Ranking of Steels in Categories based on Edge Retention cutting 5/8" rope

jimnolimit said:
i hope the blade geometry fits into your testing guidelines. a few years ago sal mentioned "The FF blade that we tested did very well on the CATRA"

thanks again for doing all this testing and sharing the info :thumbsup:
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Heard some good things about them too from a few different people so it should be interesting.
 
jimnolimit said:
it's going to be interesting to see how their friction forge process and claimed hardness of 65-68 stacks up. i didn't even know D2 could get to 68HRC, the highest i've seen right out of hardening is 65HRC.
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I'd guess performance would be similar to ZDP-189 at Rc 67, but that's just my opinion. Neither steel really has any significant volume of vanadium, and I hear chromium carbides would be in the Rc 66-68 range, so I'm not sure if the carbide volume affects wear resistance at those levels of hardness.
 
Ankerson said:
Diamond Blades.
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I hope that once you reprofile the blade it still has sufficient edge-steel of high hardness to give a valid test... I read that the edge is pretty thick and the >65 HRC section only extends so far into the blade.
 
chiral.grolim said:
I hope that once you reprofile the blade it still has sufficient edge-steel of high hardness to give a valid test... I read that the edge is pretty thick and the >65 HRC section only extends so far into the blade.
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Only time will tell I guess.
 
jimnolimit said:
those knives were mass produced. i doubt at that time they had very accurate ovens/tempering equipment, add in the rate at which those blade had to be produced and variations in the hardness of the steel must have been common. that knife was probably made out of a slightly modified high carbon steel, example: like 1095 cro-van (although i'm not 100% certain). 1095 can be hardened to about 65HRC and if the tempering ovens and or process was rushed or not even, that could make for varying hardness throughout the blade. that would explain why the blade is wearing faster in certain spots. also that is a fairly large blade with a thick grind. add in the idea that it might not have been tempered down right, and that would cause your trouble sharpening it. it would be like reshaping a file by hand.

besides the fact that diamonds will dissolve in steel way below steel's melting point, the fact that those knives where mass produced for the military should be the first red flag as why they wouldn't have diamond dust in the steel. only natural diamonds were available at the time and it wouldn't be feasible or cost effective for the company to even try that when they had to make thousands of them.

i found the paperwork that would come with one of those PAL made knives:

226512d1312799247t-help-rh-pal-knife-not-issued-paper-work-packaging-stp80015.jpg


Cro-van or Nickle-van is a common guess as to comp. It's my guess as well.
It could have been just marketing for all I know. That's a possibility.

As far as the paper is concerned, well it's a Pal cutlery users manual alright, question is, what knife did it come from?
If it came with the knife in question you might have something, otherwise a manual from a Gerber pocket knife or a toaster oven for that matter would prove just as much, which is zero
Military knives of that time were almost exclusively 1095, not alloy. Blackened blades with steel pommels, not aluminum. Look at any legit WW2 model and you see that pattern. It's doubtfull they would have used Aluminum for the pommel since the Gov was calling for aluminum to used in aircraft. People were even donating aluminum cookware for that purpose. All part of the war effort of the forties. I could be wrong about a knife like that never being WW2 Gov issue, but I doubt it.
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ritterdl69 said:
Cro-van or Nickle-van is a common guess as to comp. It's my guess as well.
It could have been just marketing for all I know. That's a possibility.

As far as the paper is concerned, well it's a Pal cutlery users manual alright, question is, what knife did it come from?
If it came with the knife in question you might have something, otherwise a manual from a Gerber pocket knife or a toaster oven for that matter would prove just as much, which is zero
Military knives of that time were almost exclusively 1095, not alloy. Blackened blades with steel pommels, not aluminum. Look at any legit WW2 model and you see that pattern. It's doubtfull they would have used Aluminum for the pommel since the Gov was calling for aluminum to used in aircraft. People were even donating aluminum cookware for that purpose. All part of the war effort of the forties. I could be wrong about a knife like that never being WW2 Gov issue, but I doubt it.
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that paper came from a PAL MK1 (USN).

if i'm not mistaken, PAL bought remington's knife business right before WWII. the RH stands for Remington Hunter.

google search PAL knife RH36. i have seen many pictures of those knives and other variants with aluminum pommels, all from around WWII.

let's not spend any more time talking about this in steel review thread. post pics in this thread to find out more about your knife: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/f...-Levine-s-Knife-Collecting-amp-Identification
 
