The Mastiff
Gold Member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2006
- Messages
- 5,577
Excellent Vegas Blade! You did a lot of work and got results as they actually should have gone going by the foundry charts of performance. When dealing with materials that really test wear resistance those carbides, and Vanadium ones at that simply can't be beat. Making the blades for performance as Spyderco does all else being the same the carbide fraction should rule that particular test.
I notice you understand why I sharpen with a bit lower grit on most of the steels. Too low is not good, too high isn't either unless you are push cutting, not slicing. If highest wear resistance is how you judge steels than CPM M4 should be better on most medias than Cruwear. Likewise M390, S90V, S110V, 10V/A11 , A11(M)/K390 , etc. are going to be better for you.
Lower angles and higher edge stability will most always go to lower carbide steels so I'd suspect if you wanted a combination of wear, yet high edge stability CPM Cruwear would suit you more. Same reason that steels like W2, O1, Super blue, white steel, etc still have uses despite there being both tougher, and more wear resistant steels.
Steels are designed to do jobs. CPM M4 is designed for very good wear resistance at high temps ( red hardness). To get this lots of expensive elements are used driving costs up. You can get equal or better wear resistance without spending as much money if you don't need red hardness, or as much toughness. Enter D7.
Everything is designed around a niche and one steel won't be good for every job. Everybody needs to decide what their needs are and go from there. Most of us old timers have different knives for different purposes though admittedly some steels, like CPM M4 do pretty darn well at most uses of many people. I've found that the Cruwear/3V class does pretty well for me as well, though I probably do have more M4 knives than anything except maybe S30V. Speaking of all around steels S30V does pretty darn well for a stainless.
Joe
I notice you understand why I sharpen with a bit lower grit on most of the steels. Too low is not good, too high isn't either unless you are push cutting, not slicing. If highest wear resistance is how you judge steels than CPM M4 should be better on most medias than Cruwear. Likewise M390, S90V, S110V, 10V/A11 , A11(M)/K390 , etc. are going to be better for you.
Lower angles and higher edge stability will most always go to lower carbide steels so I'd suspect if you wanted a combination of wear, yet high edge stability CPM Cruwear would suit you more. Same reason that steels like W2, O1, Super blue, white steel, etc still have uses despite there being both tougher, and more wear resistant steels.
Steels are designed to do jobs. CPM M4 is designed for very good wear resistance at high temps ( red hardness). To get this lots of expensive elements are used driving costs up. You can get equal or better wear resistance without spending as much money if you don't need red hardness, or as much toughness. Enter D7.
Everything is designed around a niche and one steel won't be good for every job. Everybody needs to decide what their needs are and go from there. Most of us old timers have different knives for different purposes though admittedly some steels, like CPM M4 do pretty darn well at most uses of many people. I've found that the Cruwear/3V class does pretty well for me as well, though I probably do have more M4 knives than anything except maybe S30V. Speaking of all around steels S30V does pretty darn well for a stainless.
Joe
I really like M4 a great deal. I have now built somewhat of a collection of it. I know that the M390 and the S90V steels will outdo M4 on pure edge holding, but they do so at a sacrifice of toughness. This statement always brings up the inevitable "how tough does a folder need to be" question. My answer is "it depends." See I'm learning there is no right or wrong, just choices, pros and cons. I'm rambling, but thanks for following and I think our tastes run very similar in knives.
