The Bears' Den--Shirogorov Showcase

I've had nothing new to share here since last winter's acquisition of the Quantum Ursus NL. I've got 9 Bears in my personal Den now, and none of them are current Gen, save for the QUNL and maybe my F95R, though I'm pretty sure my version's handle milling is no longer in production. Honestly, I'm quite pleased with all my "outdated" Shiro's and don't really see the point of "updating" the same models nor unloading any of those I have to balance the books, so to speak. I would be more likely at this point to pick up something older, like a 110 pre-KickStop model with the sliding bar lock, though I have been tempted a bit by the F3NS and might consider one off the secondary market at a good price.

Anyway, I carried all my Bears in a row over the last week or so, and finished up today with the NeOn UL in S30V. There's certainly nothing wrong with Shiro's iteration of that steel in either that knife or my F3 Python--both get really sharp, hold their edges well, and are excellent cutters. I had a few extra NeOn pics today so here's a couple....

1674156744622.jpeg

1674156767236.jpeg
 
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Snow and ice outside here today :D
 
ChazzyP said:
I've had nothing new to share here since last winter's acquisition of the Quantum Ursus NL. I've got 9 Bears in my personal Den now, and none of them are current Gen, save for the QUNL and maybe my F95R, though I'm pretty sure my version's handle milling is no longer in production. Honestly, I'm quite pleased with all my "outdated" Shiro's and don't really see the point of "updating" the same models nor unloading any of those I have to balance the books, so to speak. I would be more likely at this point to pick up something older, like a 110 pre-KickStop model with the sliding bar lock, though I have been tempted a bit by the F3NS and might consider one off the secondary market at a good price.

Anyway, I carried all my Bears in a row over the last week or so, and finished up today with the NeOn UL in S30V. There's certainly nothing wrong with Shiro's iteration of that steel in either that knife or my F3 Python--both get really sharp, hold their edges well, and are excellent cutters. I had a few extra NeOn pics today so here's a couple....

View attachment 2051855

View attachment 2051856
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Nice Shiro! I know you are one of the Shiro experts on here, and I had a question for you…( and MrSig, & fellow bearheads too)
I recently bought a new Quantum Ursus with the G-10 inlay and Cromax steel. Very excited to finally be in the club, I’ve wanted one for a while now…
Anyway, I was wondering if you had any definitive answers about the Cromax PM steel. I’ve heard it is “like Elmax”, but I
Have no idea if that’s true. Either way I’m sure they wouldn’t go with a sub-standard steel (and I love Elmax btw)
Any info you can share about this is greatly appreciated!
Tony
 
Well, I haven’t had a Shiro in a long time (2 Hati’s previously) and pulled the trigger on this “Halloween” special edition Hation Zero.
I only paid attention to the blade specs and to my surprise this is tiny. I wear XL gloves and it is just too slim for me to manipulate it securely.
It deploys like a boss and the carbon color is stunning!

Just wanted to share a picture since I haven’t seen many like this.
This one will be going for sale

Cheers!
2B0FB663-6C33-49B4-825E-BA9B07E2CBD7.jpeg
 
Just got my first Shiro, the entry level Quantum….and oh baby I can see why people love these. I’m still amazed every time I flip it, at how much blade they pack inside the medium sized handle
27408EF3-EC9F-422E-893A-120DF63D9117.jpeg
Freakin love it! And a shout out to all the damn enablers posting pics lol 😆
 
tony281sc2 said:
Nice Shiro! I know you are one of the Shiro experts on here, and I had a question for you…( and MrSig, & fellow bearheads too)
I recently bought a new Quantum Ursus with the G-10 inlay and Cromax steel. Very excited to finally be in the club, I’ve wanted one for a while now…
Anyway, I was wondering if you had any definitive answers about the Cromax PM steel. I’ve heard it is “like Elmax”, but I
Have no idea if that’s true. Either way I’m sure they wouldn’t go with a sub-standard steel (and I love Elmax btw)
Any info you can share about this is greatly appreciated!
Tony
Click to expand...
I don't know that I'm an expert of any sort--just someone that has a bunch of Shiro's and follows along as best I can. I was curious about Cromax PM too and started internet searching before I bought my Quantum Ursus NL about a year ago. There's not much out there about Cromax in general and very little on Cromax PM in particular. Gear Junkie has this:

