Why s90v and all these other high carbide steels suck for knives

halden.doerge said:
So, if I'm reading all this correctly it sounds like this Cliff guy really, really, really doesn't like things that are different, right?
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Agree with him or not, Cliff has done a great deal of good, detailed testing. His site has a lot of interesting insights, and his work has called a bunch of unsubstantiated marketing claims by makers into question for me.

Reading his site has made me a more critical and discriminating knife consumer. That's more than I can say for a lot of the written material in the online knife community.
 
The following steels were compared for edge retention on carpet :

  • 3Cr13 kitchen knife
  • cKc knives - utility blade in cKc-X
  • Uddo Pukko in O1/Enzo
  • Paramilitary in S30V/Spyderco
  • OTK EDC in k390
  • Farid Mehr in 121REX/69-70 HRC
In regards to edge retention, the maximum performance was found to be S30V. However in regards to edge retention efficiency, the maximum performance was found to be with the 3Cr13 stainless steel.
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http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/articles/carpet.html

this is compared to s30v which was supposedly developed as a knife steel.
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Kraftzion I don't know what to tell you, your are using a limited test to make broad conclusions.
 
Cliff ommits saying what he uses to sharpen the main bevel with. In the article mentioned above he only states about microbevel. From earlier articles he sharpens s30v like so.
  • Suehiro 'Chemical' 320 grit
  • Naniwa Superstone 400 grit -or- King 1000 grit
  • Naniwa Aotoshi 2000 grit
Then 1000 diamond Wicked Edge micro.
Its from this forum i learned you gotta use diamonds to abraide all of the vanadium rich steels properly and the rest of the CPM evenly distributed hard carbides.
So this kind of neglect on his behalf opens other possibilities...
 
kraftzion said:
if you are like me and don't even consider it a knife until you get to 15 per side, 30 degrees included or below
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That's me. I totally agree with you there.
I have been of late making friends with my two, count 'em, two (out of three) S110V blades.
I can "hone" them. I just use a 1200 and 8,000 DMT diamond plate and we are hair whittling again. Yes I would prefer less of a jump but that is the progression for this company and it works.
NOW
lets talk about this word "honing". Honing is NOT using a steel. Steels are actually not a great idea when it comes to decent, real, high end KNIFE STEEL (I'm not talking about this funny vanadium carbide stuff).

In the end I hear yah and mostly agree with you.
I fool around with the high vanadium for the "challenge" of making them work.
When I want to cut something and have a blade steel that is friendly to sharpen I start picking up one of my M4 or M390 knives and it is like coming home.

Yah toss that steel.
 
newdebate said:
Best results from the edge retention thread:

s30v = 620 cuts

s35vn = 760 cuts

These were customs both .006" behind the edge.
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pretty cool to see the S30V ABOVE the S110V ! ! !
Yah I know apples and oranges
. . . I'm just sayin' . . .

S30V - 620 - Michael Raymond Estrella Custom - 60.5 - 61 RC - .006" behind the edge
S110V - 600 - Mule - 60 RC - .015" -.018" behind the edge.
 
Across several different knives from different makers, S30V was always one of the worst steels I have used, being hard to sharpen and having miserable apex stability (wire edges at the slightest effort).

I've seen a box-stock Gerber Mark II in S30V (thin edged, but still a dagger) get pronounced wire edges from push-slicing 1/8" thin cardboard... I've seen a $2k RJ Martin 10.5" chopper get deep wire edges instantly from a single chop in Maple... CPM 154 was roughly the same from a third maker.

That being said, 440C from several makers did prove even worse, while 440B from a Randall Model 12 was among the best... It has cost me too much to ever give CPM steels another try.

As to 15 per side being narrow minded, the cutting effort easily triples on most materials with 20 per side from 15 (not to mention complete failure to cut on some materials), so I think 20 degrees is a little too open-minded...

Gaston
 
If you're unfamiliar with the time when S30V was fairly ubiquitous in modern knives, then it's likely that you weren't into modern knife designs from the popular makers like Spyderco or Benchmade longer than maybe 4 - 7 years ago. Somewhere in that time, production and custom makers shifted a lot of their use from S30V over to S35VN.

So while you see a lot of S35VN in popular designs, older versions of those models were likely in S30V.
 
My Father God rest his soul , once told me every choice in life comes with a trade off and blade steels are no different.
We are so lucky to be living in a time with so many different types of blade steels to choose from.
 
Kaizen1 said:
If you're unfamiliar with the time when S30V was fairly ubiquitous in modern knives, then it's likely that you weren't into modern knife designs from the popular makers like Spyderco or Benchmade longer than maybe 4 - 7 years ago. Somewhere in that time, production and custom makers shifted a lot of their use from S30V over to S35VN.

So while you see a lot of S35VN in popular designs, older versions of those models were likely in S30V.
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Yes, and before S30V it was ATS-34. Before ATS-34 the hot ticket was 440C. Seems like that was the progression of the most popular stainless steels. 154CM and BG42 were in there also before the dawn of the particle metallurgy takeover but were never as prolific as the others.
 
halden.doerge said:
So, if I'm reading all this correctly it sounds like this Cliff guy really, really, really doesn't like things that are different, right?
Click to expand...

