Let down by 20CV

scubadoober said:
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It wasn’t zip ties for reference, this is what I was cutting that did the damage. Not the metal the poly banding. Probably ten total. I have a flex steel carving knife in 1095 and it is indestructible compared to 20CV.
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But yeah, considering price difference 20CV shouldn't be outperformed by 1095 by such gross margin...

And then people wonder why I'm using 1095 for my EDC when there's so many fancy steels available today...
greater said:
"Super Steels" that perform no better than average regular steels.
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Or in this case they perform worse. Because wide variety of budget steels like 14C28N, 420HC or even plain carbon steels such as 1095 can handle those tasks without suffering damage.


In some cases you literally just pay for the name of steel, and since many people don't even use their expensive stuff - manufacturers are getting away with it.
 
greater said:
... It may be a better bet to get a steel that one has to really try hard to get the heat treat and whatever else wrong ???
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A point I tried to make is that for a lot of people, it's really not going to matter. M390 or S35VN with a mediocre heat treatment might not get better edge retention than 9Cr18Mov with a great heat treatment. For the average EDC needs of lots of people though, that level of edge retention is (1) still pretty good, (2) good enough to last a long time for their actual EDC use, and (3) noticeably better than 8Cr13Mov or some other cheap stuff that they may have used previously by enough of a margin to still feel like a big upgrade.

Another place I see that come up is in how the whole "factory edges suck and edge retention can pick up dramatically with subsequent sharpening" continues to be new information for lots of people. There are plenty of people who don't need to sharpen often enough to really notice these kinds of details. Heck, there are long-time knife enthusiasts who don't sharpen their own knives or just buy new knives frequently enough to never have to sharpen. (The latter can happen accidentally when EDC rotations get huge. As I've gotten more into knives and trying lots of different things, I've found that I'm spending less time on the stones. It's not that I'm buying more "super steels". It's that individual knives see less use.)

Yet another place I see this is in how the crappiness of Chinese D2 came as a big shock to some people. Even now that some of that data has been around for a couple of years, I still see people celebrating or defending Chinese D2. I'm guessing that's because "D2" has a good reputation, points 1-3 apply, and point 3 especially applies at the prices we often see Chinese D2. Coming from 8Cr13Mov, Chinese D2 offers a noticeable upgrade in edge retention; as opposed to coming from American knives in better D2 that cost several times as much.

To the quoted point, "ease of heat treatment" might be a more significant factor than people realize in the performance of production knives. That's probably the other side of the equation when we see budget knives in 14C28N outperforming Chinese D2.
 
David Mary said:
I like AEB-L because it nullifies this statement (to some degree, say up to 63 RC, which some might not consider high)
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David, do you heat treat it yourself or send it out? I read that many knife companies have a difficult time getting it that hard and quenched properly in their ovens .
 
Well I don't actually know if he's the best in the business, but he must be among them. When he does my blades, their performance does everything I could want a knife to do, namely take a very fine edge, hold it respectably for all manners of work that I do. I have dinged it against metal, banged the edge against rocks, what have you, work it on wood, zip ties, kydex, etc., and it will keep a working edge all the way through. Then when its performance slows down to a level that I no longer enjoy using it (or just a bit before that usually/ideally) I resharpen with hastily accomplished freehand passes on the brown SharpMaker rods, then white ones, until it shaves again, in just a few minutes. If someone likes simple carbon steels, his heat treated AEB-L feels like a stainless version thereof. I have used it for machetes, kitchen knives, EDC knives, tactical knives, and it impresses me every time. I currently wear one of my own models on my hip in AEB-L, a 1/4" thick knife with a 4" blade, a super skeletonized tang, and Micarta scales thin enough to be on a Delica. It's ground to near zero, so it is a perfectly serviceable cardboard slicer, and all around tough beater. And it would not have happened without Jarod.
 
