Metal quality types.

B

Blackdiamond1983

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Dec 30, 2014
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If this is in the wrong location I apologize. I am wondering what the grades of metal are. For example
I have a Benchmade griptillian. It has 154 cm stamped on the blade. Is this a high metal quality? Thank you in advance for the help.
 
Yes. It is a very good knife steel...and a good knife. Just keep it clean and dry.

All of the information on knife steel you'll ever need is a quick Google away...in fact, it's only a search of this site away.
 
154cm is a good basic blade-steel, sometimes produced exclusively in folders by several makers. Ernie Emerson has used 154cm for most of his career. The steel is said to offer advantages in toughness and in easy sharpening in the field. Newer refining processes include CPM154, a similar steel made by the powder process, which offers certain other advantages (and higher cost) over the original.
Many newer blade-steels have arrived on the market...each offering stated advantages in toughness, edge-holding capability, ease of sharpening. All of these parameters are available at higher prices. For many users, the newer steels are nice but not necessary for casual EDC needs.
 
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People work hard to make things complicated. People try to make new products to improve on previous products, and companies make products to compete with other companies. And some steels are good for some uses while other steels are better for other uses. So we end up with a lot of different steels on the market and it is hard for a person new to knives to make sense of it all, it can get very complicated when comparing steels. Check the thread below for some information on how steels compare.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...based-on-Edge-Retention-cutting-5-8-quot-rope
 
bdmicarta said:
People work hard to make things complicated. People try to make new products to improve on previous products, and companies make products to compete with other companies. And some steels are good for some uses while other steels are better for other uses. So we end up with a lot of different steels on the market and it is hard for a person new to knives to make sense of it all, it can get very complicated when comparing steels. Check the thread below for some information on how steels compare.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...based-on-Edge-Retention-cutting-5-8-quot-rope
Click to expand...

Be aware, that thread only takes edge retention into consideration....
None of the steels in the top category would last till the water got hot the way I use them.

With that said, 154cm also gets mangled way too easy for my uses.
 
What do you mean by "high metal quality"?

I hate to be a jerk, but that has absolutely no meaning around here. I would suggest taking a few minutes to do some Google searching on blade steels in general. That way you at least know how to ask your questions in a way that allows us to help you better;)
 
jpm2 said:
Be aware, that thread only takes edge retention into consideration....
None of the steels in the top category would last till the water got hot the way I use them.
Click to expand...

I agree, the subject of edge holding of various steels is a very complex subject. It is almost humanly impossible to determine what steels are best for what situations, certainly very impractical to determine. The reason I suggested that link is that it at least does provide a simple ranking of steels for one type of use and would give the OP some concept of the differences. Lots of people are suggesting google searching, I would think that would provide an overwhelming amount of information to a beginning knife enthusiast.

And yes the steel rankings would change completely if they were tested for a different use, such as some form of chopping.

The OP asked about "quality". There is a quality of manufacture that makes some steels finer grained than others. An example of this might be the powdered metal process. There may be some research and development that goes into producing alloys that would make one alloy considered to be higher quality than another. Otherwise one alloy is just different chemical composition than another. The reason we don't automatically jump into using the best alloy is that some alloys are more expensive to buy and more expensive to convert into a knife blade than others.
 
The Griptillian in 154cm is a great knife for daily carry. Mine is still sharp and it's been six months since a sharpening, just frequent light stropping.
 
In the relative scheme of things, 154 is a mid to high quality blade steel. A handful of steels are marginally "better", and then there are the "super steels" that have slightly unusual properties. But there are also a bunch of stainless steels that aren't as nice as 154.

Here's a starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blade_materials

There is an awful lot of opinion with all this stuff. One way to rank how the steels are valued in the marketplace is to look at knifemaking website and see what the different steels cost, or see how a company that offers lots of steel choices - Spyderco - prices different offerings.
 
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