Model request: Enuff in S7 steel

[Traditional.Sharpening]

duplicate

[Fireman]

An S7 axe would be amazing. My only experience with S7 has been jack hammer bits

[Traditional.Sharpening]

I think he/she is just a pedant. A look at their post history confirms as much.

Are you making this statement towards me?

[Scandi Grind]

I think controlled scientific testing can sometimes be given too much stock. I think it is useful for establishing base lines, but it often fails to account for one of the biggest factors that will effect performance in the real world; inconsistency. People are not machines that have perfect control over their cut, and they are not cutting things that are consistent either. So I think that a controlled environment is both the strength and weakness of scientific testing.

Ideally you have both forms of testing, scientific to point you in the right direction, then real world to see how it actually turns out in use, but because real world testing is going to be subjective based on use, sharpening, preference, etc., you often have to try it for yourself to make a confident opinion. In general my opinions have started to lean toward real world over scientific, but it is harder to get reliable feedback from people doing real world testing.

That said, Vivi is actually one of the few people I will tend to trust for pretty fair assessment because he uses his blades a lot, is a competent sharpener, and has an honest interest in getting the best performance for his own use. His opinions usually represent what you can expect on average for a steel.

[vivi]

I've compared that scrapyard against over 25 different choppers over the years. Something like 5 of them were 1095. Similar geometries and sharpening methods used. Everything from Rat 9's to customs to ESEE junglass etc.

I go by real world use, not charts or catra. I can tell a massive difference in edge retention between 440 & zdp. I can tell a big toughness difference between S7 and 1095. Corrosion resistance between LC200N and VG10 is like night and day.

S7 is the real deal. It seems most in this thread want to question that? Weird. Don't see many folks going into 15V threads with a similar attitude.

One day I'm going to get a custom axe made out of it.

You haven't answered how you are sharpening in the sense of what you are using and the procedure along with what level of sharpness/deburring you accept as 'sharp'. This alone can make an enormous difference. I am not arguing S7 is a poor choice but I do question how much worse you feel 1095 is in your opinion.

How can you tell a big difference? What are you seeing exactly? How can you tell a massive difference in 440/189? Are you running trials and doing some sort of blinding to make sure that the results are not biased in some way where you are simply seeing what you expect to see?

You likely aren't seeing people asking about this sort of thing in the 15V thread because very few people have ever done this sort of thing when someone makes a strong claim to performance superiority. People simply prefer fantasy over raw data and will go on emotion versus logic. 15V has been heavy on the hype train recently and anyone who goes against this is just asking to get berated in some way and I've certainly seen at least a couple cases of that.

I don't consider it worth my time to do the back and forth with you. Have a good one.

[Cl1ff]

It would be interesting to test hypotheses regarding why, for example, S7 may be reported to outperform 1095 in the common uses of large knives. If you have a question like that, test it.

I’m not silly enough to say that Vivi isn’t getting better performance out of S7 compared to 1095. It’s probably something worth looking into.

[Traditional.Sharpening]

I've compared that scrapyard against over 25 different choppers over the years. Something like 5 of them were 1095. Similar geometries and sharpening methods used. Everything from Rat 9's to customs to ESEE junglass etc.

I go by real world use, not charts or catra. I can tell a massive difference in edge retention between 440 & zdp. I can tell a big toughness difference between S7 and 1095. Corrosion resistance between LC200N and VG10 is like night and day.

S7 is the real deal. It seems most in this thread want to question that? Weird. Don't see many folks going into 15V threads with a similar attitude.

One day I'm going to get a custom axe made out of it.

You haven't answered how you are sharpening in the sense of what you are using and the procedure along with what level of sharpness/deburring you accept as 'sharp'. This alone can make an enormous difference. I am not arguing S7 is a poor choice but I do question how much worse you feel 1095 is in your opinion.

How can you tell a big difference? What are you seeing exactly? How can you tell a massive difference in 440/189? Are you running trials and doing some sort of blinding to make sure that the results are not biased in some way where you are simply seeing what you expect to see?

