Why coat an already stainless steel blade?

Nearly every large knife company coats stainless blades; kershaw, zt, spyderco, Ontario, etc.
 
evilgreg said:
Good point. Where is our resident aficionado of the blackest black blackness that ever blacked blackly?

I haven't seen him posting lately, but that's possible because he has added a browser extension that converts all pages to black text on a black background and now thinks we've all just gone quiet.
Click to expand...

He's moved on to the dark web.....
 
Some coatings are for stealth, that much is true. Although, for the life of me, I don't understand why, if you need stealth, you would put your blade in a kydex sheath. The noise of removing or replacing the blade can be just as dangerous as reflections in a combat situation, if not more so. And kydex can be just as damaging to coatings as sandpaper, especially in a desert environment where sand and grit can be trapped between the blade and the sheath.

The rest of the blade coatings are for people who don't know how to properly maintain a blade.

These are opinions, I have lots of them. None are worth more than the paper they're printed on...
 
evilgreg said:
Good point. Where is our resident aficionado of the blackest black blackness that ever blacked blackly?

I haven't seen him posting lately, but that's possible because he has added a browser extension that converts all pages to black text on a black background and now thinks we've all just gone quiet.
Click to expand...


He gave it up when I ruined all the fun, informing him that Ninjas wore dark midnight blue because it is better than black for night camo. Now he is on crusade against thumb studs.
 
Because some people are afraid of a knife that slices too well?
 
About half of what a blade is about is the steel finish. Honest steel develops a patina. This is a different wear process than "scratches." And yes I have blades that are mirror finished -- mostly I don't use them to cut stuff.

Most of my old carbon blades develop a patina where they turn grey-black.

Oh well. Some of us find short women attractive.
 
I prefer the look of metal. Beyond that, I've seen a lot of coatings that look chewed up. A chewed up coating looks worse than dinged up steel in my opinion.

I care for coated or anodized aluminum even less. Softer surfaces ding more easily and this can be a challenge on gear that comes into regular contact with keys, coins, etc. Yeah. I know. Some coatings are way better than others and all good EDCers have pocket organizers (etc.) that keep things apart. I'm just not that cool. So I'll generally choose brass, stainless steel, titanium, G-10, or a good polymer over aluminum.

Speaking of, I'd love to see the Leatherman Squirt offered in one of those materials instead of the current aluminum.
 
I also heard that some coatings help to reduce the friction coefficient when you cut something.
If it's true then it can explain (justify?) the coating of the blade.
 
I like a good slicer blade myself and find coatings don’t really help with that. I’m of the opinion that if I really needed a coated blade I would just buy a can of OD green, black, purple whatever paint to coat it with then touch up as needed. Then I could color coordinate with my tactical handkerchiefs.
 
No idea why anyone takes a nice steel blade and coats it. I should ask my wife - she will paint over anything - brick, wood, tile. I never get why she takes something with an interesting look and texture and covers it up.
 
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You could also add serrations to the handle because you can, I wouldn’t recommend it though because the lanyard would always break and that would just be annoying. If I lost my ceramic coated titanium lanyard bead I’d probably lose my mind.
 
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