Sell all your knives right now !

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All I have to say is...........LOL!

I can pick up old Buck 440C knives incredibly cheap on e-Bay and I may have to spend a little time reprofiling them and sharpening them........and then they'll beat most of the expensive new steels.

All I can do is shake my head at the gullibility of the new kids.
 
Shootinator said:
All I have to say is...........LOL!

I can pick up old Buck 440C knives incredibly cheap on e-Bay and I may have to spend a little time reprofiling them and sharpening them........and then they'll beat most of the expensive new steels.

All I can do is shake my head at the gullibility of the new kids.
Click to expand...
Define “beat.” And aren’t most old Buck knives 420HC?
 
Can't define beat. Nobody can prove much of anything about what beats what for their own personal needs.

But........440C is a bargain if you know how to reprofile and sharpen.

Prior to 1980 they are 440C.

It takes a little knowledge to sort them out and get the right ones.

Why pay a premium?
 
Wait..... Is this from the same people who told me to dump my; 9mm, .223, .45, leaded-gas engine valves, analog watches, bias-ply tires, cord-powered drills, warn manual hubs, *dumb* phone, and so many other *irrelevant* or *obsolete* items?

I can see the ads already; "This changes EVERYTHING!" or "We threw out the rule book" or perhaps that old tried & true: "New & Improved*.

Well of course it is. The Cult-of-Engineers!:neener::evil:

Todd.
 
Shootinator said:
All I have to say is...........LOL!

I can pick up old Buck 440C knives incredibly cheap on e-Bay and I may have to spend a little time reprofiling them and sharpening them........and then they'll beat most of the expensive new steels.

All I can do is shake my head at the gullibility of the new kids.
Click to expand...

Shootinator said:
Can't define beat. Nobody can prove much of anything about what beats what for their own personal needs.

But........440C is a bargain if you know how to reprofile and sharpen.

Prior to 1980 they are 440C.

It takes a little knowledge to sort them out and get the right ones.

Why pay a premium?
Click to expand...

This steel was designed by Dr. Larrin Thomas, who is the nerd behind knifesteelnerds.com. His "About Me" from that website states:
I’m Larrin Thomas, a steel metallurgist in Pittsburgh, PA. I developed an interest in steel by visiting knife shows with my father, Devin Thomas, who makes damascus steel. At those knife shows I heard knife makers claim that their steels and heat treatments were better for various and interesting reasons; I wanted to know who was telling the truth! I began reading everything I could on steel metallurgy and that culminated in a PhD in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. I now work professionally developing steels for the automotive industry, but I still love the high carbon steels used in knives. So to feed that passion, I write about knife steel related topics on my blog here, Knife Steel Nerds, where we can all nerd out on steel together. I also have a longer version of my story in this article here: How I Became a Knife Steel Metallurgist
Click to expand...

Larrin spends much of his time helping us lay folks to separate the facts from the myths about blade steels.
 
Tell Larrin I'll pass on his amazing "new" ideas.

He sounds like a fake.
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  • 10% chromium content steel that offers better corrosion protection than most stainless knife steels.
  • A corrosion resistant steel with toughness better than stainless knife steels--even better than many non-stainless knife steels such as CPM-M4.
  • The same toughness at 65RC that S35VN and CTS-XHP provide at 61RC.

Yup, pretty amazing ideas and definitely new. The knifemakers who've used the steel seem to be very impressed with it.

Here's the writeup from zknives.

http://zknives.com/knives/steels/us/magnacut.shtml

Doesn't mean 440C is suddenly no good, but Magnacut definitely offers a combination of features that weren't available until now.

Check out the rest of his website--lots of good information there and presented in a way that makes it very accessible to anyone with the desire to learn. https://knifesteelnerds.com/
 
Has anyone commented upon what kind of tap-dancing one must go through to sharpen this valyrian steel?

I know most anytime someone tries to wow me with a new steel - if they even address it - they play down the sharpening hoops one must jump through.

Not saying it's the case here but by past experience, confidence is NOT high.

If I have to take an assemblage or sharpening wonderments with me, the quality of the steel means naught to me.

I have the generally same reaction to wondrous new grinds or some *classic* grinds from which a manufacturer will not divorce themselves.

Todd.
 
If you want really good edge retention, you pay for it in sharpening difficulty. The same thing that makes a steel hold up to wear/abrasion in use makes it hold up well to wear/abrasion during sharpening.

Similarly, the same things that make a blade easy to sharpen mean that it will wear to dullness faster.

Seems like initial feedback is that it's something like CPM-154 to sharpen. Not super-easy, not super-hard. The nice thing is that it shouldn't need to be sharpened frequently given its edge-holding properties.

And, of course, the nice thing is that adding another option in blade steels just means there's another option. It's not like switching is mandatory.

