Why Does Everyone Think 1095 is Tough?

[Zeunerite]

1095 is tough at a low hardness, but that applies to nearly every other steel.
Personally I would only consider a steel tough if it were tougher than most other steels in the same hardness range that it's heat treated at, in which case I would call 1095 brittle looking at Larrin's toughness charts.

 

[Mitchell Knives]

I like 1095, but I don't require a particularly "tough" knife.

You can always find something tougher if you really feel that you need it, but 1095 will meet the needs of most people.

 

[LG&M]

I haven't read this whole thread, but tough compared to what? The "super " steels we have today? No maybe not. Tough enough for generations of knife users who knew how to use a knife. Sure is.

 

[robgmn]

The problem with threads like this is that they often blend the lines of reality, theory, philosophy, and can fully derail from the original intent of the post. Hell, I posted more than one thought in these forums where I VERY clearly stated that I was talking in hypotheticals and "what-ifs", and the discussion derailed into these never-ending battles.
I love the rabbit hole of info known as the internet as much as anyone, but some of y'all need to get outdoors and get some oxygen.

That said, there are no absolutes. I have a Becker BK that I almost solely baton wood with. It's kind of my "therapy" around the campfire. It takes a LOT of batonning to dull the edge, and it cleans up easily with a dozen swipes on a rock from my yard. 1095.

I also have a CHEAP Cold Steel Kukri that I bought for yard cleanup. One winter, I got a whole bunch of boxes of manufactured fire logs (larger wood chips and compressed wax to make 4" log). I used them for firestarter by cutting off chunks about 2" wide. How? With the $20 kukri and a 2.5 pound sledgehammer. I beat the PISS out of that kukri. The only appreciable damage was a cracked handle (hard plastic) that I fixed with paracord and crazy glue, some deformation of the spine, and some rolling/chipping of the blade when it hit the floor of the garage (often).

I would guarantee that there are keyboard warriors who will say no $20 knife is worth the steel it is made with, and would probably argue for hours on end against it. Reality is different than keyboard war, eh?

 

[chalby]

R robgmn
Yes, forums bring out all types of people. It seems a lot of them just want to convince others that their opinion is worth more than it is.

I think when people talk about toughness, it is more complicated than what is made out. Same with edge retention. You can subject knives and knife steels to a certain test and measure the results, but it doesn't mean that those results will be the same if you change some of the testing parameters.

As to your Becker, that is probably more to do with edge geometry than 1095 being exceptionally tough. Try putting a 12 or 15 degree edge on it and I would bet on it chipping and rolling.

 

[Grayman1984]

Regardless of other's opinion, I do consider batoning abuse. Most manufacturers do as well, since batoning voids the warranty just like using the knife as a screwdriver and prybar does.
In over 60 years of using my knife in the boonies, not once have I had cause to baton my knife.
Truth to tell, prior to coming to Blade Forums, I'd never heard of it. No one I knew batoned their knife. Reading their books, Nessmuk, Kephart, and Kreps never batoned their knives. The 1911 (first year published) and later Boy Scout Handbooks, do not mention batoning. (None of the aforementioned gentleman, and the BSA chop with their knives, either.) No one "back in the day" batoned their knife. Not the "Mountain Man"/Professional hunters/trappers, Explorers, Settlers, Soldiers, Scouts, "Cowboys", Missionaries, or the Natives.

Knives are a tool for cutting and slicing. Not felling trees or "processing firewood". Strangely enough, I've always been able to find firewood that didn't need splitting, and plenty of dry grass/leaves/moss, twigs, and other materials for kindling, around the camp site. I also carried a supply oh hemp or other not cotton string.

I was taught under the "Use The Right Tool For The Job" and the "Finesse and Skill Beats Brute Force" schools.

There are a lot of jobs/tasks out in the sticks and boonies, that a knife is the correct tool for. However, felling a tree, limbing, and "processing firewood" are not numbered among them. Honestly, there are more jobs/tasks in the sticks and boonies were a knife is the wrong tool than it is the right tool.

You want to, or feel you "have" to baton to be doing "bushcraft" "properly"?
Great! Get a froe, beat your axe/hatchet/tomahawk, or if you didn't pack one in, make and use a wedge.

Answer this question honestly:
SCINARIO:
Lets say you're two or three days out from the nearest civilization, and/or your vehicle. You're alone; No one came with you. You're on foot. No ATV, no cellphone coverage, etc.. You're "on your own."
It just started to snow, the temperature is dropping rapidly, along with a significant increase in wind speed, from a breeze to a gale.
You manage to get your tent up.

