SM-35M50 Micromelt Steel looks amazing!

[Stuart Ackerman]

That is indeed reality biting...no pun intended... :)

Sorry if I go off thread...

I too resisted the "thoughts" of Cliff years ago when I read his tests on the 'Net...how could someone be THAT intense...?

I tried what he did with my limited resources...I now think I understand what Cliff says, when he says it... :cool:

Because it makes sense in practice...it is tangible for a simple bloke like me, and it works... :)

More of what is wrong, is still wrong...more of what is right, should still be right...

Facts are repeatable, given similar circumstances...

Right...back on thread again, folks... :D

[Cliff Stamp]

Ugh.... Why would you do that? Why would you even WANT to?

It is mainly kids as a source of income. The heads are discarded by the fisherman who would either split the fish or fillet it. The kids would just stand under the them in the spillways and cut out the tongues. Now it isn't as common as the fishery is vastly reduced, but the price of tongues is so high that most people cut them out and scallop the heads. When the food fishery opens up the kids of the fisherman still do that and usually sell them to friends/neighbors and can still easily make $50-$100 day, especially if they bang around and get the discards from the guys who don't have kids and fight the gulls for the heads.

The irony is that BOTH individuals cite geometry as a critical performance factor.

Geometry is normalized out of the table I listed, Jim measures cutting ability, not sharpness which is why his results are so effect by geometry. I demonstrated this in the late nineties by taking cheap knives and regrinding them showing that they would have better rope cutting than as-stock very high end knives. As an extreme example I made a knife out of a piece of mild steel, unhardened, and showed that an optimal edge angle/finish would allow it to out rope cut actual high end knives.

I later abandoned rope cutting as a measure of sharpness for reasons I have explained in detail elsewhere, it simply doesn't have the necessary precision, swings of 100% in sharpness can't even be detected at all. You have to remember that if you slice a piece of rope with say 15 lbs of force, about half a pound of that is the sharpness, the rest is just lateral/wedging forces. This a knife which is only 50% as sharp will show the exact same reading on a scale as you can't measure to a precision of more than 1/2 lbs.

Did I miss an option?

There is only one option if you want to actually interact with the work :

-study the work and understand it
-point out areas for improvement based on the understanding
-suggest work which complements it or supplements it

and present your own work for evaluation and integration.

Here is the kicker, you have to do your own work with sensible methods or as noted, you will be dominated by bias. The methods used to actually know something through experimentation are developed for a reason and if you don't use them then you are very unlikely to come to know anything. It doesn't matter one bit at all how many people do things in incorrect ways, they are still incorrect.

This is so silly on a basic level it is hard to even imagine having a serious conversation about it. Here is the actual argument in a general sense :

-it isn't necessary to use scientific methods because lots of people don't and they all make claims and some of the claims are the same

This argument is so silly that even children will understand why it is wrong. If you accept that is actually sound logic then you have to believe *any claim* to be true simply if a large body of people claim it no matter how or what they have done (if anything) to support the claim.

As for changes, influences and corrections to work I do, it happens constantly. A day does not go buy that someone doesn't ask a question or make a comment which forces me to reevaluate what I do and what I have concluded from what I have done or what I understand in a general sense. Look at the way I do things now and how they were done in the past, it is obvious the methods have changed.

As an example, when I first started doing rope cutting I just used the same method that everyone else used. I put up some results, there was some discussion and a guy asked would the geometries of the blade beyond the edge make any difference (spine, width, etc.) . I said no because the angle and grit finish was the same and I normalized out the lateral forces.

However in order to moving beyond to what I thought to what I would actually know, I took a knife and reground it enough to change the actual stock thickness and repeated the work and the edge retention improved. This made no sense, why did cutting the spine down give the knife better edge retention. Yes there was less force but the force was not on the edge it was on the side of the blade.

But here is the thing, it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter how pretty your idea is, it doesn't matter how much you are attached to it, it doesn't matter if lots of people think the same, it doesn't matter if your mom things you are the smartest guy on the planet - if an unbiased experiment shows that it is wrong then it is wrong.

So now I had to figure out why forces on the spine were reducing the edge retention. I thought about it for awhile and realized that the blade with less force on it was simply hitting the cutting board with less force at the end of the cut. I checked this by simply cutting a big notch in a block and cutting the rope over the notch. This resolved the problem and the geometry then was truly normalized out (to first order anyway there are other issues which are smaller refinements).

