So what's your favorite steel?

[Cliff Stamp]

I have also read, so not first hand experience, that this was largely due to heat treat issues earlier in S30V's use and that it has been since worked out.

No offense intended really, but why do you pay any attention at all to claims with no evidence? These are rumors, nothing more and made by severely biased individuals with direct financial involvement who provided no evidence at all that they were true.

Here are a few more rumors :

-Sal is a bigfoot
-S30V doesn't exist, it is just 440C
-INFI is just modified 1095

These are silly and it should be obvious they are false. However just because a rumor isn't insane doesn't mean anyone should listen to it. Here are a few more which could actually be true :

-Busse didn't invent INFI, it was just a load of scrap steel he got for free and decided to promote as it was easy to harden
-Sal didn't invent the opening hole, he saw it on a Chinese knife by a custom small maker
-Zero Tolerance uses the same hardening on all of these stainless steels, doesn't matter the type

These even offer some explanatory power.

ZT commonly has problems with their steels and they do things which prevent the standard hardening (copper brazing). But as I have provided no evidence at all that any of these are true, regardless of the fact they might explain something they should be trivially ignored as they were trivially claimed. There is no evidence they are true and thus there is no rational reason to believe the claims made.

Don't you EDC a zero ground S30V Para1? Do you experience any chipping?

I always carry a zero ground knife for most cutting work and a stock knife for the much rougher work. Right now it is a Svord Peasant (zero) and Pingo (stock bevel). I have carried zero ground very high carbide steels blades including S30V. Do they chip, of course it is the nature of how high carbide steels blunt, if they are not chipping it simply means they are not being used.

They have to chip in use because wear of the martensite has a different wear rate then the carbides. Even in cutting fairly soft material this happens, rope and cardboard. Thus the edge will become jagged as the carbides tear out as they lose support as the martensite is worn away. They will thus develop a jagged edge which chips on the scale of the size of the carbides, they can't wear smooth.

Now does it chip large enough to see big pieces knocked out? It depends on what is cut and how. As steels get more brittle then tend to start failing by fracture more easily. This is a S110V knife, low magnification (R. J. Martin Modulator) :



and the edge chipped readily on hard contacts, a steel such as 13C26 would not. It would have just flattened/impacted.

Now as for the question :

-Would S30V chip in use by an individual doing random work in random ways on random materials?

The only sensible answer to that is "I don't know". However here are questions which would narrow it down :

-In general, does the user notice any steels chipping, if so which ones, what was the angle/thickness of the edge?

If a person sees chipping on A2 for example then using S30v would tend to produce more chipping. If they saw chipping in 3V then S30v would likely really see heavy chipping in use. However if they used D2 and didn't notice significant chipping then it is likely they would not see it with S30V either.

[bearfacedkiller]

I am very objective and take all anecdotal evidence as just that and my statement I believe reflected that it was just hearsay. However, the statement about tweaking the heat treatment seemed to be common knowledge at the time and although I cannot verify it right now I believe I remember even Spyderco commented on dialing in the heat treatment of S30V in in the beginning of it's usage. They without a doubt did considerable tweaking with 440V in the beginning so maybe I am getting the two confused in regards to Spyderco commenting on it. Sometimes anecdotal evidence is all that is available and unfortunately as much as you want all of us to approach this from a purely scientific angle this is just a hobby for many of us and we are just having fun and enjoying ourselves.

...and here we are...

I must say that this thread is going well. :) I saw the title and kept my distance. These steel threads can get interesting. :o

I'll never learn. :confused: Back to avoiding thread about steel. :)

[Cliff Stamp]

Sometimes anecdotal evidence is all that is available ...

There is no such thing as anecdotal evidence by definition. Anecdotal is unreliable by nature, that is how it is defined, and evidence is a body of facts which allow a determination that a proposition is true or false. Rumors don't provide evidence of anything. Pick any conclusion you want, it should be obvious I can start a rumor to that conclusion being true or false. This should make it clear that you can't know if a claim is true from rumors because it would mean all claims, regardless of justification are known to be true.

