Looking for kitchen knives with AUS-8, Kershaw?

Jeff Clark

Jeff Clark

Joined
Apr 27, 1999
Messages
6,117
I want to try kitchen knives with AUS-8 blades. Kershaw commonly uses AUS-6 and AUS-8 in their knives. Does anyone know if they use AUS-8 in their kitchen knives? Does anyone have experience with their kitchen knives.

Does anyone know of another source for kitchen knives using AUS-8. (I'm looking for a fine grained stainless that will take a very sharp edge. A rockwell of 57-58 would be nice. I'm not looking for something that is super tough.)
 
Hi Jeff. I just had a similar post last month for ATS-34 or better, kitchen knives. Watch out, this subject has been discussed, to death, many times and you'll probably catch some $#!+ from our elder members. Try search for more info.

I did find a couple of great resources though. "DOC" Gundersen has 440C and Steve Mullin has ATS34, 440V and D2.

http://www.aa-webwizard.com/knifeworks/intro.html
http://www.nidlink.com /~packriver/index.html
 
Jeff - MAC knives are maded from AUS-8. If you'll pardon the commercial; MBS-26 gets sharper than and stays sharper longer than and resists corosion more than AUS-8. It can also be ground thinner to more easily pass through food.
sal
 
Thanks guys,

My question wasn't "where can I find the Ultimate Kitchen Knife" it was really just where can I find something a bit better and interesting to experiment with. I don't have any AUS-8 knives now and it seemed relatively good to experiment with as a kitchen knife.

I get most of my good kitchen knives at garage sales and Goodwill these days. Since I like to sharpen, this is not only cheaper, it is more fun. Yesterday I stopped at a Goodwill where I thought I might find some MAC knives to play with. What I found instead was a set of 3 Spyderco kitchen knives with MBS-26 blades! You can't imagine my surprise and delight, even though the store wanted a full 95 cents each for the knives.

They are all roughly chef's knife contoured, two with smooth edges while a medium sized one is serrated. The serrations will take real work to clean up and the smooth edges are real dull.

I sharpened the smaller smooth edge last night. It was pretty tough. It seemed pretty high in rockwell. As I worked, it just kept getting sharper! There's a point where most knives plateau and stop getting any sharper, this MBS-26 doesn't seem to understand the phenomenon. By the time I got to my fine ceramic rods it shaved better than any kitchen knife I had except for the Russell Green River carbon steel. After I stropped it with the green buffing compound it reminded me of a straight razor.

That is an amazing material. When I look at the alloy components it doesn't look special. I assume there is something very special in the mechanical and thermal processing of the blades to make it work like that.

Thanks for the suggestion Sal.
 
Kershaw's kitchen knives are AUS6, not AUS8. They say their customers will not tolerate the slightest staining from abusive environments like a dishwasher or a long soak in the kitchen sink.

Last year, I got somebody on the phone at Fiskars, who said, after some prodding, that their Balance Plus line was 440A - again, stain resistance being the highest priority. More recently, a call to them reaches a "housewares" person who is not familiar with basic concepts like heat treatment or the idea that a kitchen knife should be sharp.

The good news is that Spyderco will, in the forseeable future, be bringing in a limited run of more of their MBS-26 kitchen knives, besides the four models they make now.

And sometime next year, maybe, don't be surprised to see a few Fallkniven kitchen knives in VG10.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
 
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