Blade Steel Question?

[raven]

Hi All, I have a blade steel question for the Knife Pros . Which Is The Better and Stronger Steel, 154CM or S30V??? Thanks In Advance and for listening to this "Oblivious Family Member" .... Take Good Care All and Be Safe Always.

God Bless


-raven-

[SimpleIsGood229]

All things (heat treat, geometry, etc.) being equal, S30V holds its edge longer than 154CM. IIRC, 154CM was originally designed for the blades of jet turbine engines. S30V was designed from the ground up as a cutlery alloy.

[RazorSharp86]

In a Knife - S30V
At least from my personal experience.
S30V holds an edge longer, is more corrosion resistant, and easier to sharpen.

[The Mastiff]

Brother Raven, Phil Wilson says this about S30V, and other stuff. I believe he got the catra results from Sal. This was posted on another forum:

I have read all this with interest and I have to respond. I introduced S30V with a couple of articles in Blade magazine a few years ago so I am responsible for some of the “hype” being mentioned here. Some history; At that time Crucible was the only steel company out there that had any interest in making a new steel that had all the qualities of a good knife steel. They talked to several of us and came up with the criteria to shoot for. The main reason for this is that S90V (upgrade for S-60V) was tough to heat treat. The problem was if you wanted to take advantage of the high wear resistance of 90V you had to get it heat treated some where. Paul Bos declined most of the time because the temp required for it was in excess of 2100 F. That was at the upper end of what his furnace could do and still have decent element life. There were also a lot of complaints about how hard S90V was to finish. This is due to the very high Vanadium Carbide percentage in this alloy. With less carbide percentage, S30V is easier to work than S90V, no question about that. So S30V was developed to mainly solve these two problems. They hit the target on both of these in my opinion. It is easy to get RC 60 with S30V at about 1950 F. I think it is easy to heat treat but it does take precise equipment and attention to detail. There is a learning curve on all high alloy steels and things like decarb and quench rate can cause some frustration. It is easier to grind and finish than S90V and this makes it possible for large production runs. This is a bigger deal than most realize. There is now a CPM steel with 4% Vanadium that can be heat treated by most commercial heat treat firms and for any custom maker who wants to buy a furnace and learn to do it himself.
There are now thousands of S30V blades out there in use. Before the introduction of S30V, S90V was the only choice for a stainless CPM and a limited one at that.
The impact toughness and bending strength turned out be a little better than S90V. I have found that to optimize the toughness a heat treat on the higher end of the data sheet range and a subzero quench and temper in the range of 400 to 600 are required. The ideal hardness range is RC 58 to RC61, with 60 being ideal. With this heat treat I can slice thick cardboard, cut rope, fillet a fish (with a very long thin flexible blade), and field dress, skin and quarter and elk with out any noticeable damage to the blade. I like to grind blades thin (.010 to .015 at the edge) and sharpen at about 15 degrees. Sharpening medium can be Silicon Carbide Norton fine or medium stone or the green or red DMT diamond. Remove the burr with a loaded leather strop. I –have- seen fine edge chipping on S30V by whittling dry Douglass Fir and twisting the blade out of the cut. The same thing will happen with 154CM, S90V, ZDP189 (rc66) and BG42. I do not have any VG10 blades to play with so can’t comment on that steel. The edge holding on S30V at RC 60 and sharpened as above is more than 30% better than ATS34/154CM. S90V is another step up and 10V is in it own category. This is all based on rope cutting tests I have done with the knives of the same blade geometry and sharpened the same. My testing is not as precise as what Cliff is doing, but correlates with the data that Spydeco gets with the CATRA machine. Here is the order based on what Sal (Spyderco) has related to me..

440C 360-400
VG10 500-510
S30V 550-580
S90V 750
ZDP 189 750
S125V 1200
VG 10 is not available to the custom maker as far as I know so if we want a steel better

Then there is Wayne Goddards Edge holding tests. More interesting stuff. Both Phil, and Wayne G. are very highly respected knifemakers and seem to do tests without any predetermined pet steels. http://users.ameritech.net/knives/edge.htm
Hope it's usefull, Joe

[raven]

Hey Joe, THANK YOU FOR THE INFO KNIFEBRO !!! Take Good Care and Be Safe Always.

God Bless


-raven-