Micron, Monkey, Memes, and Mods

Blues said:
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I lost a GSO 6 pre-order which I let go on for so long it took finding an old forum post on mine to remember, it's a shame because honestly I'd really been defending survive knives after initially getting my GSO 5 in a timely manner.

But I watched a video of someone pounding a magnacut MK 4 through a nail without a single mark and then cleanly sliding phone book paper, so I think may need to pick one up at some point, magnacut is a better steel for a 4" knife anyway.

I finally picked up an SRK to scratch the 6" knife itch, but I've really enjoyed my Spydercos's in magnacut
 
JearBeatus48 said:
PBKG tells no lie.

That just shows Micron knows what they are doing!
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I don't really know if I've ever seen a knife without an obviously super obtuse edge angle cut a nail without ANY visible edge damage, but while I would've bet on magnacut coming the closest among stainless with any edge retention, I would've thought the first one would be 3v.

I have no idea if my 3v SRK could do it or not, I suppose there's only one way to find out, but at minimum it tells me the magnacut HT is really on point.
 
He might have done the SRK in the past.

But MagnaCut tends to do better in this test than 3v. Not really sure why if im honest.

Hes had some really thin knives make it and then some really obtuse knives fail in ‘tough’ K329 steel in the past. So you never really know.
 
JearBeatus48 said:
He might have done the SRK in the past.

But MagnaCut tends to do better in this test than 3v. Not really sure why if im honest.

Hes had some really thin knives make it and then some really obtuse knives fail in ‘tough’ K329 steel in the past. So you never really know.
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I've found the hardness tends to be the more important factor than toughness for lot of situations and that may or may not apply here.

When I did some semi abusive testing on a S110v Manix and a Buck 110 in order to compare opposite extremes, I found that against expectations, the S110v knife actually usually won just because it was significantly harder and didn't roll on anything harder than cardboard.

So the SRK honestly may not win here simply because it's south of 60HRC, if only by a little, which is why I kept it at 20dps, but I don't expect it to ever chip on me.

I think Micron hardens both steels fairly identically though, which makes it somewhat fairly hard for 3v but somewhat on the soft, but tough end for Magnacut
 
SBaker34 said:
I've found the hardness tends to be the more important factor than toughness for lot of situations and that may or may not apply here.

When I did some semi abusive testing on a S110v Manix and a Buck 110 in order to compare opposite extremes, I found that against expectations, the S110v knife actually usually won just because it was significantly harder and didn't roll on anything harder than cardboard.

So the SRK honestly may not win here simply because it's south of 60HRC, if only by a little, which is why I kept it at 20dps, but I don't expect it to ever chip on me.

I think Micron hardens both steels fairly identically though, which makes it somewhat fairly hard for 3v but somewhat on the soft, but tough end for Magnacut
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The nail test is confounding in so many ways for that reason. On the surface it seems like you'd want a tough heat treat with a wide DPS, but those are not the ones that do well. It is so difficult to "nail" down a test that shows knife performance. Hardness is pretty easy. Toughness is a whole different animal. In a vacuum with controlled variables, we can measure and define so many different variables that could point us to the right direction (compressive, impact, tensile, torsional, etc.), but have that all thrown out the window when intended use, geometry, serviceability, and manufacturability is thrown in the mix.

For example, we are starting to test each heat treat batch with a charpy v-notch test. This is a very controversial way to quantify anything to do with knife steel performance. If you don't know, the charpy measures the energy required to snap a v-notched coupon. The results give you an idea of how brittle or ductile the coupon is. Relating that to knife steels is almost completely meaningless, BUT gives you a good data point to measure something beyond just hardness alone. After you dial in your desired heat treat protocol, a charpy test should show us whether there is a problem that the hardness testing did not pick up on.

If we were to design a knife to excel at a nail test alone, it would look far different than a knife we design to carry every day and be pleasurable to cut with, and it would look far different from a knife we use to baton firewood and featherstick. PBKG has expressed his distain for the nail test as being a good way to quantify the quality of a knife, as a "good" knife can perform poorly, and a "bad" knife can perform well.

TLDR: Yeah hardness is good for the nail test and the MK-4 killed it on the nail test
 
MicronKnives said:
The nail test is confounding in so many ways for that reason. On the surface it seems like you'd want a tough heat treat with a wide DPS, but those are not the ones that do well. It is so difficult to "nail" down a test that shows knife performance. Hardness is pretty easy. Toughness is a whole different animal. In a vacuum with controlled variables, we can measure and define so many different variables that could point us to the right direction (compressive, impact, tensile, torsional, etc.), but have that all thrown out the window when intended use, geometry, serviceability, and manufacturability is thrown in the mix.