From my observations (that go back at least to the two broken Maddog Tusks), the one thing that Cliff can't abide, is hype. He is a polarizing personality who has been testing knives, making friends, and influencing people long before Noss.
 
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Have these steels been hardened correctly, If it has not even the best steel in the world will not hold an edge for long.

I wish it was easier to check the hardness of the steel of finished knives that perfomed badly, But thouse machines must be quite expensive.

John.
 
kraftzion said:
When you sharpen these "super steels" to any angle even approaching what I consider a knife edge what you end up with is a bunch of loose or barely hanging on carbides on the edge. And just like loose gravel in your driveway when you step on it any pressure moves them out of the way. And your razor sharp edge goes away. So I implore American knife makers to get out of the gravel, stop trying to put a square peg in a round hole and start making knives out of proper knife steels again.
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I have what is possibly a dumb question, but I'm hoping someone can answer in a way that I can understand.

For some time now, I've been reading discussions about the effect of carbide size and distribution in steel, and I sort of understand the analogy of very hard particles in a softer matrix. I've read descriptions of carbides "tearing out", etc. But this is all on a microscopic scale, correct? What I can't picture in my I-got-a-C-in-high-school-chemistry-mind is what is the scale relative to the edge. Let's say the edge of my knife is magnified to the size of the prow of an ocean-liner. Are the carbides the size of barnacles, relatively speaking, or much larger than that? Would that really effect the performance of the blade in the real world? Or am I picturing it wrong entirely?
 
LuckyC said:
From my observations (that go back at least to the two broken Maddog Tusks), the one thing that Cliff can't abide, is hype. He is a polarizing personality who has been testing knives, making friends, and influencing people long before Noss.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. NOW you're telling me he lives and test knives at the North Pole? That, sir I refuse to believe.
 
Latest update :
Para 2 S110V two weeks or so without sharpening.
Still trimming hard rubber the way I need to do it. Controllably and well.
Zero chips or rolls or flat spots.
The edge feels smooth and consistent drawn across my fingernail.
Starting to loose the bite into my nail but the last trim of the day went just right so still "sharp" but not SHARP.
See this is where the M4 would be shining because it would still be a sharper working edge bordering on shave / scrape hair sharp. The S110V, at this stage, is no where near shave / scrape hair sharp except one little five or ten MM area near the tip.
Personally I prefer the keener feel and performance of the M4 for this reason but the S110V is by no means or stretch of the imagination "sucking".

Chipping or going dull in a day or too difficult to sharpen is sucking and there are NONE of those problems with this blade.
Happy dog !
 
r8shell said:
Are the carbides the size of barnacles, relatively speaking, or much larger than that? Would that really effect the performance of the blade in the real world? Or am I picturing it wrong entirely?
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Much larger.
I or someone will provide a link soon.
My first S11OV blade did suck though and I swear I was getting carbide tearout. Micro chipping all along the edge etc.
HOWEVER
I may not have been sharpening it right. I spent a lot of time using stones that were not hard enough and they effectively pushed the metal around and produced edges, many, many edges (many, many sharpenings) that were shave and or hair whittling. The edge would break down and DIE in a day though and I could feel all this roughness when drawn across my fingernail. Even an edge that was pretty darned mirror polished at the start of the day.
NOW
the last two blades (different knives than the one just mentioned) that have performed brilliantly for me (still cutting well after two weeks of no touch up) . . . those two blades were sharpened exclusively with diamonds from the first day I got them.
Not saying diamonds are a must but . . .

PS: I tried but all the good photos I know about PhotoPhucket has blocked so we can no longer see them. I looked at electron micrographs on line but didn't find what I wanted.

Some body help this person . . . a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
 
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Carbides in cpm steels are microscopic, somewhere in the 0.006 to 0.009 millimeter range. Carbides in conventional D2 can be add much as 0.050 millimeters. Carbides in conventional steels with relatively low carbide volume can be smaller than the width of a sharp edge. See below. Some steels have only tempering carbides, which are 0.000005 millimeters or so.

Sharp edges are somewhere around 0.001 millimeters or less. The smallest I've heard of was 0.0002 millimeters.
 
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me2 said:
Carbides in cpm steels are microscopic, somewhere in the 0.006 to 0.009 millimeter range. Carbides in conventional D2 can be add much as 0.050 millimeters. Carbides in conventional steels with relatively low carbide volume can be smaller than the width of a sharp edge. See below. Some steels have only tempering carbides, which are 0.000005 millimeters or so.

Sharp edges are somewhere around 0.001 millimeters or less. The smallest I've heard of was 0.0002 millimeters.
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Thanks for the explaination.
So, on my passably sharp knife in D2 or s30v, the carbides are actually bigger than the width if the edge? Now, I can see how that could have an effect. At least in theory.
 
I thought the beauty of high carbide steels like D2, S30V, or S90V were they kept cutting to low sharpness. The carbide tear out produced a jagged (albeit thicker) edge as it micro chipped itself to dull. I thought that was an advantage in some situations?
 
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