For whatever reason, you baton with your knife to "process/split your firewood", and it breaks on the first strike. Now you got no knife, and no fire.

What you going to do?

Bold of you to assume a knife guy only brings one blade...

 

[MolokaiRider]

I like 1095 for its character and how well it responds to a steeling rod.

 

[skx013k2]

Check out what the guys at ESEE are doing with their 1095 knives. By that I mean, what they are actually doing in real world SAR, bushcraft, and survival situations. 1095 is plenty tough for real world scenarios.

 

[Smiling]

1095 is great for outdoors
Plenty of toughness and easy to get sharp.

 

[N4SIR]

 

[robgmn]

R robgmn
Yes, forums bring out all types of people. It seems a lot of them just want to convince others that their opinion is worth more than it is.

I think when people talk about toughness, it is more complicated than what is made out. Same with edge retention. You can subject knives and knife steels to a certain test and measure the results, but it doesn't mean that those results will be the same if you change some of the testing parameters.

As to your Becker, that is probably more to do with edge geometry than 1095 being exceptionally tough. Try putting a 12 or 15 degree edge on it and I would bet on it chipping and rolling.

Likely, but a 12-15 degree edge on a knife like that would be as ridiculous as a 40 degree on a chef's knife (if even possible on a properly thin blade.

But yes on the question of "toughness". It's a REALLY weird analogy, but a good one I can think of is picking a car for a virtual racing game. The basic ones often have four parameters: top speed, acceleration, cornering, braking. Increase one, sacrifice another. As you scroll throguht he cars you can see how they interact.

Would be cool for some people to see a similar visual when it comes to steels, edge geometries, blade thickness, etc. when it comes to "tough".
Pick your poison.

 

[upnorth]

I like 1095, but I don't require a particularly "tough" knife.

You can always find something tougher if you really feel that you need it, but 1095 will meet the needs of most people.

I've had ESEE's 1095 in all kinds of obscure locations (Fur trade "nipple" ring from a 1780's post general location), and environments.

I have a buddy in the far north who forges old school Jaw Harps, as used in the Fur Trade. He sent this one to me.

I haven't damaged any of them, but then I'm not pounding them through chain sawed rounds. I did that all last summer out at the lake with the wife, many times between axe use. I was trying to see if I could kill a Cold Steel SRK in SK-5 that I left in the trunk, I didn't. When "out there" I'm usually just splitting maybe wrist thick, usually less, dead fall etc. As said, there are many ways to start a fire even without cutting tools. But I will use certain knives at times. Or whatever makes sense at that place and time. This thread made me think about taking my ESEE 4 or 6 out tomorrow. It's been a while.

 

[Grayman1984]

Because most people think about Ka-bar and Esee 1095 beasts, like the BK22 or the Esee 4/6. Those two brands profit from top quality heat treatment, which tends to make their 1095 robust. Heat treatment is king, especially on the bushcraft department.

Blade grind and design matters too when it comes to robustness and again Esee/Kabar top knives have very good design.

Condor and tops are cheap brands with soso practice in terms of metal.

I beg to differ with your assessment of TOPS knives, their differential HT has produced some superior quality 1095 blades that can take a lot of abuse and hold a good edge.

 

[StoneAndSteel]

1095 isn't my favorite steel, but it is certainly a good field user. I think that may be what has given it the mystique of being "super tough." When a lot of guys say "it's tough" they don't mean in a strictly technical way that knife nuts mean it.

With this in mind, I've never taken a big enough chunk out of 1095 to cause me any problem in the field (despite it being "abused" by battoning). Any edge degradation or little chips I've had, I have been able to get an edge on a river stone and then strop back to hair-popping on my pant leg. I haven't managed that in another steel (which might just mean I suck at sharpening). But in a non-technical sense of the word, 1095 is "field tough" in a way that the gross majority of steels aren't.

 

[deadzonepatrol]

1095 is tough, compared to the older, low end stainless steels. See the chart on page 2 of this thread. 1095 (57 HRC) is at 10 ft/lbs, whereas 4116, which is a common Euro stainless, is only about 7.5 ft/lbs at the same 57 HRC. There are now many tougher steels, such as the new supersteels. But consumers and kinfe makers balance many competing interests in their decision making: cost of the knife, cost of production, ease of sharpening, maintenance, and so on.