So yes it can be done, people do it all the time - but you are not going to do it with random nonsense and ad hominem. You have to do understand what is being done on a deep enough level to offer true insight. Hence good luck if it is attempted by methods noted in this thread.

In regards to that table, even that is in a constant state of evaluation.

Kyley noted last year that what I was doing in that table was maybe not the best presentation. He argued that instead of sharpening every knife to maximum (which takes longer for various knives) it would have been more meaningful to sharpen each knife for a given amount of time and then seen what the results would be.

I can see the merit in his suggestion and I am thinking about doing another table with exactly this restriction and limiting sharpening to just 30 seconds per blade. This will have no effect at all on the high edge stability steels as it doesn't take that long to sharpen them, but it will mean the low edge stability ones will be seriously degraded. This could be extended to look at edge retention as a function not only of edge angle and grit finish by as a function of sharpening time. I think that is a pretty interesting experiment.

As other examples :

-Clark's ultra high angle burr minimizing influenced how I sharpen

-Chris's work on machete regrinding influenced how I grind large knives

-Roman's work forced me to evaluate the meaning of "high" performance

-Discussion with Keffler changed the way I think about chopping mechanics in many areas (especially the grip)

-Your reviews point out a weakness in my commentary which was about the consistency of design, something you deal with well but I ignored for years but I have started to talk about

-Mike (Gavko) handles forced me to rethink my position on index finger notches

-Kyley's handles caused me to shift perspective on pseudo-dropped blades

I can continue at length with dozens of examples of how what I know has grown through interaction with other people. But in every case if you look at it, it doesn't come from ad hominem rantings, it comes from people who do work with the same intent I do, just often in different areas or from a different perspective so they uncover something new and we benefit from the exchange.

There are still something that I don't fully understand from some of the exchanges. I don't understand why Keffler's grip works as well as it does for example. I think it has to do with the actual bio mechanics of the grip and it is one of the things I have marked to try to figure out because right now I would not be able to design a similar handle aside from just guess/check. I have figured out some of it and Dan has confirmed that it was as he designed it, but it doesn't explain everything just parts of it. But I don't currently understand the bio part of the mechanics enough to make it obvious.

That is what it is about, trying to know - it takes work and if you are not willing to do the work you might as well write down random conclusions and start flipping coins to decide what you "know" to be true.

[dbcad]

I envision a comprehensive database with different steels :) and these subfields :eek: The real difficulty would be to obtain the consistent data to fill these fields using controlled scientific methods and parameters.

Real world has a valid place when cicumstances fall outside of the controlled parameters, ie contradiction of CATRA testing :)

Each field I've listed is a sub field of the one before it so you're talking about a ton of measured testing :eek:

Is there another sub in there I missed?

Steel
Steel treatment
Blade thickness
Grind
Edge angle
Finish
Medium cut

[Stuart Ackerman]

Blade width?

[dbcad]

Blade width?

It makes a difference in how something cuts :) I'll be back tomorrow afternoon EST US

[hunterseeker5]

I feel like what can be said to make my/our point regarding the debate at hand has been said, at least for my part, so if you'll pardon a digression:

I find the continual use of cliffy in a derogatory manner insulting to him and annoying to read. It's against the rules I just read when I signed up.

Cliff is welcome to speak for himself, certainly even if said in a derogatory manner its probably among the nicer insults both in this thread and in general, but I recall using it multiple times and in an affectionate manner. I would consider the comments regarding his lack of credibility, comparisons to other members looked on unfavorably, and suggestions that he is doing things not only immoral but illegal are much more serious than a mild alteration of his name. My 2c on that one.

There is only one option if you want to actually interact with the work:

-study the work and understand it
-point out areas for improvement based on the understanding
-suggest work which complements it or supplements it

While I condone the sentiment, you are proceeding from the hypothesis that you are predominantly correct. Because bias is innate to the human condition, proper experimental design should ideally eliminate the possibility of it influencing the results. (oh hey, we just went full circle as to why Kyley's mule project is a blinded study) I'm perfectly fine with someone assuming an experiment produced an erroneous result or is otherwise inapplicable, I'd just want to see what you say next:

and present your own work for evaluation and integration.

-Your reviews point out a weakness in my commentary which was about the consistency of design, something you deal with well but I ignored for years but I have started to talk about

You aren't talking to me are you? I gave you that idea? I'm flattered, but I thought I had stolen it from you. :P I feel like all I do is enjoy a knife and make pokey little observations about it, much like wine tasting where you actually swallow and by the 5th wine you're so drunk you just love almost everything. And thus is my issue testing and reporting on knives.

