Supersteels. Do we really need 'em?

W
NJBillK said:
D DukeNukem1977
Get your VG10 delica and cut open bags of sand, concrete, mortar or other Very silicate rich material and see how well the edge holds up.
Now do the same with a Spyderco Maxamet Mule, Manix or Native.

Since the alloy is ran harder than the vast majority of silicate matter contained within those bags, your edge life will be improved by a Very significant amount.
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The tasks planned for the knife is what I buy the majority of my knives alloys' based upon.
Saltwater = LC200N or H1
Toughness = D3V, 1095/1084/1070, SR101
Kitchen = aeb-l, 12c/14c, S35vn
EDC = anything from 440c to CPM 4V to 52100 @ 64hrc...
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Well, I dulled completly my zdp 189 dragonfly while doing just the things you mentioned in the process of building new fence and covering with concrete driveway in front of my own house. After this disaster I started cutting bags of sand and concrete with trowel. :p The knife is just not suitable for such extreme conditions imo.
 
NJBillK said:
D DukeNukem1977
Get your VG10 delica and cut open bags of sand, concrete, mortar or other Very silicate rich material and see how well the edge holds up.
Now do the same with a Spyderco Maxamet Mule, Manix or Native.

Since the alloy is ran harder than the vast majority of silicate matter contained within those bags, your edge life will be improved by a Very significant amount.
-----
The tasks planned for the knife is what I buy the majority of my knives alloys' based upon.
Saltwater = LC200N or H1
Toughness = D3V, 1095/1084/1070, SR101
Kitchen = aeb-l, 12c/14c, S35vn
EDC = anything from 440c to CPM 4V to 52100 @ 64hrc...
Click to expand...
I have a tool that holds disposable razors for that....razors work fine for this task when they dull out too (cost under $200) https://www.amazon.com/KOBALT-UTILI...6199741&sr=1-5&keywords=folding+utility+knife
 
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Now sure if it's been mentioned already, but I try not to dull my harder steels too much.
At the end of the day I'll just strop the edge back to screaming sharp. I try to maintain those edges instead of sharpening them.
Works for me!
Joe
 
palonej said:
Now sure if it's been mentioned already, but I try not to dull my harder steels too much.
At the end of the day I'll just strop the edge back to screaming sharp. I try to maintain those edges instead of sharpening them.
Works for me!
Joe
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Personally I don't like stropping. It kills cutting agression which I really like. And in fact the edge sharpened on stones will cut for a longer period of time and that's because stropping rounds the V shape of cutting edge a bit. I just maintain my sharpness of any knife by making 5-8 short pulls per side once a week or when needed on the stone which was used as a last, finishing grit. Sal on spydercoforum posted some great arguments why stropping is not the best way of maintaining the edge.
 
DukeNukem1977 said:
W

Well, I dulled completly my zdp 189 dragonfly while doing just the things you mentioned in the process of building new fence and covering with concrete driveway in front of my own house. After this disaster I started cutting bags of sand and concrete with trowel. :p The knife is just not suitable for such extreme conditions imo.
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Exactly my point. Your ZDP isn't hard enough, and it was being abraded by the silicates in the media being cut.

Next tme you buy for an alloy, it should be Maxamet and some diamond sharpening equipment. You will be surprised at what it will take to dull it, when used as a slicer.
 
Only have 2 knives right now, competing priorities. One in CPM-20CV, and one in Hap 40. Easy to maintain. Very happy.
 
DukeNukem1977 said:
my question right now is : why everybody, (and I in the past) is so "possessed" with steels which are pain to maintain, with heartattackgivin' msrp, and many of us so called"knife guys" can't even resharpen em properly?
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There's a reason for developing new tech throughout history, whether medicine, computers, tools, or materials science. In the last area, I have a brother-in-law who's a tenured Ph.D researcher in materials science, and a daughter going into the same field. There are amazing breakthroughs occurring at a fast rate in the field of materials science, both the development of new materials, and the increasing refinement of those materials and developing various applications of them. One of the most amazing examples is graphene.

With all that, there are good reasons for developing new steels that have improved properties and a growing number of applications.

As a common, everyday knife user, do most people "need" these new super steels? Of course not. For the cutting tasks most of us do, plain ole' carbon steel would do just fine. But like all improved tech, even if you don't "need" it as in to survive or carry out basic tasks, you absolutely can find reasons of improved performance, reduced maintenance, better durability/longer life, etc., that make buying the super steels a performance-versus-price equation, and many users find it's well worth it.

