Which one will dominate?

[MotoBro]

I hate to throw another steel into the mix here but if one of these three were to be crowned the new “king” of stainless blade steels, where would that put M390/20CV/204p? Isn’t that the current “king” of stainless steels? I know this topic is about which of these steels will be more dominant in the future but what are the advantages over M390 & it’s American counterparts? I know M390 isn’t very easy to sharpen which is it’s biggest flaw. I presume it’s also more expensive and harder to machine than the average blade steel too?

It sounds like the Larrin steel’s main advantage over all of the others is toughness and possibly sharpen-ability too. So would that make it the M390 killer? The best all around stainless steel? Obviously more testing is needed but I’m just curious how it stacks up against the current “king”.

[Evil D]

I hate to throw another steel into the mix here but if one of these three were to be crowned the new “king” of stainless blade steels, where would that put M390/20CV/204p? Isn’t that the current “king” of stainless steels? I know this topic is about which of these steels will be more dominant in the future but what are the advantages over M390 & it’s American counterparts? I know M390 isn’t very easy to sharpen which is it’s biggest flaw. I presume it’s also more expensive and harder to machine than the average blade steel too?

It sounds like the Larrin steel’s main advantage over all of the others is toughness and possibly sharpen-ability too. So would that make it the M390 killer? The best all around stainless steel? Obviously more testing is needed but I’m just curious how it stacks up against the current “king”.

I think you pretty much answered your own question. From a production standpoint being easier to grind cuts cost. From a user standpoint being easier to sharpen and tougher means you can actually use your knife without fear of screwing up the edge and having to deal with long grueling sharpening session to fix edge damage. All that plus being highly corrosion resistant and having better than average edge retention adds up to quite a package. I think right now most steels are leaning towards different strengths, and people choose their favorites based on what they prioritize and while we have very good "average" steels that are Jack of all trades, this steel will be a better version of that. Instead of comparing it to other steels that outclass it in single particular categories, compare it to those average Jack of all trades steels like VG10. There will still be steels that hold an edge longer or that are tougher or whatever individual traits you single out, but this may be the best average steel there is.

[JRinFL]

I ONLY want Larrinite/MagnaCut from here on out. However, I suspect we will be forced into overpaying for it via short run sprints and exclusives. Plus, with the literal tons and tons of S30V knife makers have stock piled, we will be forced to wade through that for years to come.

You likely won't notice much of a different between the two. S30V may actually out perform "MagnaCut" in direct wear situations. S30V came out initially with the claim that you can have vanadium wear resistance and 5160 style toughness at the same time. All the variation steels since then have been doing marginal tweaks to try and have the s30v cake and eat it too, but the facts of physics simply won't allow it.

I have to say that I find it remarkable that people talk about s30v now as if it were 420HC of yesterday. "We'll have to wade through it," as if it were another "gas station knife steel." This is why I get cynical about all the, "Sal can we please have X steel!!?" threads. I'm sure it makes good business though.

Fair enough, we all have our opinions. However, MagnaCut should have much better rust resistance and perform better on the stones according to it’s designer. Those will be noticeable to users even though the now 20 year old S30V will out perform in total cuts. We won't be out of the S30V era for a long time in any event.

[GarageBoy]

you guys are all missing the most important questions here...

which steel will make me feel like i'm better than other people?
which steel will look best with instagram filters?
which steel is more fun to fidget with?
which steel will open my mail better than 8cr13mov?

Hopefully, none of them will be rare enough to earn social media cred.

Will s45vn/magnacut/spy27 trio finally bring down the reign of "I'd buy it if it came in (sometimes soft) m390?"

[Woodpuppy]

I have hated s30v ever since my first two knives in that steel. The edge holding wasn’t up to the hype, and it was a b!tch to sharpen. These were not Spydercos, and I’m willing to concede Spyderco does a better job heat treating it than those first two knives. At the time, I went to M2 and didn’t look back. My first knives weren’t stainless steel, so I had no hesitation about a non-stainless high speed steel.

A couple years ago when I decided I wanted another Spyderco, I was dismayed that it seemed the entire industry had gone to s30v as the base steel. The bitterness of my experience with it 20 years ago was still front of mind. I was delighted when I found the BHQ Para 3 in CPM-M4! Had to be better than s30v, and M4 > M2 right? Well of course it was! And there we go down the rabbit hole of Spyderco sprints & exclusives. I’ll not buy s30v or variants on purpose, not when steels like M4, rex45, cruwear, K390, etc. are available.

