What are the Most Underrated Steels (MUS)?

cotdt

cotdt

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Oct 2, 2006
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My favorite knives are made in steels that people think are crappy, but the difference is that mine is a custom blade made in said crappy steel, and they perform amazingly well. I'll list some of these highly underrated steels:

440A stainless - With oil quench and cryo, can reach 59 rc and perform pretty good in edge retention. Tougher and better edge stability than the typical choices like 154CM/S30V/VG-10, it can hold acute edges well (kitchen knives, anyone?). High corrosion resistance too. Unfortunately this steel is almost never heat treated properly, as it is only used in cheap knives that are annoying to sharpen as they burrrrrr.

AUS8A stainless- With oil quench and cryo, can reach 62-63 hrc and outperform 154CM/S30V/VG-10 at their typical 58-60 hrc. Can get really sharp too. Unfortunately it's typically used in cheaper knives at 55-57 rc, and burrrrrrr as you try to sharpen.

12C26/AEB-L "razor steel" - Among the stainless steels it's the most fine-grained and has excellent edge stability due to low carbide volume. At 62-63 hrc this would make an excellent razor steel, so I'm planning to use this steel for my next straight razor. It will have a 11° inclusive angle.

M2 "high speed steel" - It's rarely used for whatever reason, except in limited edition Benchmades. I've found M2 does have SOME corrosion resistance, a bit less than D2 but much more than 1095 or 52100. That black blade coating that scares away knifebuyers is not really neccesary. My M2 knife at 64 rc vastly outperforms D2 in edge retention and is a lot less brittle than D2 at any hardness. Gets super sharp and can hold an acute 16° inclusive edge (My D2 at 60 hrc chips badly at 22°).

1070/1075/1080/1084 - This steel is almost never used in production knives. The as-quenched hardness of this steel at 66 hrc is actually harder than 1095. It's tougher too. The extra carbon in 1095 just forms iron carbides, which slightly increases wear resistance at the expense of toughness. What I don't understand is why 1095 is typically hardened to only 58-60 hrc when 1080 at this same hardness would be tougher. 1080 is easy to heat treat as it is a eutectoid steel, not much can go wrong. You can do it with a torch and get a differentially tempered blade. Does not require cyro unlike 1095, which needs some sort of freezing to get complete austenite conversion.

What else?
 
Cold Steel's 1055

I want a 10 inch chopper made from 1055 and a 5 inch folder to match.
 
cotdt said:
440A stainless - With oil quench and cryo, can reach 59 rc and perform pretty good in edge retention. Tougher and better edge stability than the typical choices like 154CM/S30V/VG-10, it can hold acute edges well (kitchen knives, anyone?). High corrosion resistance too. Unfortunately this steel is almost never heat treated properly, as it is only used in cheap knives that are annoying to sharpen as they burrrrrr.
Click to expand...

I wonder, if made well, is 440A chop-capable? Or is it too brittle like any stainless usually is for that kind of tasks?
 
I do not think M2 is underrated, only that it has been replaced by M4 for cutting applications. Both will perform about the same and Benchmades made with M2 usually fetch a premium compared to the same model in M4 due to the fact that the steel is no longer offered (see 710-801 and 710HS).
 
Aside from M2, which I don't think is underrated, just not as available (Especially now that BM has models in M4), the other steels would probably be more popular if they were heat-treated the way you're mentioning.

I believe 1095's normally done at 57-59, which some makers doing it at 60+, but no one, to my knowledge, is doing the other steels like you're talking about.

Cold Steel's 1055 is not bad, in that you beat the snot out of them & they're pretty inexpensive, however, I believe even CS does theirs at around 54 RC.
 
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Smash05 said:
Cold Steel Kuk machete and a Okapi - there you have it.
Click to expand...

I have the Cold Steel Kukri machete and its a great chopper but not my style.

I'd prefer something like the Browning Competition knife style but in Cold Steel 1055
 
With the rest of all of you, the Cold Steel 1055 is a great blade steel. On my Kukri, I sharpened it once, and it has been used countless times for chopping, and is still not needing to be sharpened.
 
I agree on M2. It's not really underrated, given the price of the not discontinued M2 blades from Benchmade, but on the other hand pretty much nobody is using it.
However, given the performance improvement of M2 at 64HRC vs. Factory 60-62HRC, that steel is underrated and underused I guess.
I think the same can be said about 1095, some makers do take it to 64-65HRC. Compared to more common 58-60HRC range it's being used in factory knives I can imagine the difference in its performance.
 
I would say AUS6 is far underated. I've read posts where someone says nothing but praise for 12C27 and then down talks AUS6 yet in just about every category AUS6 is the better steel with just enough vanadium to make a difference. Go figure.

STR
 
The two steels that probably get the worst undeserved rap are 1095 and 440C. Both are extremely capable steels with the right design and heat treatment but 1095 usually doesn't get the best of care in mass manufacturing, and less than expert home heat treatments that lack the timing and temperature control to the best it can be. Also lots of folks who assume 440C is junk because some pot metal chrome plated thing from pakistan had 440/440C stamped on the blade they bought at some fleamarket years ago.
 
I've had crappy luck with 440A and AUS6.

I like AUS8a, 1095 (my preference for a fixed blade camping knife), & 440c.

Not much exp with the others in the OP.
 
I always hate it when people point to 1095 as being a "cheap steel" as a justification to avoid a knife or to insinuate that a maker is asking too much money for a blade. When people post that statement, they also insinuate that it is a poor performing steel, which it most certainly is not.
 
I'm really quite a big fan of well HT'ed AUS8.

The new carbon Condor pieces are done in 1075 IIRC, and I'm quite interested in playing with those. I've heard nothing but good noises from folks about them so far. :)
 
CPM S90V/S110V/S125V/S150V(which was so hard that Crucible wasn't able to roll into usable form at the factory) and ZDP-189.

Most people think it's too hard to sharpen ultra mega alloys (or buy millions of dollars worth of equipment just to process it, in the case of S150V).
I think it's totally worth the effort.
 
Looking up blade steels is how I found this wonderful place :)

Before I "knew" about steels, I was very happy with 440A from Kershaw (who wasn't happy with kerhsaws 440A, great stuff). As far as 1095, I always thought it was good stuff from the get go, it seems very common in fixed blades. Of course now that I'm a steel snob, it's 154CM, VG-10, and S30V all the way :D
 
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