Cold steel cpm 3v chipped

Its luck if you have a blade that is as tough as you desire. Its bad luck if you get a blade that fails and shouldn't. The better makers just put more luck in their blades but any can have some bad luck.

So this is a blade that had no luck. I wouldn't right off every blade made of this steel. I also don't want every blade made so thick to make it indestructible from normal or even abusive use.
This type of huge chip out is what happen when a steel fails, usually heat treated on the hard side. I've seen it on a few blades including an Al Mr. I also don't want all knives made springy soft so they bend and roll rather than ever chip or break.

Even the very great Survive Knives GSO's can take damage if prised into a nail. There isn't a blade made that can't fail first week or ten years down the road if the forces defeat its strength. Battoning is a fast way to find any weakness and do a lot of it over time it will find some. If found wanting replace it. Funny how we invest hugely in blades and expect them to last forever. I like a good knife and pay hansom prices for some, but I know in that steel is some luck. The ticket price should but doesn't always ensure how much luck is in that steel. I generally use the right tool for the job, and try to get some logavity in the luck department. If I push my luck it might break, fool me.

Lastly, my higher priced knives tend to be more pampered so fair well, but they can pick up damage. The most cost effective are mid priced user knives and if they pick up damage it doesn't hurt as much.

Bad luck on this blade, its has a warranty at least. Another same knife might do better.
 
Steel means close to nothing. The maker and the steel, then you begin to have something...

I've seen 440 perform, from high price custom makers, from the best I've ever seen to literally pot metal, curling its edge towards the spine from 15 chops in Maple...

Bad failures on a pristine-looking knife is a fair clue, but not conclusive, that something is up... Skeptics should ask themselves why would an owner necessarily misrepresent everything... There's no reason to not give the same benefit of the doubt to some anonymous user as to some maker, and I would tend to lean a bit towards the end user... Precisely because they are mass-produced, failures are more significant on production knives than on some one-off custom... I used to think my cooling-curved Bk-9 was a one-off: Wouldn't you know it, it is quite common...

Gaston
 
Forgot to say. High volume manufacturers try to give a standard product but can get it very wrong as they have little time to put any love into every blade. A long run and there are going to be some with no luck built in.
Custom makers can make the time to get a product to work as it should, but even then....

With so many knives never being used much then who knows how many poor ones are out there? A lot of knives fail and never get reported. For the thousands sold a good few aren't going to be up to mustard. You only know if a knife is any good if it survives some good use. As said earlier, one bad apple isn't proof they are all bad. The rest is reputation.
 
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So why isn't this person posting their actual experience here? Who are they? If one of our local steel nuts had posted this we would have a different discussion.
 
JTR357 said:
CPM3V is at it's best at 62rc.Even at 65 it's still tough as hell.




Exactly For all we know this blade could've been shot with a rifle round.
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I'm pretty sure you can't heat treat CPM-3V to 65HRC... Maximum austenitizing temp at 2050F plus cryo without tempering only give you 63.5HRC at best...? 1000F tempering will get you 61HRC finally hardness. 400F tempering will get at 62HRC which is the maximum hardness you can properly get with this steel.

And by the way, 62HRC is still not the best all around hardness for this steel. Its suffer carbon lean martensite if you try to push it too hard and the toughness will goes down significantly.
 
I would enjoy hearing what steps CS's manufacturer takes to HT 3V. There are some steels that will perform very close to optimum with fairly simple heat treats, but 3V takes a bit more effort to get the most of. That may not be the right kind of thing to mass produce for a company like CS.

At the same time, 3V has enormous cache, and most knife users can't tell a tough steel from a hard steel to save their life. So even if CS skips the cold cycles or multiple tempers, it is still going to come out performing as well or better than the AUS-8 they replaced CarbonV with. It would be nice to know that they are taking the proper steps, but they certainly don't have to.
 
