S-30v

Heh---why is your little man vomiting?

Yes it is. Very good in some tasks, not so much in others, but for anything that a folding knife can reasonably be called on to do, yes---especially coming from a maker as reputable for consistent quality control as Spyderco. S30V holds its edge well, resists deformation well, sharpens easily enough with diamond or ceramic sharpeners and is fairly rust resistant. It isn't the steel to end all steels like it was advertised as being back in the beginning, but it's a solid performer.

Welcome to Bladeforums, by the way. :cool:
 
My foster son had a gerber folder in s30v. He was removing weather striping from a military vehicle and when he finished the edge had little jagged pieces broken out of it. What I'm saying is the edge seemed very brittle in that particular knife. Just $0.02. BTW it took me 2 good hours to recondition the edge to a semblance of smooth. It still has one large chunk out of it.
 
Rafthos said:
My foster son had a gerber folder in s30v. He was removing weather striping from a military vehicle and when he finished the edge had little jagged pieces broken out of it. What I'm saying is the edge seemed very brittle in that particular knife. Just $0.02. BTW it took me 2 good hours to recondition the edge to a semblance of smooth. It still has one large chunk out of it.
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That has been my experience with every single production S30V knife. It's just too consistently weak at the edge to say I've gotten a bad knife. To me S30v isn't worth the edge retention it offers at the sacrifice of toughness.

For a high quality stainless I prefer CPM154 but haven't given up on the vanadium rich "S" steels.
 
I have been carrying knives for 20 years and have been carrying s30v for 7 years. I have always treated it like a knife. No prying or batoning no cutting anything questionable. Well after spending more time on this forum and reading about everyone kickin Azz with there new super steel I took my original Manix in S30V with me last week to run some cable for phone/internet in my new home. After maybe 8 cuts of phone line I checked my edge and sure enough it it is all toothy and chipped. Lesson learned I should have listned to my father.
On a side note I once did a thread on how a lobster kicked my154 cm BM Nimravus azz. After busttin a few lobster shells I was horrified to discover that my edge was all chipped out. In closing new steel is same as old unless your cutting cardboard.

Cheers from the North
 
S30V is great ....... as long as the heat treating has been done right.
Otherwise, problems seem to abound. ;)
 
It's just weird how all the tech specs from Crucible say that s30v is supposed to be tougher than 154cm, but in my experience 154cm has proven to be more durable and less fussy.
 
check out the strider tests on knifetest.com

my personal S30V has been entirely satisfactory, chopping and batoning too, RC 60, cryo, polished edge
 
Baton work is not abusive to knives, it's abusive to certain blade/edge geometries and steel types/hardnesses. There are axes that have edges thinner than most factory knives, and there are factory knives with edge angle greater than almost any cheap Home Depot axe. Call it whatever you want, it's all just steel ground down to a cutting edge.

As to the brittleness:
Factory edges involve grinding and (in some cases) laser cutting many knives in rapid succession, and it's just too easy to overheat them when you're building at production volume, especially as the edge gets thinner and thinner and loses heat capacity. Almost all stainless steel (at least the stuff that interests most modern knife enthusiasts) is highly abrasion resistant with low (compared to simpler carbon steels) machinability--making it take longer to grind, and those few extra seconds on that belt/wheel/etc., the greater the chance that you'll end up with a small section of steel that's been made file-hard and chips/breaks like glass under pressure. The good news is that, yes, once you've ground that top part off (couple hundredths of an inch), the steel underneath is usually at the right temper and improves dramatically. I've seen it over and over and over again, and not just with S30V. I had a pretty low opinion of ATS-34 once upon a time, until I'd put my own edge on it.

All of that said, no, S30V is not "tough" in the sense that most here mean it. It's highly deformation resistant, but it has very low ductility so when you do overcome its strength and force it to deform, it can't go very far and still be able to spring back. It fractures. This is not a defect of the steel, it is the NATURE of the steel. That's not a bad thing, you just have to make allowances for what it will excel at and what it won't when making your selection. Or, you go the Strider route and make the edge so thick that the properties of the steel don't show up so much. At 40 degrees included, pretty much ANY steel is tough as hell, though at that angle, none of it cuts particularly well either. I'm not singling Strider out because they're the only ones who do this, but because they use S30V and bill their knives as tough and somebody might steer the conversation that way. It's achievable, but it's achieved through highly robust geometry. Take that edge down to 25 degrees included and it'll snap, crackle and pop like any other S30V when subjected to impacts that properly done L6 at the same geometry sails through.

My knife is a:

Big Bowie---lopping, chopping, slashing, zombie beheading, heavy batoning, pig stabbing, Tonka Truck disassembly, etc. Your edge will be subjected to impact and torsional forces; needs to be able to be twisted and rocked back and forth to get it out of that knot or ribcage that it's stuck in. Properly done 5160, L6, 1084, O1, INFI and others of their ilk are your heroes.

