Just want to get your opinion on new "super steels"...obviously high carbon stainless steel was a great advancement of blade material for EDC and work knives because of less maintenance. It was a giant leap forward IMHO. Do you honestly think anything "worthwhile" meaning leaps and bounds better has come along since properly heat treated and tempered 440C? I mean, with proper geometry and sharpened with suitable grit for task, what advantage does any steel have over 440C in reality? Most "advantages" are very minor and specific task limited. I really think our knife industry is designing lures to catch fishermen and not fish. It is nice to have so many choices though, I must admit.
Most of the modern steels are not actually cutlery steels and they tend to be very high carbide steels. Do they have uses, well yes. For people who are very adverse to sharpening and want to use a knife until it can't cut much of anything they have value. However are they as great as promoted? Most of the advantages come from other aspects of the knives, geometry and such. Rarely do people compare knives similar enough that the steel would be the major difference.
Nice work! This video got me thinking what if you used a Soft Arkansas stone instead of the Spyderco F for the ultra-light passes, or maybe even a XF DMT, that you could get the same effect with fewer passes. Just a thought, not sure what would happen.
The beach and cliff stamp. Why have I never put the two together? Good point regarding the orientation of the edge in relation to the sharpmaker fine stone. Interestingly, Spyderco recommends a number of passes using the *edge* of those stones before a series of passes on the flats.
Cliff Stamp on a related note, I 'touch up' my S30V Paramilitary using the sharpmaker fine and ultra-fine rods(stones), edge of rod first and then the flat of the rod for both. For general use (nothing scientific!), I find that process acceptable. After hard use, I'll go down to the medium rods having taken the possibly broken edge off as the first step. Edit: I'll try using just the flats of the rods next go around.
YasumotoUS I think a critical point, which I often fail to stress is that instead of looking for one kind of magic bullet to just remember to try a few things and find out what works. I do think as a few general principles that what most people do as touch-ups tends to lead to compromised performance but you also have to look at what is practical for them. I often bake bread without an over night fermenting and with a quick pan fry. It isn't as nice as a full rise sourdough, but you can still eat it and have fresh bread made in under an hour from start to finish.
I understand your point -- good example. Go with what works for you and in your situation. I still wish to give the flats a go; won't cost me much time. Worst case is that I take down the edge and start fresh.
If you have a local wood specialist supply store you might be able to get several boards off the same tree or if you know someone with a sawmill. This might minimize the scatter you are seeing and often the sawmill guys will give you a couple boards especially if you bribe them with beer.
mark a My family owns acres of timber wood, I could just cut down a tree and section it. However if I wanted a more uniform composition I would just cut up OSB or particle board which is an engineered product and basically already random sampled. In most of these trials I am not wanting to artificially constrain the results as much as I am trying to see what happens when you don't. Just go on some form and imply that 10V would hold an edge on carving Pine as much as AUS-6 and see what is the result. The point of this video wasn't really to complain about the scatter as much as make the point that the scatter happens even if you semi-constrain it. Now imagine what happens when someone goes out into the woods and just carves a few fuzz sticks. What kind of scatter do you expect there?
I've been following this recent video series on edge retention. If I'm understanding your general findings correctly, to maximize edge retention (of any steel) one is better off to always "touch up" an edge with a medium-coarse stone, followed by a fine stone? With this method you will be removing damaged edge steel, and not just reshaping it, like you would with a fine stone?
clapton924 It is going to depend on what you are cutting, some materials are so abrasive they cut off fatigued steel. I would suggest for most people that they at least try to use a coarse abrasive or cut the apex back to see if it improves performance.
I think I might be on the path of understanding why I've been somewhat underwhelmed with the edge retention of higher-end steels. In the past, I've generally touched up my edges with fine or ultra fine stones, followed by a strop....or just stropping in general. I'm going to try using a medium ceramic rod, and see if my edge retention increases.
After seeing your other video regarding the lengthwise bow in your sharpmaker rod, and hearing you say in this video that you generally get the metal deposits near the corners of your rods, I recalled that in my experience with my own rods, I tend to get deposits only on the center of the flats. Now I am wondering if the flat sides of the stones are truly flat at all. Perhaps they vary by either bulging outward from the center of inward toward the center as well?
traderjoes I would expect that many of them have issues. When people look at them carefully, they often report problems. Just look at what happens when the straight razor guys try them.
+traderjoes Spyderco's stone quality control has dropped significantly in the last few years. Especially their bench stone variants, for some reason. A few months ago, I decided to go ahead to buy a 2x8" ultra fine Spyderco bench stone, which set me back about $70 after shipping. Got it, looked it over, everything seemed fine. Started doing some trial sharpening and I noticed a lot of odd behavior and catching/stickiness. Figured something was wrong. Sure enough, I put it on a DMT lapping stone and it wobbled like a chair constructed by someone with whom the concept of measurement was a foreign concept. Not only was the surface (on both sides no less...) not true and flat... it was concave. I... I don't even know how they managed to do that. Frustrated, I looked online and saw a plethora of other users and customers writing about their own problems with (especially UF) Spyderco stones in the last couple of years. Amazon, in particular, has verified purchase review after review of people getting untrue stones. To make matters worse, some people were reporting they attempted to return the stones and get replacements because they were obviously not in spec - Spyderco returned the (what you'd think would qualify as defective) stones back to them stating they were within acceptable tolerances. My UF triangle rods are also not 100% true, but they were no where near as bad as the much, much more expensive bench stone. If this is the kind of quality that Spyderco is putting out, they need to get their act together. That UF bench stone was about the same size (although not thickness) and price as some of my lower grit Shapton stones - which arrived flat and true.
