Unpopular opinion about "Super steels"

I can sharpen a dull knife . Pretty easy if you do a bit of honing / stropping when needed .

A broken knife is useless and nothing I can fix . Serious edge damage , lots of big nicks etc is at least a huge PITA to repair .

So , for any knife for hard use , chopping , hammering , prying , etc IMO toughness is very important .

Depends on your needs , of course . Bushcraft , tactical , field use , emergency , survival etc . should use a tough steel ...within reason and balanced with other factors . 🤔
 
Steven65 said:
If you do stupid s**t with your knife
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:pI love , absolutely prefer , knives that I can , if necessary , use as "stupid shoot" as is required , without having them break unusably . :cool::thumbsup::thumbsup:

In my home shop and SUV, I have other tools for most every common purpose .

Hiking around my woods , I always have knives , but only other tools as I foresee a need for that day .

Same walking around in public . Usually no screwdrivers or pry bar . 🤷‍♂️
 
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My favorite knives are bombproof fixed blades. My favorite steel is Aus8. I don’t mind carbon but prefer stainless.

Legendary Bill Bagwell favored 1040 for toughness.
 
DocJD said:
:pI love , absolutely prefer , knives that I can , if necessary , use as "stupid shoot" as is required , without having them break unusably . :cool::thumbsup::thumbsup:

In my home shop and SUV, I have other tools for most every common purpose .

Hiking around my woods , I always have knives , but only other tools as I foresee a need for that day .

Same walking around in public . Usually no screwdrivers or pry bar . 🤷‍♂️
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You are an advanced user and understand the parameters of what you can and can't do with a knife. But for most less knowledgable folks they think that if they buy something made from some un-rustable, unbreakable, super steel it gives them cart blanche to use it to do stupid stuff with the inevitable catastrophic result.

Emergencies are certainly different, but as a general rule it is not recommended.
 
SharpBits said:
Really unpopular opinion: When it comes to knives (and most everything else) people overestimate what their actual needs are and can be swayed by clever marketing. As a species, we are pretty easily controlled.
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Well said! Throw “tactical” labeling in there and everyone can be an “OPERATOR”
 
right steel for the right task.

I prefer to use high carbide, high wear resistance steels since I MOSTLY make blades that are thin, high grinds under 4 inches in blade length. My go to is S90V as it takes and holds a very useful toothy edge that excels at cutting meat, vegetable matter, rope, cardboard, skin. (EDC, Hunters and skinning knives). If I am making a blade geared more towards walking in the woods whittling, or a larger blade expected to do some form of impact, I choose a steel that is better suited to the task (3V, 4V, AEBL)

Point being, nothing wrong with "super steels" and with today's widely available diamond stones (inexpensively), sharpening is not as much of a task as it was 10-20 years ago.

I will also point out that (in an emergency) you CAN do "stoopid sh*t" with a high wear resistant blade without it breaking, they ain't glass. the edge may chip, but it's not like the blade will shatter like the sword from Lord of the Rings.

I'll go ahead and add that BBB has proven time and again that you can "abuse" the edge of these high wear resistant steels without an issue (like chopping through a penny with an S110V spyderco). Wouldn't advise it, but...seems to speak volumes.

edit to add: Another thing to consider is that one of the oldest "super steels," CPM 10V, is and has been widely used in woodworking to include turning tools, hand planes and other tools that you might expect to take some abuse at the edge apex.

I have high hopes for the not yet released MagnaMax as a supersteel with 10V like edge holding, stainless and better toughness.
 
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navman said:
I have high hopes for the not yet released MagnaMax as a supersteel with 10V like edge holding, stainless and better toughness.
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You’re going to love it. I’m working on a couple hunters from the final heat from Crucible. Blades are at 64.4 and being ground thin. Grinds like butter with coarse grit belts. Still waiting on samples from the new Erasteel melt, but things are definitely promising.


I think it’s hysterical that threads like this have always popped up. Convincing yourself to have disdain for a material just seems bizarre to me, whether there’s a marketing hook that’s been attached to it or not. There may be plenty of people that have to boil there choices down to ‘one’ knife, but I’m certainly not one of them, and if you’re frequenting these forums, I have to believe you’re not so hard up for money that being able to afford more than one isn’t the issue.

