Ranking of Steels in Categories based on Edge Retention cutting 5/8" rope

martinsanders said:
Would you be interested in a K294 trailing point PW with the same geometry as the top contenders. It has been sharpened one time only. I can measure again but I believe it was less than .008 behind the edge. Since 10v is the top spot I just wondered if with the edge geometry of this blade and the steel where it fall and see what manufacturer of A11 steel is better. I would also like to contribute to the on going effort monetarily. Thank you again Jim for all you do.


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I am buried for awhile as far as testing goes.

Mine was .010" as tested.
 
What are the best sharpening stones for an edge pro on the market today ??
Are there any better than what the edge pro comes with ?
 
Love your work here.

Looking forward to seeing how Maxamet in the new Manix or Native 5 compares.
 
Ankerson,

Any idea where the s110v PM2 would place on your list? Close to the Military or lower? Thanks for all your testing.
 
Get well soon Ankerson!
I know about back & neck pain.

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I noticed there wasn't many ZT's on your list and then I found this video the other day testing zt's s35vn. links to the other tests with the same steel and brand are in the video... so it was repeatable.

any thoughts? do you plan to do some of this testing as well?
[video=youtube;yDxSG6xbl7M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDxSG6xbl7M[/video]

most of my zt's are m390/204p but I do have a 0450cf the factory edge really did hold up really nice as I used it pretty hard but once it dulled I sharpened it to 15deg and now it really doesn't keep up like it did prior, obvious reason being the edge angle but does this steel pass your tests?
do you think zt runs soft in general across the board?
 
Mo2 said:
I noticed there wasn't many ZT's on your list and then I found this video the other day testing zt's s35vn. links to the other tests with the same steel and brand are in the video... so it was repeatable.

any thoughts? do you plan to do some of this testing as well?
[video=youtube;yDxSG6xbl7M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDxSG6xbl7M[/video]

most of my zt's are m390/204p but I do have a 0450cf the factory edge really did hold up really nice as I used it pretty hard but once it dulled I sharpened it to 15deg and now it really doesn't keep up like it did prior, obvious reason being the edge angle but does this steel pass your tests?
do you think zt runs soft in general across the board?
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My 1c opinion about ZT hardening is that they stay well back from optimal range...

EDIT:
It comes from real world trekking usage
 
What we need is a concomitant test for toughness, as well as edge wear resistance. If a steel is giving fair to poor wear resistance, but much improved toughness, then it's not a matter of a poor heat treat but a question of which quality is more important to you: toughness or wear resistance.
 
Twindog said:
What we need is a concomitant test for toughness, as well as edge wear resistance. If a steel is giving fair to poor wear resistance, but much improved toughness, then it's not a matter of a poor heat treat but a question of which quality is more important to you: toughness or wear resistance.
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Twindog, M390 is a heck of a steel in the way it has superb edge holding AND toughness.
I.e. It can deliver >40J lateral toughness at 62hrc.
I've already posted details aplenty in this very thread.
Point is it that not everyone is willing to heat treat this steel as it needs to.
But everyone likes to show the M390 badge 😜
Austenitizing at more than 1100°C, 3bar quenching, triple tempering and deep cryo.
All just redundantly mentioned.
As it was about the relationship between a correct martensitic matrix hardness when an highly alloyed steel comes into the ballgame.
 
daberti said:
Twindog, M390 is a heck of a steel in the way it has superb edge holding AND toughness.
I.e. It can deliver >40J lateral toughness at 62hrc.
I've already posted details aplenty in this very thread.
Point is it that not everyone is willing to heat treat this steel as it needs to.
But everyone likes to show the M390 badge 😜
Austenitizing at more than 1100°C, 3bar quenching, triple tempering and deep cryo.
All just redundantly mentioned.
As it was about the relationship between a correct martensitic matrix hardness when an highly alloyed steel comes into the ballgame.
Click to expand...

M390 is a heck of a steel -- much better balanced that S35VN and it will in most cases hold an edge much better. But the YouTube clip was about S35VN not holding an edge well.

If you want a steel balanced between wear resistance, stain resistance and toughness, then M390 is the ticket. But if you want a tougher steel, then you're more likely to go with Elmax or S35VN.

Some steels are a pretty good compromise between toughness and edge wear. 3V comes to mind. But usually you gain on one at the expense of the other.