Skinning/hunting/kitchen/box opening/carving knife---slicing, slicing, slicing, slicing and a bit of controlled push cutting (maybe you want to make some fuzz sticks). Your edge will be subjected to a high degree of abrasion and needs to be able to be accidentally pushed into hard materials like the bottom of a pan (shame on you--cut food on cutting boards!) or the bones of an animal, all without the edge wearing away too fast or blunting/flattening. S30V, 154CM, 440C, VG-10, ZDP-189 and other of their ilk are you heroes for this go around.

CAN you successfully skin with a knife made out of 5160, or chop hardwood with one made out of VG-10? Of course you can. But those aren't the applications where you'll see either steel's maximum potential. In this case, I'd recommend you stick to slicing tasks with your S30V Spyderco. More than the steel, the fact that it's a folding knife is what would keep me from trying to baton with it.

Edit to add: LOL, well, while I was writing, somebody DID bring up Strider--so there you go.
 
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a knife is'nt the right tool to remove weather stripping with. a wide screwdriver or putty knife should be the tool. not only does the knife hit metal but weather stripping is tuff & sometimes fairly brittle.s30v is'nt the problem but the way it was used. i heard the same thing about zdp189 & tested on my brothers ranch & found it not only is pretty tuff but hard to tarnish.misuse can defeat any alloy.
 
My Spydie S30V Native is the only example of that steel I have abused - and resharpened several times in the last few years (Sharpmaker). Doing something I shouldn't have used a knife for, I did manage to roll & chip it at the tip, mostly fixed by judicious use of the Sharpmaker. I have a few Benchmades, Buck Knives, and even a stag handled Gerber Freeman fb, all in S30V. Nothing more than a couple of touch-ups required, despite a lot of wood/paper/cloth slicing/cutting/paring. I have mostly CS knives, axes, hatchets, chisels, and wedges tor impact use - the good stuff gets cutting duties. I love S30V - my favorite, followed by CPM154, 154CM, 440C, BG-42 (A real pain to sharpen!). I count tool steels - D2, A2, M2-4, O-1, etc - differently - still cutters, however - mostly harder to re-edge.

I like S30V!

Stainz
 
Like t1mpani said the factory edge can many times be over heated and results in super hard, brittle steel at the very edge that will chip out. Once these chips are sharpened out I would be willing to bet it doesn't happen again even if pushed pretty hard. Before you give up on it, sharpen it out and give it a second chance and then form your opinion on it.
 
This is my first year using s30v and it is much more difficult to sharpen than, for example, the D2 I use at a couple points higher hardness. It is also much more resistant to chipping. I typically sharpen to a little over 20 degrees included, but that will end up convexed. Resharpening through all my testing was done with a leather strop loaded with green compound. For edge holding and toughness combined I feel it's better than D2, better than any of my other stainless steels (ATS-34, 12c27, 440c) assuming all are heat treated to a similar level of technology and skill. I think it has better corrosion resistance too but I have no way of testing that practically.
 
wnease said:
This is my first year using s30v and it is much more difficult to sharpen than, for example, the D2 I use at a couple points higher hardness. It is also much more resistant to chipping. I typically sharpen to a little over 20 degrees included, but that will end up convexed. Resharpening through all my testing was done with a leather strop loaded with green compound. For edge holding and toughness combined I feel it's better than D2, better than any of my other stainless steels (ATS-34, 12c27, 440c) assuming all are heat treated to a similar level of technology and skill. I think it has better corrosion resistance too but I have no way of testing that practically.
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I have the same experience with S30V. It is tougher than D2 and 154CM, while also holding a longer edge. It also gets a lot of retained austenite so the effect of cryo-quenching makes quite an improvement.
 
I have had really phenomenal edge retention and toughness with S30V. I have also had a few that chipped during normal use. I'm sure poor heat treating was the culprit.
 
S30V is not good. It's great. I haven't had any issues with my Native and it took my best edge of any knife easily (hair-whittler!).
 
To me it may not be the end all steel for everyone but it comes dern close for me! I think CPM D2 is my current favorite steel, but it's very much apples to oranges between it and 30V! S30V is just wonderful in the models I've had!
 
myself being of the school that the perfect knife steel is impossible to evermake, i consider s30 to be a solid performer.the wide usage latitude between the jobs asked of cutlery simply means different alloys for different applications. a man opening osyster shells all day as opposed to a butcher cutting beef from bones will simply require different alloys. certainly an alaskan guide will require a performer different than a worker on a banana plantation in honduras.about the best we can say of any alloy is that the alloy does an excellent job in the confines of its job description.persons working in warehouses, going fishing, & hunting -- hiking are best served by carrying blades suited to each task.
 
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