Cliff, so what you are saying is that you could replicate the loss in edge retention on the 320 if you used heavy pressure which would essentially be doing the same thing as the Spyderco Sharpmaker stone, right?
Razor Edge Knives LLC I am not sure what you mean. I was able to stop the loss in edge retention by using the Spyderco Fine with low force. All of the runs had the Fine micro-bevel.
I guess what I am asking is that the spyderco fine is simply a fine stone. Could you replicate the same effects of high pressure on a lower grit stone and cause stress to the edge to cause lower edge retention?
Cliff, how well does that waterstone work for you for 10V? I noticed with my 1000 grit king that it doesn't really do all that much to my K2 and I can almost feel the edge getting stressed. There is very little cutting. I pretty much only use diamonds at this point for steels in the 10V class. M4 is the max I will use on a waterstone.
Kevin Oubre The King 1000 is very fine, much finer than the grit because of how it breaks down. It cuts ~2X the grit basically so it is a finishing stone. This is a #300 grit stone which is much stronger of a bond. It cuts 10V perfectly fine, it easily reset the bevels on those knives however if I wanted to change the angle I would back off to a Norton Crystolon coarse, India Coarse and use a lot more force.
Cliff Stamp Thanks cliff, Ill give those a shot. I keep looking at the fancy Japanese stones but damn are those things expensive compared to diamonds. I think Im also gonna give the Spyderco Medium and Fine benchstones a shot. I like them in my double stuff. I already have the ultra fine and it works well for polishing.
Kevin Oubre This one is pretty expensive because it is a dual density stone. The SP-II 240 is likely a better choice for 10V and less cost. But again it is really force sensitive. If you like to use a lot of force you really need a strong vitrified bond.
I do tend to use a lot of force for shaping just to get it don't faster. Its another reason I have gravitated to diamonds so much the last two years. But I am interested in getting better an dmore varied technique which is why ive been looking at different stones.
I've always been amused by Jeremy's SM100 knife. You ordered a mule, he made a very nice hunting knife. I'm in the Chum camp when it comes to edge retention, but I still think that high carbide steels have their place for some applications, namely for people who don't regularly sharpen their knives. Wood really isn't something where you would see a difference, though.
Got me excited over how good I can get 1084 with a good home heat treat. Larrin does good work and literally designs super-steels - yet he concludes that edge geometry then heat treatment determined performance. He just likes to eek out any performance he can get. He very rightfully prioritizes toughness and hardness ratio with some carbides as a bonus. Super steels like 3V actually do have benefits thanks to crazy toughness and hardness. Rex 121.. ehhh. I don't think most super steels are worth the price however, though you guarantee a pretty good heat treat from any maker going to those pricey steels, or they would lose reputation real fast.
Hi, I wanted to ask you one thing, in the practical use of the knife on the field you really notice so much difference between steel 440c and 154cm depending on your experience or the difference is little? Let me know what you think, thanks to Michele
It seems your level of sharpness is too high. Most people use a knife until it can't slice cut printer paper. Not just not cleanly slice cutting printer paper, but not being able to slice cut it at all. My guess is your level of sharpness is MUCH higher than that.
***** This is true, however it is next to impossible to do a edge retention trial to that level of bluntness unless you cut something like dirty carpet or sod. Note that the rankings won't actually change if you compare at lower sharpness in regards to order but they can move further apart as blunting isn't linear. The problem with doing really hard cutting like sods/carpet is that while it can blunt edges pretty severely it is highly random because an odd piece of grit can damage an edge severely. You have to be pretty careful doing those kinds of comparisons as well. I have posted up a few comparisons of that type.
Cliff Stamp the main problem with osb and particle board is rocks. They are full of them small about the size of a grain of rice but hit one and your run becomes an outlier. Hit one with every knife at random times and the effort becomes worthless.
mark a Random deviations average out, systematic deviations don't. It is pointless to look for a material which has an extreme tolerance for random deviations because you don't when you cut anyway. It doesn't hurt of course to use a material which has a very high tolerance for consistency but it won't gain you anything either.
TheRedRider100 Yes however it requires a very high pressure. For example 20-30 lbs on a chisel face will cause it to slurry. For a knife it is very difficult as the force you need to apply is going to be even higher.
does both sides slurry? ill just be doing light grinding on the goarse side and light refining on the finer side, about 10 lbs of pressure at most on the coarse side
TheRedRider100 Any solid stone will form a slurry, it just is a matter of applying enough force. Both sides of this stone have very strong bonds. The only way I get them to slurry is when using a chisel as I can apply a lot of force 20-30 lbs and on a small area. On a knife it is going to be very difficult, hence why most people think then can't form a slurry.
I understand How often do you use your stone? I understand it will need to be lapped if i just use moderate pressure and light passes on the fine side?
TheRedRider100 If you don't exert enough force to make a slurry it won't really wear into a hollow, but every ~5000 or so passes you likely would need to recut the surface as it would be worn.
