Production M390 - Expectation vs Reality?

FiveToes said:
I could not agree less. If your heat treat process is not able to hit the goals put forth, fix your heat treat process. If your airbags only deploy half the time they're supposed to, you figure out why and fix it. If that comes at a cost increase, so be it. It will not be a cost increase of "$500 to $800 for knives that used to cost $150 to $400".

It appears that some manufacturers are having issues, and are taking steps to fix it. I refuse to believe that EVERYONE is having "batch to batch heat treat issues due to required complexity". There is WAY too much soft steel out there for this to be an accident that slipped through QA. If it is, QA is terrible and needs to be addressed as well.

I say this as someone who's about to build some test mules, have them treated (and test confirmed) from 58HRC - 64HRC, for testers here to perform cut test and evaluations to put to bed any notions of what a proper heat treat is and what this steel is capable of.
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/sigh

You seem to be misunderstanding my intent. If you look at the list of names thrown up on IG and YT of people pushing data to keep manufacturers accountable, you will see mine on it.

Explaining why it’s happening is not the same as being an apologist, or saying I don’t expect it to be fixed.
 
Banter 247 said:
/sigh

You seem to be misunderstanding my intent. If you look at the list of names thrown up on IG and YT of people pushing data to keep manufacturers accountable, you will see mine on it.

Explaining why it’s happening is not the same as being an apologist, or saying I don’t expect it to be fixed.
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No, I just lack the ability to convey inflection appropriately in the messages I quickly type between meetings. I end up coming off hotter than I intend, which isn't helpful and I apologize for that. Specifically your videos are what made me decide a test would be appropriate here since I highly appreciate your work. I shouldn't have lumped the two of you together into one quote tree but here we are now.

Suffice it to say my work has taken me through all kinds of manufacturing from juice blenders to heavy machinery construction for the last 20 years. Most people employ (or at least attempt to employ) a continuous improvement (CI) model where there is some sort of feedback between manufacturing and product acceptance. It sounds like this is missing in many places here while others are specifically setting the bar low for one reason or another. The first can be fixed through an appropriate QMS. The second can at least be agreed upon as "not ideal from a purely performance standpoint" based on supporting evidence from an appropriate cut test. The first half of the test is to see if a small batch heat treater can hit specific HRCs based on supplied requirements. The second half is to see the cutting capacity of similarly constructed test mules using the same edge geometry where the only difference is heat treat. We can't even get people to agree what the best heat treat target is between 60HRC-62HRC (based on metal supplier white papers) and 57-59 (based on product manufacturers claimed specifications). The only way I can see to reach consensus is to generate actual data on the subject through controlled testing.
 
More controlled cut testing will definitely be the best way to continue garnering data. It would be really cool if the folks doing some of this work might put out some sort of agreed upon standards that everyone could use to conduct the testing. Might get really interesting if that happened. What do you think B Banter 247 @jcoolG19 ?
 
halden.doerge said:
More controlled cut testing will definitely be the best way to continue garnering data. It would be really cool if the folks doing some of this work might put out some sort of agreed upon standards that everyone could use to conduct the testing. Might get really interesting if that happened. What do you think B Banter 247 @jcoolG19 ?
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I asked Steel Will what hardness they use on their M390 Gekko on their Facebook page. You think I'll get a response.

Even if my Gekko is not as hard as it could be, it still holds an edge very well. At 30° included it holds up to scraping hickory at a 90° angle without rolling or chipping. It resharpens fairly easily.

How disappointed should I be? I'm trying to gain proper perspective.
 
Batmanacw said:
I asked Steel Will what hardness they use on their M390 Gekko on their Facebook page. You think I'll get a response.

Even if my Gekko is not as hard as it could be, it still holds an edge very well. At 30° included it holds up to scraping hickory at a 90° angle without rolling or chipping. It resharpens fairly easily.

How disappointed should I be? I'm trying to gain proper perspective.
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At the end of the day, with any given single example of a knife, performance is king.
 
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halden.doerge said:
More controlled cut testing will definitely be the best way to continue garnering data. It would be really cool if the folks doing some of this work might put out some sort of agreed upon standards that everyone could use to conduct the testing. Might get really interesting if that happened. What do you think B Banter 247 @jcoolG19 ?
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Supersteel Steve or Outpost76 would LOVE to talk testing with anyone interested. They were both flat out excited when Tom Hosang started doing it. They’re 100% about gathering data, and blowing up sample size.
 
halden.doerge said:
More grist for the mill:

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I’m really impressed with how Nick presented that. He does a lot of strong content, but ... to the point DeadboxHero DeadboxHero made with the SPOT ON memes, this conversation is often a huge pain in the @$$. People often blow it up, or try to throw it out, and it’s hard to get across how it fits in the big picture.

Seeing Nick *get it*, and appropriately build in perspective... that was very nice.
 
Steel Will quoted my Gekko at 60 to 61. Sounds fine to me. Hopefully their testing is accurate but it is still very good steel and the performance seems pretty awesome. So far, so good.
 
Just a random thought.
Regarding Lionsteel slip joints, isn't the blade tang annealed to match with the hardness of the spring?
So, if the tests were performed there, it may report lower numbers than that in the middle of the blade.
 
miso2 said:
Just a random thought.
Regarding Lionsteel slip joints, isn't the blade tang annealed to match with the hardness of the spring?
So, if the tests were performed there, it may report lower numbers than that in the middle of the blade.
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There was more communication this morning. Lionsteel is taking the matter very seriously. Kurt should be going to Peters HT to verify the hit results, and one of the extremely low hrc samples has already been edge retention tested.

We’ll see how it shakes out from here.
 
Banter 247 said:
There was more communication this morning. Lionsteel is taking the matter very seriously. Kurt should be going to Peters HT to verify the hit results, and one of the extremely low hrc samples has already been edge retention tested.

We’ll see how it shakes out from here.
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I already sold my Roundhead on. Till now I was still sure that I was doing something wrong. After all it was M390!
 
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