Perfect meat steel - need advice

JTknives

JTknives

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Jun 11, 2006
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I am on the hunt for the optimum meat cutting steel. I am in the "no such thing as a perfect steel" boat because knives do lots of different tasks. But as soon as you start narrowing down the purpose as tightly as I am you start homing in on optimum steels. What I'm after is the optimum steel for meat, processing wild game. We need laser sharp and crazy thin in a fillet knife style with flex. When I say laser sharp I'm not talking about the edge I'm talking about how it cuts. I have gotten close with D2 but I feal I can push the envelope even further. Wear resistance is also a must. This leads me to think edge carbides might be the key. What brought me to this conclusion is a test I did the other day. I had a hind quarter from this years Buck. A polished hair shaving sharp edge on the D2 blade sucked. I then sharpened it with a 1200 grit diamond stone and wow complete opposite performance.

My thought was to order some thin CPM10V and give it a go but befor I do that I wanted to ask my guys here what thy think. Keep in mind the requirements, good wear resistance, does not need to be easy to sharpen as I will use a flat or round diamond stone. 4-6" fillet blade with good flex ground real thin. There won't be much if any direct bone contact. I run the blade along the bone but never into a bone. Stainless is not a must, would be nice but should not compromise the other requirements. And above all else glide through meat and silver skin like magic. Thanks guys for any help you can provide
 
I use elmax and run it at 61-62rc and I'm very happy with it. Most of my hunting knives are sold to moose hunters and everyone is very happy . Plus I use the same steel in my kitchen knives.
Peters does my heat treat.
I've skinned two moose from start to finish with one 3"blade and never had to sharpen it once.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
Geometry cuts.
Geometry flexes.

Just keep that in mind.
Click to expand...

Yes that I know but all things being equal what steel provides the edge that most easily cuts meat. My wife's A2 works great but lacks in cutting compared to D2. But on other things like fruit and vegetables the A2 excels. So that being said I'm thinking it's the carbides that have a semi serated structure of sorts.
 
D2 sharpened with a coarse stone (DMT blue) produces a toothy edge that just slices through meat and snicks through cartilage, in my experience. Geometry plays a big part, too. Professional meat cutters who pull a knife all day seem to like a thin blade.
 
cts xhp and s35 vn come to mind. Alot of chefs talk about a "working" edge being important more so than steel choice, i think it is something like a 2-4 K shapton stone. just some stuff to consider
 
I'm more of a sharpener/chef than a maker but I find a nice toothy edge is best for slicing meat. All of my knives I sharpen on a Chosera 400 stone and lightly strop on 1 micron loaded balsa or leather, hell even denim and that works amazing for meat. I've used hitachi white and blue, d2, r2, even stuff like x50 cr mo v15 and a good sharp edge between 1-3k range does great. Dont strop too much or youll lose that bite.
Like timos said, a 2k shapton edge with light denim strop to knock off any little burr and it'll slice meat great. 1.2k dmt is a great working edge as well.
 
10v, m390, elmax, pm-m4, these are all high carbide volume steels made with the pm process. There are others, 10-V is the most wear resistant of all knife steels.

Top two for me are 10-V and pm-m4. 10-V for more wear resistance and pm-m4 if you need a little more toughness.
Hoss
 
Talonite. It's expensive, and harder to work with than steel, but it takes and holds an edge like crazy.
 
Plenty of steel options already mentioned. Id like to throw this in there..Sharpen on a coarse stone, like a DMT coarse and then strop.I like a strop loaded with 1 micron diamond paste..It polished the edge somewhat but still has a very aggressive cut..Goes through meat like crazy.
Im pretty well done with polished edges..One reason I like diamond, it seems to keep getting sharper and sharper through the high grits but still keeps that aggressive edge.
 
The hunters around here like one of two extremes, W2 or 52100 with a chef knife like edge, and they hone the edge frequently or they like a toothier edge on almost any steel, sharpened with either 400 or 600 grit stones. . I choose based on how wear resistant they want it versus how easy it is to touch up. Some are ok with carrying diamond stones, some want easy as possible. S35VN is popular with these guys, but any of the other high carbide steels would be good. Pick something you are familiar with and have a good heat treat for.
 
Yeah I'm moving to the toothy edge side of the group like y'all. For general work it seams to really preform well. On reasion I was thinking 10v is becaus it's found on AKS in a wide thickness range.
 
JTknives said:
Yeah I'm moving to the toothy edge side of the group like y'all. For general work it seams to really preform well. On reasion I was thinking 10v is becaus it's found on AKS in a wide thickness range.
Click to expand...

10v is on my list to buy for sure..Ive been researching the heat treat lately..Id love to try it for a hunter/skinner..I bet you could peel deer for half a day without touching it up. Also for such a high alloy vanadium steel the heat treat isn't complicated. The price isn't bad either compared to other steels like it
 
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For a knife solely dedicated to cut meat and nothing else 10V would stay sharp for a LONG time. Run it hard (HRC 63-64) for that type of application because its a lot tougher than people give it credit for in my experience. The type of cutting board/table (if any) would have more dulling effect than the meat. Stainless tables and ceramic cutting boards will kill any edge pretty quick.
 
Im not a metallurgist, or knife maker, or anything close, but my favorite knives for processing the sheep and goats I raise are the old schrade "old timer" 1095 I think.
 
I have the spiderco 10v folder and love it. But I only bought it because it was 10v well and Titanimum. But the 10v preforms amazingly for most day to day tasks. I used it on the deer but the blade is so wide that the geometry was its down fall in doing what I needed to do. But like others have said I think 10v with a corse edge that's stropped would be amazing. And honestly 10v is not that hard to sharpen with diamond. If you wanted a super hair shaving fine edge that the fine grain steels get then 10V might not be what your after. But if you play to its strength I think it could really excell. This makes me start to think about the other steels like 10v that are stainless like CPM-S90V. Seams to have just a tad less wear resistance but it's stainless. Stainless is not that big of a deal to me but I would not turn it down if it had no drawbacks
 
The big problem I can see in my future is grinding, I grind my fillet knives after heat treating, I can see this being a problem with 10v and s90v
 
i would make something using 1/16"stock with a full flat grind, 2" height at the heel, 8" blade length, and very hard. so, unless you want to break the bank, O1 or 1.2519 tempered to Rc64. Grind so you are 0.005" at the edge, 0.015" 1/4" up, 0.25 1/2" up.
 
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