Bill1170 said:
This was my first thought, too. We don't know what caused the chip.
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Since the owner of the knife did post an explanation, why do you say we don't know?
I bought this knife and was pretty excited for the supposed quality at this price. The edge was super sharp and cut through wood to make feather sticks like butter. Edge seemed to stay sharp. I thought I had found my new favorite knife.

Then I used it to baton through a 2 inch piece of wood which wasn't even a hard wood and a big chunk of the blade chipped off where even reprofiling the blade would be hard. And if somehow you were able to reprofile the blade there's even a crack forming in the middle of the blade which would no doubt lead it to breaking right in half at some point.

Such a disappointment. This can't be real 3V or they are using some fancy marketing to burn people. Maybe they just have the very edge as 3V but the rest isn't. Who the hell knows...but I have some cheap rat tail $15 Mora which was stainless steel and not even carbon steel that I used to baton through the same wood and had zero problems.
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I realize the story doesn't come with a video and a chemical analysis of the wood, but there's really no reason to doubt the basics presented.
 
CPM-3V is the steel that "need" proper equipment and precise temperature/method to heat treat it... This not a any forgiving steel at all. This is not old plain carbon wihich can be HT with just a torch....

Screwed up HT on CPM-3V and it will be a junk.
 
RX-79G said:
Since the owner of the knife did post an explanation, why do you say we don't know?


I realize the story doesn't come with a video and a chemical analysis of the wood, but there's really no reason to doubt the basics presented.
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For me, the presented basics are what cause me to be a bit reticent. Batoning 3v into 2" of wood, that "wasn't even a hard wood" (not sure what that means...birch/poplar/basswood?) whether it's a branch or sapling and causing that particular damage seems unlikely.
 
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RX-79G said:
At the same time, 3V has enormous cache, and most knife users can't tell a tough steel from a hard steel to save their life. So even if CS skips the cold cycles or multiple tempers, it is still going to come out performing as well or better than the AUS-8 they replaced CarbonV with.
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3V does have "cache", but not for me. The only crucible steel I have tested fairly extensively was RJ Martin's S30V on a 1.5k fixed blade knife. In heat treatment care RJ Martin is about the top of the top end... Based on what I saw, I would avoid all the crucible steels...

It consistently did very small wire-edges while chopping Maple, even from quite blunt edge angles (barely under 40 inclusive): This is similar to many edges I have seen that were worked on with power tools: The difference was that a bit of "cold" hand sharpening would wear away the heat-affected edge apex, and then performance would be back to normal again. Not so the RJ Martin S30V: It remained the same no matter how much metal was ground away cold... Worse: It remained the same even when the angle was opened with a slight micro-bevel.

Gaston
 
I HATE it when we do this on the forum - we shred the OP and assume user error straight out of the gate. Look, I know not every response in this thread has done so but more than enough have and I'll be honest I think it sucks. This should be a positive, supportive place for enthusiasts at all levels.

My read, the OP used his knife, (irrespective of how), it chipped, he's really disappointed, he wants to share that disappointment but instead we armchair quarterback his 'user error'/'incorrect batoning technique', etc., etc. Seems like we're waaaay to keen to look like experts. He's a Gold Member who's been around for over 2 years but we question his intentions?!?

It's stuff like this that drives me away from what should be a great place to hang out.

Let's try being civil as opposed to burning other enthusiasts away from a great pasttime/ hobby.

Ben
 
No.. he's as bad as Hitler and ISIS combined!

jk. i don't know the person and i don't know if they were trying to be malicious... but it's doubtful. yes, there are people who will waste $150 and break a knife (noss???) to get attention; positive or negative, but most often times and from what it appears on the person's post who actually broke the knife, it happened during their "normal" use. I'm not sure why anyone would attack that... knives break. especially in thin geometry, especially when used rough. not saying he abused it. i baton all the time, but sometimes blades chip, even in mystical 3V for no reason other than too much lateral force was applied and the blade failed. Like was mentioned in the first few threads though, could have been an anomaly and the rest of the 3v cold steel knives are perfect, so i wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water based on one broken blade.
 
