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Hi all, I was having a fun discussion with a seasoned knife-maker and knife-user, about different blade grinds, styles, etc. However, he heavilly disparages and downright attacks literally *all* modern stain-resistant and stainless alloy steels. He is very much a pro carbon-steel afficianado, and while I like his enthusiasm for traditional carbon steels, what are some good responses to this? Have any of you ever come upon someone who totally knocks all highly-alloyed and stainless steels?

He claims "real man's steel" or "real woman's steel" is basically iron with carbon, and the only "acceptable" alloying elements at the very most, are some of the old-style tool steels. When I brought up stuff like VG-10, 440 series, and some of the kinds such as S30V and even Sandvik Stainless (such as 12C27), he totally said "those are for tenderfeet who don't know their way around good woodsman knives." One of his claims is that men such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Jim Bowie, and others of those eras used big/large single and double-edged forged carbon steel blades, and even If they had access to modern knives, such as Spyderco folders (which I said I believe they would definitely have gone for if they had access to them!), he told me I'm "out of it son", because I personally have not made forged carbon steel blades. All that being said, I would say our discussion was cool, and I have no personal problem with him. But he is definitely anti-stainless.

Any good responses to that sort of discussion? (ps, he also does not believe people need metallographic analysis or any of the modern metallurgy tools aside from tried and true blacksmithing skills, when it comes to making good field knives).

One of his other responses, by the way, was that as soon as the American indians and others had access to big-bladed carbon steel knives and edged tools/weapons, they quickly abandoned their "sub 4 inch knives and daggers" for the "real man's blades", and considers almost every modern folder/pocket knife to be in the same category with ancient stone tools.

What is his argument exactly, that there is no utility to modern steels because Davy Crockett didn't use them?

If you want to have a rational conversation :

-ask him clearly what he is asserting
-how does he know what he is asserting is true

and since his claims (as noted in the above) are false, then it is fairly easy to provide evidence to the contrary. For example look at Verhoeven's or Landes work on AEB-L vs 1084/O1, or Cashen's description of forging as a shape-only process.

However it sounds like he doesn't want to learn anything so it looks like you are in for entertainment only. In such cases the best approach is the Hampton Yount defense :

(Video link removed contains inappropriate language for our forum - TazKristi)

I went to a knife show some years back and met one of these guys you refer to as a "Carbon Steel Purist". And don't get me wrong because I firmly believe that Carbon Steel definitely has it's place especially in specialized tools. I do a little woodworking on the side and I inherited some of my dad's woodworking tools made by "Millers Falls" along with many wood chisels and other tools and they are all carbon steel and they do great work IMO.

But anyway back to the guy at met at a knife show a few years back>> him and I got into a conversation "carbon steel versus stainless steel" and he was so jaded that he wouldn't even consider any aspects of my opinon at all concerning the newer stainless steels currently on the market. I just happened to have my Spyderco Burgundy ZDP-189 Caly jr. on me and I was telling him about the super performance I got from the ZDP-189 blade and he just looked at me with total disgust. I got the folder out and in a very nice and friendly way I offered to him to test it out for himself so he could see the amazing properties in that particular steel but he wouldn't even so much as lay a hand on it. He was so jaded and brainwashed that from that point on in the conversation he was so negative and hateful that you would think I was speaking ill of one of his family the way he was responding to me.

Needless to say I put my ZDP-189 Caly Jr. back in my pocket and walked away peacefully. But he isn't the only one I've ever talked to with that jaded of an attitude toward any "non-stainless" steel knife steel. And like the guy I met at the knife show most of them won't even consider testing one out to see for themselves. I've encountered many brainwashed people in my days but few are as jaded and close minded as these guys who are avid fans of carbon steel blades. And again I'll consider any blade material if it works well. To me dealing with these "Carbon Steel" fanatics is even worse than someone that is brainwashed by a cultic religion or brainwashed on a particular political party :confused: Go Figure :rolleyes:

Only response to the Carbon Steel Purist is:
"Fair enough, mate"- And either change the subject or walk away...

Every hobby or interest has 'these' folks who've decided that one particular facet of the hobby is the 'right' choice, and everyone else is wrong- and they can be utter clown-shoes about the whole thing, especially if you don't 100% agree with them.....every hobby, without exception

Example: Try talking about blended whiskey on a single malt forum.....Or talking about Non-GW gaming miniatures on Games Workshop forum.

(Though- option B- which often appeals to me after I've got a few beers inside of me, is to troll the living **** out of them by suggesting they start properly living in the past they so love and foreswear antibiotics, chocolate bars, diet beverages and anything invented after 1820....That's right, walk home, buddy- Your gorram Prius wouldn't be good enough for Daniel Boone!....:D )

I tend to call these kinds of folks "Old Coots" and just smile as they ramble on.

