S30V - polished or toothy?

mkjellgren

mkjellgren

Joined
Nov 1, 2005
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Title says it all, does s30v perform better with a polished edge or if left a bit toothy?

MK
 
never bothered to polish it since it came out of the box toothy, cuts like a demon toothy so toothy it stays. I simply maintain the toothy edge on the Sharpmaker.
 
I like almost all of my blades to have some degree of toothiness. For most of my edc knives, I stop with spyderco's fine sharpening rods. For kitchen knives I stop with spyderco's medium sharpening rods. For really hard use knives I end with a coarse diamond rod.
If your blade is already serrated, though, you'll want to roll the edge.

- Chris
 
flava said:
Polished :D
Will last longer.
Click to expand...


Love your avatar, got to them doggies! I go polished also, if for no other reason than to have a showoff edge. If I know I will be doing cardboard intensive work I will leave it toothy, but otherwise it is just so satisfying to have my Manix tree topping my arm hairs with the Spyderco UF finish. It lasts pretty good for various EDC things, and I usually have a smaller, thinner, more acute cardboard specific knife on me anyway (in ZDP-189) to handle the abrasive stuff anyway.

Mike
 
Well I've heard concerns about polishing S30V due to the supposedly large size of the carbides. I couldn't tell you, I usually finish up on my 1200 grit DMT stone, which leaves something like a toothy edge, and works great.

So I guess my vote is keep her toothy. Although if you want to try out polishing, be sure to post how it does!
 
My trick is to leave the last 1/3 of the blade coarse. The result is much like a combo edge; the toothy part bites in, and the rest of the blade glides through. As far as tearing out carbides, you shouldn't have a problem as long as you do your fine honing on something good and hard, like diamond. Even the fine rods on the Sharpmaker should be enough.
 
A toothy edge on S30V tends to microchip in my experience. With a V grind edge bevel, I find using the UF stones and a strop is much better as S30V is quite an aggressive cutter anyway.

Put a convex bevel on it as well and... wow... all new level of cutting performance and toughness.

Every single S30V knife I have used that microchiped came with a course edge polish. If you can see the lines in the steel at the edge, its too course with S30V I find. It needs to be almost mirror polished at the edge to really work well.

Just my experience. YMMV!
 
Jerry Hossom posted on the spyderco forum in the past few weeks that he feels the microchipping problems with S30V are the result of a toothy edge (and evidently not bad heat treat like many of us were guessing), and that a polished edge fixes the problem. If any of you have chippy S30V, would be interested if you'd polish the edge and see if the chipping continues.
 
well to update, the knife in question is a native. For some reason OTB sharpness wasn't what I had expected so I reprofiled a little narrower and polished the edge on a hard arkanas stone to a mirror polish. The thing gets wicked sharp but for some reason dulls rather quickly under even fairly light usage. its not a wire or rolled edge, its been stroped to remove such a thing and under my inspection neither are apparent. Anyway, I guess I'm wondering if a toothier edge would be better.

MK
 
S30V is know to take on a very sharp edge, then dull to about 80% and stay there forever. I shapen up my Manix on a Spyderco fine benchstone, and it is amazingly sharp. After a few boxes at work, it becomes just sharp, but I have used it all day and it stays very usablly sharp.
 
Last week I touched up my Dodo/SE at a 30 degree angle and took it to work with me.

After a few cuts on cardboard and a plastic fibre strap the edge rolled an chipped like hell:eek:

I removed the chips and rolling and put a 30 degree backbevel on it. Then I put on a 40 degree working edge. This all with the brown rods. Last but no least I polished that edge with the whites.

Tested it out at work again on even heavier cutting and no chips or rolling. Furthermore the knife was still able to shave a little.

The scallops of the blade look just like the General mentioned.

I hope this helps.

For further info look at my 2 "chippy S30V" threads at the Spyderco forum.
 
I prefer polished, just got a spyderco uf benchstone and love it, I should have gotten one sooner
 
I had been thinking the UF stone would be too fine....I'll think again and get one. These last few comments have been very interesting concerning the toothy vs. polished edge. Generally, I think of a toothy edge as more of a hard working and agressive cutting edge...maybe with s30v (or other CPM steels) this is not the case.

Off to get the UF benchstone.....
:)
 
I've been experimenting on my Native since Jan. and so far it seems to hold a polished edge (600 grit dmt -> 1200 grit DMT -> leather strop with mothers mag/alum polish) the best, but seems to take a better edge with 600 grit wetdry paper -> loaded strop. Nothing scientific, but I think I'm going to stick with the wetdry paper and finish up with a not-quite-polished stropping.
 
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