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Old 01-03-2022, 09:35 AM
Mb-MBR Mb-MBR is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coiloil37 View Post
It’s a pity most if not all of you haven’t experienced a truly great piece of cutlery. From the five pages I’ve read, if we were discussing spotting scopes you would be somewhere between a 1970’s bushnell spacemaster and a tasco. Some would be arguing there’s no way modern alpha glass could be any better. If you were discussing race cars you would be taking about mini vans. If we were talking fish finders they would be 1940’s furuno vs 1950’s lowrance and nobody would believe what chirp, side scan, down scan and 3kw transducers could be capable of. That’s how far from the top of the modern heap you are.


440c was a standard… back in the day and yes, s30v was a quantum leap forward. But that was 20 years ago. S30v is old news and has been far, far surpassed by much better steels for almost every application. There are a few makers I would use s30v from but if I was having those guys build me a knife I would ask for it in something else. Currently I don’t own and won’t own any s30v knives because it’s never impressed me compared to what else is available.

That said, steel choice matters but to get the most from it you need an specific use and a master smith to create a knife with optimised geometry, heat treat and fit/finish and the end user has to know how to properly sharpen it to get the most from it. Use a knife designed to slice as a chopper and you’ll probably break it. Use something with thick blade stock and obtuse grinds and it’ll never slice as well as something that was designed to slice. Factory knives will never get within the same area code as a properly designed custom.

Someone brought up northarm knives. I’ve got two of their knives and imo they missed the boat on the heat treat. It’s very, very chippy and the corrosion resistance is far below what s35vn should be capable of. It’s designed to be a tougher steel then s30v (which is also often chippy) but here is the blade after filleting one fish. If you look closely you can see the chips along the blade.




That was brand new out of the box to cutting exactly what you can see in this pic… aka one half of one fish. No bones cut



I assumed it needed the factory edge sharpened away. When that didn’t help I increase the primary bevel to 20 deg and it still didn’t help. This is a thick filleting knife at .016” behind the edge.



Now two years later it’s chipping everywhere. This knife isn’t abused, sees minimal cutting, I avoid bone like the plague because I know it’s chippy and gets wiped down after every use.



The north arm kitchen knife I’ve got has demonstrated exactly the same behaviour so imo it’s a heat treat issue.


Contrast that to a well built filleting knife. Made by a master from a middle of the road steel with an impeccable heat treat and geometry. This one has processed thousands??? of pounds of fish. I don’t shy away from bone (real fish bones, ribs the size of a kebab skewer) and its never chipped.




That knife runs a mere .006” behind the edge and is a slicing weapon. I used to give it a few licks on the stone after every session but I realised it wasn’t losing any cutting aggression and I was wasting my time and wearing the knife out. So I quit sharpening it and have since processed these fish with it since it’s seen a stone.














It still push cuts paper with and across the grain and pops hair off my arm without actually having to touch my skin. I’m curious to see how much further it will go before needing a touch up but it’s an absolute joy to use. No force or slicing required, put it into the fish and effortlessly move it in the direction I want to cut and it cuts.

I’ve mentioned it before in other threads but I use dozier and Crotts hunting knives. Their bread and butter is D2 steel which is far from modern or super but it flat out works with Bobs proprietary heat treat. That high hollow grind and an edge finished on a fine DMT stone gives me performance in spades. I used to sharpen them after every animal even though they didn’t need it. One year I decided to see how far they would cut and used this knife




to gut and skin that bear, three elk and six deer that fall. At the end of the season it too would still effortlessly shave my arm along its entire blade. The kind of shaving where it makes that sound when it pops the hairs before it actually touches the skin. I’ve processed a lot of animals with those knives and never lost an edge in a season or on one animal. And when I say lose an edge I mean it’s ability to effortlessly cut and shave. I won’t use an edge if it requires any force to cut. When I watch a hunting show and they’re using a slicing motion to cut something like hide it irritates me. I expect to put my knife into a moose and give it an effortless push and watch the hide part like water on either side of my blade.


I had Crotts build me one in a more modern steel (s90v) but took possession of it after I moved to Oz and haven’t bothered to go hunting since so I can’t speak to its performance.


I find a lot of joy using a well designed, sharp knife. Be it a pocket knife, in the boat, cleaning fish or processing an animal. My experience on forums is most guys don’t understand, don’t care or don’t believe what I write which will likely be the same here but you guys are leaving a ton of performance on the table. Anyone who thinks something like a havelon is sharp has never used a sharp knife.

Furthermore, there’s been zero discussion of the things that are applicable to the knives you do have. Primary and secondary bevels, media they’re sharpened on, final grit, how they’re stropped. There was a test I read once and by simply changing the media some steels are sharpened on, edge retention was increased 3X.


There is a lot of information on steels and knives on the web if you look for it. The performance gains on specific knives, steels, heat treats and sharpening techniques is significant.

For two examples.

If you look at ankersons tests on 5/8” Manila rope with his exacting testing process where a knife was tested until it took 20lbs of down force to cut the rope. An opinel in XC90 steel made 80 cuts. An opinel in 12c27 (same steel as a mora) made 120 cuts. A spyderco military in s30v made 300 cuts. A Phil Wilson in 10v made 2400 cuts. There were two Phil Wilsons in m390 and elmax were left out of the test because they made to many cuts. Or, in his words “The Custom Phil Wilson knives in M390 (62) and ELMAX (62) are not added to the data, they wouldn't fit into any of the Categories due to the Optimal HT and cutting ability, the difference is off the scale percentage wise so it wasn't added.” Those four I referenced are the bottom and top of the heap, many steels in the middle.

If you look at Larrin’s testing over on knife steel nerds with CATRA you’ll find this chart showing edge retention with a few modern steels.



For the uninitiated CATRA is

A stack of paper stock with 5% silica (sand) in it is lowered onto a knife with a fixed load (50 Newtons) and the knife is moved back and forth. The knife cuts into the paper which allows the head to lower, the distance the head lowers is recorded for every “cut” of the knife. In other words, it records how much paper is cut with each stroke. After 120 strokes (60 back and forth “cycles”) the test is complete and the total amount of paper is added up, called the Total Cardstock Cut (TCC) reported in mm.


Can always follow a hyperlink if your so inclined.


https://knifesteelnerds.com/2021/10/...on-resistance/


Or we can just keep going around in circles discussing how butchers use victorinox and pro fishermen use dexter or rapala so I’ll use my buck or gerber to process my elk because it’s always worked for me.
Damn, I feel completely deprived after reading this. Guess I better get on the interweb and order myself some new cutlery. now I have an excuse.....lol
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