Supersteels. Do we really need 'em?

SALTY said:
Sometimes less is more. I do prefer stainless steels for my pocket knives and, as CM stated 440C is fine, as is AUS-8, 154CM, ATS-34, VG-10 and other steels that, at one time were "super." I have knives in all of those steels and they suit me just fine, thank you.

For many of my uses, I am so spoiled with H-1 that it's hard to not have it swimming, diving, snorkeling, fishing, etc - but that is a special application steel IMO.

In fixed blades I like the carbon steels like 1095/1095 CroVan (loves me my Beckers), 52100, SK5, etc., etc. - all well performing forgiving easy to maintain blades.

Some of these alphabet soup new fangled "Super Steels" are kind of like a very small, two seat sports car - interesting and fun until you have to live with it day in and day out and then they're not all they're cracked up to be. Nothing wrong with them - just not the be all/end all once thought.
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Diamond sharpeners make supersteels as easy to maintain as older steels.
 
Chris, I do not disagree with you on that but maybe I'm just a simple guy when it comes to knives and am easy to please. The Super Steels may be better, but at least from my perspective, the margin of "better" pales by comparison to the loss of ability to merely drag on the bottom of a coffee cup or strop on the back of a legal pad maintainability. I have DMTs and a Lansky and some other items at home but have gotten so spoiled over the years with steels like 154CM and good old 1095 (and 1095 CroVan) not asking for much to get back to good ... at least good enough for my simple needs.
 
Last time I tried cutting 4" marine grade synthetic rope with 8cr13mov, it went from razor sharp to ZERO CUTTING before making it halfway through the rope. This really opened my eyes to the importance of edge retention. Having to re-sharpen twice to make one cut is not only annoying, but a possible safety concern. It all depends on how much use you plan on putting the blade through.
 
SALTY said:
Chris, I do not disagree with you on that but maybe I'm just a simple guy when it comes to knives and am easy to please. The Super Steels may be better, but at least from my perspective, the margin of "better" pales by comparison to the loss of ability to merely drag on the bottom of a coffee cup or strop on the back of a legal pad maintainability. I have DMTs and a Lansky and some other items at home but have gotten so spoiled over the years with steels like 154CM and good old 1095 (and 1095 CroVan) not asking for much to get back to good ... at least good enough for my simple needs.
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PSX_20180216_202034.jpg

Here are my most used knives, I have a few others but there for traveling and the like.
Top to bottom:
S30v
AUS 8
Old springs
S35vn
154CM
52100 San Mai

I don't love to sharpen just like I don't like to polish my boots or iron my clothes so diamonds make sharpening less time consuming. My former S110v PM2 probably took and extra couple minutes over my S35vn. While I'm sure most would touch up on the bottom of a coffee cup I have a small pocketable diamond plate in the Jeep if on the go. I know to each their own but diamonds really do make any knife easy to maintain.
 
I need supersteels for folding knives. For larger and fixed blades I’m fine with 5160, 1095, s-7 and even just plain old infi! My “need” may be in actual fact a “want,” but life is short and everyone’s got to have their own priorities imo.
 
Supersteel is one thing, proper heat treatment is another. I'd rather have a run of the mill steel that has been properly heat treated than a powder-out-the-wazoo steel with a botched heat treat. Case in point, I'm quite happy EDC'ing a Buck blade in 420HC since they always performed very well for me; can't say the same with knives from other vendors featuring high price, exotic steel.
 
The Mastiff said:
"Well , I do not know if this is super steel but after a month in the kitchen simple refuses to blunt .... and its VERY stainless :) HSS-E or M35 steel 67 Hrc and 1.8mm thick on spine"

Pretty super, yes. :)

It's M2 with 5% cobalt added. It's probably close to M4 and Spyderco's HAP 40 . Run at full hardness like that it should cut and slice a bunch.

Joe
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Well , some steel are made to cut , and they cut ............ six months later , still slice paper with easy ...and nobody anymore in my kitchen use another knife than this one ............I can feel some micro chips ......... :D
NBTorDL.jpg
 
Short answer short, for the thread title, yes.

