What did we use before the “age of supersteels?”

kobold said:
Don't cut anything in a hurry, you might cut yourself! Think twice, cut once. :p

That being said, I might cut ten pieces of rope each day for ten days. And what if I want to cut one piece of rope for 100 days in a row?
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All depends.if the rope is new/clean or used n full of grit I suppose but it surely makes a big difference!
Like I said, knives , the sum of all the parts.is what catches my eye! I've never gone and bought a blade because of its steel. Don't think I ever will...

I use my knives daily, as most can tell from their dirty blades.in my pics every morning!!
At the end of each day I strop what I carried that day, give it a quick wipe off n to bed it goes. The super steels definitely help in that regard keeping corrosion at bay! That to me is what's super! Really don't have to worry about rust on most newer knives!

Different strokes I guess!!!! I also take great satisfaction stroping all the blades I carried during the week on the weekend! Very therapeutic & gratifying as well...I just love watching the hairs.jump of my arms as a freshly stroped blade cruises on by!!! Haven't had much hair.on my arms in a decade.plus😎 or.my legs either🤔!!!
 
I do not necessarily associate super steel with high edge retention. Any steel excels in one particular area or a steel offering a good amount of each properties you expect to have in a steel is a super steel in my opinion. So, I would consider AEBL, 14C28N, LC200N, CruWear, Vanax, Maxamet, MagnaCut and similar steels as super steels.

Before super steel days, I used to have (still have) 420HC diving knife, which rusts and loose the edge after cleaning one or two fish. Not to mention it is nightmare to sharpen (probably to soft). But I recently swtiched to LC200N diving knife which does not rust, hold the edge much better and joy to sharpen. So, yes in some cases having a super steel makes a difference.
 
So what I learned so far from this thread: It’s definitely great to have modern, high-end steels. But for the most part, our ancestors were able to get by just fine with less sophisticated alloys.
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Our ancestors conquered villages, cities, countries, and continents with good old rusty inferior steel.
A couple of global conflicts were also settled without the super steels with an edge on them.

As far as sharpening in the field goes - there was a guy that had his leg trapped by something & after spending a few days trapped, he had to cut off his leg at the knee using his pocket knife, As bad as that was, he had to stop sawing at his leg and sharpen the knife on some rocks.
I guess some could argue that with super steel, he would have had no need to resharpen.

My experience with premium steels leads me to believe that maybe people tend to push them past the point where they need sharpened - because they are either complacent and/or they don't want the hassle.
 
Hal said:
As far as sharpening in the field goes - there was a guy that had his leg trapped by something & after spending a few days trapped, he had to cut off his leg at the knee using his pocket knife, As bad as that was, he had to stop sawing at his leg and sharpen the knife on some rocks.
I guess some could argue that with super steel, he would have had no need to resharpen.
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Now THAT is tough!
 
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dano said:
I've always found it odd that the industry that uses a knife the most: Chefs and restaurants, etc, never use the "Supersteel of the week" mantra. Very few kitchen cutlery companies even advertise their steel, yet they get used far more regularly and harshly the 99% of the super steel knives sold to the ELU's....
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I recently retired after 46 years cutting meat for 5 different companies. The only knives we used in that whole time were a 12 inch steak knife (for slicing) and an 8 inch boning knife that together cost maybe 20 bucks or so. I have no idea what kind of steel they were (some sort of stainless(ish) steel) and they kept an edge for maybe 10 minutes (an exaggeration I know).

We had the company that supplied them do the sharpening every 2 weeks, which we always chuckled about. I said to the guys that brought them in that they just replaced dull knives with slightly less dull knives, but boy did we cut a lot of meat with those cheap knives.

Super steel? Nah, not even close.
 
Certainly not considered to be a super steel anymore, but one thing that makes me partial to CRK's S35VN is the relative ease of bringing the edge back. While I have my fair share of 20CV, S90V, etc; those are not as expedient in some cases due to the ability to sharpen on the run. Of course the flip side is that they don't require an edge as often; the key is to not let the genuine super steels get to the point where a full sharpening is required.
 
It’s interesting how quickly new “super” steels are coming out nowadays, which are then demoted to “no longer a super steel“ status within a few years. So is there any such thing as a true “super” steel? Because at this rate, all of today’s super steels won’t be super in only a few years.

