thombrogan said:
I was surprized to see that the edge retention on the Temperance was almost identical to the Military.
Phil Wilson was one of the first people I discussed this with in great detail, specifically comparing different high end alloys at different hardness levels. He found that even if you went really extreme with something like S90V, if you let it get soft (low fifties) the edge would just roll and thus the edge retention would be poor. He also found the opposite to be true as well, noting BG-42 compared well to S90V when BG-42 was also ran very hard (its gets up to 64 HRC).
Alvin Johnson had discussed this in retail on rec.knives years before, specifically Mike Swaim and others using his knives found far greater edge retention with harder plain carbon steels than many of the higher alloy stainless blades (heat treated by Bos and ground by Alvin). Goddard also noted losses with even one HRC point. I saw it in gross detail on Kirks knives where a few HRC points put a blade in a different class.
Jerry Busse also has long promoted a similar issue, knowing on a large knife the edge doesn't wear down but often chips away, which is why they looked long and hard to get a really tough base of performance, as without this all the wear resistance in the world gives you nothing but really wear resistanct chips of steel. I should probably give him credit for starting me down the path of looking away from wear resistance and realizing that edge retention isn't nearly that simple.
S30V has advantages over VG-10 though as noted, with custom makers are getting it to 62+ HRC, plus it simply is a bigger selling point. Just like now it is hard to sell ATS-34, regardless of the fact that when properly heat treated the actual performance gains of the new steels are little to none, in fact some of them like S30V look to be worse in some respects like ductility, but a lot of that is due to the heat treatment, just like Benchmades harder than average ATS-34 thick edges gave it a poor image for cutting ability and durability.
General, yes, it is a really impressive cutting blade, like many of Spyderco's folders, the Spyderco Bill Moran is another such high performance lightweight small fixed blade.
Yes, the NIB sharpness was very high, in general Spyderco is well above average in this regard, not all custom makers can consistently ship blades as sharp NIB.
-Cliff