Peroni1973 said:
I HATE it when we do this on the forum - we shred the OP and assume user error straight out of the gate. Look, I know not every response in this thread has done so but more than enough have and I'll be honest I think it sucks. This should be a positive, supportive place for enthusiasts at all levels.

My read, the OP used his knife, (irrespective of how), it chipped, he's really disappointed, he wants to share that disappointment but instead we armchair quarterback his 'user error'/'incorrect batoning technique', etc., etc. Seems like we're waaaay to keen to look like experts. He's a Gold Member who's been around for over 2 years but we question his intentions?!?

It's stuff like this that drives me away from what should be a great place to hang out.

Let's try being civil as opposed to burning other enthusiasts away from a great pasttime/ hobby.

Ben
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User error is more likely than product failure under the manufacturer's intended use nine times out of ten. We can be critical of each other's posts in a constructive manner while maintaining cordiality because most of us are adults. I've disagreed with many people on BF, but that doesn't mean we couldn't be friends. I'd raise a glass with any regular around here any day; we're all knife people, so we all have at least one thing in common.
 
CPM-3V sounds that to get the best out of it requires some real application to get the heat treatment right. It sound to me that its not very forgiving if its done poorly and requires getting several stages right.
The question is: are the larger producers of blades going the extra mile to get it right? Who are going the extra mile?

Just because is stamped with a particular steel doesn't automatically mean its all perfect. Wouldn't take much to turn "super steel" into "average". Profit margins and cutting corners might be too tempting. I do worry that hype, or market position, can get in the way of quality control. Worry that we are sold something that isn't quite as good as it should or can be, all because that can't be done within the market expected price. Some Chinese stuff just doesn't have the pride even though they have the machinery; done by the book rather than the skill and pride.

I wish more people put up their failed examples. I throw knives, not all, but quite a few. Its abuse and the blades break if not tempered for throwing. Just because my knife throwing breaks a knife doesn't mean that knife is bad and won't be any good if used responsibly. To me battoning is abuse too unless a knife has been made to take it; that to me means design, steel, heat treatment, and often pure stout thickness of steel. Just like throwing, battoning is a fast way to find any failure point. Knives can be made for throwing, can be made to take battoning, but usually aren't that great for cutting.
A few years back a CRK knife failed early on in an absolute abuse test. Well I used a Project II flat out for ten years, (D2??), and its still fine. My Pacific is working fine too, so are my S!K GSO's. I'll just use them how I use them and see how it goes. Talk in ten years time if any have failed.

When a blade fails put it up and tell us how you did it. Then people will make their own judgement to why and what; all adds to the wider picture.
There is an Ek in there, all abused by throwing; must do a picture of some of my other casualties sometime:
IMG_5056.jpg
 
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Hi. I don’t know this particular knife, closest thing I have to it is the Fallkniven F1 :). “On papers” it looks to me a good, solid knife. As knives hobbyist and week-end hiker as I am :), I can say chipping occurred to me on a couple of “blazoned” production knives. I can’t consider the chippings I had derived from “improper use”, I still consider chopping a proper use for any decent fix blade camp knife and wood whittling/shaving a proper use for all folders (including gentlemen ones) :D. Hunting knives… mmmh… I think some of them are very “specialized” (e.g.: hollow grinds, very thin edges, very high HRC, etc.), to maximize the game processing but compromising (from a bit to a lot) the camping/hiking tasks.

Tip break occurred to me as well. Tip breaking was, in one case, from my improper use (prying metal) and in another case "border-line", like I was stabbing and then twisting into hard-wood (something I do sometimes with my camp knives).

I experience daily that mass production is not free from defects ;), even the best manufacturers have ppm scraps quotas, so it can be I get a “bad” car, washing-machine, lawn-mower, knife, etc. Warranty is there for good reason, when doing business with reputable brands manufacturers/dealers. I also think every knife can break and I won’t take "spot" cases for an indication something is wrong with one or the other knife; as we say round here, one swallow does not make a spring. Also I came to conclude that, sometimes, internet knives are rather prone to failures in comparison with the real life ones… :D
 
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