If It really is the case that you like my reviews, and I'm not just projecting and assuming someone else's compliment, I'll keep going. I stopped because I had assumed nobody really cared.

[eric m.]

My head is hurting!!!

[BrutallyEffective]

I think we have to be careful not to segregate ourselves to imply we are some kind of elite users... Most of the knives I sharpen locally, which are just for normal people (ed. Uh-oh! j/k, I know what you mean.), are ground very thin. I have posted extensive pictures and geometries on the forum. I can travel all over this Island and all of the knives look exactly the same.

Sounds like I need to see more knives before making a judgement. In my whole life (albeit only 26 years) I have never seen a well sharpened knife that hasn't come from a factory: chefs, carpenters, abatoir workers, a very large extended family: they are all the same. I don't sharpen professionally though, and I've only worked in one kitchen, and spoken with 4-5 chefs and their experiences with knives and other chefs.

I think it is an interesting question as to what the masses use, or what is in general representative but we have to clearly ask what do we want to be representing. We also have to be clear of regional differences. In the time I spent in India I never say anything close to a 0.020"/20 dps bevel. Again, all the working class people sharpened flat to a stone.

Were their stones heavily dished?

Do you mean average the entire thing?

You know what, this is embarrassing, but I said table when I meant the bar charts, the graphics Class I.png, Class 2.png, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the steels in ascending or descending order, with a colour code for class, and maybe even highlighted similar steels (S30V, Elmax models etc).

I just asked in case you had made the chart already, if you haven't I don't think it's worth the novelty to make one now.

[Stuart Ackerman]

Years ago, I made a hand drawn chart for customers, with all the pros and cons of each steel, and I may have some photocopies somewhere?
Compromises all the way through...

Some more stainless than others, some easier to sharpen than others, etc
BUT based on MY experience, so it was open to discussion, based on the customer's experience...

We did not always agree...

[RealityBites]

I feel like what can be said to make my/our point regarding the debate at hand has been said, at least for my part, so if you'll pardon a digression:



Cliff is welcome to speak for himself, certainly even if said in a derogatory manner its probably among the nicer insults both in this thread and in general, but I recall using it multiple times and in an affectionate manner. I would consider the comments regarding his lack of credibility, comparisons to other members looked on unfavorably, and suggestions that he is doing things not only immoral but illegal are much more serious than a mild alteration of his name. My 2c on that one.

.

Hi Hunterseeker5,

You are quite correct that Cliff is able to speak for himself, and is probably more than capable of speaking for himself in such matters if he feels inclined.

However, forums, like any form of society that intends to allow a diverse range of interaction create a set of rules that people are expected to self-manage in a general sense. you couldn't put a policeman on every citizen any more than moderators can watch every thread.

If I see a woman being yelled at, abused and possibly beaten by a random stranger in real life, I'm not going to ignore the fact just because the woman isn't standing up for herself.

the act of watching that woman getting abused effects my sensibilties, irrispective of the feelings of the woman.

I dont know if you called Cliff by some name of endearment or not, but when someone puts their name forward in a public environment where most do not, then a sign of mutual respect would be to use that name appropriately. No one calls Sal Sally do they?

the fact that a member is courteous enough to not respond to mild harrasment with the intent to derail the seriousnes of their speech does not mean people should continue such attitudes.

I agree with you on your other points, and I think people like Chuck_... would apologize if they had any self respect, and stick to talking about the topics in a clear friendly manner.

Claiming that Cliff has a dual account, or other things is not only insulting to cliff, but to the actual other member who joined in above.
if anyone has true concern of such, then its a simple matter for the moderator to identify email accounts and IP addresses and discredit such notions privately.

If no such apology is forthcoming then it simply shows that there is more interest in putting down a person, than discussing the merit or lack of their work.

I only have 2 posts.. Perhaps Sal could inform Chuck that I am also not Cliff, before I'm accused of similar.

As far as the steels go. I personally prefer simple steels with thin geometries such as opinels, or other, because they simply cut better in a wider range of tasks.

I have about 12 spydercos, and they are some of the best production folders I've had and cut very nicely. but even as fine as most spydercos are, the edge apexes all get thinned down behind the apex if I intend to actually edc them

[eric m.]

