- Joined
- Dec 21, 2006
- Messages
- 3,158
The feedback from the community here at Bladeforums is great. You all have helped me so much, I must ask to call upon you once again!
A very good friend of mine has his own hunting guide business. Spends a lot of time in Mexico, actually. Typical South Texas game of white tail deer, wild hogs, turkey, etc. He wants a knife made for himself, but probably would turn out to be a "run" of knives, which got me very excited. Actually, it may turn out to be "two" classes of knives. A "Blue" level knife with high performance carbon and quick/easy styling, and then a "Gold" level knife with high performance stainless and more complex grinds/handle work/yadda yadda. Pretty sure I will go with S35VN on the "Gold" line.
But I ask your advice, and hopefully experience, with using various carbon steels in hunting knives. While higher alloy tool steels like CPM M4 would be my choice, I'd like to stick with the more simple carbon and tool steels. This knife is going to really be put to the test, so my geometry and heat treat have to be on the money. But that leaves steel selection. My friend made the comment that he would prefer a knife that is harder to sharpen, but lasts longer, over a knife that is easy to sharpen but requires it more often.
So to boil it all down, from this list, which would you think is going to give the best edge retention on a hunter knife, very thin edge geometry, all things being equal? (kiln won't hit A2 temps, much less stainless temps)
1. 1095
2. 52100
3. W2
4. O1
5. O7 (1.2519) Very similar to Blue 2
6. Blue 2
If these steels were all you had, which would you pick for best edge retention in hunting applications? I would think it would be hard to tell the difference in all 6 of those, but you guys probably have some good input I hadn't thought of.
Thanks!
A very good friend of mine has his own hunting guide business. Spends a lot of time in Mexico, actually. Typical South Texas game of white tail deer, wild hogs, turkey, etc. He wants a knife made for himself, but probably would turn out to be a "run" of knives, which got me very excited. Actually, it may turn out to be "two" classes of knives. A "Blue" level knife with high performance carbon and quick/easy styling, and then a "Gold" level knife with high performance stainless and more complex grinds/handle work/yadda yadda. Pretty sure I will go with S35VN on the "Gold" line.
But I ask your advice, and hopefully experience, with using various carbon steels in hunting knives. While higher alloy tool steels like CPM M4 would be my choice, I'd like to stick with the more simple carbon and tool steels. This knife is going to really be put to the test, so my geometry and heat treat have to be on the money. But that leaves steel selection. My friend made the comment that he would prefer a knife that is harder to sharpen, but lasts longer, over a knife that is easy to sharpen but requires it more often.
So to boil it all down, from this list, which would you think is going to give the best edge retention on a hunter knife, very thin edge geometry, all things being equal? (kiln won't hit A2 temps, much less stainless temps)
1. 1095
2. 52100
3. W2
4. O1
5. O7 (1.2519) Very similar to Blue 2
6. Blue 2
If these steels were all you had, which would you pick for best edge retention in hunting applications? I would think it would be hard to tell the difference in all 6 of those, but you guys probably have some good input I hadn't thought of.
Thanks!