Now why where there so many problems with S30V initially? That is an interesting question, I have one of the original blades which was (still is) seriously defective and it chips even when sharpening to the point it is difficult to get the apex to form to the point it will slice paper as it breaks away unless you use very clean/sharp stones, lots of lubricant and very low pressure. Why did this happen? I think this is a likely hypothesis :

-conclusion bias

S30V was promoted for extreme toughness constantly. This kind of aggressive promotion is known to create an over inflation of problems reported. It is easy to understand. Just imagine for example you are watching "Dances with the Stars" and the guy who was promoted to be the best dancer makes a small slip and falls. That goes all over the place - why, because it is so dramatically different from the perception.

Here is the frank reality, all lines of products will have failures, there is no QC which is 100%. There are going to be failures, and at times these failures are going to land up into the hands of someone who is very vocal. Take a look at what happened with John Davis got a S35VN folder which had a dramatic failure. In a short period of time that one failure managed to create the perception of a problem with that steel and/or how that steel was used by Reeve.

However any QC manager will tell you, even with extreme Sigma processing, failures always happen. And as importantly, the people often reporting them don't tend to do careful comparisons and often will reach dramatic conclusions based on fairly sparce data. For example :



That is the edge on a custom knife which just folded over. I have never seen that happen before. I asked a few people and no one can explain why it happened. It is an extremely weird failure. I think it happened due to banding as that is the only thing I can think to explain the dramatic failure under a very low load. However if this happened on a new duper steel with strong promotion from an aggressive maker and it landed in the hands of someone like NutnFancy on YT, then this could explode into questioning the steel, the maker, etc. .

It is a statistical thing, that is the hypothesis I would argue is most reasonable on S30V. Because the type of problems reported still happen now constantly, no one makes that much of a deal of them as it is becoming more known that things such as heat damage cause initial problems and thus a lot of people are arguing to sharpen a knife a few times before reaching any conclusion.

... and unfortunately as much as you want all of us to approach this from a purely scientific angle ....

I don't want you do do anything of the sort, was curious as to why you listened to rumors. Now I would argue if you want to know anything about steels/knives then you need to use science because this is how science is defined (the process by which knowledge is gained from observation/rationalization) . However the goal of knowing something about steels/knives is something you need to decide if it has value or not for you. The goal of knowing organic chemistry doesn't have much value to me.

[thelock]

S30v and H1 for me.

[bearfacedkiller]

My father once told me that if you are about to start a sentence with "not to be rude" or "no offence" that you are about to say something that doesn't need to be said. I usually stop myself there. Maybe it is just me but starting a sentence that way has always rubbed me the wrong way. I value your input on here most of the time so we can just let it go.

I am fully aware that the term anecdotal evidence is an oxymoron.

I'm tapping out, you win. PLEASE don't respond, thread officially derailed.

I will be reading but not commenting on steel related threads from here on out. Bummer...

[PayneTrain]

Yeah, Cliff I love ya, but the term "derailed" crossed my mind a few posts ago. I understand what you're getting at, but I think you got a little off topic with it. It's ok though, the great thing about these threads is that there will be a new one within a couple weeks. :D

[Cliff Stamp]

... the term "derailed" crossed my mind a few posts ago.

Interestingly enough, it isn't how these start that people tend to notice. The thread was anecdotal in nature and I participated in such a manner, asking for comparative experiences on similar steels. Then an empirical claim was disputed with an irrational argument :

"If it was that chippy how would we have progressed into much higher allow steels like S90v and S110v without them disintegrating during use?"

and this was mixed in with rumor and innuendo in response to an empirical statement.

Imagine for example if someone used that kind of argument to imply that Spyderco used Cold Steel to heat treat their knives. The thread would likely freak out / explode and people would spam that conclusion isn't justified by heresay. Of course it isn't, I just find it curious how the same people readily allow other conclusions on the same basis.

As for favorite steels, I tend to prefer styles of knives vs steels unless they are really mismatched. For Spyderco, MBS-26 is really nice in the kitchen knives. I have a hard time seeing the difference in apex stability over AEB-L without careful measurement though I am curious if it would respond as well to burnishing as I have been fooling around with a TiN rod lately to keep kitchen knives sharp.

