Why no super steel?

Signalprick said:
No experience personally. All the new knifes that come out of my shop get an edge laid on them with my KME. Oddly, I've only ever used the KME once on a personal knife. I usually just hit my personal blades freehand on my DMT Diasharp diamond stones and strop as needed. I really should get myself a better set of freehand stones maybe but I guess as the saying goes, "if it ain't broke....."
Click to expand...
I like the dmt stones myself. But my favorite is Arkansas. For me, sharpening on a favorite stone is nearly as much fun as dulling the knife in the first place. Each stone has its own personality and pattern. Just like each of a dozen stockmans will all be different slightly. So I don’t want to switch to a steel that can’t work on an ark stone because I’ll lose a lot of the joy I get from sharpening. Sounds silly now that I say it aloud.

I guess I can equate it to splitting wood with an axe vs a log splitter. The splitter is better in every way, except for the fun aspect. Using an axe sorta feeds your soul with hard work, but using a splitter just makes you tired.
 
Last edited:
Signalprick said:
Dan,
From a layman's understanding and experience Magnacut will outperform 1095 in all categories. I will provide the link to Larrin Thomas' writing on the subject steel for your reference and here is a direct quote from the article in which it was compared directly with 1095 in a chopping test. I would see no reason with Magnacut to lower the hardness to increase toughness to rival 1095. It will do that easily with the recommended HT recipe while sacrificing nothing in wear resistance from my understanding. Hope this helps.

"Shawn compared a knife head-to-head with an ESEE 6, a knife known for its excellent toughness, made in 1095 steel. In chopping and batoning of wood both knives performed well with no loss in sharpness. The big difference came in the nail chop test where the 1095 had significant deformation; a typical resharpening was unable to take the edge back. Significant edge repair is necessary. However, the MagnaCut knife had only minor edge damage and was back to shaving sharp quickly."

Click to expand...

Thanks Jason, a lot to learn.

Dan.
 
First of all there is no supersteel in scientific terminology as far as I am aware. So using the term supersteel is very misleading. It is marketing term encouraging people to buy stuff even though it is likely that they will not know (and not care) what they would be buying

So why there are no other steels you say, but actually there are. But not as popular as 1095. There are much better steels for the job than 1095, so I am wondering about the same question too. I guess as long as knives sell no manufacturer cares much about the steel. My personal choice for a traditional folder would be AEBL or similar. Cheap, easy to machnice, heat treat, sharpen, takes great edge holds it acceptable amount of time, resistant to chip and rolls and it is a stainless. Should outperform 1095 in all performance aspects. But being able to buy (i.e. score) a GEC traditional folder or any other folder with similar price/quality ratio (e.g. Alberts Cutlery) is already quite a challenge. I would imagine introducing a better steel will not make things better in terms of demand/supply inequality. Of course, this should not be a reason from preventing companies to improve. But let me put it that way, there are lots of barriers and very little incentive to encourage an improvement.
 
afishhunter said:
spine to edge is that steep?
Click to expand...
Yes, I made my first few earlier this year and the research I did pointed to the best shaves coming in that range of angles.
You rest it on the stone while sharpening so the geometry is a built in angle guide.
Mine are W2 at 64 HRC, no super steel for me.
5ezmcDY.jpg
 
Most traditional knives have a slimmer blade profile, thin behind the edges, more of a slicey blade configuration, etc. I wonder if you start running “super steels” at higher hardness if you wont run into breaking / chipping issues? And if you heat treat to lower hardness, then you start to lose the edge retention and benefits of using the super steel to start with, reaching a point of diminishing returns. I can’t say for sure but that is just my gut feeling of why you haven’t seen it so far.
Another thing is I believe making traditional knives is a little more labor intensive, so if you start using really premium materials it probably starts to get cost prohibitive as well.
I am still not convinced that the newest super steels are really worth all the additional expense anyway. Knife marketing has always felt like a good deal of snake oil selling to me 😏
 
Whenever the topic of these modern steels comes up, the subject of sharpening can't be far behind. Some of these steels can make an old guy cranky when comes sharpening time.

When I was a kid I bought an Imperial sheath knife, if memory serves it cost something like $3.00. It had silver and black tin handles, it was beautiful.

We didn't have fixed blades in those days, we had sheath knives (calling them sheath knives is a I habit I still have). Every kid wanted a sheath knife, you could skin a rabbit, build a log cabin, kill a bear, signal passing aircraft, all with the same knife. A sheath knife was a very practical tool. If we had mulit-taskers in those days, a sheath knife would certainly qualify.

I have no idea what the steel was in that knife, but I can tell you it was hard as glass. It resisted stones, sharpening steels, river rocks, it never did resemble anything other than an elongated chisel.

I guess that means that Imperial was making knives out of super steels sixty years ago. Take that, youngsters...
 
There's not a lot of magic to good knife steels - there are measurable qualities like:
-hardness (high hardness lets you have a thinner edge without rolling)
-toughness (high toughness lets you have a thinner edge without chipping)
-corrosion resistance (high corrosion resistance keeps the edge sharp longer before it corrodes)
-wear resistance (high wear resistance means you don't have to resharpen as often)

These are all measurable. Pretty sure Magnacut beats 1095 in every single one of these. Does 1095 work well? Of course, and I regularly use knives with 1095 blades. But if I could get those same knives in Magnacut I'd do it without hesitation. I'd prefer much better steel than what I have in most of my knives, but I'll accept 1095 if everything else is right on.

As far as sharpening goes, I've never had any problem sharpening any of my modern steel knives, but I'm not trying to sharpen them on the bottom of a coffee cup or a random rock I found in a field, either. And with better quality steels, I don't worry about "field sharpening" - for my uses, a modern steel (S30V OR m390/20CV or Magnacut or whatever) seems to stay sharp long enough that I don't need to resharpen away from home. Your mileage may vary.
 
One reason there may not be much "super steel" on traditional folders is that it is simply not needed. The hard use tasks that have been referred to here are not things you would do with a 3¾ inch knife. Chopping, batoning and so on. For those things most if not all here would have a different knife or tool.
 
Jiki said:
One reason there may not be much "super steel" on traditional folders is that it is simply not needed. The hard use tasks that have been referred to here are not things you would do with a 3¾ inch knife. Chopping, batoning and so on. For those things most if not all here would have a different knife or tool.
Click to expand...
I don't do 'hard use' with a pocket knife but I do cut things every day. The benefit of using a more modern steel is that it stays sharp for a lot longer. That's all. I'm not worried about breaking my 1095 knives, I just like the idea of carrying a traditional style of knife that needs to be sharpened a lot less. My Benchmade Proper in S30V stays sharp significantly longer (meaning: many more cuts) than any of my knives with 1095 blades.

So I carry and use 1095 knives all the time, and just know that I'll have to hone them and then sharpen them more often. Which is fine and I do it. But if I could have the same knives in a steel that stayed sharp longer? Take my money!
 
Tyson A Wright said:
So I carry and use 1095 knives all the time, and just know that I'll have to hone them and then sharpen them more often. Which is fine and I do it. But if I could have the same knives in a steel that stayed sharp longer? Take my money!
Click to expand...
So I'm reading that you don't need it, however you would want it.

Thanks, I will put another check in the not needed box.
 
I think this is where customs stand out from factory knives.
If you build a custom knife you can use anything you choose. You can outsource HT and have the best knife for your efforts.
I'm working on my 10th slipjoint and used only Niolox and RWL34, wich are good stainless steels (rwl=cpm154)
I have some M390 waiting for the next four.
It is a bit more expensive but not that much per knife, slipjoints are small.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top