Cromax is actually a family of steels designed for industrial use, primarily in pistons for hydraulic systems. As a result, it is very tough and machines uniformly.
Currently, only Shirogorov uses the steel, labeled as “Cromax PM” on its Urusus model. The range of Cromax steels makes the possibilities tantalizing, as some are exceedingly corrosion-resistant and some are very tough.
Now, we just need to know which version Shiro is using.

Another search for Cromax takes one to Ovako, a Nordic steelmaker with roots going back centuries and plants mostly in Sweden, but also in Finland and other European companies. There's this page there among a few others which aren't particularly enlightening.

Searching Cromax PM takes one to a page at zknives with a compositional chart and a paragraph that, along with some useful information, denies any meaningful equivalence with Elmax. That page's reference is to the proprietary steel so named by Lohmann, a German steelmaker.

On the other hand, the knife was introduced by the Workshop on the forum pages at Shirogorov.com and the author--their rep Tom, I suspect--writes,

Among other interesting innovations, the blade is now made of a new steel, Cromax PM, which is quite close in its properties to Elmax, but at the same time surpasses it.

Without any facility in reading Russian, one can navigate those pages fairly well using Chrome and the ever-entertaining Goggle Translate.

With USN still down, there's not any opportunity for more digging or newer posts at the Shiro pages there about Cromax PM. I could write to Tom and see if he might share any more about the steel, though the Workshop tends to keep a lot of their proprietary info close to the vest.
 
USN is back up and running. It appears all the old Shiro info is gone now!!!
This really sucks as the threads their went way back and had lot's of info!
 
Mr.sig239 Mr.sig239 , I've been PMing with Jeroen who alerted me about USN being back up. I had to rejoin but am having a hard time getting anything to work there. Pisses me off that I was a paying member there for 6 years and have to rebuild "trust" and jump through hoops to navigate. Can't post text or pics, though maybe that will change once I prove more "trustworthy."

Tom said he saved a bunch of Shiro threads to repost once they got going again over there. That one forum at USN was all I cared about or liked there and it was a treasure trove of info, good conversations, and pics. I'm sure glad we've got BF and the Den here....

Edit: Well I was whining to my friend about this by PM and here to Phil, but turns out I was "on hold" over there as one has to re-register for the new site. I seem to have full access now and can post pics and text. I guess they had to make sure I wasn't a terrorist
 
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ChazzyP said:
I don't know that I'm an expert of any sort--just someone that has a bunch of Shiro's and follows along as best I can. I was curious about Cromax PM too and started internet searching before I bought my Quantum Ursus NL about a year ago. There's not much out there about Cromax in general and very little on Cromax PM in particular. Gear Junkie has this:

Cromax is actually a family of steels designed for industrial use, primarily in pistons for hydraulic systems. As a result, it is very tough and machines uniformly.
Currently, only Shirogorov uses the steel, labeled as “Cromax PM” on its Urusus model. The range of Cromax steels makes the possibilities tantalizing, as some are exceedingly corrosion-resistant and some are very tough.
Now, we just need to know which version Shiro is using.

Another search for Cromax takes one to Ovako, a Nordic steelmaker with roots going back centuries and plants mostly in Sweden, but also in Finland and other European companies. There's this page there among a few others which aren't particularly enlightening.

Searching Cromax PM takes one to a page at zknives with a compositional chart and a paragraph that, along with some useful information, denies any meaningful equivalence with Elmax. That page's reference is to the proprietary steel so named by Lohmann, a German steelmaker.

On the other hand, the knife was introduced by the Workshop on the forum pages at Shirogorov.com and the author--their rep Tom, I suspect--writes,

Among other interesting innovations, the blade is now made of a new steel, Cromax PM, which is quite close in its properties to Elmax, but at the same time surpasses it.