You likely aren't seeing people asking about this sort of thing in the 15V thread because very few people have ever done this sort of thing when someone makes a strong claim to performance superiority. People simply prefer fantasy over raw data and will go on emotion versus logic. 15V has been heavy on the hype train recently and anyone who goes against this is just asking to get berated in some way and I've certainly seen at least a couple cases of that.

I don't consider it worth my time to do the back and forth with you. Have a good one.

OK, I'll just go ahead and take that as a no that you've done any sort of testing which would attempt to eliminate any potential bias or other influences beyond steel and attempted to quantify the differences in a meaningful way. You're not wrong for avoiding going to all this trouble to be sure you are not drawing conclusions which are not entirely correct. S7 is a good steel for choppers, I'm certainly not arguing against this but I was trying to get some sort of measure of how you came to the conclusion it was better and what sort of a performance difference you were observing. Was it 10:1? Was is 2:1?

But please understand that without attempting these sort of measures, one with a background in the subject matter of knife performance can mostly just ignore claims of strong performance differences in steel choice as they are often significantly overstated and I really can't say that I know how much of a difference there is between the two but then again it appears you cannot say either despite making a strong claim for one being quite superior to the other. Even something along the lines of what sort of damage you were seeing, etc. at similar geometry. How many times the knives were sharpened is helpful.

[kerrcobra]

I think he/she is just a pedant. A look at their post history confirms as much.

Are you making this statement towards me?

I'm making the statement about you, because almost every post I've ever read of yours involves you quibbling with other forumites and being pedantic. No offense, but you come across like you're a know-it-all.

[Traditional.Sharpening]

I think he/she is just a pedant. A look at their post history confirms as much.

Are you making this statement towards me?

I'm making the statement about you, because almost every post I've ever read of yours involves you quibbling with other forumites and being pedantic. No offense, but you come across like you're a know-it-all.

And the irony here is that you might come across like someone who thinks you know-it-all about me so as to be able to characterize me with a simple label of a handful of words as though that is the entirety of my being. Some of us are here to discuss knife performance exclusively without the personal judgements and commentary and unfortunately there are also many here who are only interested in fortifying their already inflated ego's that we must share this space with.

I am simply asking questions when people make strong statements or claims of performance and most of the time the discussion ends quickly upon further questioning simply because they start to figure out they don't know as much as they think they do. I'd never claim to know-it-all and asking questions is actually a sign of those who are truly SEEKING knowledge. I think if vivi had a lot of support for his strong claims he'd be all to eager to share them with us but it appears to be anecdotal at best, which I don't take too strongly and I'd wager for most people 1095 works just fine in a chopper of all sorts. Not the best but not the worst either and for the money I think it's a hard argument to make that someone needs to spend more.

[cabfrank]

I don't consider it worth my time to do the back and forth with you. Have a good one.

This is one of my favorite responses in the history of the internet.

[Traditional.Sharpening]

Why? It seemed like a direct avoidance of my lines of questions without saying bluntly, "I refuse to even answer any of this because I've already made up my mind and you are wrong and I couldn't possibly have even a small detail confused here." Even the 'Have a good one' at the end seems like it was not truly meant, would I be wrong for thinking more like it's "piss off?"

Got to love the interet and how it creates 'experts' that are beyond even attempting to even casually answer a set of simple questions to attempt to actually prove they know what they are talking about. Happy to see vivi is also nominated as a 'Guru to Follow' here on the forum in the recent thread : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=94982

My suggestion to vivi moving forward might be something along the lines of avoiding making very strong claims about performance on a public forum which he does not intend to actually attempt to support in some way with actual data that he's attempted to collect and share because without such things he may as well not waste anyones time with those claims.

As an example of how one actually could be expected to answer on this type of thing, here is a great example of how to receive constructive criticism such as this. Murray Carter is a very well known maker who has obvious ties to Spyderco, this is his response (albeit not the initial response, which was much more pointed and actually entirely avoided responding to the actual questions which were made -- which were entirely valid) when asked about how he used waterstones.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmJ_qBOJVD1/

Murray obviously has plenty of followers and several of them were very quick to rush to his 'aid' and say to the OP who asked the question, "Don't you know who you are talking to? This is Murray Carter.... an XXXX accomplished blacksmith in the XXXX heritage of blacksmiths?" As though they have everything figured out and couldn't possibly improve upon even a single practice. As though the OP questioned the entire validity of everything that which he was doing rather than a single small detail?