A correction I need to make here, apparently some WW2 knives did in fact use aluminum pommels, I stand corrected on that one
 
jimnolimit said:
that paper came from a PAL MK1 (USN).

if i'm not mistaken, PAL bought remington's knife business right before WWII. the RH stands for Remington Hunter.

google search PAL knife RH36. i have seen many pictures of those knives and other variants with aluminum pommels, all from around WWII.

let's not spend any more time talking about this in steel review thread. post pics in this thread to find out more about your knife: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/f...-Levine-s-Knife-Collecting-amp-Identification
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Yes you are right about the alluminum pommels, and I am getting some more info about the knife in general. Apparently the model was reintroduced as a combat knife with some machine work done the blade to make it more of a bowie knife. And they did, contrary to my earlier understanding, use the symbol in the middle of the Rh and 36.
Which explains the condition some of these knives are in compared to mine and why the shape of the blades are different as well. In order to make them more acceptable to government standards they latter blackened the blade. Whether the steel used in the WW2 version is the same as the pre WW2 version I have is as of yet unkown, I am creating a new thread on the general knives froum of this site for any further discussion, and will not respond to the issue here any longer as it is getting way to long, allot longer than I could have ever predicted. Please do not respond to this any more, respond on new thread in general knives forum
 
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ritterdl69 said:
A correction I need to make here, apparently some WW2 knives did in fact use aluminum pommels, I stand corrected on that one
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You're out of topic on a thread that a lot of us find great value in, Please make your own thread about your knife and please stop discussing your knife in this thread.
 
ritterdl69 said:
I am creating a new thread on the general knives froum of this site for any further discussion, and will not respond to the issue here any longer as it is getting way to long, allot longer than I could have ever predicted. Please do not respond to this any more, respond on new thread in general knives forum
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I have a question here ...................In general ,
Does Stainless steel or Carbon steel hold a better edge ?? I always thought that carbon steel was better.
Say....... M-390 vs. M-4
One is stainless and M-4 not.
 
djdawg said:
I have a question here ...................In general ,
Does Stainless steel or Carbon steel hold a better edge ?? I always thought that carbon steel was better.
Say....... M-390 vs. M-4
One is stainless and M-4 not.
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Depends on the steels, heat treating and tempering methods.

It really goes a lot deeper than just carbon steel vs stainless.
 
Ankerson said:
Depends on the steels, heat treating and tempering methods.

It really goes a lot deeper than just carbon steel vs stainless.
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Thanks ........ thats what I was afraid of , nothing never easy ......LOL
I know my S90V does really well ............I actually dont use a knife enough to really judge much.
I once used ZDP-189 a whole day cuttin foam insulation (which is very abrasive) and it held up fairly well I thought. Granted it got dull , but not to bad.
 
djdawg said:
I have a question here ...................In general ,
Does Stainless steel or Carbon steel hold a better edge ?? I always thought that carbon steel was better.
Say....... M-390 vs. M-4
One is stainless and M-4 not.
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In general? I'd say stainless. The reason why some abrasive compounds are specifically for stainless is because the chromium carbides make the steel more wear resistant and thus harder to polish.

Still, it's hard to make a direct comparison between M390 and M4 since the steels are formulated so differently. It's also hard to say precisely without knowing what the expected mode of failure will be. Wear resistance won't help if the steel is chipping or rolling.

S30V and CPM-3V might be the only two that can be directly compared, though there might be some discrepancies if the two have a different final hardness. For cutting cardboard and the like I'd say S30V ought to last longer at the same hardness.

Maybe 1095 and 420HC or some other low alloy stainless could be compared, though I suspect the actual difference in edge retention isn't something noticeable.
 
Comparing something like a simple carbon steel like 1095 to a high alloy non stainless like CPM 10V would be a true apples to oranges comparison.

Same as Comparing 420HC to CPM S110V....

Then go to 1095 to CPM S110V or 420HC to CPM 10V.
 
Okay, so to get to the heart of the matter, of the two highest wearing alloys, one stainless and the other not, which I assume to be 10V and S110V, which has the higher wear resistance?
 
Fancier said:
Okay, so to get to the heart of the matter, of the two highest wearing alloys, one stainless and the other not, which I assume to be 10V and S110V, which has the higher wear resistance?
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At optimal hardness (64-65 HRC) and cyro treated they would be close enough one would get tired of using them before either one got really dull.

I would say they would be in the same class edge retention wise.
 
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