Kershaw did a run of Shallots in S110v but at 58rc.
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What are the "super steels"? INFI, CPM3V ... what else?
- Thread starter wacki
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Kershaw did a run of Shallots in S110v but at 58rc.
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And there are a couple of new models using that steel in the Zero Tolerance line.
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there is no super steel, since there is no official designation. people have, and will continue to, call the 10xx series super steels. There is no wear resistance, carbide volume, impact resistance, corrosion resistance, alloy content, melt procedure, brand, or country of origin to delineate a super steel from anything else.
Geometry and heat treat are important. Neither is more important than the steel. Without the geometry, you have a dull bar. Without the steel, you have air. Without the heat treat, you lose performance. That said, there are steels I would compare without a heat treat to any low alloy steel for wear resistance. They have carbide volume a couple dozen times greater and cannot be annealed below the low 50s, so they are actually as hard as many production knives in carbon steel after a full heat treat.
Geometry and heat treat are important. Neither is more important than the steel. Without the geometry, you have a dull bar. Without the steel, you have air. Without the heat treat, you lose performance. That said, there are steels I would compare without a heat treat to any low alloy steel for wear resistance. They have carbide volume a couple dozen times greater and cannot be annealed below the low 50s, so they are actually as hard as many production knives in carbon steel after a full heat treat.
Right, well I might be way behind the rest of you here 'cause I'm still rockin some L6, D2 and 1095 
To me, my VG10s and S30Vs still count as knives with "super steel" blades... but I'm a man who prefers cassettes over MP3s so don't listen to me eh.
-G
To me, my VG10s and S30Vs still count as knives with "super steel" blades... but I'm a man who prefers cassettes over MP3s so don't listen to me eh.
-G
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That is very low. If you mean non-stainless alloys, and not just carbon steels, then you think that 15V, REX 121, 10V, 3V, Super Blue, etc are not super steels. Which is fine, super steel is a totally meaningless term as no one has any rules to follow on using it.
K390 is also not stainless, so it would not make your list even if there were a production knife made of it.
In the real world of good-quality production knives and customs, do differences in heat treat actually lead to much performance variation between blades of equal hardness and geometry?
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The quality of heat treatment leads to final hardness. In the world of production folders, most manufactures play it safe and do not push the limits of heat treating to a higher hardness level. That is why a custom Phil Wilson in S90V will outperform the Spyderco Phil Wilson knife even though they are both S90V. Spyderco for production sake, and to please the most amount of people will run it a little softer.
Yes, HT regimes can be tweaked to favor attributes the maker/treater desire's.
Not all regimes are the same, and though they might be tempered back to the same hardness, the final toughness/edge retention equation might vary.
Big Mike
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Some of the steels you mentioned beat the crap out of a manufacturer's tooling. As for CPM-S110V, I happen to have two Kershaw factory seconds with blades made from that stuff. I think I got them back when kershawguy bought a boatload of factory seconds wholesale and was selling them on here.