Recommend a steel for me

N

NSW1535@Gmail.com

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Nov 21, 2011
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The steel for the knife I want to make is task specific, mostly push cuts and slicing. Anything from soft materials to cardboard, maybe wood dowels. It needs to be stable and durable at extremely low angles. For example, maybe .100" blade stock and around .010" or less behind the edge, if not a zero grind. The steel needs to be able to be high polished. I'm feeling M390 or CTS-204P. Any others I should consider. Going to be a mean slicer. Thanks.
 
M390 would do very nicely. I carry and use a few custom fixed blades in S90V and K390, the last time I had to sharpen those steels was about 2 months ago under heavy use each day. Each blade is 15 DPS and about .010" behind the edge.
 
CPM-M4 does really well. Just followed a test thread on the Spyderco sub-forum here and the M4 surpassed all expectations.
 
I have used many different steels, and m4 is a great cutter and sharpens nicely. It would be a solid choice
 
The CPM 20CV is reportedly the U.S. equivalent to M 390. Good stain resistance. Guy Seiferd is putting it into his Survive GSO lineup, stating excellent edge retention.
 
I have no exp. with either M390 or 204P and I have no idea how well they'll do at extremely low angles but if that's a major concern of yours, and depending on just how low of an angle your talking have a look at ZDP-189, its able to take an extremely low angle and for the light to medium duty tasks you mention, especially cardboard which it seems to never go dull cutting, it does extremely well. My one other bit of advice on ZDP-189: if to go with a spyderco buy new, when they first started using ZDP they ran it to 65+HRC which made it extremely brittle, now days its around 62-63 so its a little stronger on new production knives.
 
I have a bunch of Spyderco ZDP knives. The only one that was brittle and acknowledged as so was the Mule in ZDP. When tested they found it's composition was off to the point the right heat treat for ZDP was incorrect for whatever steel it was.

It was rumored that the later batches of CPM M4 on the Gayle Bradleys were lowered from aound rc 64 to rc 62 but as far as I know it has never been officially confirmed.

If you have any links to threads where this is discussed please let me know as I'm interested in this kind of thing.

Thanks,

Joe
 
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