Q to Spyderco: Rc Hardness of the S30V?

[Franco G]

Since the S30V steel will be soon used in Spyderco' knives, I would like to ask what the hardness is supposed to be?
There are long discussions at the Chris Reeves Forum among Sebenza's fans about the new steel and why the Rc hardness in Sebenzas is lowered to 58-59 HRC, compared to about 60 in the BG-42 Sebenzas. The fans were a sort of frustrated with 'low' hardness and were not much convinced even after some official explanations. The dissapointment has been grown after finding that some manufacturers produce the S30V blades with more than 60 Rc. As a general rule, I would expect the higher Rc for smaller blades (for example, the new Delica in VG-10 is quoted to have 60-62 Rc) and the large blades are expected to have lower Rc, especially the larger fixed blades.
I would appreciate any comment, especially from Sal.
Regards,

Franco

 

[FullerH]

Franco, I don't know all of the details on S30V, but I am very familiar with its cousin, CPM440V, my favorite steel in a folding knife. Initially, makers brought out their CPM440V blades with relatively high Rc numbers, about 59-62 range, IIRC. There were immediate complaints about the blades chipping and, when Spyderco began production of blades using that steel, it used an Rc number in the 56-57 range. They may have had some initial problems with the fine edge on some of the knives, especially the early production ones, rolling or folding over when they contacted something hard in a cutting situation, as in the case of "rockspyder" over in Maryland and his BF Native, but they seem to have worked it out and the softer Rc number has solved the chipping problem. You need to remember that these are not the same as regular steels, but a matrix in which reside carbide crystals that are what make the very hard edge, not the steel itself.

 

[Carlos]

Considering that the first S30V clipit from Spyderco is likely more than 6 months from production, I'd bet that they are still experiementing with different hardnesses in testing and haven't officially decided what they're going with yet.

Since Spyderco does make knives in S60V (still tagged CPM-440V), one might consider that a benchmark for the direction that they will go in production with S30V.