S30V Questions as Answered by the CRK Shop Foreman Himself...

Before responding to the discussion on S30V, I first want to apologize for the apparent lack of communication from Chris and me. We became aware of the post called "Question about S30V" on Wednesday, when Professor called Bryan and asked extensive questions of him. Chris was at home, sick with the flu. I printed off the two threads, brought them home but Chris was feeling too rotten to even look at them. Thursday, he wrote his thoughts but, since then, I have not had a consecutive hour or so to spend composing a comprehensive reply. I am sorry that this looks as if we don’t care what is happening on the forums because that is very far from true but there are simply not enough hours in a day!

The points Chris made go something like this:

"By the tone of some of the posts, it sounds as if the talk is not about CRK but about Enron! No, we do not go backwards. It is always the policy of this company to push developments forward and I never plan to change that. One of my most common sayings when talking with my employees and customer is that we do not make changes in our product unless it is an improvement.

S30V is an improvement over BG42 - it took 18 months of research and development with Crucible to perfect this steel. There is a definite improvement in toughness and a little in corrosion resistance. We have stressed that the gains are small but they are gains.

Lets address the hardness issue. Hardness is not the be all and end all of edge retention and the Rockwell hardness is simply an indicator. There are many variables that come into the equation of the performance of a general purpose folding knife.
1. differing materials being cut
2. differing angles of attack
3. differing hardness within the material being cut (staples in boxes, knots in wood, etc.)
4. differing cutting pressures (guys with big strong hands, guys with hands less strong, patient people, impatient people)
These varying conditions contribute to my course of action and I have determined S30V works better overall at 58-59Rc.

I am not overly concerned what the rest of the industry believes or is doing for the hardness of their blades. I have never followed popular trends for sake of being popular, instead, I prefer to set the trends. For 18 years, I have pushed the envelope to get CRK to where it is, we are certainly not going to regress just to make a buck or two. While S30V has a variety of machining characteristics that are different from BG42, the choice of 58-59Rc (not 57 as mentioned somewhere) has nothing whatsoever to do with the machining process. It has everything to do with the performance of the knife. I do not cut corners at the expense of the performance of my product.

Opinions are always welcome here - ! :)

Anne
 
I picked up my large S30V Tuesday and proceeded to use the knife rather extensively through the end of the week as I trimmed out a law library in mahogany. I am a finish carpenter and I use pocket knives extensively to clean out mortises, clean out back-copes (end grain cuts) in miter cuts in an assortment of hardwoods. I also had to use the Sebenza to shave off old construction adhesive on the back of pre-existing trim work. Last night after checking my blade for sharpness, I was shocked that the edge still shaved hair. The only area that was noticably duller was the belly of the blade that I had used to shave the old construction glue.

Conclusions thus far:
Is this blade an improvement over BG-42? For me it is. With BG-42, I usually would have to touch up the edge every night after similar work.

How about resharpening? I reprofiled my edge to 30 degrees compound. It took me about a half an hour with a Sharpmaker 204. I started out with the gray rods, but switched over to diamond rods. After getting the primary bevel to where I wanted it, it didn't take long to get the knive sharper than when I bought it.

So from a real world work situation, I am pleased with the performance of the blade. I do not have another S30V knife to compare yet. Next week will be more of the same, so I will keep track of how long I can use the blade with out resharpening.

All for now,
Barry H
 
..........for responding to the question at hand!:D I think most of us here, if not all of us here, felt like you would not go in reverse when it came to the product you have. After all I have read and heard about Chris Reeve it just didn't jive that he was after an extra dollar or two by cutting quality on the #1 "production" knife in the world today!:D :) :D

And no I'm not kissing up here in order to get my large wood inlaid Classic any quicker;) Really, I'm not!;) :D


Thanks Anne, Chris, and all the great folks at CRK!!!
 
Chris and Anne care what the people here on the forums think, that is part of what makes them such a great company. The other part is that they make the best folder in the world!!! :D
 
Chris Reeve Knives :

Hardness is not the be all and end all of edge retention
Click to expand...

It is never a good sign in a discussion when you respond by arguing against a statement that was never made, and specifically when you do so against an exaggeration of the actual point being made. Of course there is more to edge holding (and knife performance in general) than just hardness, that is just a straw man argument.

The point was quite simply that there are numerous elements of knife performance very strongly linked to hardness and thus by decreasing the hardness you are losing performance in those areas. Specifically a loss of strength which will make the edge indent and roll easier, inducing drawbacks both for edge retention on some materials as well as various durability aspects. Also the steel will be "gummy" [only for high alloy materials], and have a higher tendancy for burr formation so there are sharpening drawbacks.

Yes, obviously there are positive attributes such as a higher impact toughness, ductility and ease of stock removal, and a more aggressive edge (the latter is a *very* small effect). However the main advantage of S30V was its toughness, which implies a high RC. You can already get very good toughness and ductility with CPM stainless grades at a low RC like Spyderco does with their S60V (440V). Of course S30V does machine a lot easier, but that is of little benefit to the ELU as you are not dropping the price of the Sebenza.

In regards to the testing you have done, I am always glad to see this, however when the commentary is basically "yes we have tested it and the testing supports our conclusion" with *no* details, then that comes down to taking the results on faith, this should be science, no faith necessary, just results and logic. What cycles were used to get the higher RC's and at that higher RC in what aspects did the steel show poorer performance than the BG-42 that you now use? I would have expected based on how CPM is promoting it that it would have been directly better, including tougher, even at a similar RC. If you have to drop the RC to get the toughness, well as noted in the above, you could have just done that with the BG-42.

-Cliff
 
I spoke with Bryan too about two months ago on this very topic. He truly believes S30V is superior to BG42. I really got the feeling he was being honest and not just spewing the company's position. He really seems to be a stand up guy.



woods5small.jpg
 
As I read this thread ,no one is doubting the superiority of s30v per se, rather Mr. Cliff Stamp and others before him point out that its superiority should be evident (and sufficiet) at the same RC as for bg42.
put it this way, if Chris Reeve Knives did not switch to s30V (lets say it has not been invented) would they have lowered the RC on their Bg42 accordingly this year?
If not ,then why do so with s30V?

Crk after all did not drop their Rc when they shift from Ats34 to bg42.

I am Sebenza fan by the way, not a troll here. I am genuinely puzzeled like others on this matter.

Regards,

Martin
 
Only thing I can comment on is ease of sharpening S30V at rc 61. It is not difficult to resharpen at rc 61, and I have done alot of resharpening including changing the edge angle by alot. S30V is a very nice blade steel, and I am sure at rc 58 it is a better steel than BG, and at rc 61 I know it is.
 
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