Sandvik 14C28N and S30V

[KennyB]

So I've seen a few threads here and there ( none that I can find... is it just me or does the search feature kind of suck ) where people were talking about the differences between these two steels and I saw a lot of people suggesting it's easier to get 14c "razor sharp" and some suggest that because of the carbides S30V just won't get as fine.

Anyway, my two favorite EDCs come in these flavors of steel, and for the first time last night I was noticing that the 14c seemed a little bit sharper. Liking things to be equal, I started stropping up my blade in S30V, but couldn't quite get it to perform like 14c.

The difference seems to be with that very misleading paper-cut test again. I can push-cut through an entire page of phone book paper with the 14c and it feels smooth as butter,and I don't really need to work on keeping the paper straight up too hard. On the other hand, the S30V would sometimes press the paper down, and it felt very jumpy comparatively, even though it too push-cut all the way down.

So I was curious, wondering if there's something in my technique that's not getting the blade in S30V "as sharp", if the test is just misleading, or if it's in the steel itself because after a while I started going back to recalling people talking about 14c as if it was "razor blade steel" and mentioning S30V keeping a "toothy" edge because of the carbides.

Personally I think that I'm not really at the level of refinement where the carbides would start causing this effect as I sharpen on 1K waterstone and then strop on chromium oxide until I get a fairly shiny polish and can shave with the edge. I'm just curious as to whether it actually could be the differences in the steels at this point versus difference in my technique with them. Both knives are as sharp as I need them, but in the ambition to get things as sharp as I can get them I'm finding my blade in 14c outshining the one in s30v, and I'm not really sure why. Both are ground to the same angle, on the same type of abrasive, the only difference I can see is that the edge on the 14c is slightly more convex than the edge on my s30v; that and the 14c is a wharncliffe blade, and the s30v is a drop-point, so it's probably easier to control the one in 14c.

Anyway, no real problem, just curious as to what's making one knife have a finer edge than the other, and with all the misinformation about steel flying around I thought I'd see what people thought about that theory.

 

[THG]

that and the 14c is a wharncliffe blade, and the s30v is a drop-point, so it's probably easier to control the one in 14c.

I had this in mind as I was reading your first paragraph. The blade style can have a lot to do with how well you can sharpen a knife, depending on your skills. Personally, I have a bit of a harder time with knives that have more belly.

What are the two knives, by the way? I'm guessing the Needs Work, and what else?

 

[David Martin]

Kenny, I know that the Sandvik steels were discussed and they (the steel) will take a much finer edge than most any steel . Their steels are razor blade steel . Even though it doesn't have many elements in it like S30V . I'd still consider S30V a fine grain steel just not as fine as the Sandvik steels . I've noticed S30V is more toothy as well . However, I wonder (don't think) if the edge retention of the Sandvik steels are at the same level as the CPM steels . Like most things its a trade off . Plus, sharpening technique does play a big role . DM

 

[KennyB]

I had this in mind as I was reading your first paragraph. The blade style can have a lot to do with how well you can sharpen a knife, depending on your skills. Personally, I have a bit of a harder time with knives that have more belly.

What are the two knives, by the way? I'm guessing the Needs Work, and what else?

Yep, Needs Work--love that little knife. The S30V knife is a Benchmade Kulgera.

David Martin,

I don't really let my blades get dull enough to be able to comment on edge retention issues, except that my Kulgera will seem to make slicing cuts forever. I'll use it for a few weeks and it won't even seem like it has dulled until I try to shave with it or I get obsessive and start stropping it and notice the wear. I've heard people say this is because the Vanadium carbides, but I don't know if that's just theory or actual science.

Either way, I have definitely found my blade in 14C taking a finer edge than all the others, and since I had heard that being the case so often, it made me wonder if perhaps it wasn't just all hype about steel and that there was really something to it.

One thing that makes me lean toward it actually being the steel, is that I free-handed the edge that I have on my 14C blade, but on my S30V blade I've had edges that were done in a jig that were not as sharp as the edge on my 14C blade.

 

[Jason B.]

All, ALL! steels will reach similar levels of sharpness and polish. The difference will come from the abrasives used and the grit finished at.