To elaborate, some of these "super steels" aren't that hard to sharpen at all, just need diamond stones. XHP, for example, only took me 25-30 minutes to sharpen on my diamond stones earlier, and that's after I accidentally tried to cut through metal and severely dulled and chipped the edge. These steels all have their place and purpose. Necessary for everyone? No. But nice things aren't for everyone to begin with, that's the nature of any type of goods that we buy.
 
For some occupations and some materials, yes, a super steel maybe a need. For the general populace, most likely not, but it sure is fun to have options ( albeit dizzying sometimes)!
 
`br4dz- said:
Short answer short, for the thread title, yes.

To elaborate, some of these "super steels" aren't that hard to sharpen at all, just need diamond stones. XHP, for example, only took me 25-30 minutes to sharpen on my diamond stones earlier, and that's after I accidentally tried to cut through metal and severely dulled and chipped the edge. These steels all have their place and purpose. Necessary for everyone? No. But nice things aren't for everyone to begin with, that's the nature of any type of goods that we buy.
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Do not get me wrong , but WHY you need that much time ? I often read here, this steel is difficult to sharpen, this one even is more difficult ...... With Diamond ???? In 15 minutes I will put FIRST edge on freshly finished knife from HSS steel like M42 , M35 , M2 ....???? And all that with only 4 inch FINE DMT ....600mesh , ?
 
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91bravo said:
Supersteels...do we need them? Probably not. Do we want them? HELL yeah!
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We need supersteels just as much as people need cars with more than a 150 hp. Can you commute in a base model compact car? Sure. Is it as much fun as commuting in a Hellcat? Probably not.

Curious question, is there gonna be some apex steel, the end all be all? Something that can't be improved upon?
 
b00n said:
Curious question, is there gonna be some apex steel, the end all be all? Something that can't be improved upon?
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Only regarding one characteristic. You could approach a point where you could say "you won't get any more corrosion resistant than this", within reason. Same with toughness or edge retention, but for all 3, never. There's too many different combinations of ingredients. Even the most well rounded steels often don't cut it for people who value one characteristic much more than others.
 
Natlek said:
Do not get me wrong , but WHY you need that much time ? I often read here, this steel is difficult to sharpen, this one even is more difficult ...... With Diamond ???? In 15 minutes I will put FIRST edge on freshly finished knife from HSS steel like M42 , M35 , M2 ....???? And all that with only 4 inch FINE DMT ....600mesh , ?
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You can even use silicon carbide stones for your rough work without issue. Vanadium carbides are the only thing that give aluminum oxide and silicon carbide trouble, and those carbides are VERY tiny. That means that until your abrasives start to approach the size of the carbides, you can just abrade the steel matrix and those coarser abrasive grains will just scoop the little vanadium carbides out with the steel. You could technically even leave the edge coarse if you had to (if diamond wasn't available for finishing on) though the resulting performance wouldn't be as good as finishing on diamond to abrade the carbides at the apex.
 
Do we “need” super steels? I don’t think so, but they play a roll in companies trying to innovate. It is more of a marketing strategy, companies like Crucible take a steel already available on the market and add one or two ingredients, give it a new name, then advertise how it is a bigger and better deal than the previous product. Then of course, other companies try to keep up with the competition by doing the same thing.
 
TheEdge01 said:
Do we “need” super steels? I don’t think so, but they play a roll in companies trying to innovate. It is more of a marketing strategy, companies like Crucible take a steel already available on the market and add one or two ingredients, give it a new name, then advertise how it is a bigger and better deal than the previous product. Then of course, other companies try to keep up with the competition by doing the same thing.
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Powder metallurgy
Powder Metal Steel
Powder steels can be incredibly hard which allow them to take a really sharp edge and due to that hardness hold on to it, which means longer times between re-sharpening and more use for you.

Powder steel is formed by mixing very finely ground powders of the various metals required for the mix, compressing them into shape and then heating them to make them bond together. It allows for a near perfect mixure of all the different elements to ensure the end result is as good as current technologies will allow.

This is not the kind of steel made by old blacksmiths sprinkling metal powders around, this is specialist chemistry done under extremely strict conditions in "the lab" to produce the most "perfect" mixture of steel possible in modern times and technologies.

There are different mixes of powdered steel available some more stain resistant than others. For knife making they are all exceptional steels.


 
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