Who likes soft steel on knives?

[Dorito Monk]

As a side note, it is possible that "the common US rock" that is in question is not a native rock at all to the state. If it was found in a back yard it may be part of a gravel foundation or driveway, like many of our residences.

Possibly something to think about?

That is possible. I would note that it is not, to the best of my knowledge, part of a gravel foundation or driveway, but it's entirely possible that it's from outside of Ontario. It's shape seems more water-worn than quarried, if that makes sense... there are no jagged edges on this particular rock, more like a smooth stone from a river or beach or something. Might have been brought back from a trip to the beach, even from a trip to Nova Scotia. You raise an excellent point - I'm just not sure of it's origins.

 

[Gator97]

You'll note who made said claim (some Russian guy), which was then attacked by Gator97. In pointing out that he didn't know what he was talking about, I was tasked with "proving it".

I am touched that you felt compelled to defend unknown Russian guy with such a passion However. Let me spell that out for you, he knew perfectly well what he was talking about, as to him the whole rock sharpening thing was the justification for making softer knives.

Gator97, my boy, the only claim I made about the subject was that you were selling the notion of using a flat rock in a pinch (ie: having no better option available to you) a little short.

1) I was not selling anything. b) You are making the same mistake believing that suitable rocks are available anywhere you go. If your hiking is limited from your basement to your backyard, you're all set, however, the rest of us are not very likely to hike in there.

Also, that you are being pretentious, but that's just an unpleasant reality and entirely beside the point.

Like I said, cheap shots add nothing to your creditability or this thread.

Since I haven't said anything about my past experience with field sharpening, where did you get this statement from?

Go back, read again, assumptions were made exclusively based on your postings, and to make things easier for you I quoted each sentence. If it still unclear, I have nothing else to add.

Again with the assumptions. Good god, man, you're going to have to get those under control.

I think U need to chill out.

It's a rock. It's round. It came out of my back yard. That's the sum total of what I know about it.

Which means you know absolutely NOTHING about that rock, yet you insist that that rock is pretty average throughout US. That's a pretty big assumption...

Why would you assume anything more about it?

I didn't You insisted it was a great sample for averaging.

That would be the same personal experience which led you to understand that it would take three hours to sharpen a blade in the field with a rock, right?

Yup, and please don't bring your test as a proof of anything, I specifically reposted my original claim as to how and when it'd take 3 hours. If unclear, read again. Although, since you are so hung up on the number 3... Depending on the knife length, steel and hardness it may take 2 or 4 or even 6. I hope that makes you feel better

I'm not sure you understand yourself what are you arguing. If you were given a limestone you'd spend a lot more than 3 hours without achieving much.

 

[Dorito Monk]

b) You are making the same mistake believing that suitable rocks are available anywhere you go.

Of course, I've never said anything of the sort, but it seems that for you, reading my posts takes a backseat to being contrary.

assumptions were made

I'm glad you agree. It was your first mistake. I'm sure this exchange would have been much more fruitful had you stopped to think before assuming whatever you wanted. Like I said, you probably ought to stop that, it lends itself to extremely poor critical thinking.

I think U need to chill out.

Because I'm definitely foaming at the mouth, right?

Which means you know absolutely NOTHING about that rock, yet you insist that that rock is pretty average throughout US. That's a pretty big assumption...

It's a bit sad that, in spite of the fact that I have never said anything of the sort, (the rock was found in Canada, man, have you even been reading this thread? ) you claim that I have. I have claimed that it is a rock. The first rock I laid my hands on. I have claimed nothing more, nothing less about the origins or broader implications of this rock. I don't really see where you're coming from with these claims...

Perhaps you could help? Would you be so kind as to find me the post where I declared that this random rock was representative of every rock in the U.S.?

It's probably the same post where I erupted into a rage and declared that rocks suitable for sharpening are available over every square foot of this earth, right?

So, Gator97, do you actually have anything to contribute, or are you merely perpetuating this argument for the purpose of putting as many words into my mouth as possible? Since you've refused to clarify your own experience with field sharpening (or indeed to acknowledge whether or not you have any such experience), repeatedly attacked the validity of my views without providing any foundation for your own opinions, and demonstrated a keen inability to comprehend simple sentences, I don't see any reason to persist in this exchange.

If anyone else has something to contribute, I'm happy to learn a thing or two, but I'm through satisfying Gator97's hankering for bickering.

 

[elkins45]

"Logic" never matches actual test.

Talc and calcite are both abrasive and both will remove much harder metal over time. I know this because I have done it. They are used as metal polishes on buffing wheels and will not only polish but will round edges if you get heavy handed about it.