The 14c is easier to sharpen and polish with "average" tools where the S30V is not. I'm actually surprised most find stropping with Cro to be effective on S30V, its one of the steels that made me switch to diamond compounds. To get S30V to the same level of 14c with your equipment expect at least 3x the amount of sharpening time.

S30V and like steels are also NOT forgiving like 14c and other "standard" steels. You can strop out a mistake on something like 14c, that's something that's just not happening with S30V.

Because of the difference in steels 14c will get sharper but it won't be uber sharper.

Also, keep in mind that even slight thickness differences of the blades will have dramatic effects on its "feel" of sharpness.

 

[KennyB]

All, ALL! steels will reach similar levels of sharpness and polish. The difference will come from the abrasives used and the grit finished at.

The 14c is easier to sharpen and polish with "average" tools where the S30V is not. I'm actually surprised most find stropping with Cro to be effective on S30V, its one of the steels that made me switch to diamond compounds. To get S30V to the same level of 14c with your equipment expect at least 3x the amount of sharpening time.

S30V and like steels are also NOT forgiving like 14c and other "standard" steels. You can strop out a mistake on something like 14c, that's something that's just not happening with S30V.

Because of the difference in steels 14c will get sharper but it won't be uber sharper.

Also, keep in mind that even slight thickness differences of the blades will have dramatic effects on its "feel" of sharpness.

Yeah, I've often observed the difference in the amount of sharpening that S30V requires, but I don't do things by a standard of say 100 strokes and compare sharpness. Right now the 14C is at 100 strokes stropped, and the S30V at 400, and the S30V still hasn't quite caught up. It's close though, so maybe I just need 100 more to get it there? Not that I would do that, just saying, perhaps the disproportionate amount I knew I would need to strop is just a bit more disproportionate than I thought?

Is it more difficult to make mistakes on S30V as well as it is to take them out? I've never really thought about it until now, but when thinking about the idea of making a mistake like rolling the edge over that was too difficult to sharpen out, wouldn't it be just as difficult to make the edge roll with that amount of wear and abrasion? Wouldn't its wear resistance just make the effect of rolling the edge that much slighter and therefore be just as easy to take out? I don't know if that makes a lot of sense reading it, but it's the best I could articulate it.

I guess a better way of asking what I was getting at before is this... Suppose you had razor blade blanks, one in S30V and the other in 14C. The geometry was exactly the same, down to the edge width. Let's say that was .03 microns, I think that's what they had the razor blades at in the Verhoeven study. At those specific and identical dimensions, would the carbide in S30V make it cut any more roughly? If so would it even be perceivable to the user?

I mean, I think the sharpening inconsistencies could explain the inconsistencies of the two blades and steels cutting paper, but it just seemed too coincidental to me that the steel people propose to be "toothy" was making what felt like jumpy cuts, while the "razor blade steel" had no perceivable resistance behind it. It seemed to lend credence to the idea anyway.

In any case, I think with my specific knives the actual edge thickness is probably the real difference. I've only sharpened the Needs Work once after its initial reprofiling. I've reprofiled the Kulgera three times, and sharpened more than that. So I'm pretty sure the edge is thicker on the Kulgera, not to mention having much wider bevels. On to top of that, the Needs Work edge is probably thinner though I'm not able to measure it; I just say this based on the freakishly thin tip.

 

[pwet]

+1 on the equipement.

1k to 0,5 micron is a big jump. on simple steels with not much wear resistance you get a nice slicing edge just polished enough not to tear, that's what i do to my shirogami slicer at work, it's great for protein. but s30v is too wear resistant to benefit much from stropping right after 1k. to get the same edge you should probably ad a stone in the 3 to 5k range, this could level the performance of your 2 knives.

 

[Jason B.]

With exact steel examples the S30V would probably get as sharp if not sharper. The difference would come in how they wear, this is the point where the carbides and the toothyness factors come in. As S30V wears it gets what I like to call the chainsaw effect, its why 14c keeps a sharp feel and steels like S30V get toothy. Its just a different wear characteristic.

Without being able to view your edges its hard to say why your S30V blade is having issues. But from what your explaining it sounds like you haven't completed the edge on your stone, missing the apex by microns, literary. If you looked at your edge under a microscope you would see your sharpened bevels come all the way to the edge but the edge itself would be rough and look used. This is that rough feeling and why stropping seems to be doing very little to improve it.