Personally, my favorite steel I‘ve used a lot of, starting in the early 1980s, is Victorinox’s steel, in my SAKs. And I still love it and use it; I still carry SAKs, and my kitchen knives are Victorinox. At one time, Vic’s steel would have been a super steel. I’ll never discard it just because blade steels have advanced so much.

Today, I consider LC200N, H1, S30V, S35VN, VG-10, etc., among the steels I use regularly as worthy of being considered “super” steels. Others may not. If they were once, why not still? IMO, there is more to a steel excelling than only holding an edge forever. Personally, I actually don’t like the term “super steel,” because it sounds a bit pretentious, and also because it’s only a very temporary category that good steels are quickly knocked out of. Then people will say they are only okay, or that they suck.

Jim
 
I have an appreciation for both the traditional old school steel and the newer super steels. I use both for different tasks and reasons. I don’t have or use as many carbon steel knives mainly because of corrosion issues I’ve had in the past. I have several in Buck Bos 420hc that do their fair share and perform very well and a Damascus 110 that served me well for many deer hunting seasons.

My first upper level blade around 2002 was in vg10 and it was a step up in performance. Then in 2009 I got a couple of knives in S30v, a 110 and a fixed blade vanguard. That’s when I realized just how much difference there is in overall performance not just edge holding. I put them through a lot of rugged use and they didn’t seem to be affected after several weeks of cutting all kinds of materials. Then when I did touch up the edge it didn’t take much till they were screaming sharp again. Since then I’ve acquired cpm154, s35vn, 20cv, and a 3V. Each for particular service that is best suited. I have no regrets!
 
NG VI said:
I will say I have never seen any steel as modern as S30V sharpened away to a toothpick
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Maybe not a toothpick, but I have seen them extremely worn away. The problem is the same on both super and non-over sharpening, or aggressive sharpening. Diamond stones can even eat super steels.
Stropping more(and less un-needed sharpening) is the answer to avoiding this.
 
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Every time this conversation comes up I am reminded of how limited our language is with respect to knives. High end knives, custom knives; the whole rich variety of cutting implements that we have today is a a very recent development brought on by a combination of an ever increasing pool of small craftsmen and ever improving communications. It has only really been around for a couple of generations. It is at a point where it is not unusual for an end user to order a knife directly from a maker that is located on the other side of the planet, with the expectation that the knife would arrive within days.

But with all this diversity comes the real challenge of distinguishing the product. This is where the language fails us and leave marketing folks with little more to say than a litany of meaningless chemical compositions under a senseless variety of names. It may be made of blankety-blank steel, but so what? What we really want to know is why we should choose that product, and whether it can deliver and particular advantage to the user. We have no way to convey this. Unlike tires, we have no standard that would allow us to say, that this knife is rated for 50,000 cuts, while the competitor can only do 25,000. We do not even have a size refence for knife handles, although we all know that whether you have very small, medium or very large hands will go a long way in determining the relative ergonomics of a knife. Basic questions, like how long can I expect for your knife to deliver good service and what is a reasonable definition for that service, how much energy does it take to perform a particular cut with your knife, or what is the proper maintenance routine for this knife, remain complete gray zones.

We need for marketing to step up their game and develop objective standards of informative by which we can judge the product. Granted, everyone uses knives differently, but they also use everything else differently. Our rating systems for other products are based on standard models as a means of comparison. That is what is needed in the industry, the exhaustive list of magic steels is not very informative.

I want to be able to buy a knife because it weighs less, has an edge retention that is 200 hours versus 125 for its competitor, that is of the right size for my hand, and rated at 50 years of longevity which might be 10 years more than its closest competition. But, we can't say that today because that language just isn't there.

n2s
 
shqxk said:
According to this test, plain old W2 which basically 1095 with a hint of vanadium (.2%) will outcut M390?
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Yes some of these comparisons are way off according to other tests. I laughed when I saw case cv did better than bos 420hc not to mention 1095. In my experience buck 420hc does about 2.5-3 times the cutting than all of my case examples with exception to one in 154cm.
I think Dr. Larrins test is more representative of actual performance and the toughness test are good indication of what can be expected.
 
shqxk said:
According to this test, plain old W2 which basically 1095 with a hint of vanadium (.2%) will outcut M390?
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I clicked the "Summary" tab and looked at the averaged values. But who can tell? Maybe a horrible heat treat, maybe an obtuse edge bevel, maybe both.

A much more reliable relationship between the two steels is ofc the one produced by Larrin. In these CATRA tests M390 is represented by 204P:

CATRA-4-27-2020-2.jpg
 
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