Ed Schempp wrote:VG 10 was developed for stainless grafting knives. It's ultra fine grain disrupts minimum tissue and gives a cleaner faster healing graft in the tree fruit industry.
Ed I can understand why the aus-grain would be finer due to the vanadium, however it seems to be the carbide size would be far too large if the goal was to have maximum sharpness for minimal tissue disruption and Cold Steels VG-1 would be superior for that purpose. I would however be interested in any test data on VG-10, especially a picture of the microstructure.
In general, there are a number of high quality steels designed for razor blades, AEB-L/13C26 is such a steel. That is a stainless steel designed to have a small volume, <5% of very small carbides, < 1 micron. It is the stainless steel which current has the highest ability to take and hold a high polish at acute angles. The sharpest surgical instruments are made from diamonds and they have an edge much sharper than steels, they are about 10 atoms thick.
-Cliff