Premium AUS-8 Steel!

[Frotier76]

Depends on how you look at it. AUS-8 is premium if you're used to clam packed discount store knives. AUS-8 is actually decent for a $65 retail knife.

I don't know if clam-packaging makes a knife 'discount store' status.Quite a bit of CRKT and Timberline that came in AUS-8 came in both blister pack or box format.I remember the same for the Camillus Robo-Power Series in the early 2000's which also used AUS-8.My SOG Auto-Clip in BG-42 steel that I bought a long time ago came in a blister pack.

Nothing wrong with blister packs.Tells you a lot more about the knife you're buying rather than staring at a knife propped on the blank box.You can only hope the guy behind the counter knows what he's talking about when you ask them about it.

 

[JacksonKnives]

Premium is in the eye of the beholder. The most "premium" knife steel around is probably Hitachi white, and that's about as boring a steel composition as you can find.

Selling your knife as made from "premium steel" is silly if you can't make a good knife out of it, but AUS8 isn't a bad choice. If they'd spent more on quality control and less on marketing, it might have been a really awesome knife.

Compared to 1.4116/X50CrMOV (the #1 "German" stainless in kitchen knives) AUS8 has more carbon, less chromium, same vanadium, some nickel and silicon that 4116 doesn't have. Basically it has all the alloying elements of both 12c27 and 4116 and should be able to get harder.

Compared to AISI 440 series, carbon level is only at 440A levels, but it's also got ~4% less chromium, so fewer carbides than 440C meaning grain is finer. (At least in my understanding of the theory.)

It isn't AEB-L or 13c26 (ultra-fine-grain razor steel), but the Japanese makers love making hard, thin blades out of AUS8. It's kind of like the kitchen knife equivalent of 154CM (in reputation, not in composition or performance).

Misen was a kickstarter project. It's paint-by-numbers. They picked a steel their OEM would work with, or at least that the OEM claimed they could work with.

You could go the other route, like Dennis Epstein/Apogee or Mark Richmond/Chef Knives to Go do, and pick a steel you think it amazing and try to get OEMs to work with you, but that often doesn't work out. (The stories about the Richmond Artifex/Lamson AEB-L blades were not positive, and it was discontinued. The Apogee/Yaxell BD1N knife on Massdrop is by all accounts a good knife, but has got some flak for being under-hardened compared to the claims.)

MAC gets top points from nearly everyone for their AUS8 knives, and I have a cheaper/thinner Misono that takes and holds a very nice edge. I don't cut cardboard with it, I cut tomatoes and carrots with it. Cutting board contact is what makes it dull.

So... Compared with the world leaders in kitchen cutlery, this OEM is trying to make these blades much harder for better edge retention. (Not a difficult feat; German knives are often ~56RC in top-end knives, many even below that. Their customers expect blades that are easy to steel back to shape.)
Misen could probably aim for higher hardness, but they say they aim for 58-59 to get best toughness. The proof is in the pudding, though, and one reviewer had a smith test a Misen and found it really soft, so clearly the OEM was having issues. It makes the insane graphs in this explainer post pretty ironic.

 

[pinnah]

Also really weird to see someone lump 12C27 in the same category as 440A. I was under the impression 12c27 is typically vastly superior to 440A.

My experience with steels in the general class is that the heat treatment applied by the knife manufacturer is so important to the performance that you really can't talk about the quality of the steel in the general sense.

The old Schrade (based in New York) ran their 440A (branded as Schrade+) at around 58Rc. It's very comparable to Buck's 420HC and Opinel's 12C27, both also run at 58Rc. I find these 3 vastly better than generic 440A or 420HC and a tiny bit better than Mora's 12C27.

I believe that Aus8 is somewhere between 440A/420HC and 440C in terms of carbides. Again, I think the heat treatment is key, just as it is with 440C. Buck's old 440C is great, IMO.