"HRC as advertised." Who is accurately listing HRC?

[Pelagic]

Bottom line guys.

S30V. You pay X. You get s30v performance. And s30v is almost maxed out.

M390. You pay X plus $30-50. You get s30v performance. And m390 is NOWHERE NEAR MAXED OUT.

Price is only part of it, but I had already mentioned the other part. I guess I have to lay it out all at once for people to realize something so simple.

[Skywalker]

Bottom line guys.

S30V. You pay X. You get s30v performance. And s30v is almost maxed out.

M390. You pay X plus $30-50. You get s30v performance. And m390 is NOWHERE NEAR MAXED OUT.

Price is only part of it, but I had already mentioned the other part. I guess I have to lay it out all at once for people to realize something so simple.

This has not been my experience using Spyderco M390, which is why I've been asking in the other threads about this - where have the user complaints been?

I've been using an M390 Para 2 since 2012 and an M390 Benchmade 710 for about as long - they're noticeably better than the S30V/S35VN/XHP I've used and they sharpen more easily than in my more limited experience with S90V/S110V, all while being very stainless. That's worth another $30 to me. I don't care if it's theoretically maxed or not, it's already in my own "sweet spot" for how I seem to use my knives.

Everyone is trying to "lay it out" for people with this new round of testing and convince them that M390 is no better than S30V - well, where have the complaints been for the last 8 years since Spyderco started with the Mule Team? Maybe everyone's having problems with all of these new startup Chinese companies using it all of a sudden - and that's one thing if they are; good luck, glad the word is out, whatever. But as far as I'm concerned it ain't Spyderco's problem.

And more cut tests are great but if they don't appear to be representative of my own experience, I'll keep taking them with a grain of salt... and still buy Spyderco M390/204P/20CV/whatever name they call it next.

[Ankerson]

Bottom line guys.

S30V. You pay X. You get s30v performance. And s30v is almost maxed out.

M390. You pay X plus $30-50. You get s30v performance. And m390 is NOWHERE NEAR MAXED OUT.

Price is only part of it, but I had already mentioned the other part. I guess I have to lay it out all at once for people to realize something so simple.

M390 is better than S30V, how much depends on your use, the actual knife etc.

And if a persona can notice the difference in real world use or not.

M390 maxxed out will never happen in a production setting, I don't think they can do it without a lot of product loss.

So the 62 range is about it + or - whatever the makers tolerances are. Most of them ran or still run it 60-61 or so last I heard.

Running anything maxed out hardness wise is asking for a lot of issues to say the least.

Like what happened with S30V and ZDP-189 a long time ago until the problems got worked out....

They have had a very long time to get the HT right on S30V.

[Ankerson]

Bottom line guys.

S30V. You pay X. You get s30v performance. And s30v is almost maxed out.

M390. You pay X plus $30-50. You get s30v performance. And m390 is NOWHERE NEAR MAXED OUT.

Price is only part of it, but I had already mentioned the other part. I guess I have to lay it out all at once for people to realize something so simple.

This has not been my experience using Spyderco M390, which is why I've been asking in the other threads about this - where have the user complaints been?

I've been using an M390 Para 2 since 2012 and an M390 Benchmade 710 for about as long - they're noticeably better than the S30V/S35VN/XHP I've used and they sharpen more easily than in my more limited experience with S90V/S110V, all while being very stainless. That's worth another $30 to me. I don't care if it's theoretically maxed or not, it's already in my own "sweet spot" for how I seem to use my knives.

Everyone is trying to "lay it out" for people with this new round of testing and convince them that M390 is no better than S30V - well, where have the complaints been for the last 8 years since Spyderco started with the Mule Team? Maybe everyone's having problems with all of these new startup Chinese companies using it all of a sudden - and that's one thing if they are; good luck, glad the word is out, whatever. But as far as I'm concerned it ain't Spyderco's problem.

And more cut tests are great but if they don't appear to be representative of my own experience, I'll keep taking them with a grain of salt... and still buy Spyderco M390/204P/20CV/whatever name they call it next.

It is actually better than S30V edge retention wise in general.

That's from my own experiences with it also in production and customs.

I like S30V though as an EDC steel, or S35VN for that matter, that's what I currently use, that's my personal opinion.

[Pelagic]

Select Spyderco's and BM's with s30v have recently been beating out nearly all m390 models tested by a significant margin. Yes, the tests are cardboard, but the thing they had in common was high HRC. And the tests are conducted before the HRC is known. Each time, the tester suspected above average HRC and each time he was correct.

Spyderco does m390 better than (probably) anyone else, so yes their m390 models do average better than the s30v models. But the whole m390 issue doesn't really concern the best production m390 on the market. If every company was cranking out m390 like the better half of m390 models from spyderco, this issue never would have arose.