Josh laid out a perfect scenario for why high carbide volume, high hardness stainless steels are a great choice, and his reference to Shawn’s testing and examples (that’s BBB) reflect it perfectly. Might be the absolute wrong choice for processing firewood, but that’s why it’s so great to be able to have so many choices, and use the RIGHT tool for the task.

At this point, nearly all of my knifemaking is using so-called ‘super steels’. I don’t use the term, but I guess some do. I choose them because they’re usually the optimum choice for the task, and in 2025, I’m given the luxury of countless options to choose from. Not using something because somebody applied a marketing label to it that irks me seems sophomoric, but everyone has to make their own decisions, I guess. Buy what you like!
 
I have been comparing the 2 Magnamax mules to other steels for that past week or so, in the spyderedge form the knife cuts like a laser and just does not stop or so it seems. The plain edged on holds and edge really but did chip a little when pushed hard through some heavy double walled cardboard. Everything else I tested them against including cruwear could not keep up holding an edge with the same cuts. Although the magnacut knives hang in there as well and so far have not chipped. But the edge holding on magnamax is superior. I'm looking forward to more of this magnamax. We'll have to see how pricing goes.
 
vulcan2 said:
I am no expert in metallurgy or knife steels. But I think the criterion for super steels should be toughness over wear resistance.
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I'm not trying to be rude, but I have to disagree. A knife is primarily a cutting tool, and should be able to take and hold a good edge, otherwise it isn't living up to its potential. So I think that wear resistance should be a priority... However, I understand that a knife needs some degree of toughness--hell, toughness even contributes to things related to edge retention, such as edge stability and resistance to chipping.

This is somewhat hypocritical of me to say, as I've developed somewhat of a distaste for high vanadium steels and have a preference for AEBL, which has the highest toughness and almost the lowest wear resistance of any stainless blade steel. But, I also wanted to share my nuanced take on the matter.

Some knives can baton through logs but can't whittle for shit, while other knives can sail through soft materials but will sustain significant edge damage on a small knot in a piece of wood.

I think it very much depends on what kind of knife you're talking about and what you want to do with it. For example I'd likely hate a machete made of 10v and would also hate a small knife made of 1075.
 
I'm Very much looking forward to this steel, and I Will try it out.....
I'm hoping, if it's good it will become more available to regular Makers

But, it Must cut cardboard. I'm not going to like it if it needs to be thick and high bevel angles.

-Hopefully it's not going to be chippy
 
In the past, I have generally preferred more primitive steels to the newer stuff mostly because of my long history with softer, tougher carbon steel like the ones they make khukuris out of. I was never bothered by the idea that I could touch up a ding or a roll with an Arkansas stone in the woods without having to wait until I could get back to my house to hog off some metal on a chipped edge of a much harder blade.

To be honest, I rarely let any knife get dull enough to notice a performance drop. I'm very much a fan of maintenance stropping and the like. Big soft blades require that mindset.

That said, "super steels" are so ubiquitous these days that unless you are going out of your way to buy a very cheap knife, the price of the upgraded steel is baked in. I don't feel the need to justify the expense of going with a steel I won't use hard enough between touch ups because all of the mid-range and higher tend to be using some form of advanced steel from the last 10 years.

Furthermore, with the advent of cheap ceramic/diamond stones, I don't need to really worry about the difficulty of touching up my knives in the field. I really like how Cruwear behaves, and even rocking a 62 hardness, a cheap ceramic/diamond stone makes it super easy to touch up if I happen to bugger my knife.

At the end of the day, the steel isn't what sways me on a purchase. Fit, finish, function, design, etc. I can make due with just about anything in terms of steel if the knife is durable and fits my hands.
 
I wouldn't be here if I had not decided to buy a Native 5 in S110V in 2015 (?), after carrying SAKs and Laguioles my entire life before. It went downhill from there :)

Super is just a name. In Switzerland they add "Mega" to everything. Like, "Mega Geil" (meaning "very horny"), when something is cool 🤣 So, I'm kind of glad we are not talking about "Mega Steels".
 
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