Well an edge will fail one of 2 ways:GoldenSpydie wrote:Cliff said that, and that's where pages of "discussion" came from. I would like to judge it for myself, because it seems that a lot of people say that it isn't.Ankerson wrote:GoldenSpydie wrote:I would like to test (and report about) one of these in a bushcraft/woods environment. I understand that this is not what it was designed for, but I am now very curious about this steel, so I would like to see if it is really as "chippy" as everyone says. This is my typical knife testing environment, and I think that it would provide interesting data in addition to that from extended and heavily scientific rope and cardboard cutting.
(BTW, no, I'm not asking for a free one.)
Who is saying it's chippy?
I haven't found it to be chippy from my testing and yeah on wood also....
It will chip or it will roll (Deform)
And that's the same for any steel and it all depends on the basics like all the other steels being HT, tempering, geometry and hardness etc.
Impact toughness (shock testing) doesn't really mean much when talking about folders or smaller fixed blades, but has more more meaning when talking about larger blades and swords.
Compression strength and lateral strength are more inline with what really matters here.
And we are talking about a production blade so the edge geometry will be reasonable for general use.
People can make a steel chip if they want to in many different ways:
They can thin the geometry out as much as possible weakening it on purpose and then do something with the the blade they shouldn't be and the steel will give out and chip...
They can stress the steel above what the edge geometry will handle like striking rocks or metals on an angle.
They can cut into something and twist out the edge and on very thin geometry it could fail....
But then those things are true with any steel that has a good HRC hardness up in the higher ranges of what the steels can take.
Having tested knives since the 1970's I have seen different types of failures over the years.
Lately talking about the newer steels the only steel I have seen really chip out was ZDP-189 and that was at very high hardness with very thin geometry, the edge basically fell apart on me and looked like a serrated edge just cutting rope. It was one of those oh well moments and never took ZDP down that thin again...... By contrast I have taken A11 down even thinner and pushed it through knots in wood and had zero damage and both blades were in the same hardness range (64-65).
So in the end how about we try to have a positive attitude about this knife and wait and see what it will really do in testing before we bash it and the steel....