Having said that - I won't buy any woodworking hand tools with blades in "modern" steels. I tend toward White/Blue Aogami, A2, 01, and other low-carbide steels for my chisels, plane irons, scrapers, and carving knives. They take a blazing edge, and are easy to sharpen.

I guess that makes me an Old Coot. Sigh.

TedP

I tend to avoid conversations with anyone who uses phrasing like, "A real man" or "a real woman". Mainly because dinosaurs aren't evolved enough for basic communication.

Yes this guy was like the one you met, JD Spydo, same basic attitude and mindset against all stainless steels. His attitude was that the stainless is for people who he considers inexperienced and not into 'hard working every day' use for big jobs. But again, I find his view mistaken.

Here is an interesting thought: While steel is definitely more elastic and tougher, to make a blanket put-down of 'ancient stone tools' is somewhat mistaken: Obsidian which is a volcanic glass based stone, and which was used by assorted people for cutting tools...is sharper and harder than steel..and the edges can be gotten down nearly to the molecule. Some surgeons have used scalpels made with it to a great degree of success, and, I read an old time account of a Spanish author in the Americas who said a well-trained Aztec warrior armed with one of their obsidian-studded war-club/swords could cut someone in half.

Cliff: His attitude about stainless and high alloy steels was that since men like Crockett and mountain men used carbon steel, even if they had access to modern stuff, like 440, and VG10, they would turn those down because only (in his eyes) your basic carbon steels like 1095 and 1050 and things of that nature can stand up to seriously hard use and battlefield use. What I also thought was kindof ridiculous, though I could be wrong, is his put-down of Kabars. Not the cheap knock-offs, mind you, but the real thing. He claimed Kabars are just a 'gimmick' designed to make money for knife-factory contractors, and that no self-respecting outdoorsman would stake his life on a Kabar, because even though the originals have carbon-steel blades, the handle/blade joint is weak and the leather washer handle is flimsy and in long-term outdoors use for hunting, combat, shelter-making, etc, the Kabar would fall apart. My response to that was the Kabar is tried and true by multitudes of military men and women, outdoors people, and survival-bushcraft practitioners and is one of the best knives available, the original genuine article, ofcourse, made by Ka-Bar.

I should have mentioned the Spyderco Bushcraft, that is one tough blade.

SpyderEdgeForever wrote:... even if they had access to modern stuff, like 440, and VG10, they would turn those down because only (in his eyes) your basic carbon steels like 1095 and 1050 and things of that nature can stand up to seriously hard use and battlefield use.

Simple carbon steels have a far higher toughness than modern high carbide stainless, they are not even in the same class. However for those guys (Crocket and similar) I would think that the ease of grinding would be a more important issue than extreme durability. They had very simple abrasives which would not tend to work well on steels like 440C. But yes the toughness is far higher in 5160, O1 and similar compared to things like 440C.

However not all stainless is high carbide, for example 420 stainless is comparable in toughness to high carbon tool steels and there are other examples like the Randalls in 440B with the mid-range hardness. I would think that Davy Crocket would have had no issue skinning out a few buffalo with one of them.

... even though the originals have carbon-steel blades, the handle/blade joint is weak and the leather washer handle is flimsy and in long-term outdoors use for hunting, combat, shelter-making, etc, the Kabar would fall apart.

These are all valid criticisms, lots of people won't use leather stacked handles because in certain environments leather is very hard to maintain. Similar lots of people are very critical of anything which isn't a solid and full width/thickness tang. Is there more strength there, sure, is it always needed, well it depends on how you use knives. If you are looking at the ultimate in durability then that is what you want. However I don't think historical trade knives were always like that, just look at some classic patterns from 100+ years ago.

We're not in the 1800s anymore. The only blade I've ever broke was carbon steel. Why would you want a knife that can rust when we have such great other choices?

A knife maker with a small set up (like most seasoned knife makers use) do not have the equiptment or knowledge to work or heat treat most modern steels so they will argue till their blue in the face the attributes of carbon steel(the only material they can work with effectively)through a fear of the knives they make being outperformed. He's just putting his head in the sand because he can't keep up with the evolution of the industry in the last 2 decades making his knives obsolete and unwanted

What I also find very interesting, which Cliff Stamp and others here have pointed out, is the potential of new steels to give you the toughness properties and other properties such as edge-holding ability of carbon steels, with the corrosion-resistance of stainless steels.