[PayneTrain]

But isn't that just the nature of these threads? I think maybe on BF things could get out of hand that way, but I don't think people here take these things that seriously. I think the members here know that steel is a hard thing to understand, and to take everyone's opinion with a grain of salt. Especially since we have you around reminding us just how many factors are involved! Still, it's a lot to take in and I'm slowly putting pieces together, but despite reading all of your detailed posts here and elsewhere I'm still anything but confident in my evaluation of a steel, or any material for that matter. It's not the easiest concept, and I think this community respects that enough not to get outraged at another's opinion so I wouldn't worry about it. Don't stop doing what you're doing, but here, for this thread which isn't very scientific to begin with, I just wouldn't read too much into it. Just have fun!

I mean I admit, I chose 204P as my favorite based on very little. I even threw in the phrase "pretty colors"! That's the level of science I'm involving in my choice because honestly, if it cuts and doesn't waste away when I'm not looking, it's good.

Oh which reminds me, that 440A knife I referenced was a Kershaw, which is what disappointed me because one would think they know what to do with steel. Meanwhile, I had a cheap chinese mall knife on that boat made out of "440 stainless" (so it's probably also 440A) which suffered almost no corrosive damage with the same duty. I actually blame the coating on the Kershaw, but I won't even get into that because even there I have next to nothing to back that up with.

Great, now I'm derailing. :rolleyes:

[Cliff Stamp]

I'm still anything but confident in my evaluation of a steel, or any material for that matter. It's not the easiest concept ...

It depends on how you approach it. The simplest way to learn something is to approach it like a child, think of how a child would approach trying to understand a tree for example and compare that to opening up a biology textbook and trying to learn about trees if you didn't know anything about plants. It likely would be an exercise in frustration as you would not understand the technical language. But yet a child can learn a vast amount about trees immediately with no technical language at all. The problem is that the bulk of teaching/learning tends to fight the way the brain works, if you actually just let it do what it has evolved to do it is really different.

The simplest way to learn anything is find someone who knows it really well and you will not be self-conscious about what you say and just talk to them in freeform. That is hard to do if you are an adult as you are trained out of it in fear of sounding stupid, but kids don't care about that at all, they freeform speak naturally. If you have never done it then it takes awhile unless the other person is experienced in it as they can also participate by spearking freeform as well. Ideally it is interactive as what they say probes what you know/understand. But even if they are not experienced in that at all, if they just respond to you freeforming your rate of knowledge expansion will be tremendous.

I actually blame the coating on the Kershaw, but I won't even get into that because even there I have next to nothing to back that up with.

Coatings on steels are often applied at very high temperatures, it depends on the coating. These temperatures are often in the exact range which causes secondary hardening which significantly reduces the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Corrosion resistance in steels is one of the most dramatically influenced aspects by the processing. Most knives are very similar in hardness, a small change of +/- 10% covers almost all knives made and the hardening barely influences that at all. But corrosion resistance can be changed trivially by many times to one.

[sok]

VG-10. If every knife I owned were in VG-10, I would be perfectly happy. It is the only steel, that I have tried, that I can make this statement about. It is great from folders to kitchen knives to fixed blade camping knives.

For me, it is the perfect balance of corrosion resistance, cutting ability, and ease of sharpening. It is probably my favorite looking steel too.

Having said that, I have been carrying a Super Blue Caly for the last few months, picking it over the exact same knife with VG-10 steel. :)

[PayneTrain]

Well I'll tell you what, I'm glad we have a resource like yourself around. I really enjoy the subject and have since the first time I decided I wanted to be an engineer. This is take two, and is going much better. I feel like I'll already have a leg up on the rest once I get to the materials science classes.

Coatings on steels are often applied at very high temperatures, it depends on the coating. These temperatures are often in the exact range which causes secondary hardening which significantly reduces the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Corrosion resistance in steels is one of the most dramatically influenced aspects by the processing. Most knives are very similar in hardness, a small change of +/- 10% covers almost all knives made and the hardening barely influences that at all. But corrosion resistance can be changed trivially by many times to one.

This is actually a really interesting thing to note. The Kershaw had a resilient coating, and despite a lot of use it barely had any scratches (except for the ones that harbored rust). The chinese knife was probably more likely painted than coated, and it came off very easily to reveal the horrible finish beneath. Perhaps the Kershaw coating treatment did have an effect. See? So many factors!

But oh well, they both still serve a purpose in my life, however small. But this isn't about least favorites, it's about most favorites. I stand by 204P, though XHP just impressed me with what it did to a half frozen 12lb turkey.