Once again, anything abrasive can be used to sharpen.

Have you ever taken a dull steel knife of reasonable hardness and sharpened it on a limestone rock? If so, how long did it take?

 

[Gator97]

Of course, I've never said anything of the sort, but it seems that for you, reading my posts takes a backseat to being contrary.

Hmm, is that so...
You personally quoted "some Russian guy", and context was that you were agreeing with him. You never expressed your disagreement and your post reads:

...whereas a softer steel could be sharpened on any old flat rock you should happen to find.

Are you debating that the statement above clearly implies any place and any rock? Something more specific in there than the said rock being old and flat?
To which I objected stating few things, amongst them availability of the rock, and suitability of the rock for sharpening.
You replied with the photo of norton waterstone... Which was funny, I give you that, but clearly had nothing to do with old flat rocks found in the field.

Because I'm definitely foaming at the mouth, right?

No, besides overusing emoticons, you keep going back to my personality and cheap personal attacks.

(the rock was found in Canada, man, have you even been reading this thread?

Who cares Canada or US? Question was if it can be considered generic enough.

This is you asking the question:

I just went out in my backyard and found a rock. It's not even very flat. Pretty round. It's the first rock I found. Would you agree that this provides an acceptable sample to test the abilities of generic rocks as sharpening implements?

The answer is no.

I have claimed that it is a rock. The first rock I laid my hands on. I have claimed nothing more, nothing less about the origins or broader implications of this rock. I don't really see where you're coming from with these claims...

Exactly from your words above, as you have very clearly claimed that the rock was generic enough to test sharpening on the rock in general. So, your latest statement that you have claimed "nothing more" is incorrect. You did claim a lot more.

Perhaps you could help? Would you be so kind as to find me the post where I declared that this random rock was representative of every rock in the U.S.?

2 sentences above, where you declared that the rock from backyard was, and I am quoting you again: "acceptable sample to test the abilities of generic rocks"

I'm through satisfying Gator97's hankering for bickering.

Really? After all the name calling and comments on personalities you still feel like a victim?

 

[FlaMtnBkr]

Give me the hard stuff and the super steels. I like a knife to hold it's edge for as long as possible. And so far I have not had a problem with chipping in any of my knives except for S30V which after being sharpened a few times has gone away in the one knife it occurred on.

Also, the 'super steels' like ZDP189 and M4 get far sharper for me than the middle of the pack steels like 440C, 154CM, and VG10. S90V gets pretty darn sharp too but not as sharp as the other 2 mentioned. I also don't consider myself the best sharpener and I'm not sure why others have such a hard time with them. I also don't know why I can get them so much sharper when they are supposed to be hard to sharpen and have a high carbide volume but they get sharper for me.

As far as sharpening in the field, I usually carry 2 or 3 knives so if one gets dull I use the next one. I have also taken a piece of hard felt and cardboard and loaded them with diamond spray and keep in a little plastic pouch from the girlfriends birth control that fits easily in a pocket. I can get my knives back to fairly sharp with a little work if I don't let them get to dull.

 

[Dorito Monk]

I don't see any reason to persist in this exchange.

I've said my peace.

Moving on:

One thing this 'Soft VS Hard' steels topic has got me wondering about (I think this is probably the most relevant topic)...

Are 'super steels' like CPM M4, S30V, D2, etc. easier to strop than say, 440a or soft carbon steels?

My thought was this: When stropping, I'd figure that there would be a much lower chance of 'rounding' an edge on a knife that uses a really hard/tough super steel than on a softer steel that's really easy to form a burr on, round the edge, etc. So, would super steels be more forgiving to strop? Does anyone know whether or not this is the case?

I figured it's relevant, if only because if they are generally easier to strop, a good stropping once and a while would be an easier way to keep the edge sharp than waiting for a knife to require coarse stones or diamond hones, etc... A little work in the short term versus a whole lot of maintenance at once in the long term.

 

[hardheart]

Are 'super steels' like CPM M4, S30V, D2, etc. easier to strop than say, 440a or soft carbon steels?

No. I strop with no pressure, so edge rounding is non-existent. More important, I don't use compounds that remove enough metal to really round an edge. But a loaded strop will not do you much good on an edge reflecting light or that has suffered chips/nicks or rolling. Unless someone is using compound of 20 micron abrasive or more.

That is for finish stropping as I know it. For edge trailing strokes against a soft backed sharpening medium, then it's no different than edge leading. The high hardness, high wear resistance, high carbide volume steels will require more work to achieve a similar level of polish. More passes, harder abrasive, etc.