I enjoy both: I have some super steels, and enjoy using them, but definitely don't need them. Increasingly, I find that quality knives made in traditional steels with good heat treat (Buck and ESEE knives are two great examples) do everything I need, perform great, don't cost a lot, and are very quick to resharpen, even though you may have to resharpen them more often. I like high-end knives too. But I LOVE high-value, great performing, low cost knives made in traditional steels.

The "hard to sharpen" thing is increasingly a red herring and doesn't need to be part of your equation. You can get VERY affordable quality diamond sharpening stones, or a guided system based on diamonds, neither of which have any problem at all sharpening super steels. To me, "hard to sharpen" should not even factor into your thinking. Get the steels you want, or the steels that you can afford that seem to offer the best price to performance ratio, and don't worry about it, enjoy!
 
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DukeNukem1977 said:
Personally I don't like stropping. It kills cutting agression which I really like. And in fact the edge sharpened on stones will cut for a longer period of time and that's because stropping rounds the V shape of cutting edge a bit. I just maintain my sharpness of any knife by making 5-8 short pulls per side once a week or when needed on the stone which was used as a last, finishing grit. Sal on spydercoforum posted some great arguments why stropping is not the best way of maintaining the edge.
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If your strop is rounding your apex, that is an issue of form (too steep of an angle) or strop media being too soft or too much pressure on the strop.

I have no problem stropping a knife from scraping to shave hair to hair whittling sharp. If you can whittle hair from a stone, then disregard my suggestion. But I personally have found the correct usage of a strop to be invaluable, and often under appreciated.
 
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I find that the better you get at sharpening the less you care about extreme edge retention and more about what your options for sharpening are. High-vanadium carbide steels have their place if you cut a lot of abrasive material, but otherwise you're honestly better off with something simpler. Even ZDP-189 can be sharpened with conventional aluminum oxide or silicon carbide sharpening stones because it's just high in chromium carbides. I find that geometry is much more important to me than steel so long as it's cutlery grade and heat treated appropriately. My most used knives are all in pretty low-end steels but I've reground them with thin geometries that hold an effective edge a long time and are easily brought back to shaving sharpness with just 1-3 quick swipes of a stone, even when they smack into a piece of steel or ceramic. I've never worn out a knife through sharpening, and probably never will. The kind of things that usually end up damaging my knives are things that would damage any knife, so having it faster to touch back up is a big advantage.

TL;DR version: I've tried plenty of "super steels" and found them just "ok."
 
basmca said:
Very nice ladies working the front desk there ;)

Is there still a dragon in a park that breathes actual fire?

Cracow, the city where you can get a pint of beer for 1€, go to clubs with the girls working at the hostels, have them show you a fire breathing dragon and later their bedroom. :p
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I think I need to go to Poland........
 
Same here William.

NJBillK said:
If your strop of rounding your apex, that is an issue of form (too steep of an angle) or strop media being too soft or too much pressure on the strop.

I have no problem stropping a knife from scraping to shave hair to hair whittling sharp. If you can whittle hair from a stone, then disregard my suggestion. But I personally have found the correct usage of a strop to be invaluable, and often under appreciated.
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NJBillK said:
If your strop is rounding your apex, that is an issue of form (too steep of an angle) or strop media being too soft or too much pressure on the strop.

I have no problem stropping a knife from scraping to shave hair to hair whittling sharp. If you can whittle hair from a stone, then disregard my suggestion. But I personally have found the correct usage of a strop to be invaluable, and often under appreciated.
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That's the sharpness i get right out of the stone, 1000 grit japanese ceramic waterstone (I did it just for this topic) sharpened of course freehand. The knife on the photo is 20 years old CS Pendleton Hunter :)
36562582954_2644e9c2e8_c.jpg

XGUN6h
 
maximus83 said:
The "hard to sharpen" thing is increasingly a red herring and doesn't need to be part of your equation. You can get VERY affordable quality diamond sharpening stones, or a guided system based on diamonds, neither of which have any problem at all sharpening super steels. To me, "hard to sharpen" should not even factor into your thinking. Get the steels you want, or the steels that you can afford that seem to offer the best price to performance ratio, and don't worry about it, enjoy!
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I have about 7 years of practice in sharpening my knives and at the very beginning I just stated, that I have quite big collection of diamond stones from Eze-Lap. Probably all of em ever produced by this company :p Just joking, 12 diamond stones from extra coarse to ultra fine. I do not have problems sharpening supersteels, please believe me that I know a thing or two about it. (not trying to be cocky or something, I just sharpened hundrets of knives nad had about 150 of em on my own) That's not the point. All I wanted to say is that sometimes we're getting so hard steels (which even with best diamond stones can be pain to resharpen) that it kills all the fun of using the knife (at least for newbies who followed general trend) and that we really don't need them for our simple daily tasks. Amount of effort put to maintain such blades compared to "gains" of having so high carbide, so hard, and finally - so expensive piece of steel in the pocket is simply unfavorable.
 