[tvenuto]

"If it was that chippy how would we have progressed into much higher allow steels like S90v and S110v without them disintegrating during use?"

and this was mixed in with rumor and innuendo in response to an empirical statement.

Imagine for example if someone used that kind of argument to imply that Spyderco used Cold Steel to heat treat their knives. The thread would likely freak out / explode and people would spam that conclusion isn't justified by heresay. Of course it isn't, I just find it curious how the same people readily allow other conclusions on the same basis.

Isn't it possible that BFK said something that's technically correct, but expressed it in a less than ideal way, which caused it to be blown out of proportion?

From what I understand of his point, he could have said:

I see that there are many people who have found S30V to be "too chippy" in their use. I do not, however, see similar statements about S90V and S110V. Would it not follow that any knife that was "too chippy" in S30V would also be as bad or worse in one of those steels due to their higher carbide volume? If so, why do we not see a similar number of aversions to these steels on those same grounds?

Is the above not a valid question to ask? Does it not express (relatively) the same point?

[Nate]

why do you pay any attention at all to claims with no evidence? 

I think the S30V story is an interesting case study. It is one of those things that I have heard so many times that I also just accepted it and can't even recall if anyone making the claims about tweaking the HT offered much in the way of supporting evidence.

On the surface it certainly sounds very plausible: New alloy, makers start off using a process which turns out to have issues, as they conduct testing and receive reports from end users the process is dialed in...

As you said above, one of the simplest ways to learn something is to find someone who knows it really well, but of course it is not always easy to distinguish those people from others who probably mean well but maybe aren't really as well versed as they appear. Especially if you're new to the game and not already accustomed to asking good questions about the information delivered and doing your own checks to see if it holds up.

Maybe I'm rambling a bit here, but I'm glad it came up.

[Cliff Stamp]

....though XHP just impressed me with what it did to a half frozen 12lb turkey.

You are in good company, it is one of the few modern steels Dozier has spoken about in a positive manner compared to D2.

[Cliff Stamp]

On the surface it certainly sounds very plausible ...

There are two concerns, first, without evidence it should be dismissed if the claim is made by people who could trivially provide evidence if it was true. There is no way they would accept that claims against them should be accepted without justification so it isn't reasonable for them to expect the claims they make to be so accepted. However I would go further and say that as a hypothesis it is even insensible.

-Crucible claims to have developed S30V specifically in response to makers claiming S90V was difficult to harden / work, the entire purpose of the design was to resolve those issues.

-Just think about not only that Crucible specifically developed the steel for these purposes, claimed to work extensively with knife makers on the steel (who have extensive experience heat treating steels) but then claimed that the issues were these very people didn't harden the steel properly when it was designed specifically for them to be easy to harden and Crucible told them exactly how to do it? The first question you would ask is - as part of the design didn't you even do any standard coupon runs? That is the most basic thing you can do with a steel is map out the hardening response, the soak time/temperature, and the resulting retained austenite.

-PM steels are actually very resistant to less than ideal hardening as for example they are very resistant to grain growth in austenization. What tends to happen when you are less than ideal is that they won't harden fully, see for example Roman trouble shooting a maker having problems hardening 3V because they were air quenching it vs oil.

But move beyond that, how exactly were they made overly brittle by some flaw in the hardening? Were they over soaked at too high a temperature? Left too long at the austenization temperature? But these were the things makers were complaining about and S30V was supposed to be able to be hardened without so we are to assume that the makers just forgot about these when they were the very design constraints and the entire focus of the development that they themselves asked for?

The one which is even sillier is that S30V was "tweaked" in composition, implying some minor change and this explains the issue. I have seen physically some of the flaws samples, I still have one. They are extremely brittle, even more so than S125V, there is no way you can "tweak" the steel to explain them as even jumping to massively different compositions won't explain it.

... it is not always easy to distinguish those people from others who probably mean well but maybe aren't really as well versed as they appear.

This is really easy, all you have to do is two things :

-ask them for justification

-say they are wrong about something and assert the opposite

People who actually know things respond very different to these than people who don't. Bill recently claimed I was wrong about something I asserted about silica in wood. Now my assertion was weak as I was making an inference from an indirect source. I eventually tracked down the direct source and it turns out he was right so I updated my response noting the retraction and supplying the resource which confirmed his contention. If you are interested in knowing then you want the truth, you don't want to pretend to be right you want to actually know if you are. You seek as one of the most valuable things someone who can look at what you say critically. Praise is excellent, but it doesn't help you actually know anything.