 

[A.P.F.]

...I have also taken a piece of hard felt and cardboard and loaded them with diamond spray and keep in a little plastic pouch from the girlfriends birth control that fits easily in a pocket. I can get my knives back to fairly sharp with a little work if I don't let them get to dull.

*Vision of FlaMtnBkr pulling a blazing pink birth control pack from his pocket.*

For what it is worth, I have put a working edge on 440a using a granite river rock. Such is an 'emergency' edge that doesn't last long.

 

[Sword and Shield]

Now, tell me, what would be your advantage with softer knife + ohio sandstone combo over another guy who had harder knife + DMT diafold over the course of the same 2 weeks?

Hard steel= chips, possible breakage. Soft steel= dings, bends. Which of those can be repaired? What good is a knife that breaks?

 

[Gadgetaholic]

Hard steel= chips, possible breakage. Soft steel= dings, bends. Which of those can be repaired? What good is a knife that breaks?

I don't think that all 'hard' steels are lacking in toughness - different steels have different characteristics. Choose the blade shape, grind & steel type that suits your intended use. For a chopper hard steel is fine - but it MUST be tough or you'll be looking at a damaged edge.

Some of us 'knife knuts' carry sharpening tools into the field so edge retention is not always #1 priority. A good tough knife that can quickly and easily be sharpened to a screaming sharp edge and retain the edge reasonably well - may be better than a brittle knife that is hard to sharpen, but is RC65+.

 

[FlaMtnBkr]

*Vision of FlaMtnBkr pulling a blazing pink birth control pack from his pocket.*

It is actually dark blue and doesn't say anything. Would make a decent credit card holder as well. Not sure I would carry it around if it was pink and advertising birth control.

 

[knarfeng]

If "common stones" work well on soft steels it would be nice to see results on hard steels as well. That would be appropriate for the thread and interesting.

"Common Stones" work quite nicely on blades hardened to 59 or 60HRC if the blades are not high carbide steels. I would think they would work just fine on blades of higher hardness as well, but I don't have any such to try.

Hard is not the issue. Carbide content is.

 

[hardheart]

Hard steel= chips, possible breakage. Soft steel= dings, bends. Which of those can be repaired? What good is a knife that breaks?

Steel taken to higher hardness requires more force to break than it does to bend at lower hardness. The tradeoff is do you want to bend a knife at X force, keeping it in one piece, but damaged, or do you want a knife to do nothing at X force and continue unchanged, but break at 2-3-4 times X? Geometry is also a major factor in this, thicker steel will require more force at any hardness, to either bend or break.

 

[Gator97]

Hard steel= chips, possible breakage. Soft steel= dings, bends. Which of those can be repaired? What good is a knife that breaks?

I think you are underestimating the strength of the "hard steel" and overestimating what damage a soft steel knife can take.


Here, the photo of the Chroma cutlery porshe design kitchen knife. Made out of the Type 301 stainless steel. Everyone's complaint whoever used or sharpened it, soft steel. I'd be surprised if it is 54HRC. See the crack?

Now let's go back to Fiberware boning knife, 440A steel, 54-56HRC.
I have a lot of hard knives, but never really observed a chunk of that size missing from the blade. The edge damage gallery is posted on my site, I have nothing to hide in there. Check it for yourself.
There is also GRS gallery, which had failed heat treat apparently, and look what a single nail did to the edge. The blade didn't break, that's for sure.

Generalizing, I can say that, hard edge will not take damage as easy as the soft edge. Especially if you use proper tools for the proper job.
Soft steel will bend, as you said, and then you can realign it back, and then it will bend again next time. And few times realignment will weaken that part of the steel enough that it will become loose. That and inherit steel weakness is why I get bunch of soft steel knives with missing chunks of metal from the edge. Well, plus user abuse.

I have quite a bit hard or super hard steel knives. Never had ANY breakage on them. It is very clear to me that I shouldn't take 65HRC SS110V or 67HRC ZDP-189 knives to baton through the steel tubing.
Neither 65HRC S125V nor 64HRC S110V had no problems with wood whittling, cardboard cutting and even pushing through coaxial cable. I didn't chop, pry, batton etc... When I expect that, I pick up Busse BM, or one of the Himalayan import kukris.
If I need to cut veggies I want that knife with as thin of the edge as possible because it makes cutting a lot easier and more precise. That's where high hardness comes very handy. And if I stay with in the steel limits, no carrot so far ever chipped or broke my superhard kitchen knives.