Hi Hunterseeker5,

You are quite correct that Cliff is able to speak for himself, and is probably more than capable of speaking for himself in such matters if he feels inclined.

However, forums, like any form of society that intends to allow a diverse range of interaction create a set of rules that people are expected to self-manage in a general sense. you couldn't put a policeman on every citizen any more than moderators can watch every thread.

If I see a woman being yelled at, abused and possibly beaten by a random stranger in real life, I'm not going to ignore the fact just because the woman isn't standing up for herself.

the act of watching that woman getting abused effects my sensibilties, irrispective of the feelings of the woman.

I dont know if you called Cliff by some name of endearment or not, but when someone puts their name forward in a public environment where most do not, then a sign of mutual respect would be to use that name appropriately. No one calls Sal Sally do they?

the fact that a member is courteous enough to not respond to mild harrasment with the intent to derail the seriousnes of their speech does not mean people should continue such attitudes.

I agree with you on your other points, and I think people like Chuck_... would apologize if they had any self respect, and stick to talking about the topics in a clear friendly manner.

Claiming that Cliff has a dual account, or other things is not only insulting to cliff, but to the actual other member who joined in above.
if anyone has true concern of such, then its a simple matter for the moderator to identify email accounts and IP addresses and discredit such notions privately.

If no such apology is forthcoming then it simply shows that there is more interest in putting down a person, than discussing the merit or lack of their work.

I only have 2 posts.. Perhaps Sal could inform Chuck that I am also not Cliff, before I'm accused of similar.

As far as the steels go. I personally prefer simple steels with thin geometries such as opinels, or other, because they simply cut better in a wider range of tasks.

I have about 12 spydercos, and they are some of the best production folders I've had and cut very nicely. but even as fine as most spydercos are, the edge apexes all get thinned down behind the apex if I intend to actually edc them

I just chimed in because of all the technical/scientific jargon that was going back and forth. I thought It was a healthy debate until you both got frustrated with one another!

[BrutallyEffective]

RealityBites, I appreciate the point you're making here, and it gives me more confidence to call it out if I see it in future, rather than avoid it, or perhaps just make veiled comments at how puerile someone might be being.

I actually went from lurking to joining the forum to try and counter some comments that were made that were patently ridiculous and disrespectful.

But I was also disrespectful in my first post, and that was genuinely a stupid and inexcusable thing for me to do. Seriously, it was a crap way to start out posting, and I would like to apologise to Chuck; disagreements or not, there's no room for belittlement or any other juvenile crap like that in a free and accessible forum where ideas and information can and do flow very freely.

Here's to a friendlier time on Spyderco, starting with my own behaviour!

[O,just,O]

Your name rather speaks of your intent.
O.

[me2]

I find it interesting that this occurs, and I suspect there is a term for it, but for now I'll call it source bias. When Cliff says his testing indicates low carbide/low wear resistance steels cut better for longer at low angles than high carbide ones, he is accused of having a hidden agenda and all sorts of other things. When Spyderco says their testing indicates a low wear/low carbide steel cuts better for longer any high carbide steel they've tested, the reaction is completely the opposite.

I'm speaking of the serrated H1 knife that out cut others and was discussed here. The notion that there is a shortage of people using low (sub 20 degree inclusive) angles on their knives is false. Unless Spyderco has changed the serration pattern for different models, the scallops are at a such a low angle. The scallops on my Salt 1 are about 16 degrees inclusive. I dare say the pool of serrated Spyderco users is quite large.

The question I have is what are people doing with pocket knives that they are concerned about damage when using an edge angle on a 3-4 inch blade that I and other people consider obtuse for a 10-12 inch chopper? This isn't a rhetorical question. I keep one blade of my trapper and my Delica at 17-20 degrees per side for scraping and such. For such work, it doesn't matter what steel gets used, there will be some damage, so the high carbide steels don't have an advantage, unless I need a reason to practice sharpening.

[Cliff Stamp]

I gave you that idea?

Yeah, I liked the way you would talk about the design as a whole, an integration and then referenced parts back to a central theme, it made for a very nice presentation to follow and simply to think about and make sense of.

In regards to am I assuming I am right, I don't assume it, I will make a claim to know if I have a body of evidence which can support that claim and it is consistent with what is held to be known. In general careful experimentation is rarely just completely obliterated as it can only be done so if the experimenter was incompetent.

If you look at the work that Mike Swaim did on rec.knives in the late nineties, it has not been over ruled by anything anyone has done since then but why would you expect it to as it was unbiased data. Yet people have added to it, refined it, but that isn't the same as saying Mike was wrong in a general sense.

