What's your opinon, worst steel ever?

420J2 has 1/3rd the carbon of 420HC, so it is a pretty pitiful blade steel considering the corrosion resistance of other stainless steels - which is really the only useful property J2 has in our neck of the tool world.
 
I love cheap shitty asian knives, composed of mystery metal. I have a few of these, and use them to open mail or plastic packages.

The biggest problem with them, is their universally crumby handles. They ALL make good letter openers, which you can leave out on desks. And if some knife wrecker shambles past and steals/ruins/misuses one, what's the big loss?

You can try out new, uncertain sharpening techniques on them, with a clear conscience, too.
 
HoosierQ said:
I have a Gerber LMF that is such a nice knife but heaven only knows what that blade is made of. Xamax maybe?

Titanium is not steel. It is an element unto itself (Ti). Steel is iron (Fe) and carbon (C) plus other things depending on the alloy. So titanium is not a crappy steel. It is not a very good edge holding metal that's true but a fantastic metal for many other things.
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I've heard about this, add about 0.5% Xanax to the steel, this was actually an old American Frontiersman survival trick, except they substituted it for morphine, went around slicing animals with them, but the animal would like it, and keep coming back. Then, a trapper could leave a wall of spikes down and come back to a goldmine of self-impaled critters, some still alive, jerking to stay on the spikes when being removed. This was also widespread in swords, knives and bayonets, also why during the Civil War, opioid addiction was called "The Soldier's Sickness", because after a volley of gunfire, both sides would be in so much pain, they would eagerly affix bayonets and charge. Only way to relief? Was on the end of the enemy's bayonet, The positive upside to this, is that the blood-gutters on the side of the blades coated in morphine to suck it all in the body, was an essential step to the invention of the hypodermic syringe, one of the most classic designs ever, the knife we now use, even to this day, for batoning medication into the human blood.

I hear that Sal Glesser uses a little (0,2-0.4) morphine in Spyderco's steels before leaving the factory to make them more addictive, that's why they can release so many sprints.

I think you mighta got a portmanteau of Elmax and Vanax there.

Erasmus said:
I love cheap shitty asian knives, composed of mystery metal. I have a few of these, and use them to open mail or plastic packages.

The biggest problem with them, is their universally crumby handles. They ALL make good letter openers, which you can leave out on desks. And if some knife wrecker shambles past and steals/ruins/misuses one, what's the big loss?

You can try out new, uncertain sharpening techniques on them, with a clear conscience, too.
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Nothing wrong with that much, but you can do the same thing with Opinel (very moddable for a $12 knife, both blade and handle), MAM from Brazil, Douk-Douk and K55 Mercator around $20, RAT 2 or Buck 110 LW for just over $20, and you can, in my onion, have much more pride, too. Hey, lots of choice.
 
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