Older Buck knives hold better edge?

I know, as my sharpening skills increased, my knives cut better:). Preston
 
As I mentioned before, I worked for David Boye and am very knowledgeable when it comes to his steel. As I have said before, it is great at cutting rope or tomatoes, but for many other tasks, it is much too course (the Boye Dendritic Steel).

I agree that there is no single best steel or test-----BUT the point I am trying to make is that the Buck 420HC & BOS is the best all around, including edge holding, in the less expensive knives..... AND in many tests it beats more expensive knives.

Bryan
 
OklahomaBryan said:
As I mentioned before, I worked for David Boye and am very knowledgeable when it comes to his steel. As I have said before, it is great at cutting rope or tomatoes, but for many other tasks, it is much too course (the Boye Dendritic Steel).

I agree that there is no single best steel or test-----BUT the point I am trying to make is that the Buck 420HC & BOS is the best all around, including edge holding, in the less expensive knives..... AND in many tests it beats more expensive knives.

Bryan
Click to expand...

Bryan, we are in raging agreement on all points.

The only reason I brought up the Boye knife is to temper <rim shot> the discussion about rope cutting tests. Rope cutting is like a 1/4 mile time for cars. Useful for discriminating between, say, a Toyota Camry and Ford Fusion but it's not the only factor to consider. If all you do is consider the 1/4 mile, the next you know you're looking at full modified dragsters. The Boye knife is like a dragster.

As for 420HC, it's among my favorite for EDC use. I also like 12C27 (by Opinel and Mora) and 1095 (particularly by Schrade USA or Schrade-Walden). Honestly, I can't really tell the difference among these steels.
 
OklahomaBryan said:
As I mentioned before, I worked for David Boye and am very knowledgeable when it comes to his steel. As I have said before, it is great at cutting rope or tomatoes, but for many other tasks, it is much too course (the Boye Dendritic Steel).

I agree that there is no single best steel or test-----BUT the point I am trying to make is that the Buck 420HC & BOS is the best all around, including edge holding, in the less expensive knives..... AND in many tests it beats more expensive knives.

Bryan
Click to expand...

Boye steel too coarse??? Not sure what you mean. He doesn't make straight razors.

I have 3 Boye BOye Dedritic Steel knives and think his steel is great. I have two Basic fixed blades and a folder. His steel certainly out performs the 420HC of a Buck Vantage in the Kitchen and as a pocket knife. His folder design is as classic as a 110 and his fixed blades are also classic.

His blades have to be cast, that's a process foreign to most knife makers so its not suprising he has few imitators.
 
My buddy loves his Boye knife. He's a pro bike mechanic and needs to break down a lot of cardboard on a nearly daily basis and, as you would expect from a super toothy blade, it does great at this.

But these reviews about Boye's steel are both common and consistent with many other more carbide rich steels. They have a reputation of not taking as keen of an edge, being harder to sharpen and more prone to chipping.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/270381-Reviews-of-Boye-knives

Which is to say, there's a reason why fans of bushcraft and survival knives tend to prefer fine grained steels like 1095, 12C27, 420HC, or 5160.

Nobody is saying that Boye's steel is inferior. Just observing that different steels have different combinations of properties making them better suited to different tasks. Any single test like rope cutting can shed insight in similar steels in similar knives (just like a 1/4 mile time in car reviews) but shouldn't be taken as the end all of blade tests. Otherwise, everybody would be using dendritic cobalt blades for everything.
 
Dendritic steel is not prone to chipping...in normal use for a knife. Now if you abuse it??? None of my blades have chips, the Basics get used in the kitchen, I recently took the back out a chicken with a 10yo one. It has no chips. I got a small chip in a Boye Basic 2 due to direct on-edge impact by the blade with the sharp steel edge of a cart from a height of 3". David ground it out for free. Freak accident. When my father died, I stupidly threw my Boye dendritic steel folder multiple times in the dirt in a act of stupidity that was a reversion to my teenage self. It took awhile to redo the edge, but there were no chips.

Boye makes a big deal about rope cutting because that's a big deal for sailors. If I recall it correctly, his grandfather was killed due to entanglement with ropes in a boat at sea. He wanted a steel that would work all day w/o sharpening, a knife that wouldn't be a burden to carry, an knife that would be good at utility and in the kitchen, a knife that would save your life by cutting you out of a net after a day of work...hence his Basic series of fixed blades in cast 440C aka Boye Dendritic Steel. He moved from cast 440C to cast cobalt due to the additional corrosion resistance of cobalt for sailors.
 
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