There is one caveat about that chart, though. I see that they used "subsize unnotched charpy speciman" for their tests. This is in contrast to Carpenter's testing (unnotched IZOD samples) and Crucible's testing (C notched Charpy samples). That threw me until I looked at the specifications of the testing. I couldn't figure out why Crucible's A2 had tested at 41 ft/lbs, whereas it was only 15 ft/lbs in this test. Then I saw the sample sizes and notching had been different. So the test results are only good for relative comparisons of the steels tested therein. The numbers cannot be compared to the results from other testers, as the samples were different.

Another complication that arises from threads like this is that people's opinions of steel types generally comes from using knives. (I am talking from the knife consumer's point of view here.) We buy knives, not steel. So companies like TOPS and Kabar have been using 1095 for a long time and have been very successful at producing tough user knives out of 1095. Even though 1095 is not as tough as CPM3V, there are ways to make 1095 knives very tough. They can use differential heat treat, so the spine is at HRC 52, while the blade edge is 57. They can make the blade thicker or the edge more obtuse. Or they can improve toughness by tweaking the heat treat or using modified 1095. So all that leads to people believing that 1095 is tough.

 

[Smiling]

My take on it is that 1095 is tough for the price and also tough enough for tasks like batonning, and when it comes to ease of sharpening it has an edge over other steels (pun intended) as it can be sharpened on river stones and other natural stones.

 

[tomsch]

My Becker BK9 seeks some hard chopping use in the back yard with plans and small shrubs. Yes it does dull but the good news is it does not take much to bring it back to very usable sharp. I currently have it at 20dps and it still performs well. I'm sure that a big part is how they HT.

 

[soc_monki]

My Becker BK9 seeks some hard chopping use in the back yard with plans and small shrubs. Yes it does dull but the good news is it does not take much to bring it back to very usable sharp. I currently have it at 20dps and it still performs well. I'm sure that a big part is how they HT.

My bk7 is the same. Actually held its edge after chopping a limb for a while. I was impressed.

 

[hugofeynman]

Although Larrin numbers says otherwise, I think 1095 is a tough enough steel, because it can be differentially hardened, letting the edge hard and the spine soft. Having said that, I have zero 1095 knives, because my main focus in on extreme toughness, knives that can be battoned with a sledgehammer and laugh at it with minor cosmetic dings in the spine. But I also like a good slicer, and 1095 can get high hrc numbers, so I would prefer 1095 in a purely cutting oriented knife.

 

[D-weaver]

I spend more time making and using woodworking tools, and have found 1095 to make acceptable chisels. But just acceptable - even when they start off artic ice hard, they don't have a great range of no edge failure at all in wood while O1 has a pretty decent range, and re-forged and temperature cycled wood files also work well. But some of what's going on with chisels is more testing strength than toughness, and I have no idea how those things work out - nor do I know that it's specifically the 1095 that's the issue.

There's another woodworker who I talk to fairly often who, I believe, got advice from larrin in picking a tough steel to use 3V. If it wasn't larrin, it may have been someone else, but this woodworker was focused purely on toughness and many of the tools were hardened to 59. I used one of the plane blades - it was fine, but an edge that deflects without breaking is still a huge problem in a woodworking tool. Wood is relatively hard compared to watermelons and little deflections on an edge stop everything. The idea of straightening an edge is something that isn't done much in woodworking, and such little bits are sharpened off each go (perhaps a thousandth of an inch) that whether your correcting a deflection or resharpening doesn't make a difference.

This is compounded further by other uses. 1095 is commonly used in boutique saws hardened to about c-50 so that it can be filed. It has little in it that would abrade the teeth of a file back (for lack of a better way to to put it), so it's very good for that.

I've seen it super soft in knives (55? maybe even a little less) and over 60 - it's like two different animals.

Nothing that I ever do with a knife challenges toughness like a notch test does, so it's not in the equation unless I can draw a parallel to the edge of a woodworking tool nicking, and so far, I haven't had great luck. I didn't see any better performance (actually less good) with 3V at 59 hardness than O1 at 62/63, despite monstrously different toughness numbers, and though A2 shows better toughness than O1, the edge of O1 wears much more evenly in woodworking tools and I see fewer small nicks leaving lines on wood surfaces (is that grain size or lack of refinement for a2? I don't know).

I'm sure toughness matters more in a commercial knife where an easily broken tip will make for constant return and refund.