Why Do Steels Go Out Of Fashion?

B

Bugout Bill

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Jan 2, 2013
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I am very much in favor of progress when it comes to knife steels, but what ever happened to older steels? Why don't we see BG-42 blades any more. Or S60V?

I know that some companies still use ATS-34, like Black Bear Knives and Microtech, but why aren't other companies still using these older steels?
 
Your title holds the answer... Fashion. Just like everything else in the world today, there's always something new and "better" marketed heavily as the next best thing out there... It catches the consumers attention, becomes popular, and old steels are forgotten about. Simple as that.
 
olybears57 said:
Your title holds the answer... Fashion. Just like everything else in the world today, there's always something new and "better" marketed heavily as the next best thing out there... It catches the consumers attention, becomes popular, and old steels are forgotten about. Simple as that.
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I almost wish Spyderco made a sprint run BG42 Military or PM2. Would be interesting to see what the reaction would be.
 
Sizes and availability of sheet stock and popularity with customers are a couple of reasons.
You've mentioned a couple of stainless steels that aren't common in knives anymore, but there are a lot of legacy low alloy carbon steels that are still popular, and I attribute a lot of that to nostalgia. Very few people seem to get nostalgic about an old stainless formulation, but you can still buy a knife made from a worn out file or a railroad spike.
 
There was a Spyderco Military in BG42. A quick search will find forum posts about it.
 
Well, ATS-34 and 154CM are very similar, and US based companies generally prefer the US made steel. Regarding S60V, if I remember correctly the cost between making S60v and S90v was not that much, and since S90v is a "better" steel, S60v was phased out. I could be wrong. I often am.

SOG used ATS-34 extensively back in the day, when most of their knives were made in the Seki, Japan factory. Now, most of their knives are made in China, Taiwan, etc, and so they only reserve the better steels for their models made in Japan, which almost exclusively use VG10 now.

As Xiaolong said, there are newer better steels available, and the old ones are being used less and less.
 
Part of it could be lack of demand. A very large portion of society simply doesn't carry knives, those who do are usually happy with cheap no-brand POS Chinese knives or Gerber, the relatively few who do know knives are usually content to use something more mainstream from the big 3. The knife community is relatively small to begin with, and the group of dedicated collectors who want more obscure steels are even smaller. Add in that a lot of those steels are difficult/expensive to work with and in the grand scheme of things companies don't have a lot of incentive to use them, and they get dropped by the wayside.
 
Bugout Bill said:
I am very much in favor of progress when it comes to knife steels, but what ever happened to older steels? Why don't we see BG-42 blades any more. Or S60V?

I know that some companies still use ATS-34, like Black Bear Knives and Microtech, but why aren't other companies still using these older steels?
Click to expand...

BG-42 is too popular in the aerospace industy and the maker Latrobe went out of business and was bought by Carpenter. They recently released CTS-B75P which is the PM version of BG42.

I believe S60V, like said above, was not worth producing anymore after S90V came out.

Almost everyone who used to use ATS-34 now uses 154CM instead since they are basically the same.

There is usually a good reason besides going out of fashion.
 
It also has a lot to do with manufacturing processes and tooling, if some new super steel is made that takes super expensive machining processes and tools no manufacturer is going to want to not use those tools to their full potential working some older, no longer top of the line steel and no steel mills are going to want to take up production time/facility's making the older steels either, there's some that'll always sell, VG-10, CPM154 and/or 154CM, acuto+, S30V but others are just a fad and won't ever be used widely.
 
Demand (fashion, in some cases) typically dictates the longevity of any supply.
 
olybears57 said:
Your title holds the answer... Fashion. Just like everything else in the world today, there's always something new and "better" marketed heavily as the next best thing out there... It catches the consumers attention, becomes popular, and old steels are forgotten about. Simple as that.
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What he said.

Knives with "better" steels sell more... And now that you can get a benchmade with M4 for under $150, why would you ever spend more on one with 440c or ATS-34?
 
Combination of multiple factors.

First, with technology there are a lot of advancements. If you can get a higher end steel that performs better why would you want to stick with something older? I'm not saying the older steel is bad, it just doesn't perform as well as the new steel often.

Secondly, as stated some steels will always be produced, whether they have a connection with another industry where there will always be demand, or whether a steel company/steel buyer wants to continue its use.

And last, of course there is always trends and marketing.
 
D2 has been around for a loooong time and is probably out of fashion but I'm still going to use it because it's a very good steel.
 
Bugout Bill said:
I am very much in favor of progress when it comes to knife steels, but what ever happened to older steels? Why don't we see BG-42 blades any more. Or S60V?

I know that some companies still use ATS-34, like Black Bear Knives and Microtech, but why aren't other companies still using these older steels?
Click to expand...


ATS-34 is basically 154CM and it does still get used a lot on production knives.

BG-42 isn't used anymore in production knives because it was replaced by S30V as that standard back in 2001, some of the Custom guys still use it from time to time though.

Actually the older steels in general are still widely used, most are lower alloy so they tend to be used in the lower cost knives.

It's not so much out of fashion as higher alloy, higher performance steels become available in quantities that can be used by the production companies.

Nothing really NEW other than S35VN, CTS-XHP and a few of the Carpenter Steels that match some of the older steels in alloy content like CTS 20CP.

Other than that most of the steels have been around for along time and used in other industries.

For example CPM 10V was the 1st PM steel and was developed back in 1978.....
 
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