First off, I didn't say "destroying" itself. All times I have had S30V roll/chip I fixed it, and the knives are back in service and get used. It is a pain to fix though, and I would just rather not have to grind away a bunch of steel to get a nice smooth edge back. It is the only steel that has showed damage from cardboard cutting. Granted that was on a factory edge, and I see some validity to the claim that factory edges need to be sharpened away and better results will be had. Spyderco does not offer it in all of their "premium" knives. S30V and VG-10 have become the default steels for Spyderco. VG-10 for Japan and S30V for Taichung and Golden. I have noticed a trend in the Taichung knives being shifted to XHP which is a very welcome change in my mind. Their "premium" knives as I see it are using CTS-204P, M390, ZDP-189, CTS-XHP (sort of as mentioned earlier), M4, CRUWEAR, Super Blue, S90V, S110V, K390, and others.
I gave a very specific example of what "real world experience" means to me. Running an edge over a staple under masking tape on a box has chipped/rolled my S30V edges, and my boss' Native in S30V. I explained that I may occasionally go through what I want to cut and smack something unintentional. For example to be more specific on that, I was cutting strapping off a pallet still on the forks and once I got through the strapping I smacked the edge on the steel fork. This was my Southard (CTS-204P) and it did some damage, see below. Would have my CRUWEAR fared better? Would have a Sage fared worse? I would say yes for both based on my experiences. Also, the Southard was easier to fix than S30V. Should I have been more careful? Sure, but it is preferred to me to have a steel that will stand up to that kind of impact better than others.
Those examples aren't impact damage, or related to shock testing in any way, and the reason why the S class steels like S7 do so well in the Impact testing, that's shock testing, S= Shock resistance.
You would have to smack the knives with a hammer literally since we are talking about folders here.
To get really technical and relevant here a blade would have to be set in a vice and hit it with a hammer on the side of the blade to reproduce the type of shock testing that Charpy is and I think that's were the confusion comes into play about impact testing.
The damage is from side loading and or low compression strength that caused the the edges to roll or chip out.
If you take a knife edge and put it against steel there will some some kind of damage, although it could be worse or better depending on the edge and blade geometry along with the steel and the HRC hardness.
So it's all variables with no specific answers.
Yeah I have done the same things with my own knives over the years and usually get some rolling, metal and thin knife edges, that's expected.
Like I posted before the edge will fail, one of two ways, it will roll or it will chip, but in the end it will fail one way or another once the pressure is too much for the edge to handle.
Now the damage can be reduced with thicker edge geometry and or blade geometry, but it will still there, just less.
The steel really doesn't matter all that much,
it's more about geometry than the steel type, knife edge contacting steel is never a good thing, specifically on an angle.
So in the end the best thing to do is be careful or use a utility knife so you can just change the blade when cutting around steel or other metals.