For example, we are starting to test each heat treat batch with a charpy v-notch test. This is a very controversial way to quantify anything to do with knife steel performance. If you don't know, the charpy measures the energy required to snap a v-notched coupon. The results give you an idea of how brittle or ductile the coupon is. Relating that to knife steels is almost completely meaningless, BUT gives you a good data point to measure something beyond just hardness alone. After you dial in your desired heat treat protocol, a charpy test should show us whether there is a problem that the hardness testing did not pick up on.

If we were to design a knife to excel at a nail test alone, it would look far different than a knife we design to carry every day and be pleasurable to cut with, and it would look far different from a knife we use to baton firewood and featherstick. PBKG has expressed his distain for the nail test as being a good way to quantify the quality of a knife, as a "good" knife can perform poorly, and a "bad" knife can perform well.

TLDR: Yeah hardness is good for the nail test and the MK-4 killed it on the nail test
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All Hail The Nail!
 
MicronKnives said:
The nail test is confounding in so many ways for that reason. On the surface it seems like you'd want a tough heat treat with a wide DPS, but those are not the ones that do well. It is so difficult to "nail" down a test that shows knife performance. Hardness is pretty easy. Toughness is a whole different animal. In a vacuum with controlled variables, we can measure and define so many different variables that could point us to the right direction (compressive, impact, tensile, torsional, etc.), but have that all thrown out the window when intended use, geometry, serviceability, and manufacturability is thrown in the mix.

For example, we are starting to test each heat treat batch with a charpy v-notch test. This is a very controversial way to quantify anything to do with knife steel performance. If you don't know, the charpy measures the energy required to snap a v-notched coupon. The results give you an idea of how brittle or ductile the coupon is. Relating that to knife steels is almost completely meaningless, BUT gives you a good data point to measure something beyond just hardness alone. After you dial in your desired heat treat protocol, a charpy test should show us whether there is a problem that the hardness testing did not pick up on.

If we were to design a knife to excel at a nail test alone, it would look far different than a knife we design to carry every day and be pleasurable to cut with, and it would look far different from a knife we use to baton firewood and featherstick. PBKG has expressed his distain for the nail test as being a good way to quantify the quality of a knife, as a "good" knife can perform poorly, and a "bad" knife can perform well.

TLDR: Yeah hardness is good for the nail test and the MK-4 killed it on the nail test
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We use Charpy V notch for welding rod filled a lot, so I'm somewhat familar with it.

Anecdotally, testing heat treats would probably be what I'd largely advocate it for, because like the nail test. It only means much under the assumption that everything else is fairly uniform and ideal for a functional knife. It'll show if something is screwy with the heat treat as Larrin Thomas has noted, but not neccesarily if it's good knife steel in a vacuum. I made a lot of assumptions about the nail test like it being under a fairly tpical 20dps.

I happen to be fairly partial to magnacut, because due to the optimal hardness range, I can almost certainly sharpen it to sub 15dps with acceptable outcome S110v passes this test, but only until it suddenly chips

I would argue I'm fairly unlikely to kill a 20dps knife I can hammer through a nail without a scratch, but as evidenced by my results using 420HC on copper wire, my edge stability might totally disappear the moment I go to strip a wire, regardless of how tough on paper a certain steel may be.
 
SBaker34 said:
We use Charpy V notch for welding rod filled a lot, so I'm somewhat familar with it.

Anecdotally, testing heat treats would probably be what I'd largely advocate it for, because like the nail test. It only means much under the assumption that everything else is fairly uniform and ideal for a functional knife. It'll show if something is screwy with the heat treat as Larrin Thomas has noted, but not neccesarily if it's good knife steel in a vacuum. I made a lot of assumptions about the nail test like it being under a fairly tpical 20dps.

I happen to be fairly partial to magnacut, because due to the optimal hardness range, I can almost certainly sharpen it to sub 15dps with acceptable outcome S110v passes this test, but only until it suddenly chips

I would argue I'm fairly unlikely to kill a 20dps knife I can hammer through a nail without a scratch, but as evidenced by my results using 420HC on copper wire, my edge stability might totally disappear the moment I go to strip a wire, regardless of how tough on paper a certain steel may be.
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Tell me more about the charpy being used on welding rod!

I shouldn't say Larrin recommended the charpy test, but when I proposed that as my plan he agreed that we would get a good idea if the heat treat went well or not, assuming we had good data to get reasonable limits from
 
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