And there are other considerations. ZT ran its 0560 S110V model at 59 Rc, which means that they left a ton of wear resistance in the oven. But they wanted the beauty of a composite blade, which couldn't take a higher hardness without melting the brazing. It was a compromise. They lost a lot of wear resistance, but gained in toughness. Lots of compromises.
 
Twindog said:
M390 is a heck of a steel -- much better balanced that S35VN and it will in most cases hold an edge much better. But the YouTube clip was about S35VN not holding an edge well.

If you want a steel balanced between wear resistance, stain resistance and toughness, then M390 is the ticket. But if you want a tougher steel, then you're more likely to go with Elmax or S35VN.

Some steels are a pretty good compromise between toughness and edge wear. 3V comes to mind. But usually you gain on one at the expense of the other.

And there are other considerations. ZT ran its 0560 S110V model at 59 Rc, which means that they left a ton of wear resistance in the oven. But they wanted the beauty of a composite blade, which couldn't take a higher hardness without melting the brazing. It was a compromise. They lost a lot of wear resistance, but gained in toughness. Lots of compromises.
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Twindog, you made a quite interesting remark, which allows me to point out something.
S110V DEFINITELY needs to be brought up to 63HRC to show some (small) advantage over S90V. This opens up a can of worms: S90V,Elmax, M390, S110V, S125V are all steels that need some more attention.
You've to forget the oldie and goldie 1050-1080°C austenitizing range, if you really wish to have Vanadium diffused properly in the matrix AND Cr carbides (M7C3) to be limited and thus bring about the greatest possibly content of Cr in solid solution for stain resistance. This is especially true and important for Elmax and M390 that have an insane Cr content associated with a fairly high C content.
S35VN is IMHO a step back from S30V, which -ceteribus paribus- has higher edge holding (in Jim's test environment). Yet SxxVx really don't show the exploitable secondary hardening advantage that the other above all show.
This is quite important to bear in mind as, by cleverly using this, Elmax can reach a lateral toughness of circa 43J and S90V can forget about micro-chipping.
But I'd like to point out that minimizing Cr carbides requires > (or at least equal to) 1100°C aust and minimizing retained aust. requires deep cryo (or secondary hardening, which also minimizes retained cementite).
Good news are that italian (I'm from Italy and it is fairly easy for me to check) knifemakers have learned this the hard way and now they HT M390 almost like a dream (one KFM already mentioned also S125V). No names unless strictly required ;)

Of course 3V is the toughness king, no bail here.
 
Points have been made about why they don't use higher ht protocols to maximize steels like m390 and now ZT has a S90v out there and I'm sure that it has a low Hrc but the question is much more simple than that and so is the answer. I see it like this...don't use a high wear steal to sell your product if you aren't going to really use it and their are plenty of other cheaper steels they can use for toughness with lower alloys. Their blades are .16 at the spine so they won't snap. Which brings me to the answer for low HRc's which is profit margins. M390 is a popular steel but to properly ht it costs money so Until they start to lose money because people aren't buying their blades they will continue to heat treat them at lower HRC values and rake in the profits. That's the bottom line.


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You certainly know more about steels than I do, Daberti; but I was not criticizing your post, but rather the tester in the YouTube video who said that the relatively poor wear resistance of the S35VN blade he tested was due to a poor heat treat. The problem with his statement is that he tested only wear resistance, not edge stability or toughness. The heat treat could have been fine; it was just optimized for toughness, not wear resistance.

From Sandvik: “A higher tempering temperature will yield a somewhat softer material with higher toughness, whereas a lower tempering temperature will produce a harder and somewhat more brittle material….
“A camping knife or a survival knife, for example, may be tempered at 350°C so that it will be able to withstand rough handling without breaking. On the other hand, if the knife is expected to keep a sharp edge, it can instead be tempered at 175°C for maximum hardness.”

http://www.edge-1.com/Edge/stores/afri-thipa/articleimages/SandvikHardening Guide.pdf

So heat treating can be optimized for toughness or wear resistance or some other quality. Just because the wear resistance is somewhat low, doesn’t mean the heat treat is poor. It may mean that the heat treat was optimized to emphasize toughness over wear resistance.

Typically, wear resistance on powder steels like S35VN is excellent, but toughness is average. (See chart from link above.) So it may make sense for a tough-use knife with a blade made out of powder steel to kick up the toughness at the sacrifice of wear resistance in order to achieve a performance better balanced for the intended use of that knife.

