Super Steels vs Regular Steels

I enjoyed the article as always. I have always kinda felt it to mean that by using CPM steels it allowed steel that would have been much to brittle to be used for knives and the other exotic stuff like talonite. But it is kinda a fad. It wasn't very long ago that S30v was the super steel of super steels and now it's kinda boring. It's more or less the new 440c, offered by every brand in almost every model and with a lot of sucky heat treatment to give it a bad name. What I find interesting is that all of the super stainless that I have tried seems to be lacking edge stability. It doesn't hold a fine edge well .

You mentioned the idea of developing some lower carbide stainless for knife making. That could be a really cool article looking at some options. You could even do 3 steels 1 for large high impact blades 1 for small blades and kitchen use and something in the middle. If it go enough support its possible that it could be crowd funded.
 
good article. part of 'Super Steel' is what forum you ask the question on. Go to a kitchen knife forum and the super steel is either Hitachi White or Hitachi Super Blue.
 
Interesting read. I misunderstood supersteels to be pm higher alloy steels that could not be made without the pm process. I never thought they were referring to stainless.

I do like working with the pm steels. If they could only get a hamon.....
 
I’m not sure there is any such thing as misunderstanding what super steel refers to. But there has been a surprisingly consistent working definition.
 
Very interesting.
I jumped on the Super Steel Wagon in 2010 when I made my first knives from M4 and S90V.
I have pretty much stayed with the High Alloy steels since then with only a few random knives in the basic steels like O1 and 1084.
The most interesting thing to me is that basically none of the "Super Steels" were intended for use in knives, most were developed for the plastics industry.
That is the reason wear resistance is the focus and not toughness.
Molten plastic is very abrasive and highly corrosive.

Great Article Larrin.
 
That's a good point, it doesn't seem like they need much toughness for the plastics industry.
 
I recall reading that Crucible had hitched their wagon to the automotive industry back in the day and that is a big reason that they went under during the crash. I seem to remember that they were not only supplying "super" steels for tooling but also for parts like valves.
 
Vanadis 4 extra and Caldie are used in the automotive industry, if my memory doesn’t fail me. In the chassis, I think.
 
Chris can you help me out? I want to buy I knife I saw you made and sold. You still selling?
 
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