Looking for knives produced under optimum conditions.

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hudak

Joined
Feb 10, 2008
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Due to excessive grinding after heat treat and/or an improper heat treat to begin with I have been dissatisfied with the majority of medium to high priced knives I have purchased. I have seen S90V dull from cutting a small amount of cardboard, cpm154 so brittle a glass blade would have performed better, 3V roll after making a featherstick, etc...These so-called super steels are sometimes indistinguishable from an old school buck or schrade. I am wondering what brands or makers out there do the majority of their grinding BEFORE heat treat, do the heat treat with a digital oven, and then finish grind with water cooled belts? I am looking for the very best any particular steel has to offer in other words. Any help is appreciated.
 
Nathan Carothers/Carothers Performance Knives does 3V right, according to what I've heard. Never used one, myself, but they sure sell fast.

Busse gets a lot of praise for their high-performance steel, and there are a few others around who do something similar with 52100.

As a personal observation, I wonder if the problem is actually with the heat treat process itself? It seems that some steels are more sensitive to small variations in temperature than others, and I've seen enough threads about minor variations in the performance of "S-series" steels to wonder if this isn't a symptom of the large batch processing methods used on mass-produced blades.
 
The knife makers that have their own sub forum here stand behind their work. You may want to try one, if there's any issues, it'll be taken care of.
 
Unless a company wants to do it themselves with very strict control ,using a very good HT company like Peters is the way to go.
But like anything QC must be a major consideration !!! You [or at least I] could write a book about QC and HT. .. Bean counters and 'less than perfect ' types KEEP OUT !!
 
hudak said:
Due to excessive grinding after heat treat and/or an improper heat treat to begin with I have been dissatisfied with the majority of medium to high priced knives I have purchased. I have seen S90V dull from cutting a small amount of cardboard, cpm154 so brittle a glass blade would have performed better, 3V roll after making a featherstick, etc...These so-called super steels are sometimes indistinguishable from an old school buck or schrade. I am wondering what brands or makers out there do the majority of their grinding BEFORE heat treat, do the heat treat with a digital oven, and then finish grind with water cooled belts? I am looking for the very best any particular steel has to offer in other words. Any help is appreciated.
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Read some of Ankerson's reviews. He kicks the snot out of them, so if he didn't experience any of the issues you claim to have seen with a particular knife, you should be fine.

As far as a knife that is made under ideal conditions is concerned, I doubt anything could rival CRK or Rockstead at their individual price points.
 
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