Cliff Stamp said:
Carl what are your concerns/problems with it after extensive work?
-Cliff
Mainly sharpening, if you mean s30v.
The edge on my s30v Native is now almost 1mm back from where it once was, after repeated sharpening and reprofiling. I am almost certain at this point that the edge suffered from some malady, perhaps metal fatigue, when it was new. Whether this was from some factory condition or my fault during the original sharpening (it was a little dull when new, even compared to another of the same model) I don't know. I asked Sal about it in the Spyderco forum, but neither he (not blaming him, I'm sure he can't catch every single message posted there) nor anyone else had any comment.
I did a long and careful job using a Sharpmaker to avoid edge fatigue. Spyderco says use a good amount of pressure to make sharpening work, but instead I did it very light. I got rid of the edge burr completely. It ended up very sharp and smooth.
In casual non-scientific testing, my s30v Native might actually be giving me a small advantage in edge retention over my VG10 Delica, also sharpened very carefully (although the burr went away easier on it). Mainly I cut large amounts of paper and cardboard. Nothing too stressfull.
I gave both the Delica and Native a few good hard strokes (maybe 4 or 5) on a rod sharpener as if I were in a hurry to sharpen them. Both of course got an edge burr immediately, though the Delica seemed to a little less so. Both initially had as close to the same edge angle as I could get (prior to the Sharpmaker, I used a clamping Smith's system to set the profile). I was able to sharpen the Delica up and get rid of the edge burr fairly quick by following up with more careful strokes in under a minute. But the Native's burr was a major pain in the rear and would not go away completely even after 5 minutes of careful sharpening. It remained there in at least a miniscule amount indefinitely. A single stroke would push it over to the other side, so it wasn't going anywhere fast. I had to switch to a fine diamond stone for a while to eventually get rid of it, then follow up with a similar, but longer, process which the Delica required as the only sharpening step to return to full function.
This could have been avoided with careful, but still longer, sharpening on the Native rather than the rush test. But I wasn't doing anything harsh for the usage test. If I were cutting rope, wood, or even slicing against a flat surface (it's easy to slice through free-hanging paper with zero lateral force), I would imagine the edge fatigue would be inevitable and the big annoyance of sharpening the s30v blade would again pop up.
I would like to note that I don't think s30v is horrible, nor is VG10 perfect. Both are better than AUS8 or 440c, while still not as good as some well-hardened but unlabeled tool steels I have used. A persistant burr from edge fatigue is almost as bad as breaking that same portion of steel clean off (in fact I have recomended doing that on purpose as a solution to persistant burrs), even worse if the broken-off edge would respond to sharpening better (which is almost certain to be the case if it doesn't retain a large burr to begin with). Both are very good for knives as most of us use them, but I would certainly be happier with a few other things if I were to get lost in the woods for a month. I do notice that VG10 is more of what I would want than s30v.
