steel vs steel

bladsmth said:
I still stand by my oft repeated recommendation - "For most knifemakers, three steels can make 99.9% of any knife you would ever want. IF you learn how to work them properly." Find the three that fit you and your equipment. Get them from a reliable source and in enough quantity to assure consistent results. Learn their every trait and secret in HT and edge ability.
One simple carbon type ( eg. 1084,5160/O-1)
One high carbon type ( eg. 1095/W2/Hitachi white/52100)
One high alloy stainless type ( eg. K390/CPM-S35VN/elmax/AEBL/etc.)
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Right on. Furthermore, a studious maker could choose only one of those and stay happy and busy the rest of his career. :thumbup:

Sometimes knife users challenge themselves to use only one knife for everything for a period of weeks or months, to really learn its attributes and drawbacks. As a maker, I think it would be fascinating to make one or two test pieces of every standard model out of one steel, for the same general purpose... hmm.........
 
Just like the supermodels........I would LOVE TO TRY THEM ALL!!!!! There can be consequences of trying out all the steels, just like their can be consequences of trying out all the girls!!! But I must learn for myself!!!! I get a kick out of guys who get a kick out of guys who want to play with various steel.
 
I think that is an excellent analogy but you have to take into account that some of us are still in the "dating phase" in which case I think it is good to do some thorough research and try more than one apple on the tree..
 
I am not saying don't date.....just date the ones that you are compatible with. Take it from a much older man...it is wisest to date one at a time. Talk to her friends and find out what she likes and doesn't like, and what she is willing to do and not do. Then, stay with each one long enough to ring her chimes....metallurgically speaking :)
 
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I think the biggest reason to use anything beyond good carbon steel is convenience (seriously, I don't have time after the 5th 13 hour shift to carefully sharpen my knives) and marketing. There's a reason the Mule program by Spyderco is so highly thought of. If you're not familiar, Spyderco does the exact same knife (grind, geometry, profile, etc), only they choose a different steel every year. They leave it without scales and sell them at cost. They've done them in simple steels up to the most exotic steels and do the best ht they can. I've had a few and they are awesome.

Just mentioning it in case anyone wants to see how it's done by a production company. It's also interesting to see the results of tests done with the knives and customer reactions.

Spyderco is well regarded for their effort to cater to the "knife knuts", "steel snobs" or whatever you want to call the enthusiasts.
 
I totally get the idea of pick a steel and learn it....all you can about it. I am not going to do that. It's like saying, pick ONE car......be it an Porsche, a Maserati, a Lamborghini, or a Ferrari.......stick with ONE car and learn all you can about it. Forget about the rest. Or, more along the lines of what Stacy was saying, pick a Pinto, a Toyota truck, or an Infiniti. Drive those three cars until you know all about it, inside and out, before moving on to others. Sorry.....it aint' gonna happen. I'm not out to become an expert on any one steel. I want to try the ones that I am attracted to. Some cars have better performance than other cars.....NO MATTER what kind of after market computer performance chip I buy for an Accord.....it still isn't going to out perform the Ferrari. NO MATTER what kind of heat treat protocol I apply to 1084, it won't come close to the performance of CPM M4. I say that without even touching CPM M4, just going by the numbers. I may not be the best race car driver in the world (steel expert or heat treat expert), but put me in a Ferrari (cpm m4) and I CAN and WILL beat the pants off of (insert famous race car driver here) driving a ford truck.

I have no illusions of becoming a house hold name in the knife making industry. If that were the case, I would HIGHLY consider exactly what has been said.....pick one or three steels and stick with those. The CPM M4 project is for myself.....to make a knife for my hunting/outdoor needs that has crazy edge retention with relatively high toughness. Can W2 do that....yes to a degree. 52100? Same thing. Can 52100 out perform CPM M4? Of course that is heat treat/geometry dependent. But the numbers show crazy hard carbides...crazy ridiculous edge retention...and I want one....for myself.
 
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samuraistuart said:
But the numbers show crazy hard carbides...crazy ridiculous edge retention...and I want one....for myself.
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...and you're right for wanting to. How can we possibly talk about this stuff without having tried it, at least? There are valid reasons that passionate engineers came up with this stuff.
 
I find the metallurgical side of this craft most fascinating. Reading the technical literature behind STEEL X and STEEL Y sparks my curiosity like no other. I did some searching on here (and everywhere) for forgeable exotics and found one that's quite interesting and impossible to find in "stock removal" dimensions... It's called DC53, and while it's literature probably makes it more attractive than it really is. I'd like to make a couple of blades out of it, along with a couple of dies and punches.



Then there's that little tidbit that I don't partake in any of these pursuits with the intention of having, gaining, or attracting new customers/clientele. I really do commend the makers that work outside the comfort of "classics", as the R&D and sharing of new found knowledge is priceless to those of us that are curious.
 
