The Meat man wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 9:11 pmDavid, you're probably right. The good news is that if I know the knife's limits I'll still be able to use it. And at least it didn't cost me $100.
In your opinion, what would be the best steel for hard wood carving? Something like O-1 or 52100 or maybe CPM M4 or REX 45?
I won't pretend to know which are best, but I do know that various .8 to 1.5% *simple* carbon steel alloys are the most common in traditional woodworking tools.
Before the advent of high carbide tool steels being used in blades, the way to get better edge retention was higher hardness, so steels that gave up too much toughness when hardened above 59HRC didn't get used in higher quality carving tools.
Like I mentioned, my Eriksson/Frost/Mora carvers in HC laminate (61HRC) chip easily in anything from maple on up in hardness, the homogeneous versions at 59-60HRC seem to do better in the harder woods. The 12c27 Moras I have used don't roll or chip (usually 57-59HRC), but definitely lose their edge much faster than the HC blades and are slightly more effort to re-sharpen.
Most hand made Japanese woodworking tools are Hitachi White or Blue steel at 63-65HRC (not Blue Super like Spyderco used, it's a higher alloy content than the others), the white can achieve higher working hardness, the blue has better wear resistance (a bit of chromium and tungsten in the mix), so White is recommended for soft to moderately hard woods and Blue for very abrasive or hard wood. With all the hand made Japanese tools, it's expected that they'll chip if the blade isn't sharpened to remove a significant amount of the original edge. I have a few chisels and a set of single bevel carving knives (left and right cut), all in blue steel, the only chip I've ever gotten was when I was working inside a built-in cabinet and drove the chisel through a sheetrock screw (I thought it was just a knot)... it made a clean cut and the edge took surprisingly little damage, I've wrecked bi-metal saw blades on those before!
The bottom line with all of these traditional tools, is that the price you pay for using such finely tuned designs in traditional materials is that you have to use care and pick the right tool for the job, none of them are catch-all EDC type blades.