When I read about Clark's use of very high angled passes for burr removal and started experimenting with it, I would not say this meant I was wrong about how to sharpen before just that by using that technique I learned more. This technique combined with experiments on steeling/stropping lead to the destressing that I now do as a starting step.

Just like I would not say people are wrong if they do not destress edges. But this is coming down to how I am using wrong and I don't use the term for matters of refinement. The problem is if you use that definition then almost everything you know from empirical data is wrong because we know it isn't right in an absolute sense as there are always limits to observation and data collection.

This is why bias comes in as an important term because it allows you to say that a sample is representative of the population. This doesn't mean that the sample behavior is identical, just that it is unbiased estimation. That is what science is about, producing unbiased estimates, not exact determinations.

Were their stones heavily dished?

In India? They often used actual rocks. The blades tend to be much softer and easier to grind.If a blade is fairly soft and the stone is fairly hard the abrasive will be very resistant to dishing. Dishing is mainly a concern of very soft waterstones which are really only ideally suited for the very hard and very thin ground Japanese (or similar style) blades. While I don't agree with Fitzen's perspective that you should just throw out waterstones, I think that Carter's perspective that they are a panacea for all steels is just as unreasonable.

Claiming that Cliff has a dual account, or other things is not only insulting to cliff, but to the actual other member who joined in above.
if anyone has true concern of such, then its a simple matter for the moderator to identify email accounts and IP addresses and discredit such notions privately.

Is it not blindingly ironic that these accusations are made by people who are arguing that science isn't necessary to make claims to know and that bias effects like placebo are not significantly of influence.

The notion that there is a shortage of people using low (sub 20 degree inclusive) angles on their knives is false. Unless Spyderco has changed the serration pattern for different models, the scallops are at a such a low angle. The scallops on my Salt 1 are about 16 degrees inclusive. I dare say the pool of serrated Spyderco users is quite large.

Yeah, Joe Talmadge was one the first people to strongly argue this was one of the critical reasons why serrations often performed so well. He went beyond that and reground plain edged blades to a similar angle/finish and showed they could achieve comparable direct cutting ability.

The problem is that while there are points at which this discussion with rise and become popular, as it is forum discussed as soon as the threads stop becoming active the main marketing push returns and then you have the chestnuts returning.

[Cliff Stamp]

The real difficulty would be to obtain the consistent data to fill these fields using controlled scientific methods and parameters.

It is just a matter of time/effort. If you want to check the influence of edge retention on angle you do something like this :

http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/review ... ments.html

I repeated it with another knife (same class of steel) as another layer of verification/consistency.

The same method can be used to check :

-cutting methods
-influence of media

and of course edge angle.

Ideally you need to change all of these things together, not isolate them in individual trials as then you can look at the correlations between the influence as well and these can be of critical importance. It is also critical to keep in mind that precision requirements are not necessarily high and thus you can do experiments like this as well :

http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/review ... ntion.html

which is an ongoing comparison of edge retention in kitchen knives with varying grit finishes. There is no specific work done here aside from regular use and thus the effort/time requirements are very low, all you are doing is just logging the time between sharpening. Since the variability is so high as the cutting is not controlled it will take a large sample to stabilize - but again, that just means more time and it isn't like you are being rushed to get work done before a grant runs out.

Because bias is innate to the human condition, proper experimental design should ideally eliminate the possibility of it influencing the results.

Yeah which is why I do :

-blinding
-random sampling
-full data inclusion/median statistics
-cross reference to materials data
-sponsor pass arounds

This diversion (he is just a shill) isn't new :

http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/review ... lades.html

More than a decade ago a number of knife makers made the same nonsensical statements and implied I was shilling, some of them went so far to say I was actually a sock account of Busse. Ray Kirk asked if I would be willing to perform work on four test blades if I didn't know the steels. I am an experimentalist, I doesn't afraid of science.

Just take a quick scan through that and realize when that work was done I didn't know which blade was which and note what I concluded and then what you would expect given the steels and how they were hardened. After that was done the same makers stopped for quite some time as they were shown to be completely wrong.

Here is one of the silliest things about most of the complaints :

-how many times do you see the same people make those complaints about people who agree with them

NEVER.

