What is important to you about steel selection?

[RedCollie]

Edge retention is the most important for me, followed very closely by corrosion resistance.
I use M4 for utility & cardboard-cutting,
H1 or LC200N for camping,
3V for backpacking, and
VG10 for EDC

 

[Rasmus80]

When our ancestors went from bronze to steel, you would have said steel is just a marketing gimmick.

Steels are not equivalent to styles. Steels are not fashion. Knife designs can be fashion, but not steels. Good steel, whether it's old school or new school is not fashion. Steel makes up the most important working portion of the tool. Good steel is an extremely important factor in the performance of a knife.

When someone has 10 Spyderco PM2 in 10 different steeltypes and 10 BM Gribtillian in 10 different steeltypes, it is the same craving that a woman or man has to buy 10 shoes of different color.

Just a different object of craving.

 

[KnifeRep]

The knives I enjoy using the most for those tasks are made of XC75 at RC54 or so, Bucks 420HC at RC58 (IIRC), and whatever stainless and hardness F. Dick uses in their blue handled boning knives.

@NapalmCheese F. Dick’s blue handle EuroGrip (hard Polyamide handle) and ExpertGrip (soft, tactile Polypropylene handle) are both X55CrMo14 steel and listed by F. Dick at 56 HRC

When our ancestors went from bronze to steel, you would have said steel is just a marketing gimmick.

Holy smokes, you shot right past the Iron Age...


For my profession of selling F. Dick cutlery what matters most to me is edge retention. I think a lot of us would be surprised at how many foodservice professionals (excluding processors here) do not sharpen their own knives, most will steel or tool a knife to retain an edge, but once it needs to be sharpened it’s getting done by a mobile sharpening/grinder guy or gal at their kitchen site or it’s taken to a knife shop (talking metro/urban areas, rural America still sharpens out of necessity). More and more professional kitchens are offering knife sharpening as a free benefit to their kitchen staff, the establishment will contract with a mobile grinder to regularly come to the establishment to sharpen everyone’s knives, some establishments will purchase, or even rent, the knives for their kitchens and sharpening services from the same supplier/grinder.

What I was first taught by R.H. Forschner almost 30 years ago is that edge retention is the most important sales feature to a kitchen professional, then comfort and feel of the handle, then sharpness...This is, of course, a very Western way of looking at the sales aspects of kitchen cutlery, with Japanese cutlery I’d say sharpness wins out over edge retention or at least the two are closer aligned.

After reading that you might be wondering, “What about corrosion resistance?” Well, I’ve never sold a carbon steel blade in my career, they’ve all been stainless steel. In my experience, the only time a professional Chef thinks about a knife’s corrosion resistance is when they’re using their carbon steel knives, away from that, not many professional Chefs give it much thought and because most Health Dept. codes mandate S/S cutlery they shouldn’t have to.

Personally in an EDC knife I prize sharpness over edge retention because I rarely need an edge to last a long time, I just don’t use my EDC’s like that so D2, 154CM, S30V and S35VN are the most common EDC steels I use but of late ELMAX and M4 have entered my collection.

 

[115Italian]

1-Who’s making it
2- Is it appropriate for the style knife
3- Is It shiny and perrty