Interesting. 10-15 degrees is pretty low by most standards. I would use 20 degrees per side for heavy duty cutting.
However, Ankerson tested ATS-34 to have better edge retention than VG-10, so I'm not sure why you have a complaint about that.
Well to be fair, none of my knives would exhibit chipping or rolling from cutting say, USPS flat rate cardboard boxes. The kind of cardboard I'm cutting is used to reinforce a pallet of items, typically stacked about 10 feet or higher, so it would naturally have to be pretty tough stuff. It's about as thin as or even thinner than the USPS stuff, but the difficulty in cutting it is ridiculous. It's like cutting dense hard wood at twice the thickness, maybe more.
And again, the cardboard that rolled my M390 blade was about an inch thick, used to stack up watermelons onto a pallet about 4 feet high. Definitely different from postal boxes.
I have cut all kinds of cardboard, so I know about the heavy stuff too! I worked at a grain plant, were we used super dense slip sheets (stack 1.5 tons of popcorn in bags on a sheet of cardboard, then use a slip sheet puller fork lift that grabs the edge of the cardboard and pulls it out from underneath 1.5 tons of bags). I also worked at a plant that manufactured diamond surface carbide substrate drill bits for oil and natural gas drilling industries. Lots of very very heavy cardboard there.
I have cut cardboard so thick that it I actually had to baton the knife through it like I would when cutting wood.
My point was not that cardboard is not tough, or even "impossible" to cut with a knife (because I have met cardboard that was for practical purposes not actually able to be cut with my knife).
My point was that if he takes that same knife, and moves the edge angle to a steeper angle like 20 per side, he will be able to cut without edge damage.
Nothing magical about the knives I use, that they aren't damaged by cardboard, but that they guaranteed have a thicker stronger bevel.
I know a lot of people that carry and use knives with 10 degrees per side on a knife.
I find this to be too thin for most of my uses. It will be fine for cutting soft material, with no torsional stress applied, but hit a patch of dense cardboard and you can rolll the edge. (one great example is the very dense corner reinforcers for big items like new refrigerators).
Carpet roll center tubes is another great example. Stuff I can stand on and bounce up and down on with all 350lbs and not get to crease.
I have cut that stuff with my knives before. (the knife for that was about 50 degrees inclusive at least).
With a thin grind, you will still get decent slicing performance with a thicker edge bevel. Might even want to try steeling the edge back into shape, then trying a thicker micro bevel.
As for breaking down cardboard. 7 years stocking and breaking down boxes in the food industry as a kid. A year working at a grainery (also stored and sold bulk popcorn using cardboard slip sheets with super high density). 5 years working at a factory manufacturing PDC cutters (Polycrystalline Diamond drill bits with a tungsten carbide substrate) for the oil and gas industry (some of the cardboard there was basically only able to be cut with saws to break it down to fit in the smaller dumpster in my area, before being dumped in the mega dumpster on the other side of the plant).
Cardboard can be terrible for edges. It can have grit, dirt, bits of metal, particles of what ever the crap they recycled into it. I have damaged an edge (dented or chipped) when finding junk embedded in the cardboard when cutting (but when looking I have found what caused the damage, and it was not the cardboard particles that did it!) Even when cardboard is "clean" with no bits of hard stuff in it. It will still dull your edge very very quickly, as it is very abrasive. I was not using magic steels, or high end steels (especially back then). Just a basic steel, with a much steeper angle on the edge than 10 per side! That was my point.
