S35vn

Walt2

Walt2

Joined
Mar 13, 2001
Messages
1,157
This is a question for those who have used quite a bit of S35VN. What hardness have you gotten the best edge retention with? The last 3 blades I made from this steel, I had hardened to 60 by Bos Heat Treating and neither one of them holds an edge very long. One is a kitchen knife and one small turkey will make it very dull while avoiding bones. Thanks for any comments.
 
I just returned to this thread and had additional thoughts.

Carving a turkey should not dull any knife appreciably....especially S35VN. It is cooked soft meat, and the bones are not hard or abrasive. If your RC60 knife isn't lasting for a single turkey there may be something wrong with your edge design. Posting a photo with the specs might help.

The only thing I can think of besides that is that you may have greatly overheated the edge in grinding and sharpening post-HT and the edge is far below Rc60. How was the knife ground and sharpened?

To give a comparison. my friend with the BBQ restaurant now used S35VN for all his stainless knives. He cuts 100s of pounds of briskets, chicken, and veggies on a Teflon cutting board every week, and has to re-sharpen them only occasionally. He says he gets at least twice the edge life than he did with CPM-154. Part of that is probably that he makes a much better knife than he did before, and part is the steel. His knives used to be way too thick. He would use .125-.250" stock. Now he uses .100" as his thick stuff, and .060" for his slicers. They cut amazingly better.
An S35VN FFG blade with a well made edge is a very scary thing to a turkey :)
 
I heat treated my S35 to 60-61 as well and have very good luck with it at that hardness. I have had no complaints about edge retention either.
Even when aggressively cutting wood it holds a killer edge, not to mention how well it does in food prep.
Sharp belts and a thin edge are the best combination. I generally finish my hunters and kitchen knives by hand on a stone just to ensure I do not overheat them during sharpening.
 
Carving turkeys ? I've done that since I was a kid and often as a guest I'm asked to carve the turkey etc. Usually they have a cheap knife .But I sharpen it and certainly it will last more than one turkey.
Of all the CPMs I prefer S35VN . Stacy's right your doing something wrong . When you get it all sorted out you'll love S35VN !
 
I agree with the others, there's something funny going on. No half-way decent steel, much less a very good one like S35VN at 60Rc should go dull just from slicing a few pounds of meat and cutting some tendons.
 
That is strange. An unhardened piece of steel sharpened should not even dull while carving a turkey.
 
Stacy, this is not my first time to use S35VN. I used some a couple of times soon after it became available and those blades did fine. Cannot remember what hardness I had them done and did not make a note of it. The steel on this blade was 3/32" x 1 1/2". At the widest point the blade is 1 9/16" wide and was ground to .010 at the edge prior to heat treat. There was no grinding after heat treat and there was no overheating on sharpening. Most of this was done with a jig and diamond stones. I do not have a picture of this knife as it is not anywhere close to where I live, however I was at my sons house, who has the knife, at Thanksgiving and witnessed how it was behaving. It was sharpened to a 17 deg.angle and I resharpened to 20 deg. angle, and it performed the same with both angles. I was very surprised because of how the prior blades I had made with this steel performed. I had communicated with Paul Bos by email before the blades were heat treated and he advised me that I should stay at a hardness of 60 because that steel has a tendency to be brittle at 61. This was my reason for asking what others were doing with hardness on this steel.
 
Edge retention in this application is more to do the microstructures than the actual measured hardness. 61 may work fine if it is homogenous, and 59 might both chip and roll if it is mixed.

Bos uses a snap temper before cryo. S35VN at 60 would have a fair bit of RA which will play hell with edge stability on a kitchen knife.

Personally I really like Peter's. I feel they push the envelope more than most.
 
(all of this assuming something wrong didn't happen post HT)

Call Paul F. and express your concerns. He stands behind his work and will fix it. He can adjust his recipe based on what you need.

I only use him now, and he has held a much higher standard for me than other big companies. Over two thousand of my knives have been cooked by him and I haven't had one issue. The other places I tried have made huge errors which set me back a bit.
 
I do my own HT with S35VN. I temper to 59/60. Edge retention has been outstanding.
Scott
 
The only flags I see in your info is that there is no shaping after HT. A .010" flat edge with a 17-20° sharp edge coming off it is a bit blunt for a carving knife. Thinning down the blade bevels may solve the problem.
I would sand/grind the bevel down to about .005" or less, and then put a 15° edge on a carver. I take them to nearly a zero edge and then put on the edge angle.

Sharpening at 20° you have a 40° inclusive edge. While it is just barely within the range of the kitchen edges, that is a bit of a wedge for a carver.

As has been said, Peter's does 35VN really well.


Obviously, you can't pull out a loupe at the dinner table and inspect the edge, but I would love to have seen a close up of the edge after it went dull.
 
Last edited:
40* is too much for most things. I had a chance to try a knife at the last minute for deer. I hadn't even looked at the edge. Performance was poor ! I had to quit and get a proper knife.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top