A friend of mine recently brought me a Boker automatic for "service". He lost it sometime last year and found it in his front yard about 6 months later.
There were a couple of rust spots on the AUS8 steel blade which came off easily--one did leave a barely visible patch of pitting. After the rust removal, I cleaned up the blade with Flitz and it looked nearly as good as new. The aluminum handle shows some wear and weather damage but is still fully functional.
I cleaned/lubricated and tightened the pivot, tightened up the pocket clip and then put an edge back on the blade. The sharpening was done because the blade was dulled from use--I could see no significant edge deterioration as a result of exposure to the elements.
The outcome is a perfectly functional knife with virtually no life lost due to edge corrosion damage. There's no way the outcome could have been nearly as positive had the knife been equipped with a carbon steel blade.
There are basically 4 wear/damage mechanisms.
1. Abrasion.
2. Corrosion.
3. Chipping/breaking.
4. Rolling/bending.
Stainless dramatically reduces or eliminates corrosion, one of those damage/wear mechanisms, and at similar hardness levels a premium stainless will be more resistance to abrasion wear as well. That's a pretty significant benefit in terms of overall wear and in terms of edge retention.
I'm not saying that knives should be designed to survive 6 months lying outside in the rain and sun, but surviving that kind of abuse suggests that it should be nearly impervious to the more conventional corrosion threats a knife would encounter in normal use.
There were a couple of rust spots on the AUS8 steel blade which came off easily--one did leave a barely visible patch of pitting. After the rust removal, I cleaned up the blade with Flitz and it looked nearly as good as new. The aluminum handle shows some wear and weather damage but is still fully functional.
I cleaned/lubricated and tightened the pivot, tightened up the pocket clip and then put an edge back on the blade. The sharpening was done because the blade was dulled from use--I could see no significant edge deterioration as a result of exposure to the elements.
The outcome is a perfectly functional knife with virtually no life lost due to edge corrosion damage. There's no way the outcome could have been nearly as positive had the knife been equipped with a carbon steel blade.
There are basically 4 wear/damage mechanisms.
1. Abrasion.
2. Corrosion.
3. Chipping/breaking.
4. Rolling/bending.
Stainless dramatically reduces or eliminates corrosion, one of those damage/wear mechanisms, and at similar hardness levels a premium stainless will be more resistance to abrasion wear as well. That's a pretty significant benefit in terms of overall wear and in terms of edge retention.
I'm not saying that knives should be designed to survive 6 months lying outside in the rain and sun, but surviving that kind of abuse suggests that it should be nearly impervious to the more conventional corrosion threats a knife would encounter in normal use.