DukeNukem1977 said:
That's the sharpness i get right out of the stone, 1000 grit japanese ceramic waterstone (I did it just for this topic) sharpened of course freehand. The knife on the photo is 20 years old CS Pendleton Hunter :)
36562582954_2644e9c2e8_c.jpg

XGUN6h
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Then like I said earlier, feel free to disregard what I said earlier.

That being said, I feel that taking my knife to a stone when a strop will work does nothing other than shorten the life span of said knife, or at least it shortens the time until it needs to be reground to get it back thin BTE...
 
DukeNukem1977 said:
I have about 7 years of practice in sharpening my knives and at the very beginning I just stated, that I have quite big collection of diamond stones from Eze-Lap. Probably all of em ever produced by this company :p Just joking, 12 diamond stones from extra coarse to ultra fine. I do not have problems sharpening supersteels, please believe me that I know a thing or two about it. (not trying to be cocky or something, I just sharpened hundrets of knives nad had about 150 of em on my own) That's not the point. All I wanted to say is that sometimes we're getting so hard steels (which even with best diamond stones can be pain to resharpen) that it kills all the fun of using the knife (at least for newbies who followed general trend) and that we really don't need them for our simple daily tasks. Amount of effort put to maintain such blades compared to "gains" of having so high carbide, so hard, and finally - so expensive piece of steel in the pocket is simply unfavorable.
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I don't know... I don't have any issues with sharpening very high hardness or very high carbide or alloyed steels.
I guess my technique might be a bit different than yours, but that is Meer speculation based upon perceived effort required for a seemingly comparable edge keeness (hair whittling without a wire edge).
 
DukeNukem1977 said:
Hello everyone!
I'm new here and as green as possible! :p Just saying this in case I did something wrong and out of place.
I'd like to share my general reflection which revolves around blade steels.
I'm from Poland, Cracow, I've been collecting knives since 8 years. Most of the time I was a typical steel snob. M4, Zdp189, XHP, S90V, S35vn, Vanax75, many other cpm steels...yes, my knife had to be made of something exotic, hard to sharpen, expensive and with great edge retention. I dunno why, but one day I decided to buy something more normal and mediocre and bought cold steel Pendleton Hunter in vg1 steel. And now I feel like I just rediscovered knives once again! I feel like I've already forgotten how pleasure to use and maintain a knife can be. Right now I have one blade in vg1, delica in vg10, benchmade in 154cm and don't want to look at supersteels never again. This medium grade steels require 4-5 times less time to maintain hairpopping sharp, I don't have to worry about microchipping while working with the hard wood, they are helluva less expensive...my question right now is : why everybody, (and I in the past) is so "possessed" with steels which are pain to maintain, with heartattackgivin' msrp, and many of us so called"knife guys" can't even resharpen em properly?
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The thing about highly wear resistant steels is if you get them well sharpened once then you actually spend less time sharpening them because you only perform a simple touch up.

Its true if you let you supersteel blades get as dull as your more ordinary steel blades then the super steel will be a nightmare to sharpen. However if say two people are cutting boxes all day and have the same knife with the same sharpness just different steels. One is 8cr14mov and the other is HAP40 or some other ultra premim steel. The 8cr knife is going to be very dull at the end lf the day and will require a substantial resharpening. The Hap40 blade will be dulled from the day's cutting, but no where as much as the 8cr. Consequentially at the end of the day the person with the 8cr spends more time sharpening it back from dull. The guy with the Hap40 only sharpens his knife a little touch up.

There in lies the advantage of super steels that many people overlook.
 
NJBillK said:
That being said, I feel that taking my knife to a stone when a strop will work does nothing other than shorten the life span of said knife, or at least it shortens the time until it needs to be reground to get it back thin BTE...
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I think that COULD happen as a result of using a stone vs traditional stropping (taking off too much steel). But I don't think it's a necessary outcome. There are folks who use approaches with very light edge-leading or edge-trailing strokes on whatever stone you finished on, where they are barely taking any steel but just aligning/refining the edge. FortyTwoBlades uses this approach, we're discussing it in the thread about stropping on cardboard. I find this really interesting and plan to try it.
 
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