Recommendation? Super Steel for Slaughter and Butchery?

dtoro said:
Cutting necks is the most of it, but the work is not always in a processing factory setting and I want a knife that does acceptable (kosher) neck work, but also will tolerate primal butcher cuts and the occasional bone smack.

Who is Peter and what is Delta 3v?
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Peters Heat Treatment, out of Pennsylvania. Delta 3v is 3v steel given a nonstandard type of heat treatment that results in a terribly tough blade that, in my experience, is pretty hard to damage and quite easy to return to scary sharp. It's my understanding that the treatment isn't proprietary to the shop that developed it, so it may be available to the common man. I mean, if survive!knives is allowed to use it on their gear without making the originator mad, then anyone should be able to order that treat from Peters for their custom 3v steel.
I asked once, and thats the way I understood the response from CPK.

Here's my thought, tho.. a thin butchering blade isnt going to last forever with all that required sharpening. Honestly, i dont understand how there could be 200 year old knives that did this because they should probably be looking like an ice pick and be replaced after a few years of use and sharpening. Something you'd never see in an insulators tool bucket is a knife more than 2 years old because it's sharpened all the time till its gone, so Im just going by that experience. You cant cut insulation with a compromised knife, so they get kept as razors, plus lots of touchups. Those guys just buy old hickory butcher knives in bundles to get around that. I know livestock hair isnt quite as abrasive as glass fibers, but still I think the same ideas hold.
Someone may point out those knives are soft, so they get worn down fast. True, but if they were glass hard, they're going to disappear faster because you have to remove more metal to fix a chip than a slight roll.
AEB-L can be made hard enough to support a keen edge, but its super fine grain makes it a bit harder to chip out at a good working hardness, plus its so easy to sharpen with regular stones. Delta 3v is definitely tough and chip resistant at pretty high hardness and retains an apex really well during normal use. I would say both are stainless enough to tolerate blood with regular washing.
The Delta 3v will be tougher, the AEB-L might be easier to sharpen to a sharper edge, both are among my favorite knife steels so I could be biased.

All that said, i think there are far less cruel ( and many that are moreso) ways to dispatch livestock. Having observed the difference in results, I'd rather take an axe or an overpowered rifle round to the brain stem than have my throat cut any day, personally.
 
Check out S90V. The spyderco Southfork in S90V, by Phil Wilson is a great steel that many have used for slaughter/butchering. I've been very pleased in my use of S90V. I've seen a few videos of breaking down a cow with S90V and I've butchered my share using it. No complaints.
 
patrickguignot said:
According to the tests on edge retention done by Larrin, that's not true.
The score for LC200N is 380 TCC.
The score for S30V is 568 TCC.
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Larrin ran the steels, including S30V, at a (nearly) uniform hardness higher than most manufacturers use, to try to reduce that variable. His testing is closer to “best case” performance than Pete’s, which is done with real-world heat treatments.
 
AndreLinoge said:
Peters Heat Treatment, out of Pennsylvania. Delta 3v is 3v steel given a nonstandard type of heat treatment that results in a terribly tough blade that, in my experience, is pretty hard to damage and quite easy to return to scary sharp. It's my understanding that the treatment isn't proprietary to the shop that developed it, so it may be available to the common man. I mean, if survive!knives is allowed to use it on their gear without making the originator mad, then anyone should be able to order that treat from Peters for their custom 3v steel.
I asked once, and thats the way I understood the response from CPK.

Here's my thought, tho.. a thin butchering blade isnt going to last forever with all that required sharpening. Honestly, i dont understand how there could be 200 year old knives that did this because they should probably be looking like an ice pick and be replaced after a few years of use and sharpening. Something you'd never see in an insulators tool bucket is a knife more than 2 years old because it's sharpened all the time till its gone, so Im just going by that experience. You cant cut insulation with a compromised knife, so they get kept as razors, plus lots of touchups. Those guys just buy old hickory butcher knives in bundles to get around that. I know livestock hair isnt quite as abrasive as glass fibers, but still I think the same ideas hold.
Someone may point out those knives are soft, so they get worn down fast. True, but if they were glass hard, they're going to disappear faster because you have to remove more metal to fix a chip than a slight roll.
AEB-L can be made hard enough to support a keen edge, but its super fine grain makes it a bit harder to chip out at a good working hardness, plus its so easy to sharpen with regular stones. Delta 3v is definitely tough and chip resistant at pretty high hardness and retains an apex really well during normal use. I would say both are stainless enough to tolerate blood with regular washing.
The Delta 3v will be tougher, the AEB-L might be easier to sharpen to a sharper edge, both are among my favorite knife steels so I could be biased.