So the fact that MagnaCut will offer a practically stainless cruwear, comparable or better than the best balanced stainless steels, who could want anything more in a balanced cutlery steel? What remains to be seen is how it stacks up against H1 and LC200N. I can see needing 3 or 4 steels in a collection:

1. Rustproof - We all sweat. M4 rusts in my pocket. I live in Florida. A Spyderco Salt is a must-have!
2. MagnaCut for my balanced daily driver.
3. Need something specifically tougher? Choppa for camp/bushcraft/yard work etc.
4. Need something with major abrasion resistance?

#2 is the routine daily steel that covers >90% of the use cases. #1, #3 & #4 are the extreme performance end members that cover the rest.

I hope to see more graphs as testing of MagnaCut continues. Will a different order of addition of the extra elements of the steel recipe produce a different result? Who knows. I thought Larrin’s description of Crucible asking to add more carbon because the mixture wasn’t right was very interesting. That it smoothed out once the rest of the elements were added was interesting too, and suggests order of addition could be important to the process, whether or not it would affect the end product.

So will MagnaCut outperform s30v in slicing performance or edge retention? Gads I hope so. I expect it to pound s30v in toughness, edge stability, and sharpenability. I’d like to see s30v as a footnote in history, it’s only distinction being among the first PM steels.

[Evil D]

I'm still extremely happy with LC200N, so it'll be down to corrosion resistance and edge retention between those two, and (insert broken record sound here) if I can get MagnaCut with serrations and in what models. If it's only available in plain edge Para 2s and 3s then it may as well not exist to me.

[archangel]

I'm still extremely happy with LC200N, so it'll be down to corrosion resistance and edge retention between those two, and (insert broken record sound here) if I can get MagnaCut with serrations and in what models. If it's only available in plain edge Para 2s and 3s then it may as well not exist to me.

LOL :)

In fact, has Larrin made a statement how he expects MagnaCut (see, I can learn) to perform with serrations? Was it maybe tested already? My memory fails me again today....

[Lucabrasi]

Sounds like m390/20cv properly hardened will still have better edge retention and equal corrosion resistance. Less toughness, but I think many are fine with that trade off in a folder for the types of things that many do with their knives. So I don’t feel like Magnacut makes these steels redundant in the way others do.

However with this steel it’s hard to see what benefit s30v, s35vn, s45vn, or even xhp (which I have been a big fan of due to edge taking) bring to the table. I mean...I’m not selling off my models in these steels as they work great. But the charts seem to indicate they don’t have any advantages at all over magnacut.

[Evil D]

I'm still extremely happy with LC200N, so it'll be down to corrosion resistance and edge retention between those two, and (insert broken record sound here) if I can get MagnaCut with serrations and in what models. If it's only available in plain edge Para 2s and 3s then it may as well not exist to me.

LOL :)

In fact, has Larrin made a statement how he expects MagnaCut (see, I can learn) to perform with serrations? Was it maybe tested already? My memory fails me again today....

I don't recall reading anything but I'm hopeful. At this point I just have zero interest in plain edge knives except for some rare exceptions. This will likely be one of those exceptions just to try the steel out, but it won't be something I buy more than one knife in unless I can get it in SE.

[Larrin]

M390 has a very coarse structure for a PM steel and so is no tougher than S90V/S110V so I would rather use those. I don’t know why M390 is considered the hot steel right now.

[bearfacedkiller]

I am voting for Larrimantium

[Fireman]

I am voting for Larrimantium

Now that would be the nerdiest of names
:D. I can see the Wolverine knives now...
Magna Cut is a great name for this steel.
I would tag line it
Magna Cut...“No Compromise”

[Fireman]

Maybe the Instagram told them it was hot?
Keeping up with the trends?
I see your steel being the next hot steel on IG, just wait till some influencer posts about it and all the stock will be gone. hoping to get some before that happens.

PS. Can someone please send a Magna Cut knife to Ada & Cedric and DBK on you tube? They are fun to watch and they are super steel nerds.

M390 has a very coarse structure for a PM steel and so is no tougher than S90V/S110V so I would rather use those. I don’t know why M390 is considered the hot steel right now.

[MotoBro]

M390 has a very coarse structure for a PM steel and so is no tougher than S90V/S110V so I would rather use those. I don’t know why M390 is considered the hot steel right now.

I didn’t know M390 had such poor toughness if it’s as likely to chip as S110V. So far I haven’t chipped it on my Para 3. I guess the hype just comes from the combination of high edge retention and corrosion resistance making it ideal for people who want a very low maintenance knife.

