Jeez; I leave you guys for a few days to go to the wine country (beautiful this time of year in CA, and hardly any tourists), and look what you have done!!
Once at a winery in the area where I visit, an employee was found to be taking a full case of wine or two among the many empty cases he was supposed to be hauling away to be burned. He then sold the wine. He was fired.
It seems the same thing may be at work here; an obviously unscrupulous employee finishes a knife which supposedly failed heat treat, but actually didn't. I doubt Kevin personally tests all the blades for heat treat, and then personally grinds identifying marks into the blades that fail, so this seems plausible to me.
But wait; the heat treat, initially thought to be exemplary, is shortly thought to actually be defective! WOW!! What a difference. Now, it seems that the unscrupulous employee selected a knife to finish which actually did fail heat treat. This is not too hard to for me to follow logically. In fact, it is the explanation that Mad Dog provided.
Now comes the part I have trouble with. The hardness tests on this blade, which may or not be heat treated in the manner which Mad Dog treats all his knives is used as a springboard to first condemn the heat treatment on this blade (remember, it was postulated that this was, in fact, faulty to begin with), and then to condemn MD's in general.
I have a great amount of respect for Ed Schott; he works in a steel mill as well as making knives. I, parenthetically, would have even more respect, bordering on fawning admiration, if Ed would finish my Talonite (r) knife which he has been working on for some months, and return my Mad Dog Mako along with my new knife (Please, Ed, Please).
However, his conclusions regarding the toughness of 01 steel seem to be at odds with actual practice. While Ed says that his data come from many different sources, they are actually from CPM (or at least, his data are identical with CPM's data, which, incidentally, I got from Ed. Thanks.). CPM makes the point that toughness is a very difficult quality to measure. I suspect this to be an understatement.
Regarding the joule. This is a unit of measurement, equivalent to a watt-second, which is usually applied to electricity. I think it would have been clearer had Ed used the familiar foot-pounds units, which are also supplied in the CPM data, but he is entitled to use whatever form of unit he chooses.
In point of fact, Kevin has tried CPM3V, and he found that it was lacking in, guess what, toughness!
How to explain this disparity? Well, I can't help but recall the debate over the purported brittleness of ATS-34. Some makers condemned it, Chris Reeve switched to BG-42, yet other makers, notably Strider, still use it, say it is the best, and have good results.
It seems to me that it is to be expected that knifesmiths have different results with the same materials. This is where the art, as opposed to the science, of knife making comes into play. I think that there are two good tests for the quality of any product on the market. Is it well received by its' purchasers, and is it always in demand? By these tests, it would seem that Mad Dog and Ed Schott, as well as A.T. Barr, Kit Carson, Rob Simonich...well, you know the list as well as I do, these knifemakers are producing fine products. They use different materials, and different techniques, have different styles, and different personalities, but all of their products are of high quality.
Steve B. you stated:
I seem to recall that the Mad Dog was NOT very sharp out of the box, and Mike had to touch it up a bit before he did the comparative review.
I believe you are thinking about my MD ATAK2 which I sent to Mike after x-rays were done (thanks, Gonesailing) showing the lack of 'notches.' He stated that the edge showed considerable oxidation and sharpened it before use. My second gen knife was tested along side NamViet Vo's first gen knife, and there were no significant differences between the two brought out by the testing.
I am grateful to Mike for this observation. It has made me rethink my knife storage, which as most of you know consists of a humidity controlled sock drawer, the knives being wrapped in Tuf-Cloths (r). I have added a Tuf-Glide (r) spray system, and a nitrogen gas atmosphere to further protect my knives.
As always, comments, questions, or criticisms are welcomed. Walt