Oh I did just have to use a 400 grit diamond plate on the tip recently due to a particularly hard ding on a rock. Then sharpened. Total repair time probably less than ten minutes, if anywhere near that.
 
I sharpened to 20 dps after the chipping referenced and have none of the issues listed earlier. I even cut through 18/2 solid wire today with no ill affects. For the record the knife in question was a TRM neutron. I may push the angle narrower, but for now I am happy with the performance at 20 degrees.
 
I have every derivative of the steel--hollow grinds and flat. Just cut some plastic straps for a toy with my ZT 0470.

I agree it sounds like a bad heat treat and/or too much lateral stress on the cutting edge.
 
Bad heat treatment?
Or just some overheating during the sharpening process?
(I've got an S90V Blade that got burned during sharpening...)
 
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I was sharpening my Hogue Ritter the other day and thinking that the M390 isn’t all that impressive. It needs sharpened about as often as my S30v Griptilian and more often than my GB2 in M4. I still love the knife but I am not thrilled with the steel. Maybe the Magnacut version will be better.

The ratio of time spent using to time spent sharpening is my complaint, I suppose.
 
Someone mentioned 16 DPS being quite acute for some steels. I don't think a steel that's too brittle to be used at 16 DPS is suitable for knives, honestly. Not if 16 DPS is too acute for even light tasks, anyway.
 
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Funny how people can have such different results using the exact same thing. My daily for the last 7 or 8 months has been a Neutron 2, about 90% of the time. The day I received it I sharpened at 17° to .05 micron on the KME, and thats what ive kept it at since.

To this day I can't remember ever picking up a chip in it. Cutting everything from the same plastic banding to zip ties, fiber reinforced rubber conveyor belt, small insulated electrical wires to the occasional hidden staple. I have been thoroughly impressed with TRM's heat treat. Since then have also picked up an Atom and a Holy Nerd that have both performed the same..

Crazy how much things can vary from batch to batch, or even knife to knife..
 
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David Mary said:
Oh I did just have to use a 400 grit diamond plate on the tip recently due to a particularly hard ding on a rock. Then sharpened. Total repair time probably less than ten minutes, if anywhere near that.
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Just dinged my knife on an aluminum table when it went through my apple faster than anticipated, and it was clear from the mark on the table that the knife won the battle! 😂 Edge looks great!
(This is referring to AEB-L, not 20CV! Though I was carrying a 20CV Yojimbo with it, so... it's still in the story)
 
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Corton93 said:
Funny how people can have such different results using the exact same thing. My daily for the last 7 or 8 months has been a Neutron 2, about 90% of the time. The day I received it I sharpened at 17° to .05 micron on the KME, and thats what ive kept it at since.

To this day I can't remember ever picking up a chip in it. Cutting everything from the same plastic banding to zip ties, fiber reinforced rubber conveyor belt, small insulated electrical wires to the occasional hidden staple. I have been thoroughly impressed with TRM's heat treat. Since then have also picked up an Atom and a Holy Nerd that have both performed the same..

Crazy how much things can vary from batch to batch, or even knife to knife..
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You cut a staple without chipping?
 
AEB-L, 14c28n, Nitro-V, are some of my favorite steels. I just don’t get the excessive love for 20CV. There are a lot of knives I’d buy if they were in something besides 20CV. I find myself gravitating to less expensive knives as a result.

As far as “super steels” go, I stick with LC200N, 3V, and Magnacut (it lives up to the hype imo), and to a lesser degree s35vn.
 
jstn said:
AEB-L, 14c28n, Nitro-V, are some of my favorite steels. I just don’t get the excessive love for 20CV. There are a lot of knives I’d buy if they were in something besides 20CV. I find myself gravitating to less expensive knives as a result.

As far as “super steels” go, I stick with LC200N, 3V, and Magnacut (it lives up to the hype imo), and to a lesser degree s35vn.
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I need to try some magnacut. Maybe when the Spyderco military 2 is released there will be a magnacut version.
 
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