Just as a point of clarification, steels like AEB-L are ~100 years old, they are among the earliest stainless steels. They are well known as cutting steels as they are what razor blades are made from. They are only recently being used in high end cutlery mainly because of a lack of knowledge of metallurgy and the problems created by this misunderstanding.

In short, people looked at steels like AEB-L, saw it has only ~0.6% carbon and just judged it as being soft/weak with low wear resistance. This is because a lot of people thought (and many still do, it is common to see) that you need a lot more carbon (~1%) to get a steel hard (60+ HRC) and that even more is needed to form carbides to increase wear resistance.

Thankfully, a number of makers such as Devin Thomas, Kevin Cashen, Roman Landes, etc. openly argued for such steels on the basis of actual metallurgy and the ideas are starting to get somewhat more understood. People now realize that steels like AEB-L can actually reach 62/64 HRC, have 3-5% chromium carbides and make very nice knives for a broad range of uses.

Cliff Stamp wrote:Just as a point of clarification, steels like AEB-L are ~100 years old, they are among the earliest stainless steels. They are well known as cutting steels as they are what razor blades are made from. They are only recently being used in high end cutlery mainly because of a lack of knowledge of metallurgy and the problems created by this misunderstanding.

In short, people looked at steels like AEB-L, saw it has only ~0.6% carbon and just judged it as being soft/weak with low wear resistance. This is because a lot of people thought (and many still do, it is common to see) that you need a lot more carbon (~1%) to get a steel hard (60+ HRC) and that even more is needed to form carbides to increase wear resistance.
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Cliff- I love you (in purely platonic, bloke-style, fashion of course) :)

So, so many otherwise clever folks in the engineering department at work (Aerospace) pull out the Fe/C phase diagram and the related strength vs hardness curves and believe it applies equally to all steels regardless of actual strengthening mechanism ...Then we get a slightly off tensile result from (say) 15/5 precipitation hardening steel but "The vickers hardness was fine though", and they can''t wrap their heads around the fact that strength is not directly correlatable to hardness for a bunch of materials.

Sorry for the slight drift off topic- then again, this is probably another facet to the 'Carbon Steel Am Teh Bestest' attitude....

Even if you switch to bulk compression strength which is just hardness testing on another scale, the correlation while positive, is not well enough defined to allow reasonable prediction due to the vast difference in testing on the scale of the micro-structure vs beyond it.

On some level this should be obvious, imagine doing spot hardness testing on concrete with 1 mm points vs bulk compression. This tends to not be obvious in steel as you can't see the phases so it all looks just like steel. Roman Landes was one of the first guys to argue that the microstructure had a significant influence on the behavior of the apex.

At least you can have the discussions, in the knife industry when presenting data the response is often some kind of argument that science is all biased, the Illuminati control academic research (and cutlery steel is high on their agenda?), and possibly it has something to do with Bigfoot. But hey, we are progressing, it wasn't that long ago people would argue that forging increased the density of the steel molecules.

Steel will always remain steel and it will always behave like steel. No more and no less...

I could be wrong, but hasn't D2 been around in knives for a long time and was used in WWII and such? D2 is highly respected to this day

D2 is one of the most heavily used tool steels, almost everyone makes a high carbon, 12% Chromium cold work steel. It has very high hardness, 62+ HRC, very high compressive strength, extremely high wear resistance and is fairly easy to harden as it can be air quenched.

Usually any time someone proclaims that anything is absolutely superior to something else, I stop listening.

Blerv wrote:I tend to avoid conversations with anyone who uses phrasing like, "A real man" or "a real woman". Mainly because dinosaurs aren't evolved enough for basic communication.

Yeah, it's best to just walk away.

Not even worth the effort to even try and talk to people like that.

SpyderEdgeForever wrote:downright attacks literally *all* modern stain-resistant and stainless alloy steels. He is very much a pro carbon-steel afficianado

I like stainless steel and more than ever I appreciate some of the modern high carbide steels. I also appreciate the properties of high carbon steels.

If you really think about it, it actually is relatively hard to defend stainless steels. What can we say for certain?
1. Yes they will resist corrosion but most of us could take care of carbon steel blades and mostly achieve the same thing. The stainless blades will stay pretty longer, a carbon steel blade will eventually form patina.
2. High carbide stainless steels have very good edgeholding, but in my experience M4 steel will do about as well. I have read other tests where steels such as S110V did significantly better.
3. Carbon steels are tougher than stainless steels.

The only thing I could say for certain is that some people really need the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Some stainless steel alloys may have slightly better edgeholding than carbon steels. So is the old guy really all that wrong? But if a person is not interested in absolute toughness, you could just about equally argue that stainless steel is completely better than carbon steel.