Thanks and that has been my understanding. I perhaps should have been more specific in my question and that is this: M390 has a weird, "cult" following when it comes to SK available items in the Exchange. Of course most of what Guy is currently pumping out is in 3V so M390 is either out or on hold for a while (never know about new models and what further experimentation and research may reveal) and he may move from 3V to another steel that is even more in line with his philosophy of what his knives should be providing in terms of their build, use and customer expectations.
Therefore, saying all that, that is where my question comes from is what is the difference between M390 and 3V in terms of preference.
I believe that an M390 blade, being more in the camp of S30V and other "stainless" steels, which has a finer grain and very excellent edge retention, would begin to fall apart in the field in terms of practicality because if you cannot sharpen your knife on a piece of granite rock, like you would be able to with 3V, then what's the use? You may lose your pack with your diamond sharpening stone and then where are you when you dull it out? Additionally, you give up toughness (ability to bend/give under lateral pressure) with the "stainless" steels, unlike the tool steels such as 1095, 4140, O1, A2, 3V, Z-Wear, PD#1, etc....
Hope that helps everyone.
It really comes down to what you want.
There is a tradeoff in tool steels- a steel can be tough or it can have good wear resistance, but it is hard to have both. Different steels will optimize towards one property or the other, and can move the tradeoff point up or down the scale. M390 is on the side of high wear resistance (ability to hold an edge), 3V is on the side of high toughness. For some uses you might like M390, for other uses you might like 3V. You just have to match the steel to your needs.