Without any facility in reading Russian, one can navigate those pages fairly well using Chrome and the ever-entertaining Goggle Translate.

With USN still down, there's not any opportunity for more digging or newer posts at the Shiro pages there about Cromax PM. I could write to Tom and see if he might share any more about the steel, though the Workshop tends to keep a lot of their proprietary info close to the vest.
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Cool, ok so it sounds like it is indeed good stuff 👍 thanks for sharing !
The first site claims better edge holding than M2, and 2X the toughness and can get to 63 HRC!
 
tony281sc2 said:
Cool, ok so it sounds like it is indeed good stuff 👍 thanks for sharing !
The first site claims better edge holding than M2, and 2X the toughness and can get to 63 HRC!
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First site? Which is that? I missed better edge holding than M2 and 2X the toughness. Can you link that?
 
ChazzyP said:
First site? Which is that? I missed better edge holding than M2 and 2X the toughness. Can you link that?
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From the Zknives link…
“Cromax PM is actually quite close to Erasteel ASPAPZ10 steel, save for this missing Nitrogen in later”…

“According to maker charts, ASPAPZ10 has slightly higher wear resistance compared to AISI M2 steel and almost twice as tough in the same hardness range (61-63HRC for M2 and 60-62HRC for APZ10).”
 
tony281sc2 said:
From the Zknives link…
“Cromax PM is actually quite close to Erasteel ASPAPZ10 steel, save for this missing Nitrogen in later”…

“According to maker charts, ASPAPZ10 has slightly higher wear resistance compared to AISI M2 steel and almost twice as tough in the same hardness range (61-63HRC for M2 and 60-62HRC for APZ10).”
Click to expand...
Thanks. I didn't follow the link to Erasteel at the Cromax PM page so was in the dark about the origin of your second quote. It's odd, looking at your first quote above and the text from the Cromax page, then following to the Erasteel page where it is described as a "PM nitrogen steel" and yet there's no nitrogen listed on its compositional chart. I do have nitrogen steels in a few knives including Vanax37 in my F95R and RDD and like that quite well.
 
ChazzyP said:
Mr.sig239 Mr.sig239 , I've been PMing with Jeroen who alerted me about USN being back up. I had to rejoin but am having a hard time getting anything to work there. Pisses me off that I was a paying member there for 6 years and have to rebuild "trust" and jump through hoops to navigate. Can't post text or pics, though maybe that will change once I prove more "trustworthy."

Tom said he saved a bunch of Shiro threads to repost once they got going again over there. That one forum at USN was all I cared about or liked there and it was a treasure trove of info, good conversations, and pics. I'm sure glad we've got BF and the Den here....

Edit: Well I was whining to my friend about this by PM and here to Phil, but turns out I was "on hold" over there as one has to re-register for the new site. I seem to have full access now and can post pics and text. I guess they had to make sure I wasn't a terrorist
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell Shirogorov has no 'section' on USNV2 and Tom does not appear to be listed as a moderator anywhere.
 
TacTiFrameLock said:
As far as I can tell Shirogorov has no 'section' on USNV2 and Tom does not appear to be listed as a moderator anywhere.
Click to expand...
Well, not yet anyway. So far it doesn't seem there are any sub-forums in the Makers/Manufacturers area over there--just individual threads. I've been posting a little over there and finding my way around since having to "rejoin", but I've never been particularly taken with USN--I was just there for the Shiro pages and Tom's input and accessibility. Maybe things will evolve and take shape there. I'm really a BF guy when it comes to knife forums anyway.
 
ChazzyP said:
-I was just there for the Shiro pages and Tom's input and accessibility. Maybe things will evolve and take shape there. I'm really a BF guy when it comes to knife forums anyway.
Click to expand...
Same here. The Shiro knowledge is what kept me going there. Not sure how much time I will spend there now if they don't rebuild the Shiro page. I like it here. This is the only knife site I pay to be in.
 
All I find for USN is the marketplace site. Re-registered, password doesn't work. Typical.
Is there a separate site for USNV2 or is the market one it for now?
There were some good heads over there.
Let's go Sergey!
 
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