[shunsui]

Well, here's some test results from long ago.

http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/CATRA.html

If you notice, the Bohler CATRA edge retention test result for M-390 is 959 TTC (total cards cut) at "61+" Rockwell C Hardness.

Where have we heard that number before ? 61.xx HRC ?

Gets around doesn't it ?

Here's a thought: if M-390 was better (cut more cards) at 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, etc hardness, don't you think they would have put that in the test results ?

Wouldn't that be better for the company ?

This is why I couldn't care less about this tempest in a teacup over the terribly important M-390 hardness MAXOUT.

If you want to get a one off custom M-390 knife from someone at uber hardness, feel free.

But why ? There's several other knife steels that test better in edge retention if that's all you want.

[Ankerson]

Select Spyderco's and BM's with s30v have recently been beating out nearly all m390 models tested by a significant margin. Yes, the tests are cardboard, but the thing they had in common was high HRC. And the tests are conducted before the HRC is known. Each time, the tester suspected above average HRC and each time he was correct.

Spyderco does m390 better than (probably) anyone else, so yes their m390 models do average better than the s30v models. But the whole m390 issue doesn't really concern the best production m390 on the market. If every company was cranking out m390 like the better half of m390 models from spyderco, this issue never would have arose.

Simple solution, get the BM knives.

Since Spyderco doesn't make a production M390 blade as a regular item. They do make knives in other steels however like S30V and S35VN and S110V etc.

Problem solved, simple.

Why are we talking about some knives from a Company that we don't even know who the Company is?

And when talking about other knife Companies remember Shiny Footprints.

Not sure what some other companies M390 has to do with Spyderco?

[Ankerson]

Well, here's some test results from long ago.

http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/CATRA.html

If you notice, the Bohler CATRA edge retention test result for M-390 is 959 TTC (total cards cut) at "61+" Rockwell C Hardness.

Where have we heard that number before ? 61.xx HRC ?

Gets around doesn't it ?

Here's a thought: if M-390 was better (cut more cards) at 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, etc hardness, don't you think they would have put that in the test results ?

Wouldn't that be better for the company ?

This is why I couldn't care less about this tempest in a teacup over the terribly important M-390 hardness MAXOUT.

If you want to get a one off custom M-390 knife from someone at uber hardness, feel free.

But why ? There's several other knife steels that test better in edge retention if that's all you want.

Bohler did test M390 at 62 and ELMAX also, I remember seeing the charts.

[shunsui]

Bohler did test M390 at 62 and ELMAX also, I remember seeing the charts.

Here's the PDF results for M390 at "61+" and ELMAX at 62.

If you have the Bohler M390 at 62 results I'd love to hear more about it.

61+ was how Bohler decided to put forth the edge retention test results, for whatever reasons. I'd imagine they liked it better than 62. In a production run, you'll probably get both anyway.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... zQ5sqPHhf5

[Pelagic]

Select Spyderco's and BM's with s30v have recently been beating out nearly all m390 models tested by a significant margin. Yes, the tests are cardboard, but the thing they had in common was high HRC. And the tests are conducted before the HRC is known. Each time, the tester suspected above average HRC and each time he was correct.

Spyderco does m390 better than (probably) anyone else, so yes their m390 models do average better than the s30v models. But the whole m390 issue doesn't really concern the best production m390 on the market. If every company was cranking out m390 like the better half of m390 models from spyderco, this issue never would have arose.

Simple solution, get the BM knives.

Since Spyderco doesn't make a production M390 blade as a regular item. They do make knives in other steels however like S30V and S35VN and S110V etc.

Problem solved, simple.

Why are we talking about some knives from a Company that we don't even know who the Company is?

And when talking about other knife Companies remember Shiny Footprints.

Not sure what some other companies M390 has to do with Spyderco?

I wasn't saying ALL BM's. Select ones. I remember a bug out and a free doing exceptionally well and they came back with higher HRC. BM really has some consistency problems on some models.

The topic was m390, not spyderco specifically. I brought it up because Spyderco's m390 tends to perform better. Especially the ones with higher HRC But there aren't many outliers to this trend. As a whole, production companies aren't pushing the hardness so a great steel is underperforming.

[Banter 247]

Well, here's some test results from long ago.

http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/CATRA.html

If you notice, the Bohler CATRA edge retention test result for M-390 is 959 TTC (total cards cut) at "61+" Rockwell C Hardness.

Where have we heard that number before ? 61.xx HRC ?

Gets around doesn't it ?

Here's a thought: if M-390 was better (cut more cards) at 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, etc hardness, don't you think they would have put that in the test results ?

Wouldn't that be better for the company ?

This is why I couldn't care less about this tempest in a teacup over the terribly important M-390 hardness MAXOUT.

If you want to get a one off custom M-390 knife from someone at uber hardness, feel free.

But why ? There's several other knife steels that test better in edge retention if that's all you want.