All that said, I've messed around with a variety of knife steels and I haven't really found sharpening to be a big hurdle. As far as I can tell, anyone who can carry a sharpening stone can carry a diamond sharpening stone. You can even sharpen a ceramic blade on a diamond stone if you know what you're doing, and no knife steel begins to approach that kind of hardness.
 
ApacheCoTodd said:
Has anyone commented upon what kind of tap-dancing one must go through to sharpen this valyrian steel?

I know most anytime someone tries to wow me with a new steel - if they even address it - they play down the sharpening hoops one must jump through.

Not saying it's the case here but by past experience, confidence is NOT high.

If I have to take an assemblage or sharpening wonderments with me, the quality of the steel means naught to me.
Click to expand...
The answer is in the article linked in the OP and stopped under the bold face heading "Sharpening and Grinding":
"Sharpening was also reported to be relatively easy by all of the knifemakers that commented on it to me. Devin Thomas reported that it sharpened well even with Shapton Glass stones, which have the standard aluminum oxide abrasive, as opposed to CBN or diamond which is harder than vanadium carbide. He found the Shapton stone to sharpen better than diamond plates on MagnaCut, perhaps due to the finer scratch pattern. Shawn Houston also said that putting on the initial bevel and burr removal was very easy to do."

JohnKSa said:
If you want really good edge retention, you pay for it in sharpening difficulty.
Click to expand...
To a point. As Larrin speculates under the "Sharpening and Grinding" heading of his article about the steel, the finer grain size seems to help with ease of sharpening relative to the hardness and edge retention.
 
I dont know. I have a knife with 420j that says its a survival knife. Cant say that and be wrong. right?
 
jas1776 said:
Cant say that and be wrong. right?
Click to expand...

You need the ;) after that since we all appreciate the marketing departments' efforts in selling product.

...

Look folks, I get that decades ago our options were pretty simple on knife steels and that we're over flowing with steel options for blades to the point that marketing knives had very much started chasing the new new thing in steels to sell knives. BUT here we see a steel metallurgist that works in the industry and that loves knives as much as we do come up with a steel that looked good enough on paper that the steel mill took a chance on it (IOW, they thought the gamble was worth the risk of a small batch). Then not only did the steel test out in the lab, it was sent to knife makers to test in the shop and it performed exceptionally well. So, a knife nut metallurgist is inspired to come up with a new formulation and a mill invests the time and money to find out if it matches how good it should perform on paper AND then after lab testing actual makers in actual shops test the actual steel in actual extreme tests and actually show it to everyone cutting carpentry nails and shaving paper. Yeah, sometimes good people come up with good ideas that become good results and it can look too good to be true. If it makes anyone feel better, it is expensive and you won't be seeing it bump 440C or 420HC our of their places in the industry. OTOH, I've already put in an order for a billet and am eager to see what a favorite knife maker makes of it. :D
 
Spyderco has also ordered as much as Niagra would let them have, and they're planning to release as many Mule Team knives as they can make from what they were allotted. We're probably still looking at a couple years out before MagnaCut makes into a regularly produced knife. S45VN was announced in 2019, and availability finally became stable enough for Spyderco to switch just their Paramilitary 2 and Para 3 over from S30V to S45VN this year.
 
ugaarguy said:
The answer is in the article linked in the OP and stopped under the bold face heading "Sharpening and Grinding":
"Sharpening was also reported to be relatively easy by all of the knifemakers that commented on it to me. Devin Thomas reported that it sharpened well even with Shapton Glass stones, which have the standard aluminum oxide abrasive, as opposed to CBN or diamond which is harder than vanadium carbide. He found the Shapton stone to sharpen better than diamond plates on MagnaCut, perhaps due to the finer scratch pattern. Shawn Houston also said that putting on the initial bevel and burr removal was very easy to do."


To a point. As Larrin speculates under the "Sharpening and Grinding" heading of his article about the steel, the finer grain size seems to help with ease of sharpening relative to the hardness and edge retention.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that. I find it very interesting and worthy of praise that they not only noted the issue but explained it quite clearly.

Todd.
 
Shootinator said:
All I have to say is...........LOL!

I can pick up old Buck 440C knives incredibly cheap on e-Bay and I may have to spend a little time reprofiling them and sharpening them........and then they'll beat most of the expensive new steels.

All I can do is shake my head at the gullibility of the new kids.
Click to expand...
I have a decent paying career that eats up a lot more than 40 hours a week. This means I have more money than time right now in my life. So because I choose to buy really good steel, in a design and build I find appealing, I'm gullible?

The title of the thread is an obvious joke. Spend your money how you want, and I'll do the same. But I'm not going to mock people's choices based on what they can afford either monetarily or chronologically.
 
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