zt450 s35vn excellent heat treat

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microtech85

Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Messages
468
Today i saw a post concerned about zt having bad heat treat. The post combined with a video by cedric and ava youtube channel where the zt 0450 underperformed prompted me to run a copy cat test to see how my 0450 would do. using 3/8 inch sisal rope on maple cutting board and cutting until it could no longer reliably cut printer paper, i got 438 cuts. very impressive and unexpected result. i recorded a video and will try to post it on youtube if i can get it to work. On cedric and ava channel, he only got somewhere close to 100 cuts.
 
I was able to get the edge retention of zt 0450 video posted. So here it is for anyone who would like to see evidence of how the zt 0450 did cutting rope. I made this for the benefit of bladeforum members after reading a few posts about bad heat treats from zt. I hope this provides useful information to our forum.
link:
 
I did a way less scientific test on cardboard and found that my 450CF, 630, and Ki405 all performed close to the same. In sharpening yesterday (to fix the wear I made), I found both ZT models to be slightly harder to sharpen (steel reacted like it was slightly higher Rockwell). I'm only disappointed that S35VN performs so similarly to S30V.
 
microtech85 said:
I was able to get the edge retention of zt 0450 video posted. So here it is for anyone who would like to see evidence of how the zt 0450 did cutting rope. I made this for the benefit of bladeforum members after reading a few posts about bad heat treats from zt. I hope this provides useful information to our forum.
link:
Click to expand...

It is a good test and thanks for doing it and posting, I was interested to see it and would like to find something similar for the ZT Elmax, about which the rumors of bad heat treat still persist to this day.

At the same time, just in the interest of being objective, your test is a sample of 1 so all it can demonstrate is that your 1 knife has good edge retention.
 
I think one of the main benefits of buying from a reputable manufacturer is that you are getting a consistently high quality heat treat. i am confident with benchmade and spyderco heat treats. i think maybe with zt we see a company attached to kershaw and they sell some of their knives like the zt450 for such a good price that it seems logical they would cut a corner on heat treat by treating softer to save money. but, i think that would be very damaging to their business. so, thisntest has atleast for me confirmed that at least my blade is heat treated very well.
 
^Sure that seems reasonable. I keep hearing that my ZT 0561 in Elmax is supposed to have "heat treat problems", and yet I see thread after thread here at BF going back the last few years refuting that and indicating that the huge majority of users with this steel from ZT had no issues whatsoever. I've had no observable issues with mine either. It seems like a VERY small sample of people who had some kind of issue got blown out of all proportion, and then it gets turned into this perpetual (and unfounded) rumor: ZT has heat treat problems with their Elmax/S35vn/whatever. When I hear these things, I always want to know: what's the evidence? Are we talking one guy demonstrating this on a blade? Or are talking multiple independent users, with the same blade, reporting the same issue?
 
You know, according to phil wilson seamountworks website, the heat treat for m390 and elmax is roughly identical. so, logic would tell me that if zt's m390 and cts204 are good, then so should be their elmax.
 
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