What's your favorite steel?

MissesMeow said:
I’m not new to knives, but I am relatively new to knowing/caring about different knife steels. As someone who cares a lot about toughness and corrosion resistance, AEB-L has always appealed to me, and it seems to get almost universally high praise from knife makers. My question is, is there a powder metallurgy version of it? I think I read recently that it has a fine grain structure and even distribution of carbides, so maybe “powdering” it wouldn’t do much — but I could be so wrong about all of this. It’s just something I’ve been curious about and am using this opportunity to ask about. (By the way, this isn’t a question specifically for you, CDHumiston, it’s more a question for the universe, so no pressure on you.)

With all humility and respect for my knife elders,

- MissesMeow
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Powder processing this particular steel wouldn’t be worth it. The carbides are already smaller than what is commonly found in powder steels. Heat treatment and whatever processing the manufacturer does can do basically whatever is needed with ARB-L.
 
Yeah, I'm wondering about S45VN, it's significantly less tough than S35VN for not much more edge retention.
 
me2 said:
Powder processing this particular steel wouldn’t be worth it. The carbides are already smaller than what is commonly found in powder steels. Heat treatment and whatever processing the manufacturer does can do basically whatever is needed with ARB-L.
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Thanks! Glad to know my limited understanding isn’t too far off the mark.
 
Magnacut for larger knives, S90V for smaller knives. If you don't care about rust then CRU-WEAR and Maxamet instead.
 
you’re pretty much right on. Powder processing is most useful for a particular group of steels where the steel will nearly melt or will melt before all the carbides can be dissolved during heat treating. When that happens the control over carbide size and location becomes quite limited. Powder processing restores a good deal of that control.
 
MissesMeow said:
I like your comment about getting a migraine trying to keep knife steels straight. I’m about a year into “steel obsession” and while I think it’s something worth knowing about, it also makes me feel completely insane at times. I keep this page from KnifeSteelNerds permanently open in my web browser: https://knifesteelnerds.com/2021/10...ness-edge-retention-and-corrosion-resistance/. It’s the best single page of HTML on knife steels that I’ve come across. (If anyone knows of a better one, please let me know!)
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I just bookmarked and saved that link, thank you so much buddy!
 
I'm happy with anything VG-10 equivalent and "higher" grade. However my preference is for edge retention, so S30V and higher is what I aim for. Pretty much everything I have is S35VN or M390 these days, it seems.
 
In articles where I have shown that chart (minus the extra labels) I have also said that I think plotting toughness on a log scale is a better representation of the behavior, which I also showed.
toughness-vs-edge-retention-log-scale.jpg
 
Larrin said:
In articles where I have shown that chart (minus the extra labels) I have also said that I think plotting toughness on a log scale is a better representation of the behavior, which I also showed.
toughness-vs-edge-retention-log-scale.jpg
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Yep, The M4 is right in the sweet spot... Thnx
 
I like the one with the line plots with toughness over hardness better, Larrin Larrin . After all, hardness can be very different from maker to maker.
 
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