- Joined
- Jan 23, 2023
- Messages
- 34
easier to sharpen and easier to grind are two different things that many commonly mix. also, as far as grinding is concerned, once you're talking about vanadium steels are going to essentially require better abrasives regardless, this question is mostly moot in the context of hand sharpening. when you're grinding by hand on diamonds, it really doesn't make much difference what you're grinding as far as steel. to me the question is, do i want to go with something that has this extra requirement ie diamonds or not. and if you do, then imo it makes sense to get the most bang for your buck, ie why I'd rather s90v than s30v for my office edc knife. now, as far as sharpening is concerned, this also involves factors like apex formation, and burr removal, which isn't as straightforward as just how grindable a steel is, which comes down to basically grain structure and abrasion resistance, with hardness having a 1 to 2% impact on that for each Rockwell C, keeping in mind that it's not actually linear even it seems linear from close. Other factors like heat treatment, hardness, composition will influence how they are with apex formation and burr removal. zdp189 for instance is not fun to grind on a shapton, but its one of the easiest steels to debur, get a very fine apex and in general get wicked edges. hard to grind, very easy to sharpen. etc.
these are accurate but they're not even intended to be 100% accurate, they are basically the roughest quickest outlines he makes available. if you really want to know you have to dig beyond just those roughest of outlines.
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