure it out. Maybe the legions of backpackers can tell us why a dull SAK still seems to cut a lot of stuff.
Or maybe Mr. Elsner needs to swear us all to secrecy and let us in on the secret!
For some odd, unexplained, reason that crosses over the border into out and out weird, it's true to a large degree. A knife nut, will obsess over how sharp his or her knife is, while the non knife nut will not care less. It seems like as long as it saws through whatever box top, plastic blister package it's put to, it' fine. My better half is a very prime example of that.
My little classic has seen heck of a lot of use, and I admit, abuse. It's been resharpened many times in it's many years life. But Karen's little SAK has not. To me, it feels a little dull, but when I ask her if she wants me to sharpen it, she says no, it's fine. Sometimes her keyring will be laying there and I'll pick it up and feel the SAK blade thinking I'll just take my diamond hone in my wallet or a coffee mug bottom and give it a quick hone. But then Karen will see me chicken eyeing her knife and she gets a bit alarmed, tells me to put it down, it's fine.
It's weird, but to me it seems dull, but it still opens mail, opens boxes, and saw through jute twine. No, it won't just go through the twine we use on the tomato plants with a tiny flick of the blade like mine will, but it cuts it just fine with a little sawing motion. Maybe SAK people that are not knife nuts are bit weird, or maybe the Swiss mountain gods gave the SAK a bit of juju so it doesn't really have to be sharp. It still opens packets of freeze dried food for back packers, opens mail for non knife nuts, and other stuff.
Two classics with a difference;
As you can see, my red classic has been sharpened so many times over the years that there is some blade loss. On the other hand, Karen refuses to let me sharpen her's, so it's like new but dull, but still performs for her on what the normal edc stuff a small knife is used for; mail, packaging, twine, plastic wrap on cheese and then he cheese, and whatever. But the darn thing still works I'm not sure I'm smart enough to figure it out. Maybe the legions of backpackers can tell us why a dull SAK still seems to cut a lot of stuff.
Or maybe Mr. Elsner needs to swear us all to secrecy and let us in on the secret!
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Neither am I.
maybe the Swiss mountain gods gave the SAK a bit of juju so it doesn't really have to be sharp. It still opens packets of freeze dried food for back packers, opens mail for non knife nuts, and other stuff.
Two classics with a difference;
As you can see, my red classic has been sharpened so many times over the years that there is some blade loss. On the other hand, Karen refuses to let me sharpen her's, so it's like new but dull, but still performs for her on what the normal edc stuff a small knife is used for; mail, packaging, twine, plastic wrap on cheese and then he cheese, and whatever. But the darn thing still works I'm not sure I'm smart enough to figure it out. Maybe the legions of backpackers can tell us why a dull SAK still seems to cut a lot of stuff.
Or maybe Mr. Elsner needs to swear us all to secrecy and let us in on the secret!
Carl,
As it was pointed out it has much to do with the edge geometry on the SAKs. It is one thing I like about Victorinox SAKs. If you look at a lot of modern knives you will notice that the secondary bevel or edge stands out much more than on a SAK in a lot of cases. This is because a lot of knives are not thinned out properly on the primary bevel prior to the edge or secondary bevel being added. This equates to poor performance when dull for these overbuilt or poorly designed knives. I would guess that it also means better performance for knives that don't have this issue even when dull.
Pinnah's Opinel is another good example of a blade with good edge geometry. You often hear folks express how sharp they are, likely because compared to modern blades they are better suited for actually cutting tasks.
Kitchen knives are often a good example of this. Most kitchen knives are dull as a spoon yet they will still cut veggies and saw through meat since they are extremely thin behind the edge.
Another probable reason why Vic SAK blades are kept at RC 56: the thinner grinds. Buck blades are clearly thicker than Vic's. If Vic's blades were hardened to 58 like Buck's, they might be more prone to snapping.
Anyway, I won't assume to know more about the knife business than the largest knife manufacturer in the world.
Jim
Anyway, I won't assume to know more about the knife business than the largest knife manufacturer in the world.
Jim
Yup, all one has to do is google Victorinox knife factory or Victorinox knife manufacturing and watch the videos to see just how very modern, impressive and leading edge their factory truly is.
Better question is, "does anybody feel the need defend Victorinox's 56Rc Inox?".
You want to attack it and have done so often on this forum. Your position is well known. You just need to accept that millions really like Vic SAKs, even heat treated as the are. Many knife knuts are among them.
Since you seem to so desperately want to know, why don't you go to the source? I suggest you email Victorinox and simple ask, "For what reasons have you decided to treat your knife blades for a hardness of 56Rc?". If you truly want the answer about their reasons, ask them.
You might be surprised by Buck's grind given a close look.
While they are certainly thicker at the spine (as you would expect), they are incredibly thin behind the edge. They moved to their Edge 2000 right around 2000 based on CARTA tests. The upshot of it is that since that time, Buck's hollow grinds are very, very thin behind the edge. I've been tracking and sometimes participating in the Buck forums for many years and have gotten to know several of the regulars there including a commercial electrician, commercial fisherman and many hunters and breakage and chipping just aren't topics that come up with 420HC blades.
This mirrors my experience with Buck's 420HC and Opinel's 12C27. They might dent if abused but then these steels will dent at lower Rc too.
I own both a 110 Folding Hunter and 119 Hunter made post 2000. I wouldn't describe either as thin behind the edge. The 110 on the other hand has a decidedly uneven primary hollow grind.
I own several post-2000 Bucks, including some 300 series pocketknives and small lockbacks. In my experience, none of them came as thin at the edge as my SAKs. I even have a newer Buck 303 Cadet whose blades came not overly sharp at all...in fact, the clip point blade came surprisingly dull with a very uneven edge grind OOB (part of one side of the blade was not ground with a bevel at all). I've never gotten a Victorinox OOB with an uneven or semi-dull edge.
However, my post was not just referring to edges, but the entire profile of Buck's overall thicker blades than Victorinox's.
Jim