Super steels anyone?

People tend to use that term to describe high carbide, high price, and/or exotic steels. This includes M390, K390, ZDP-189, Sliepner, Cpm-10v, S90v, S110v, S125vn, and CTS-204P among others.
 
They're the newest steels that knife-nuts use to justify purchasing "just one more knife" and then a week later, are on the hunt for another even more super steel knife.

Alternatively, they are the steels that raise the bar over current steels, either because they improve toughness (Infi, S7) hardness (HAP72, MaxaMet), wear resistance (S125V, A11, K294) or other factors, like corrosion resistance (H1). Super steels to me are just the natural progression in the pursuit of improvement.
 
It's a term that has no clear technical definition (afaIk)

This is what I base my interpretation of a super steel on (link) :thumbup:
 
The steel they came out with today that is "new and improved" over the steel they came out with yesterday = supersteel.

Check your VM's, dude, Mr. RevDevil has some valuable insight for you....
 
Well......

Interesting conversation.....

Most of the steels used in knives today aren't new by any means and that includes most of the so called super steels.

A lot of them have been used by custom knife makers for a very long time and before that were used in other parts of the industry that they were developed for in the 1st place.

The 1st PM steel, CPM 10V (A11) has been around since the 1970's and it's still in the top class in edge retention for knife blades, it's a very fine grained steel with a very high Vanadium content 10% with the ability to achieve high RC hardness in the 64-66 RC range with good edge stability and toughness. That's makes it excellent for knife blades that are to be used for cutting things when max edge retention is important.

So new is subjective really....

Some newer ones like S35VN, XHP and VG-10 as examples are newer, but really tweaked versions of existing steels one way or another.
 
I think it's just a selling gimmick that's been coined over the years to sell. There is no super steel, after hours and hours of reading on steels, I've learned most of the steels used in the knife industry has been around and used for years, they are however new to the knife world marking them as super steels. And oh my splitting head, I've read about all kinds of different methods of getting these steels to perform in the knife industry. One particular steel will perform differently by different makers and it goes on and on. That's why it's important to know who is making the knife and their method of making the steel out perform all others. Different steels have different attributes and flaws that if not treated properly will not perform.BUT, for people like me, who can't wait to see when the next knife will come out with a different steel and feed my addiction, it doesn't really matter as long as I'm confident it will be worth the price.
Since this is a almost endless topic, I will say one last thing: these steels are very expensive to make and drives the making process more difficult and costly.
 
To give you a car analogy these steels are the extremely high end performance cars in the knife world. Typically though when people refer to super steels they refer to the ones that are extremely wear resistant and don't need to be sharpened very often.

I be honest though it is better to learn how to properly sharpen a knife than to rely on "supersteels" so you can avoid sharpening which is what a lot of people tend to do from what I gather. This also gives you the option to do things like carry a very small stone on your keychain, credit card sized stone, or sandpaper in your wallet so on that one very rare occasion you use your EDC more than you planed and dulled it down you can quickly bring it back to sharp with that or even use the bottom of a mug. It opens a lot more doors for you in what you can carry than to get a wear resistant knife for those just in case moments you dull it because you had a lot of work to do you didn't plan on.
 
I searched here a while back about what is super steel.
Someone here (sorry cant remember who) said something like: A steel, the alloying contents of which are too great to be produced with a normal steel making process, and can only be satisfactorily made with the process of particle metallurgy.

That was as near as I found to a 'definition'.
 
Super steels come from supernovas. You can get carbon and iron just about anywhere. :D

"Once the core fails to produce enough energy to support the outer envelope of gasses the star explodes as a supernova producing the bulk of elements beyond iron. Production of elements from iron to uranium occurs within seconds in a supernova explosion."
Supernova nucleosynthesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Bob6794 said:
To give you a car analogy these steels are the extremely high end performance cars in the knife world. Typically though when people refer to super steels they refer to the ones that are extremely wear resistant and don't need to be sharpened very often.

I be honest though it is better to learn how to properly sharpen a knife than to rely on "supersteels" so you can avoid sharpening which is what a lot of people tend to do from what I gather. This also gives you the option to do things like carry a very small stone on your keychain, credit card sized stone, or sandpaper in your wallet so on that one very rare occasion you use your EDC more than you planed and dulled it down you can quickly bring it back to sharp with that or even use the bottom of a mug. It opens a lot more doors for you in what you can carry than to get a wear resistant knife for those just in case moments you dull it because you had a lot of work to do you didn't plan on.
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Well, one would argue that is the point of the super steel, to not have to sharpen it as much. I guess a comparison would be if a person switched to a full-synthetic high-mileage-interval oil for their car, but then just stuck with the same 3000 mile change. Yeah they're using better oil, but are they really reaping the benefits spending more money to change it just as often?

But the other aspect is that when cutting extremely abrasive materials some steels just aren't up to snuff to not fail in the first cut. Instead of "super steels" which tend to give the idea that they have whimsical super powers, "performance steel" is more in line.

There's other aspects to "super steels" though. H1 is super corrosive resistant. INFI is super tough.
 
KennyB said:
Well, one would argue that is the point of the super steel, to not have to sharpen it as much. I guess a comparison would be if a person switched to a full-synthetic high-mileage-interval oil for their car, but then just stuck with the same 3000 mile change. Yeah they're using better oil, but are they really reaping the benefits spending more money to change it just as often?

But the other aspect is that when cutting extremely abrasive materials some steels just aren't up to snuff to not fail in the first cut. Instead of "super steels" which tend to give the idea that they have whimsical super powers, "performance steel" is more in line.

There's other aspects to "super steels" though. H1 is super corrosive resistant. INFI is super tough.
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I was more referring to EDC usage, for specific jobs/tasks it may be more beneficial to get a certain blade steel to match the job like you mentioned how H1 is rust proof to my knowledge, INFI is known for toughness, S110V is known for wear resistance.

For normal EDC carry though I think learning how to sharpen is a wiser choice as it opens a lot more doors to what you can carry as you no longer worry about having a blade be sharp all day long just in case you have to use it heavily. It allows something like a SAK to be a lot more serviceable to me as I find them extremely easy to dull but you can sharpen them up in no time.
 
Ankerson said:
Don't fool yourself....

Not a sales gimmick like surgical steel was because the steels really do what they say they will.
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It's a sales gimmick because "super steel" doesn't mean anything definitive and it changes over time. "Super steel" is a relative term because you have to have a point of comparison. It's overused in marketing and poorly defined. The term itself is a sales generating buzzword.

The steels themselves, however, may offer excellent performance for specific tasks with their particular combination of attributes. There is no perfect steel for everything. So calling S110V or any other steel a super steel doesn't make sense when it's not ideal for every task. It might be a "super rope cutting" steel or a "super corrosion resistant" steel or "super high impact resistant" steel, but we need to be more specific instead of simply throwing labels around. If you aren't being specific then the term is vague and nothing more than a buzzword to drive sales.
 
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