Cowery Y ,is really impressing me for it's fine edge,edge retention.Plus I can get it sharper than anything else.Very tight grain structure.S30V does hold a great edge and I'm definately not bad mouthing it.It just excels at it's medium edge ,edge retention due to the vanadium carbide size which is finer than most any other knife steel with vanadium in it.
IMO most of the super steels have very little difference in fine edge edge retention and .
I notice that how a knife is heat treated ,ground and sharpened has as much to do with how well it will cut,hold it's fine edge or perform in general as it does the choice of the super steels. 440-C,ATS-34,VG10,ATS-55,BG-42 will cut almost identically if they are processed the same. The noticeable differences are in the areas of toughness ,strength,corrosion resistance,impact resistance. Also some of these steels excel in cutting flesh as oposed to abrasive products like card board . Some steels are slipprier(sp) than others and create less drag than do others when cutting. The dividing lines are very thin when comparing comparable steels and most of the retoric is nothing more than an opinion based on little information.Or a prejudice against a steel for bad performance when the real culprit was the grind,design or geometry of the knife.
I didn't add the powder metal in with the afore mentioned steels as they are in a category of there own S60,S90,S30 are superior than the previously mentioned alloys due to how they are made powder metal is denser and tighter grained than hot rolled.However the dividing line isn't as big as you might think .And in some instances a blade made from the other alloys is prefered.
When all things are in harmony with one another,alloy,heat treatment ,grind ,geometry,edge,design,symetry,The resulting Knife is a thing of awe from a visual standpoint as well as a using stand point.To place to much emphasis on any one of these areas and not enough of another will result in a flawed product.