[Cliff Stamp]

Is the above not a valid question to ask?

To clarify, I don't think it isn't a valid question, it just isn't a valid assertion to say since one steel is popular it indicates that a performance claim could be made as that only works if popularity has an IFF dependence on performance. Why are steels popular is a very interesting question, how much of it is just marketing for example? How much of it is based on branding? A number of makers have openly admitted that they pick steels based on branding and how it will let them sell knives. Benchmade admitted openly when the internet was a small place many moons ago, that they did not use what they knew were the best performing steels if the market didn't know that because it would cost them too much to market it and overcome that lack of knowledge.

[SpyderNut]

So, this thread seems like fun. Hee hee.

Back to the topic at hand: I really don't have a clear favotive steel, per se. VG-10 works well for my EDC needs. I also like ZDP-189, CTS-XHP, and CPM-440V. I still have some Superblue that I haven't played with much since last year. :o

[Nate]

 I have seen physically some of the flaws samples, I still have one. They are extremely brittle, even more so than S125V

As usual, thank you for the detailed reply. You hit on several of the exact points I was starting to consider that didn't make much sense on closer inspection. I mainly posted because I thought it was ironic how even though I am trying to be more skeptical and ask the questions (even if only internally in some cases,) that there are probably still a lot of things I may have already ingrained that perhaps aren't actually the case, (which isn't limited to knives...)

With regard to the quoted snip above, you are essentially saying that the early flaws observed were most likely just random somewhat indeterminate qc failures, correct?

[Cliff Stamp]

... you are essentially saying that the early flaws observed were most likely just random somewhat indeterminate qc failures, correct?

I would not make the assertion it was true, I don't have the necessary evidence, but I would argue it is a reasonable hypothesis. In addition, the other explanations are unreasonable and in some cases physically impossible. There is no way to "tweak" the composition of S30V for example to explain the performance of the S30V Ritter Grip I have, it is more brittle than any steel I have seen/experienced.

The problem with a lot of these issues is that they are often greatly inflated by very poor responses by the maker/manufacturers and at times the fans who often are trying to support someone they care about but act in a way which is harmful. For example take a look at John Davis's attempt to do some stock work with a Reeve Sebenza in S35VN and the failure he saw on natural rope.

John was doing some slicing on small natural ropes and the entire edge bevel collapsed and deformed to the side. Not the apex of the edge, the actual edge bevel itself deformed. People actually defended this and made arguments claiming that it was abusive to cut with a dull knife, that John caused the failure because of "abusive" testing.

When arguments like this are made all they do is show the people who see/read about the failure that the people defending it don't understand steels even on a very basic level. If Reeve had to step in immediately, note that was an obvious defect and replace the blade then there would be no explosion about that one reported problem.

In S30V it was very similar. I have seen similar problems with all knives. Even knives that I would rate as performing very high will at times have poor performance and exhibit obvious failure in performance. Why? Because in general, when we use knives there is a tremendous random element which changes the loads on knives by a factor of 100:1 easily, this has to produce a huge spread in observed results.



This was an edge retention comparison I did awhile ago and looked at :

-3Cr13 / production
-VG-10 / Spyderco
-k390 / custom
-M4 / custom

They had the same edge angle/thickness and apex grit finish. The cutting was done in a very controlled manner. The sharpness was measured precisely. In each round a large amount of material was cut and the total and average performance was examined. However I did not random sample from the cardboard stock intentionally to look at the bias it would produce in the result. In fact the bias produced from the variation in the cardboard alone was so high that even the average of 10 runs with each knife could not significantly separate out these knife steels . There were many runs where the performance of 3Cr13 (420) exceeded k390 and M4, let alone VG-10.

Now just think about what would happen if someone bought a new knife in a steel like 10V and found it had lower edge retention than an inexpensive kitchen knife. They are very likely to think that knife is defective and if they do talk/post online then it is likely they would make a complaint about it. What is unfortunate is once this complaint is made, and especially if it is defended irrationally, then it can tend to set off other people making similar complaints in support.

[dreadpirate]

I like all the Spyderco steels I have, in this order:

S110V
CRU-WEAR
Super Blue
VG10
S35VN
S30V