I don't consider it worth my time to do the back and forth with you. Have a good one.

This is one of my favorite responses in the history of the internet.

[cabfrank]

TLDR. Blah.

[Cl1ff]

We’re not entitled to detailed explanations from Vivi (of which he has given many). They are a gift.

There’s no need to throw a fit because he wasn’t in the mood to answer some “simple questions” that totally weren’t intended to afford an opportunity to flex “superior” knife steel knowledge.

Can’t tell someone their word means little to you and ask them a question in the same breath. At least, you can’t do that and expect an answer much more polite than Vivi’s

Subsequent comments have just proven Vivi wise.

[Manixguy@1994]

I normally avoid dramas but I’m on my first cup of coffee , I’m cranky and need to feed the cat . The guru to follow statement throwing negativity at other members is just plain wrong . Vivi is respected because of his breakdowns of sharpening and testing knives, his willingness to help others is countless . He and other Forum members go out of their way to help and that is the greatest thing about the Forum and something I treasure. Regards and have a good one . MG2

[JSumm]

It's not the questions, it is the lack of tact used in asking them. Plenty of good debate on this forum with detailed questions. I think most try to keep the mindset of always learning. Even pushing back on information that may question a norm is great. But there is always a level of respect that can be used. Even if it means moving on when the info provided doesn't seem to satisfy you. You will typically get much further using niceness in questioning things. It is much more challenging in written form than in person, but I think we are all up to that challenge.

[nerdlock]

First of all, vivi never claimed to be a guru nor pretended to be one in all the years he's been here. Second, seriously, comparing Murray Carter - a well known and established knifemaker who does these things for a living to a regular Spyderco afi who has a life outside collecting Spydercos and contributing knowledge to the forum? If I were vivi, I don't know if I should be flattered by the comparison or not.

[kerrcobra]

I think he/she is just a pedant. A look at their post history confirms as much.

Are you making this statement towards me?

I'm making the statement about you, because almost every post I've ever read of yours involves you quibbling with other forumites and being pedantic. No offense, but you come across like you're a know-it-all.

And the irony here is that you might come across like someone who thinks you know-it-all about me so as to be able to characterize me with a simple label of a handful of words as though that is the entirety of my being. Some of us are here to discuss knife performance exclusively without the personal judgements and commentary and unfortunately there are also many here who are only interested in fortifying their already inflated ego's that we must share this space with.

I am simply asking questions when people make strong statements or claims of performance and most of the time the discussion ends quickly upon further questioning simply because they start to figure out they don't know as much as they think they do. I'd never claim to know-it-all and asking questions is actually a sign of those who are truly SEEKING knowledge. I think if vivi had a lot of support for his strong claims he'd be all to eager to share them with us but it appears to be anecdotal at best, which I don't take too strongly and I'd wager for most people 1095 works just fine in a chopper of all sorts. Not the best but not the worst either and for the money I think it's a hard argument to make that someone needs to spend more.

You're right. That's what many of us are here for, and we'd appreciate it if you too would act accordingly. I'm done derailing this thread. Feel free to PM me if you have anything else you'd like to whine about.

Back on topic, I still think a big S7 fixed blade like that Forester or even something like the Darn Dao would be excellent candidates. I'd love to see a flash batch of the Darn Dao in S7.

[shunsui]

Well, since vivi hasn't posted his scientific research and reams of data; and Traditional.Sharpening (curiously) hasn't posted his either, I guess I'll just note both their opinions as two interesting data points; and lean more on Larrin's research and data for the moment.

[vivi]

Well, since vivi hasn't posted his scientific research and reams of data; and Traditional.Sharpening (curiously) hasn't posted his either, I guess I'll just note both their opinions as two interesting data points; and lean more on Larrin's research and data for the moment.

lol

[kennethsime]

Gotta be honest, that seems like an awful choice. VG10 at 4mm thick in a 3" long blade is already overbuilt. What would you gain from a tougher steel in that format?

Dream bigger. Forester sprint. Or maybe a Rock Salt. Darn Dao?

Yes please.