So, I can ask you too, what good is a knife which does its work only half as good as it could? To have very questionable pleasure of rock sharpening? I can see that as an exercise for the skill, but not as the way of maintenance.

If Dorito wants to keep his knives "rock sharp" all the time, more power to him, but overall, soft knives don't have high durability if you try to keep them sharp, otherwise they do not have high cutting performance because you have to stick with very thick edges "thanks" to the soft steel.

 

[VTguy]

Gator, that last post was very good, I quite agree.
To adress the OP I generally prefer harder steel. I find that for me I get increased edge durablity without sacrificing and sharpen potential. As far as sharpening with rocks...Gypsum is one of the softest rock/minerals out there and yet...see how long your edge holds up to cutting sheetrock (gypsum board) The one point I would make is that metal edged blades have been around a LONG time. For what percent of this time do you think diamond/ceramic sharpening media has been there to sharpen these edges? What do you think people used before these manufatured methods? That said the way I see it is that I don't believe it is necessary to keep steels softer to allow them to be sharpened by a rock, I think it's a cop-out for poor heat treatment. I know for a fact I can sharpen s30v on my own local stones if necessary. One must be careful but I don't see why you need steel any softer than 60 rc to be able to field sharpen with a carefully selected stone.

 

[greater]

This sounds like the quest for the ultimate do it all field blade. Even in the field this bush ignorant person (me) can figure out there are different types of cutting tasks to be performed.

Hardness, abrasion resistance, toughness, edge geometry, size, thickness, weight, shape, etc.... blah blah blah...... they are all important.

A few words there is no perfect do it all blade. Everything is a tradeoff.
Figure out what your priorities are, what needs to be done, and get THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB.

Another suggestion is to maybe learn how to chip yourself a cutting tool out of flint or some other hard rock.

 

[greater]

Maybe this thread should be renamed Knives that are easiest to sharpen using common rocks.

 

[Gator97]

Thanks VT

As far as sharpening with rocks...Gypsum is one of the softest rock/minerals out there and yet...see how long your edge holds up to cutting sheetrock (gypsum board) The one point I would make is that metal edged blades have been around a LONG time. For what percent of this time do you think diamond/ceramic sharpening media has been there to sharpen these edges? What do you think people used before these manufatured methods?

As for sharpening methods, well here's the list of what I use for sharpening.
That includes over half a dozen waterstones. Ok, most of them are synthetic, but natural stuff costs way too much to justify the cost and it's very hard to get the really good stuff.
Considering that even cardboard and vegetables dull knives eventually, yes I do not doubt that even the softest stone will dull the edge. However, sharpening it is a different matter.
To clarify, most of the initial blunting, especially when cutting harder objects will occur due to edge deformation, this is especially true for softer blades. Sharpening however, is the opposite, you need to remove the metal, wear it off. Which is why tomatoes dull knives a lot faster compared ot the time it'd take to sharpen them using the same tomato.

And there is a reason the sharpening stones appeared as such, because some rocks work better, others do not.
The reason I mentioned ceramics and DMT diafold is that those are compact, and have high cutting power. If you are expecting sharpening in the field, it is quite impractical to pack 5 different waterstones, or even 1 stone which is 2x3x8 inches in size or even bigger.

 

[Javelin]

Man, I don't know about all this sharpening on random rocks stuff, but I can say with out a doubt that I have no clue what I prefer hardness wise.


On one hand, I've been using japanese laminated steel knives at 62-64 HRC with GREAT results. The friction folder I have in particular, which I've used on occasion to shave with, can go from batoning to making fuzz sticks to opening a soup can. Now, I put a fairly thick edge on it and keep that edge refined, it doesn't shave with ease but it'll do if I have nothing else. Also the blade its self is about 3/16ths of an inch think, no thin slicer. The fixed blades I've used were just as good. The only problem i've faced was a broken tip on the friction folder but that was more just poor design and a dumb friend. Sure, sharpening's slow but with a medium thick edge nothing blunts these knives enough to really cause a headache, just a quick touch up on the diamond/ceramic pocket stone I have.

On the other hand I've had the great pleasure of owning a knife from Blind Horse Knives. These knives, in a soft saw blade steel at mid-low 50s, are tough as nails. I've used my patch knife to bust coconuts. Soup cans don't do any more to this as it did to the japanese laminated knives. At no point was edge holding an issue and it sharpened up as quick as any other knife. In fact when it comes to cutting carpet or cardboard I feel this tougher steel holds up better to the hard particles that would otherwise cause micro chipping in a blade.

So, I've had good experiences on both ends of the spectrum.