If a knife maker is going for any particular characteristic (toughness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, edge stability (resistance to chipping and rolling) or sharpness, he has a lot of choices. He can change the heat treat to stress one or more characteristics and he can choose the appropriate class of steel. And he can choose the best alloy within a steel classification. So if he wants high wear resistance in a powder steel, he’ll choose M390 over S35VN. If he wants exceptional toughness in a powder steel, he’ll choose 3V over M390 — or Elmax over M390 if he needs stainless.

If he wants a blade easily capable taking a keen edge, he can choose a fine grained steel like 13C27 or a carbon steel like 1095. He’s not likely to choose a coarse carbide steel like D2, which is a bear to sharpen to a keen edge. On the other hand, if he wants wear resistance, he’s certainly better off with a coarse carbide steel like D2 or a powder steel like M390 than he is with a carbon steel like 1095, which excels at toughness and edge stability, but is poor at wear resistance.

You could say that ZT’s heat treat of its 0560 S110V composite blade was terrible because it was run at a relatively soft 59Rc, leaving lots of the performance potential of that steel in the oven. On the other hand, ZT, on that blade, was heat treating with beauty in mind. It wasn’t a bad heat treat, it was a heat treat with a specific mission: a composite blade. To my mind, that knife was intended more for collectors than users, and the heat treat was optimized for that purpose.
 
Twindog said:
You certainly know more about steels than I do, Daberti; but I was not criticizing your post, but rather the tester in the YouTube video who said that the relatively poor wear resistance of the S35VN blade he tested was due to a poor heat treat. The problem with his statement is that he tested only wear resistance, not edge stability or toughness. The heat treat could have been fine; it was just optimized for toughness, not wear resistance.

From Sandvik: “A higher tempering temperature will yield a somewhat softer material with higher toughness, whereas a lower tempering temperature will produce a harder and somewhat more brittle material….
“A camping knife or a survival knife, for example, may be tempered at 350°C so that it will be able to withstand rough handling without breaking. On the other hand, if the knife is expected to keep a sharp edge, it can instead be tempered at 175°C for maximum hardness.”

http://www.edge-1.com/Edge/stores/afri-thipa/articleimages/SandvikHardening Guide.pdf

So heat treating can be optimized for toughness or wear resistance or some other quality. Just because the wear resistance is somewhat low, doesn’t mean the heat treat is poor. It may mean that the heat treat was optimized to emphasize toughness over wear resistance.

Typically, wear resistance on powder steels like S35VN is excellent, but toughness is average. (See chart from link above.) So it may make sense for a tough-use knife with a blade made out of powder steel to kick up the toughness at the sacrifice of wear resistance in order to achieve a performance better balanced for the intended use of that knife.

If a knife maker is going for any particular characteristic (toughness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, edge stability (resistance to chipping and rolling) or sharpness, he has a lot of choices. He can change the heat treat to stress one or more characteristics and he can choose the appropriate class of steel. And he can choose the best alloy within a steel classification. So if he wants high wear resistance in a powder steel, he’ll choose M390 over S35VN. If he wants exceptional toughness in a powder steel, he’ll choose 3V over M390 — or Elmax over M390 if he needs stainless.

If he wants a blade easily capable taking a keen edge, he can choose a fine grained steel like 13C27 or a carbon steel like 1095. He’s not likely to choose a coarse carbide steel like D2, which is a bear to sharpen to a keen edge. On the other hand, if he wants wear resistance, he’s certainly better off with a coarse carbide steel like D2 or a powder steel like M390 than he is with a carbon steel like 1095, which excels at toughness and edge stability, but is poor at wear resistance.

You could say that ZT’s heat treat of its 0560 S110V composite blade was terrible because it was run at a relatively soft 59Rc, leaving lots of the performance potential of that steel in the oven. On the other hand, ZT, on that blade, was heat treating with beauty in mind. It wasn’t a bad heat treat, it was a heat treat with a specific mission: a composite blade. To my mind, that knife was intended more for collectors than users, and the heat treat was optimized for that purpose.
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I know you weren't criticizing me :)
Please consider the possibility that the great majority of stainless steels when tempering is in the 350-480°C range are left as garbage (and manufacturers say this in spec sheets).
When you're dealing with highly alloyed SS the optimal HT windows are very narrow...we've to remember that aust. above the level I mentioned is mandatory to have the greatest chance of fine tuning toughness with tempering, otherwise you'll mess the whole stuff up. Deep cryo is mandatory as well
Bottom line: the best combination between toughness and edge holding will be achieved with secondary hardening (500-540°C), because residual austenite and cementite will be minimized. But this is something better being left for skilled custom makers.
 
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