Also remember you are jumping 49,000 grit to your strop

 

[Noctis3880]

Seems to me that you need to spend more time sharpening your S30V on finer stones. I have ZDP-189 and M390 which are both wear resistant carbide steels. Both polish up to hair popping sharpness off my paper wheels. I don't have much problem doing the same on my ZT 0350CB in Elmax and ZT 0301 in S30V.

It's sharpening my Buck Vantage Pro in S30V freehand that I begin to notice the difference. That small little knife took a LOT longer than the cheap chinese meat cleaver I sharpened, and the resulting edge, while it could push cut paper, didn't pop hairs. But I can see from the leftover scratch patterns that I need to spend more time on the EF DMT stone as well as my japanese high grit waterstones.

 

[THG]

Also keep in mind that the Needs Work has a REALLY thin edge. The hollow grind on that knife is so thin, you might not realize it, but the edge is actually thinner than the FFG Delica. I haven't seen many production knives with edges as thin as the Needs Work, so no doubt it's a better slicer.

 

[knarfeng]

So I've seen a few threads here and there ( none that I can find... is it just me or does the search feature kind of suck ) where people were talking about the differences between these two steels and I saw a lot of people suggesting it's easier to get 14c "razor sharp" and some suggest that because of the carbides S30V just won't get as fine.

Anyway, my two favorite EDCs come in these flavors of steel, and for the first time last night I was noticing that the 14c seemed a little bit sharper. Liking things to be equal, I started stropping up my blade in S30V, but couldn't quite get it to perform like 14c.

The difference seems to be with that very misleading paper-cut test again. I can push-cut through an entire page of phone book paper with the 14c and it feels smooth as butter,and I don't really need to work on keeping the paper straight up too hard. On the other hand, the S30V would sometimes press the paper down, and it felt very jumpy comparatively, even though it too push-cut all the way down.

So I was curious, wondering if there's something in my technique that's not getting the blade in S30V "as sharp", if the test is just misleading, or if it's in the steel itself because after a while I started going back to recalling people talking about 14c as if it was "razor blade steel" and mentioning S30V keeping a "toothy" edge because of the carbides.

Personally I think that I'm not really at the level of refinement where the carbides would start causing this effect as I sharpen on 1K waterstone and then strop on chromium oxide until I get a fairly shiny polish and can shave with the edge. I'm just curious as to whether it actually could be the differences in the steels at this point versus difference in my technique with them. Both knives are as sharp as I need them, but in the ambition to get things as sharp as I can get them I'm finding my blade in 14c outshining the one in s30v, and I'm not really sure why. Both are ground to the same angle, on the same type of abrasive, the only difference I can see is that the edge on the 14c is slightly more convex than the edge on my s30v; that and the 14c is a wharncliffe blade, and the s30v is a drop-point, so it's probably easier to control the one in 14c.

Anyway, no real problem, just curious as to what's making one knife have a finer edge than the other, and with all the misinformation about steel flying around I thought I'd see what people thought about that theory.

I have noticed the same with 14C28N and S30V.
To be truthful, I have made those same observations about 14C28N compared to any alloy with more than 0.8% Carbon. Alloys with carbon contents above 0.8% form carbides.

The 14C28N does not have carbides. As David Martin pointed out, it is most similar to 13C26, a razor-blade steel. Such alloys take a very fine edge with little work. While it is obviously possible to use diamond media to get to as fine an edge on carbide alloys, those carbide alloys lose that razor edge faster than razor alloys. (forgive the tags, it is easier than writing out the names).

To me it depends on what you want out of a steel. If I want an uber fine edge, I will look to a razor steel because it's going to hold that razor edge longer than a carbide steel. On the other hand, if I want to cut through abrasive materials, such as when skinning an animal, I will use a carbide steel, but won't put a razor edge on it. And it will hold that sharp, but not razor, edge a long time, longer than a razor blade steel.

 

[Incahiker]

I like CPM-154. I gets as super fine an edge as any razor blade steel I have tried (sandviks), and it also holds the fine edge just as long and then holds a working edge even longer. CPM-154 is pretty much the best of both worlds to me. It was treated by Paul Bos, so..... it is very very nice. And yes, S30V does lose that hair popping sharpness faster then bucks 420HC, but it will keep that working edge for a while. I like S30V fine, but I like cpm-154 better.