All that said, i think there are far less cruel ( and many that are moreso) ways to dispatch livestock. Having observed the difference in results, I'd rather take an axe or an overpowered rifle round to the brain stem than have my throat cut any day, personally.
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Thank you for taking the time, this is most informative. Putting 3v on the short list with AEB-L, LC200N and Vanax.

Regarding old blades being sharpened down to nothing in older times, I submit that their survival may be due to the following: (1) people consumed a lot less meat for economic and religious reasons like fasting (2) used a dedicated knife for slaughter and a different knife for butchery, as I do, since slicing sharpness and push-cut bone-splitting sharpness are quite different things, and (3) consumed the animal more primally in slow roast (often in public ovens) than broken down according to modern retail cuts for private steak feasts. I don't speak with certainty here, just conjecture.

Regarding humanity of slaughter, much depends on the art and attention of the slaughterer to the animal rather than on the tool and the method per se. I happen to agree somewhat with you in the case of modern mass slaughter and processing. But in the micro, hunting and tracking deer, or shooting a pig in the head at the trough, I am less certain. And as I am learning on this forum, knife making has a similar contingency; a poor steel in a master's hand trumps finer steel worked by the less adept. Hence my request for makers, as well as steels.

Again, thanks for the detailed answer.
 
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Pomsbz said:
I've handled a bunch of 200 year old Iraqi shechita (slaughter) knives, they look like regular carbon steel, no idea what or which though. They were still paper cutting sharp. No kidding. I had photos of them somewhere but no idea where the pics are any more. :(
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If you could find these photos, I would be much obliged. I have contacted two Jewish history professors with questions regarding old shechita practice in Europe (ashkenaz) during the period of the religious wars. I figure the Venetian and Izmiri Jews had access to wootz if they could afford it, but the norther ashkenazim (Vermes, Maintz) used inferior crucible steels. I wonder if that's true.
 
dtoro said:
If you could find these photos, I would be much obliged. I have contacted two Jewish history professors with questions regarding old shechita practice in Europe (ashkenaz) during the period of the religious wars. I figure the Venetian and Izmiri Jews had access to wootz if they could afford it, but the norther ashkenazim (Vermes, Maintz) used inferior crucible steels. I wonder if that's true.
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I had a good look on Friday but couldn't find them sorry. They were not that old though, just a couple of hundred years.
 
Read this piece about modern Russian made wootz/bulat:
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_quest/f_wsteel/lounyov.htm
Contact info is in there too.

Claims:

- Their softest wootz has an average hardness of 62-63 HRC
- A blade made of it easily scratches glass, cuts nails without notches and can be bent more than by 120 degrees without residual deformations.
- A wootz steel knife with 1% of carbon (the softest Wootz they are making), can slice a screwdriver from a rod made of U10A steel.
- Acoustic properties: Hardened strip of wootz steel, containing 2% of carbon, sounds with steady tone at least for 3-4 minutes.
 
joeldworkin307 said:
There are a number of custom makers on this forum that can make a custom blade for shechita. I would imagine a thin nakiri profile (straight edge, flat end) with a zero edge bevel would do the job nicely. I am really interested to see what you end up doing with this. My wife is a conservative rabbi and has agreed to eat meat from animals I slaughter if I ever receive proper training. With Covid putting my industry (youth climbing and experiential ed) on some pretty tight restrictions, now may be the best time to seek out a shochet looking to teach.
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There was a big argument in Europe 100s of years ago between Lithuania Jew and Polish Jews if you can use a ritual knife that is only sharpened on 1 side. The old custom in America was to use blades only sharpened on one side. However now everyone uses knifes sharpened on both sides. (there are still a handful of people that still do 1 side) It would be problematic know to use a single sided knife.
 
kwackster said:
Claims:

- Their softest wootz has an average hardness of 62-63 HRC
- A blade made of it easily scratches glass, cuts nails without notches and can be bent more than by 120 degrees without residual deformations.
- A wootz steel knife with 1% of carbon (the softest Wootz they are making), can slice a screwdriver from a rod made of U10A steel.
- Acoustic properties: Hardened strip of wootz steel, containing 2% of carbon, sounds with steady tone at least for 3-4 minutes.
Click to expand...
So... Magic? 😂
 
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