[Evil D]

M390 has a very coarse structure for a PM steel and so is no tougher than S90V/S110V so I would rather use those. I don’t know why M390 is considered the hot steel right now.

I didn’t know M390 had such poor toughness if it’s as likely to chip as S110V. So far I haven’t chipped it on my Para 3. I guess the hype just comes from the combination of high edge retention and corrosion resistance making it ideal for people who want a very low maintenance knife.

It's just the other end of they hype spectrum. S110V or Maxamet may be significantly more likely to chip and significantly less tough, but they're still STEEL and in reasonable use the edge isn't going to crumble off the knife. I've used S110V plenty hard enough and edge damage really depends more on edge geometry and how well you apex the edge. Steels like these are much less forgiving of burrs and lazy sharpening habits. All it takes is one "influencer" to chip an edge and suddenly a steel is branded as being fragile, or it's now a Spyderco heat treat issue. Some people should question their own sharpening ability before they blame the steel, and that's coming 100% from my own experiences and failures.

[Larrin]

The high chromium in M390 reduces the amount of hard vanadium carbides which makes it easier to sharpen with aluminum oxide abrasives. That may make some people like it more. People often equate "easy to sharpen" with tough as well, or with a fine microstructure. Just the other day I was on the German knife forum where someone was claiming my micrographs of M390 can't be trusted because he likes how it sharpens.

[bearfacedkiller]

M390 has a very coarse structure for a PM steel and so is no tougher than S90V/S110V so I would rather use those. I don’t know why M390 is considered the hot steel right now.

I didn’t know M390 had such poor toughness if it’s as likely to chip as S110V. So far I haven’t chipped it on my Para 3. I guess the hype just comes from the combination of high edge retention and corrosion resistance making it ideal for people who want a very low maintenance knife.

S110V is incredibly corrosion resistant. Maybe a touch less than M390, I don’t know. I will say that S110V is noticeably more challenging to sharpen but it beats M390 in every other way. I like M390 and it’s analogs but I will also agree that it is overhyped.

[Lucabrasi]

The high chromium in M390 reduces the amount of hard vanadium carbides which makes it easier to sharpen with aluminum oxide abrasives. That may make some people like it more. People often equate "easy to sharpen" with tough as well, or with a fine microstructure. Just the other day I was on the German knife forum where someone was claiming my micrographs of M390 can't be trusted because he likes how it sharpens.”






The easier to sharpen aspect has certainly been a big part of my preference for it. I started in the kitchen knife world and my preference is for sharpening with Japanese water stones, freehand. I sold an s110v Manix because I had acquired diamond plates specifically to address sharpening it, and I simply hated using them. They feel terrible, and you get no feed back. I just wasn’t having any success. The m390 family allowed me to sharpen on my Cerax stones with no trouble and still have some very good edge performance.

Now, many years later I’ve come around to sharpening in diamonds and am willing to re engage with the high vanadium steels, but this was definitely a bog part of my preference for m390 vs s110v/s90v. For the longest time I wouldn’t even consider them.


Looks like Magnacut will be a big part of my collection going forward. Appreciate your efforts and contributions to this community.

[bobnikon]

you guys are all missing the most important questions here...

which steel will make me feel like i'm better than other people?
which steel will look best with instagram filters?
which steel is more fun to fidget with?
which steel will open my mail better than 8cr13mov?

And you in turn left out THE most important question. Which ones will be offered with which scale colours? That is the only true determinant of quality and popularity!

[Joshua J.]

I ONLY want Larrinite/MagnaCut from here on out. However, I suspect we will be forced into overpaying for it via short run sprints and exclusives. Plus, with the literal tons and tons of S30V knife makers have stock piled, we will be forced to wade through that for years to come.

You likely won't notice much of a different between the two. S30V may actually out perform "MagnaCut" in direct wear situations. S30V came out initially with the claim that you can have vanadium wear resistance and 5160 style toughness at the same time. All the variation steels since then have been doing marginal tweaks to try and have the s30v cake and eat it too, but the facts of physics simply won't allow it.

I have to say that I find it remarkable that people talk about s30v now as if it were 420HC of yesterday. "We'll have to wade through it," as if it were another "gas station knife steel." This is why I get cynical about all the, "Sal can we please have X steel!!?" threads. I'm sure it makes good business though.

When Magna Cut does to S30V what S30V did to 440C, logically it should follow that in two or three years we'll see S30V used about as often as 440C is today.

Except 440C is cheaper to make than S30V, where S30V is not cheaper to make than Magna Cut.

First generation powdered steels are about to go extinct.