San Mai/Layered/Sandwiched Steel Ideas/Questions

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xounlistedxox

Joined
Dec 10, 2008
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I've recently taken a break from buying guns, guns, and more guns and have found myself buying more and more knives. I've found that in general you get what you pay for sometimes more sometimes less.

From my findings I like the steels that are coming out of Crucible i.e. 3v, and s30v and I plan on picking up some more "fancy" steels like s60v, s90v, etc whenever I can get my hands on them.

I've always like the layered steel concept and own some Cold Steel San Mai, and plan on buying some fallkniven soon as well... hopefully I can get my hands on a 3g S1.

My questions/ideas about the layered steel are:

Does anyone make a layered steel with any crucible steels like s30v?

How about a carbon steel sandwiched by a stainless steel? I've never heard of or seen this but if it can be done I think it would be an awesome concept for a blade...Imagine 3v sandwiched by s30v, s60v etc
 
Lots of damascus are like that but make sure you do your research on the specific laminate. VG10 is simply amazing. Fallkniven and Spyderco both use it, though I doubt I can ever buy a spyderco due to their ridiculous fanatical fan following and love for hallow ground blades. I don't want to buy a 60HC knife and have to reprofile it upon arrival, that would suck.
 
Ya I've checked out many many spyderco knives in person at many stores and every single time I'm disappointed and am reminded why I haven't bought a spyderco in my 20+ years collecting knives
 
xounlistedxox said:
How about a carbon steel sandwiched by a stainless steel? I've never heard of or seen this but if it can be done I think it would be an awesome concept for a blade...Imagine 3v sandwiched by s30v, s60v etc[/quote]

Then you do not understand the concept behind such sandwich alloys.

The outer layers are to provide toughness, and corrosion resistance. Only the center alloy has to have excellent edge retention, because only the center alloy ever becomes the actual edge. So there is no benefit to putting S30V or S60V on the outsides of the sandwich. It would be a total waste of the capabilities of those alloys, whose corrosion resistance and toughness BTW, are inferior to those of plain 420.

To answer the first part of your question: I do not know of anyone making sandwich alloys out of the Crucible particle metals.
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The few production laminate blades you see are made with Japanese steel like the Spyderco Cali3 with ZDP core and 420 flanks.
There is one or two custom makers that use Japanese steels too but I can't think of any that use CPM steel.

There is one guy that makes an S30V/Ti blade IIRC, his name is Miltner Adams or something.
 
Some of the Japanese steels coming out, used by Kanetsune (sp?) have a carbon core with stainless damascus sides, I believe. Those look awesome. The Japanese also make VG10-cored stainless damascus blades, used by Kai and Mcusta, and A.G. Russell.

I know these are not what you were looking for, but they are worth looking at.

Probably the closest you'll find to what you want are the ZDP-189 laminated with stainless, or stainless damascus, as done by William Henry.
 
I am not sure what the problem with Spyderco is. I own numerous "top end" Spyderco knives and love every one of them.

Granted, they are like Benchmade, Kershaw and others in that they make knives out of everything from the finest steel in the world, like ZDP and M-4 down to "K-Mart Blue Light" junk, but their top end steel knives are absolutely wonderful.

Be careful with Fallkniven though. Their knives are all made in Japan from Japanese steels, so they're far superior to cknives made from the soft Swedish steels, but AFAIK, they're all convex ground, so unless you're experienced in sharpening convex edges, you're going to have to learn how to sharpen all over again.

OTOH, Fallkniven are excellent quality knives.
 
PayetteRucker said:
Lots of damascus are like that but make sure you do your research on the specific laminate. VG10 is simply amazing. Fallkniven and Spyderco both use it, though I doubt I can ever buy a spyderco due to their ridiculous fanatical fan following and love for hallow ground blades. I don't want to buy a 60HC knife and have to reprofile it upon arrival, that would suck.
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If you think VG10 is amazing then you need to try some ZDP-189 or S90V or M4.