If someone makes a claim and individual A happens to agree with that, individual A makes NO demands on the first party at all. However if you make a claim which is in disagreement then out comes the list of demands/accusations. I am all for critical evaluation, by all means start demanding that people be more rigorous - but unless you do it across the board then you have moved beyond bias and you are now into snake oil selling.

Personally, I have never demanded anyone do something a certain way and I think it is silly to even do so. At times I may make a suggestion, or point out a glaring problem if the conclusion really isn't supported by the data - but it is their life/time/hobby. It is a bit insensible to demand they change it for you unless you are paying them for the work they are doing. The only thing I have said, and will continue to say is this :

-if you do not use proper methodology then your results will be dominated by bias such as the placebo effect

This is the frank reality of empirical research and it doesn't matter how much you dislike that statement it isn't going to change any time soon. However, it is more than a little silly to say I said no one but me uses proper methods. Lots of people are producing solid work, I reference them all the time. I have done full summaries of the excellent work that other people have done.

But again, if my methods are at fault, if my conclusions are not grounded by the data, if my interpretations of papers is wrong, if I am ignoring a critical bias - then point it out, I can take it, don't worry. I am married, I am really NOT concerned about criticism over the internet, it pales in comparison to real life.

Come at me bro.

[WorkingEdge]

So Cliff, I am still trying to figure this out a little.

Regarding low carbide steels versus high carbide steels at 30 degree inclusive, which would have better edge retention? Production knives are all I buy and I can reprofile an edge but not regrind a knife.

More specifically, your opinions on Cruwear and S90V. I though I have encounted some positive comments by you regarding S90V but not sure and it usually sounds like you feel high carbide steels are a negative.

Thanks.

[sal]

Great discussion and it's pleasing to see most ego's parked at the door so we can get down to learning.

sal

[Cliff Stamp]

Regarding low carbide steels versus high carbide steels at 30 degree inclusive, which would have better edge retention?

-what are you cutting and how
-what grit finish are you using
-how sharp is the knife after sharpening
-how blunt does the knife get before you sharpen

...it usually sounds like you feel high carbide steels are a negative.

It depends on what you are looking for. As carbide volume increases :

-abrasive wear resistance in low stress increases

almost every other property decreases. This means for the steel to be better they use has to depend very critically on low stress abrasion and not very much on anything else.

As an example :

-sharpen a knife with diamond stones until it slices newsprint

(diamonds cut anything easily, and that is an easy sharpness to obtain)

-set the edge at 20 degrees per side

(high enough to stabilize high carbide steels)

-cut with it on a soft but abrasive medium until it can't slice photocopy paper

(very dull)

If you compare S90V vs AEB-L on this work then S90V dominates and has no real apparent downside (aside from cost).

But :

-sharpen a knife with a fine waterstone until it push cuts newsprint

(most waterstones outside of SPS-II will not cut high carbide steels well, and that is a high sharpness goal)

-set the edge at 10 degrees per side

(is not high enough to stabilize high carbide steels)

-cut with it on a non-abrasive but hard media until it can't shave

(high sharpness stopping point)

If you compare S90V vs AEB-L on this work then AEB-L dominates and has no real apparent downside (and is lower cost).

Or :

-sharpen a knife with a fine india stone until it slices photocopy paper

(moderate on both)

-set the edge at 15 degrees per side

(moderate)

-cut with it in very demanding conditions (sods)

(extreme cutting)

Both blades will have similar performance in terms of edge retention as it will be practically zero for both. However the S90V blade will take more damage and take longer to restore. Therefore it will wear out faster and take more time to maintain.

As some general rules these things will raise the performance of high carbide steels :

-expensive abrasives
-high user skill/experience in sharpness
-lower sharpness goals
-use of a knife to very dull states
-lighter use
-lower requirements for cutting ability

The opposite will tend to favor low carbide steels.

[Blerv]

Cliff (and everyone who would like to respond :) ),

How do high carbide steels perform at low(ish) angles, say 10dps with light cutting tasks compared to low-carbide steels of otherwise similar properties at the same tasks?

Ie:
1. At what point for light tasks does stability become such a concern that routine "EDC"-type cutting duties will damage your edge? (white collar sissy type work :p )
2. At this degree, or steeper, are the high carbide steels noticeably more wear resistant for lighter tasks?

It's a bit of a personal question, most of my cutting duties are quite light and I do appreciate the ease of sharpening and general feel of Super Blue over say S30v. I'm just curious if the angles remain somewhat reasonable and the tasks light if it's (personally) necessary.

Thanks!