S30V Impressed

MikeC

MikeC

Joined
Sep 16, 2005
Messages
1,364
Last night after coming in from our evening deer hunt, I fired up the bbq and threw on some steaks. Was checking steaks and cut through one with my Buck Mayo TNT S30V Paul Bos heat treat, hit the grill several times really hard and then once hit a grill fork real hard with the edge.

This knife has a high hollow grind and I thought for sure due to my carelessness the edge would have chipped as several of the hits were pretty hard as these steaks were 2 inches thick.

Anyway inspected the edge tonight while cleaning gear and its perfect like nothing ever happened, after all I read about S30V being brittle I'm impressed or most of the stuff I read must have been erroneous because I hit steel on steel real hard 3 times with a high hollow ground blade which is supposedly the most prone to damage from that kinda thing.
 
A vast majority of S30V is nowhere near as brittle as some would have you believe. Even in the minority of those that had minor problems once it was sharpened out the problems were corrected. In most cases the problem was probably due to the heat generated in the factory sharpening process. I agree that there were some lemons out there, but S30V would not be in such expanding and widespread use if it was anywhere near as brittle as some say.
 
I have used this Jim Stewart Custom in S30V quite a bit in the bush,



…it has served me very well,

…holds a great edge and has handled the abuse I’ve thrown at it.




Big Mike
 
Properly heat treated S30V does just fine. I have done comparison testing in cardboard and sisal, with various blades in S30V and in numerous other steels, and the S30V has shown that it is fully capable of keeping up with Dozier D2 and BR A2. The only blades I have tried that did better were S90V and ZDP-189.
 
You just learned a valuable lesson: Don't believe everything that people say. S30V is far and away my favorite steel. I use my knives hard and have never had a problem. (It's nowhere near as hard to sharpen as some people would have you believe either.)

Now go buy some more knives in S30V!:D
 
Samael said:
You just learned a valuable lesson: Don't believe everything that people say.
Click to expand...

+1:thumbup: Alot of the bad press comes out right when a new steel comes out. I seldom here anyone saying much bad about it these days.

I have several steels, such as S90V, M4, D2(Dozier and CPM), ZDP-189, BG-42, INFI..among others.

I feel the M4 and INFI would be hard to beat for major abuse, but feel S30V offers a great balance of ease of sharpening, edge holding, stain resistant, and toughness.

Along with S30V I also put INFI and Doziers D2 in that "great balance" of doing many things very well.
 
I only have one blade in S30V, a benchmade 210 snody...great little piece and takes/holds and edge very well. I will definately be getting more blades with this steel, it comes second only to D2 in my personal opinion.
 
I have had no problems with my knives in s30v, d2, cpm d2 and vg10. Of these I really like s30v and both d2 versions (BM 710 and para respectivly). vg-10 is pretty good too, but seems to edge roll easier than my favorites. I dont like my bg42 buck 110 as I find it chips really easily. I also dont like the zdp 189 in my spyderco delica. I actually gifted it to a friend, and it has been chipping pretty badly with light use--although it doe stay sharp long.

I really like the s30v on my seb, but I also like the s30v on my miniskirmish (i did sell that knife because I dont like recurves hehe).
 
S30V is some good stuff, spyderco has a good HT for theirs too.
 
My only S30V blade is a 1st Gen. Spyderco Swick which I bought if (I remember right) in 2006.

Yes, at the beginning, I did see micro-chipping in the edge that were NOTICEABLE enough to the naked eye, enough to cause concern and mild-disappointment. But after continued use/work-hardening and resharpening, it finally got a good edge and retains it for a long time. I was even able to carve wood with it. Very rust resistant as well and this will become evident on your blade especially if you live in a tropical country like ours (I have another blade in 440C and it suffers a lot of pit marks).

You did mention though that your blade was a Paul Bos-HT who's recognized as the best in the business.
 
Its just that I read so much negative about S30V and its propensity to chip out and to make matter worse the knife I was using has a high hollow grind with the hollow grind supposedly being the least durable type of grind and the most prone to damage from misuse, accidents, hard use or abuse.

I have also heard that Paul Bos heat treat is something special, so with that I am going to make the following final observation about this situation.

No.1 A lot the original negative crap I heard about S30V wasn't entirely accurate and was probably attributable to variables such as heat treat and other things and not indicative of the steels properties or very little.

No.2 Heat Treat is probably the most overall CRITICAL variable in the whole process, and cannot, should not and at least by me shall not be over looked again from the stand point of its overall importance. Furthermore Paul Bos heat treat means something and obviously he is the man for a reason not just hype.

No.3 A hollow ground blade with good steel and good heat treat is more durable than knife gurus would have me believe and that maybe a hollow ground blade is more durable overall than previously described to me. I still prefer a full flat grind as I do believe its stronger, but what I've come to learn is that the hollow grind is tougher than I thought and have been led to believe and unless I'm trying to pry open a Sam's size bucket of peaches, a small European car door or am trying to baton through some seasoned mahogany and oak for no other reason as to see if my knife can do it.

Basically abuse disguised as hard use because I refuse to use the right tool for the job I'm doing like hmmm that is why old timers used an axe to split wood and not a ball peen hammer an folding knife. Damn, those silly pioneers, don't they know my pocket/folding knife can split those logs with about ten times the effort and my folder cost $400.00 plus, those simpletons.

Thanks and Merry Christmas
 
S30V is very nice and very easy to maintain. :thumbup:

After I get a good edge on my blades it only usually takes 2 strokes per side on my Ceramic rod that came with my Edge Pro to get them hair popping sharp again.
 
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