RobbW said:
I'm curious Cliff, given the above criteria, wouldn't you recommend a higher HRC?
Yes, it is very difficult to do though because you need a combination of high austenization temperature, fast quench and cold treatment.
I've been considering a Dozier in D2 or something with S90V and have the same criteria as the original poster.
Dozier's hollow ground blades do very well for those types of tasks and sets a fairly high standard, his initial sharpness is also among the best I have seen. S90V should be an improvement in most respects and be able to make a better knife, but you would *really* have to get the grind and heat treatment right or the Dozier would blow past it.
daberti said:
Coming to your implicit question, the knife will be used to cut cardboard (EDC) as well as rope, food (fish, meat, fruit, vegetables) and finally will be used during my trekking sessions.
The high carbide steels tend to do well for that class of work with edge angles about 15 degrees or so, as you move lower you can often get better performance with simpler steels, as the higher alloys can start to break apart, but you have to go fairly extreme in angle and the knife becomes somewhat restricted in use.
The main reason I would pick S30V over S90V with the specs in the above, is that I find it consistently outperforms other steels in initial sharpness and gets there easier. I am not talking about ease of grinding, 10V, S30V and 52100 pretty much act the same to a 200 silicon carbide stone, it cuts all of them like a wood rasp on pine.
However when it comes to shaping the final bevel, removing the burr and getting the edge very crisp, both the South Fork and small Sebenza both respond very well. By sharp here I mean push cut newsprint far from the point it is held, shave smoothly with no draw, slice toilet paper, etc. .
Personally, if it was me, I would have the knife made out of S90V and have it secondary hardened, high soak, fast quench, deep dryo, as based on what I have been seening lately this would give a better blade, but it would be very much a prototype and you may not want to run an experiment with that level of $investment$. The maker might however offer some kind of deal for a field test.
One thing to note in such comparisons is that you are often talking about going from very good, to extremely good, you would likely be very pleased with any of them if done very well.
I was offered to have a ZDP-189 blade into a clad of ATS-34 and a not better specified Hitachi carbon steel. I've nothing against ZDP -as my Caly has it as well as my William Henry B12-FT titan - yet more than a single issue had punched me with ATS34....Further on, ZDP still leaves me with more than a question mark about toughness and even corrosion resistance in really heavy use.
The sides really don't do anything significant, unless you are subjecting the knife to heavy prying or severe impacts, he japanese will even use mild steel (not even hardened) or wrough iron for edge support for that reason. I have had no problems with the Calypso Jr. in ZDP-189 and have done fairly heavy work with it, reports on the forums with problems have not been common either. The corrosion resistance seems to be behind S30V (Reeves) but it takes pretty extreme enviroments to corrode either and the difference seems slight. Details are in the small Sebenza review.
-Cliff