My Rambling ...

I started with knife making with thoughts similar to yours. First s90v then cpm-m4 then hope to get s110v and what-if about cpm-rex121. I had fun with my large HF propane torch ht. Upgraded to an Evenheat + Dewar provides even more funs with more high alloy steels: 3v, k390, elmax, 20cv, s35vn, s110v, cpmrex121(soon), etc.. If I started all over again, I would start out with K390(decent corrosion resistant) or 20cv/m390 (stainless).

CPM-M4 disappointed me and took a while to realized... CPM-M4 alloying % is good but can't even match the lowly D2, 20cv higher, k390/s90v/10v/s110v are way up there. Let's do the math.

M4: 1.42%C, 4%V, 5%W, 5.25%Mo, 4%Cr. Which translate (via atomic weight) to atom count per 1000: 118.2C, 76.9Cr, 78.5V, 29.9W, 55Mo. Simple subtraction 0.6%C (50 atoms) taken by the ferrite matrix, leaving 68C to alloying up carbide former (V,W,Mo,Cr). Add some carbide precipitation say up to 10 more carbon, thus total up to 78 carbides/1000.

Not taking carbide size/aggregation into account and uncommon carbide formula... D2 would has about 88 carbides/1000. 20cv has 118. K390 has 164. S110V as 193.

And of course toughness crash-in the scene and demanded equality, oh hey Vanadis4E looks well balanced but traded/lost the stainless tag.

My present day 52100/1095/W2/CruV knives out perform my s110v, k390 in 2 of 3 tests (Win: cardboard, Win: wood tasks, Lose: rope of rolled-up old denim jean). For the first 2 tests, CPM-M4 knives (62 to 65.5rc) are dusted-up somewhere in the rear mirror. Yes, it got a W (against 52100/1095/W2) for the 3rd test. From 30K ft, a blade is mostly consists of steel matrix, so fine-tune and super it, the performance reward can be much more substantial than adding more alloying elements (and yeah, need to throw in more Si to keep/refine grain small - golden handcuff eh:rolleyes:)


samuraistuart said:
...
I have no illusions of becoming a house hold name in the knife making industry. If that were the case, I would HIGHLY consider exactly what has been said.....pick one or three steels and stick with those. The CPM M4 project is for myself.....to make a knife for my hunting/outdoor needs that has crazy edge retention with relatively high toughness. Can W2 do that....yes to a degree. 52100? Same thing. Can 52100 out perform CPM M4? Of course that is heat treat/geometry dependent. But the numbers show crazy hard carbides...crazy ridiculous edge retention...and I want one....for myself.
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samuraistuart said:
but put me in a Ferrari (cpm m4) and I CAN and WILL beat the pants off of (insert famous race car driver here) driving a ford truck.

I
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For the record, I strongly disagree if the pro is driving my SVT Lightning. The suspension in my truck isn't as good as your Ferrari, but my supercharged truck most likely has more power. :p :D
 
I had to look up SVT Lightning. Looks pretty darn speedy! But in all seriousness, I totally agree with Mr Alpet about really learning one steel. The thing I say to that tho, with the info that is freely available...and MUCH appreciated by myself and probably not appreciated enough by others...that the idea of spending one's life to learn one or three steels sure seems like a waste of time, if one wanted to explore his options. What I am saying is that, generalizing, heat treat for knives is pretty straight forward. I think once one understands what normalizing does, thermal cycling, proper aust temp and quench variables, proper temper temps and cryo if called for, there is only so much to a certain knife. Do I heat treat/design a knife for a slicing instrument or do I want it to be super tough ala chopper or some where in between. Once the geometry and heat treat are nailed for the application (again....I see that info online from very generous and well informed sources....Stacy being one....Kevin another....Don....I hate naming names because I leave people out) the only other variable a hard charging knife maker can mess with is the steel. And to learn the differences between super fine grained steel like 52100, W2, Shiro and carbide clustered steels like CPM M4 and D2 and the like, how they perform, what kind of edges they prefer. yada yada.
 
All these car analogies leaves me with just a single question...









...who is the Stig of knifemaking?
 
iamstig-300x150.jpg


(Not really)
 

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Strigamort said:
M4 is my favorite user steel. It responds well to stropping (I was surprised) and has great stability at lean sharpening angles at high hardness. I would love to get a chunk and make a nice wharncliffe with it.
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I noted the same.
I just did a run of general utility knives at 63rc and some skinners at 65rc, sharpening with diamond stones is easy and it responds well to a good strop with diamond paste on it. The skinners were push cutting phone book paper.
Defiantly do as much as you can finishing wise before HT it is imposable to hand finish at 65rc normal sand paper just skates over the steel.
 
