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- Nov 16, 2002
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Another factor is urban legends and most of those are complete BS, but they die hard....
For instance, this chestnut:
Any steel, no matter what it is won't perform above it's alloy content all things being equal and assuming a proper heat treatment and made by someone who knows what they are doing.
The best Japanese style kitchen knives are made from Hitachi's white and blue paper steels and Swedish ingot carbon steels and they're made for some of the most precise cutting to appease some of the most discerning recipients of that food being cut (Kaiseki-style meals in Kyoto being the pinnacle). I don't know of any chef or itamae who's posted on a forum complaining it was time to brake out the Kitayama or J-nat because his or her knife just didn't have enough cobalt or vanadium to get the job done (though, to be fair, I only go to English language forums).
There aren't any magic heat treatments that will work miracles above and beyond what the alloy content of the steel is and anyone that says otherwise is fooling themselves because it just won't happen.
Agreed. That's why CPM-10V or CPM-S125V will be a perpetually bad choice for a yanagi or an outdoors chopper, but 1095 can make both without too much trouble (even though it'd be pushing it for 1095).
As an example 1095 will never outperform CPM 10V when cutting abrasive materials like cardboard or wild boar hide because the alloy content just isn't there.
Same goes for 420HC and CPM 110V, same as the last sentence, but in stainless.
Compared to the overall thickness of a blade, the finish of its edge, the angle of its edge, and even the hardness of the martensite, the steel type and alloy content is overblown. A thick knife made of S110V that's RC59-61 with a polished edge of 5 degrees per side will most emphatically not outcut a thin blade made of 1095 that RC65-66 with a polished edge of 5 degrees per side. Neither will a thin blade of S110V hardened to RC65-66 with a polished edge of 5 degrees per side. The S110V will lose that edge immediately and all the vanadium in the world won't do jack poopypants to help it.
And one can make scenarios and uses where the S110V will completely outshine 1095 such as scraping barnacles off fiberglass hulls.
But, as you say:
Another factor is urban legends and most of those are complete BS, but they die hard....