Saying there is a big difference is not even close. There is a huge difference. Not only in edge retention but also in how sharp they will get.

And Spyderco is one of the main companies using these steels and usually in a flat grind. Might be time to give one a try. And I'm not a spyderco fan boy. But they are using the latest and greatest. Not saying they are always perfect but it sounds like you might have some prejudice that you need to over look.

I just got an edge pro apex and went to touch up a Spyderco and had to lower it down to about 12 per side. I don't think you will need to reprofile an edge like that. Which is good because there have been some independent tests showing this particular ZDP blade to be coming out at 64 rockwell hardness.
 
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KAbar made a Becker Necker in carbon core/stainless sides. Burt Foster and Jerid Johnson also make them, IIRC. Ariel Salaverria may as well.
 
PayetteRucker said:
Lots of damascus are like that but make sure you do your research on the specific laminate. VG10 is simply amazing. Fallkniven and Spyderco both use it, though I doubt I can ever buy a spyderco due to their ridiculous fanatical fan following and love for hallow ground blades. I don't want to buy a 60HC knife and have to reprofile it upon arrival, that would suck.
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They have a few flat gound too...

Oh, and some hollow ground...

I can't think of one decent company that doesn't have a fanatical following.
 
Then you do not understand the concept behind such sandwich alloys.
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I understand the concept of these layered steels very well. The purpose of sandwiching 3v in between s30v would be for the s30v to protect the 3v from rusting... which it does very easily rust. It may not be traditional like using 420 as the "bread" of the sandwich, but it is a concept that would be awesome and look a lot better than some sort of powder coating to protect most carbon steels.
 
FlaMtnBkr said:
If you think VG10 is amazing then you need to try some ZDP-189 or S90V or M4.

Saying there is a big difference is not even close. There is a huge difference. Not only in edge retention but also in how sharp they will get.

And Spyderco is one of the main companies using these steels and usually in a flat grind. Might be time to give one a try. And I'm not a spyderco fan boy. But they are using the latest and greatest. Not saying they are always perfect but it sounds like you might have some prejudice that you need to over look.

I just got an edge pro apex and went to touch up a Spyderco and had to lower it down to about 12 per side. I don't think you will need to reprofile an edge like that. Which is good because there have been some independent tests showing this particular ZDP blade to be coming out at 64 rockwell hardness.
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I don't WANT a hard blade. I edc a DPx HEST at 58 Rockwell. VG10 is the one stainless I think I will ever go back to. All of the models I have ever been interested in from Spyderco come with hallow grinds. No thanks. I don't know where you got the idea I was looking for a superhard letter opener because I neither implied I wanted one or any of the characteristics of one. I'm just sick of people asking for something in the general forums and 9/10 people rub the wonders of spyderco in their face. If Spyderco had a reasonably priced (60-70 dollars) flat ground VG10 blade with a simple liner lock and flipper, with naked stainless handles, then I might be interested. Until then...
 
I agree I have yet to see a spyderco that I wanted to buy. There are several spyderco dealers around here, so I've had the opportunity to check out many spyderco's and everyone has seemed overpriced.
 
xounlistedxox said:
I understand the concept of these layered steels very well. The purpose of sandwiching 3v in between s30v would be for the s30v to protect the 3v from rusting... which it does very easily rust. It may not be traditional like using 420 as the "bread" of the sandwich, but it is a concept that would be awesome and look a lot better than some sort of powder coating to protect most carbon steels.
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420 is both more corrosion resistant and tougher than S30V.
S30V is much more expensive to buy the material and to process.

So your proposed sandwich would decrease the performance while increasing the cost.
This is not generally perceived to be a winning combination.

And whatever Spyderco has to do with a question about San Mai Steel I cannot imagine.
 
I have knives in both s30v and 3v and both perform very well and I'm sure combining the two would work perfectly. Cost is no option when getting exactly what you want in any tool.
 
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