I should mention that my experience hasn't been with working the stuff on a grinder. I'm coming from the perspective of using it a lot and sharpening it a lot.

I reprofiled a 64-65hrc 4" blade from something well over 30° to 28° using the 120 silicone carbide stone on an edge pro. Diamonds would have been really nice, but it actually wasn't that bad. The retention was a big surprise given the hardness and chemistry. S30v was a nightmare with a similar stone and doesn't seem to last as long in terms of pure edge retention. Cutting material is obviously a big factor. Most of what I cut is plastic strapping and zip ties(a very mean thing to do to steel!), cardboard sheets (very abrasive) and plastic wrap (piece of cake). My Spyderco at 30° chipped on cardboard of all things. M4 shrugs everything that I've thrown at it off.

For more quantitative data on many steels look at Ankerson's thread in the reviews forum. I've seen no better test than his. Yes you could poke holes here and there if you're so inclined, but no one else has gone to the lengths that he has to define specific steels. Mete has also done a ton of work in that regard.

There are a lot of steels that I've tried, many more that I haven't, but m4 is some of the best I've found period.

One other thing. I hate coatings on any blade. Cerakote is some tough stuff. Very resistant to chemicals too. Cool thing about m4 is that it isn't stainless so to remove the coating you can simply place the knife in vinegar and the coating will delaminate. Pitting is possible so you must be careful. This method is better imo than using abrasives because it retains the etched makers mark. Not really important information for a knife maker, but I found it interesting all the same.
 
bluntcut said:
From 30K ft, a blade is mostly consists of steel matrix, so fine-tune and super it, the performance reward can be much more substantial than adding more alloying elements (and yeah, need to throw in more Si to keep/refine grain small - golden handcuff eh:rolleyes:)
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I'm having a very hard time understanding what in the world you're trying to say. Frankly, you are not making any sense at all.

30,000 feet of what, exactly? :confused:
 
:confused:
bluntcut said:
My Rambling ...

I started with knife making with thoughts similar to yours. First s90v then cpm-m4 then hope to get s110v and what-if about cpm-rex121. I had fun with my large HF propane torch ht. Upgraded to an Evenheat + Dewar provides even more funs with more high alloy steels: 3v, k390, elmax, 20cv, s35vn, s110v, cpmrex121(soon), etc.. If I started all over again, I would start out with K390(decent corrosion resistant) or 20cv/m390 (stainless).

CPM-M4 disappointed me and took a while to realized... CPM-M4 alloying % is good but can't even match the lowly D2, 20cv higher, k390/s90v/10v/s110v are way up there. Let's do the math.

M4: 1.42%C, 4%V, 5%W, 5.25%Mo, 4%Cr. Which translate (via atomic weight) to atom count per 1000: 118.2C, 76.9Cr, 78.5V, 29.9W, 55Mo. Simple subtraction 0.6%C (50 atoms) taken by the ferrite matrix, leaving 68C to alloying up carbide former (V,W,Mo,Cr). Add some carbide precipitation say up to 10 more carbon, thus total up to 78 carbides/1000.

Not taking carbide size/aggregation into account and uncommon carbide formula... D2 would has about 88 carbides/1000. 20cv has 118. K390 has 164. S110V as 193.

And of course toughness crash-in the scene and demanded equality, oh hey Vanadis4E looks well balanced but traded/lost the stainless tag.

My present day 52100/1095/W2/CruV knives out perform my s110v, k390 in 2 of 3 tests (Win: cardboard, Win: wood tasks, Lose: rope of rolled-up old denim jean). For the first 2 tests, CPM-M4 knives (62 to 65.5rc) are dusted-up somewhere in the rear mirror. Yes, it got a W (against 52100/1095/W2) for the 3rd test. From 30K ft, a blade is mostly consists of steel matrix, so fine-tune and super it, the performance reward can be much more substantial than adding more alloying elements (and yeah, need to throw in more Si to keep/refine grain small - golden handcuff eh

:confused::confused::confused::confused:
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... I didn't want to say anything, as I'm always concerned it will be taken as a personal attack, but here goes...

Bluntcut, I've been reading your posts for a while, and I can't for the life of me determine what it is you're attempting to do. There doesn't ever appear to be any methodology or gathering of legitimate empirical evidence, it just seems as though you feel like providing the most severe quenches to steels which due to their makeup require obviously different handling, then throwing the results against the wall and seeing which one sticks to whatever arbitrary target you're supposedly aiming for. It's no wonder the simpler steels are working "better" for you - you've destroyed any chance the other steels may have through absurd heat treatments! Superquench for high alloy steels? Really?

Please outline your methods for us, so we may be able to find some sense in your posts, otherwise I fear all you're doing is confusing people.
 
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