I don’t know where the notion that people are looking to “max out” hardness on M390 came from. We (the people involved with Kurt/jcoolg19’s testing) have each been talking about 60-62hrc as a range we’d like to consistently see in production M390/20CV/204P. 61-62 would be excellent.

[sal]

The above 8 pages of discussion show why we would prefer not to list Rc. If someone has a particular question on a particular model, I'll usually test it and give the results, but as discussed, there is much more involved.

sal

[Banter 247]

The above 8 pages of discussion show why we would prefer not to list Rc. If someone has a particular question on a particular model, I'll usually test it and give the results, but as discussed, there is much more involved.

sal

For what it’s worth, I get why it makes sense for you to have that position, and I won’t argue that you should advertise ranges.

Also, it’s said that character is best observed when an entity doesn’t have to do the right thing. As independent testing has developed, one of the patterns popping out right away is that you all have been committed to doing great things since before there was any means of outside accountability beyond anecdote. CATRA, cardboard, rope, hrc testing... it’s all supporting that take away.

Thank you for that.

[Ankerson]

The above 8 pages of discussion show why we would prefer not to list Rc. If someone has a particular question on a particular model, I'll usually test it and give the results, but as discussed, there is much more involved.

sal

Sal,

You guys are always improving and adjusting anyway so it would really be pointless because that would also have to be changed in the literature also.

Jim

[Ankerson]

Bohler did test M390 at 62 and ELMAX also, I remember seeing the charts.

Here's the PDF results for M390 at "61+" and ELMAX at 62.

If you have the Bohler M390 at 62 results I'd love to hear more about it.

61+ was how Bohler decided to put forth the edge retention test results, for whatever reasons. I'd imagine they liked it better than 62. In a production run, you'll probably get both anyway.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... zQ5sqPHhf5

I have the same one you do, M390 was at 61-62 HRC from the HT info that I have on all the steels tested.

[Ankerson]

Select Spyderco's and BM's with s30v have recently been beating out nearly all m390 models tested by a significant margin. Yes, the tests are cardboard, but the thing they had in common was high HRC. And the tests are conducted before the HRC is known. Each time, the tester suspected above average HRC and each time he was correct.

Spyderco does m390 better than (probably) anyone else, so yes their m390 models do average better than the s30v models. But the whole m390 issue doesn't really concern the best production m390 on the market. If every company was cranking out m390 like the better half of m390 models from spyderco, this issue never would have arose.

Simple solution, get the BM knives.

Since Spyderco doesn't make a production M390 blade as a regular item. They do make knives in other steels however like S30V and S35VN and S110V etc.

Problem solved, simple.

Why are we talking about some knives from a Company that we don't even know who the Company is?

And when talking about other knife Companies remember Shiny Footprints.

Not sure what some other companies M390 has to do with Spyderco?

I wasn't saying ALL BM's. Select ones. I remember a bug out and a free doing exceptionally well and they came back with higher HRC. BM really has some consistency problems on some models.

The topic was m390, not spyderco specifically. I brought it up because Spyderco's m390 tends to perform better. Especially the ones with higher HRC But there aren't many outliers to this trend. As a whole, production companies aren't pushing the hardness so a great steel is underperforming.

61-62 range is the max that they will ever be able to get out of M390 in production HT without issues.

Maybe in an aerospace furnace they might be able to get more, but I doubt anyone would want to pay for that.

[FK]

Thank you for above spreadsheet,,,, again showing how blind faith in Rc numbers does not tell the entire story.

True Cryo at -300F results in much improved physical properties than the more common liquid Nitrogen quick dip.
Wear resistance is commonly doubled in precision rifle barrels with only the deep Cryo treatment,,, automotive racing engines and components are also proven in over 20 years of experience.
Double temper also improves wear resistance,,, we have seen this with wood carving knives having 1095 steel.

Heat treatment of steel is much more complex than hitting a temperature readout and quenching then one quick temper soak time.

Regards,
FK

[Pelagic]

Select Spyderco's and BM's with s30v have recently been beating out nearly all m390 models tested by a significant margin. Yes, the tests are cardboard, but the thing they had in common was high HRC. And the tests are conducted before the HRC is known. Each time, the tester suspected above average HRC and each time he was correct.

Spyderco does m390 better than (probably) anyone else, so yes their m390 models do average better than the s30v models. But the whole m390 issue doesn't really concern the best production m390 on the market. If every company was cranking out m390 like the better half of m390 models from spyderco, this issue never would have arose.

Simple solution, get the BM knives.

Since Spyderco doesn't make a production M390 blade as a regular item. They do make knives in other steels however like S30V and S35VN and S110V etc.

Problem solved, simple.

Why are we talking about some knives from a Company that we don't even know who the Company is?

And when talking about other knife Companies remember Shiny Footprints.

Not sure what some other companies M390 has to do with Spyderco?

I wasn't saying ALL BM's. Select ones. I remember a bug out and a free doing exceptionally well and they came back with higher HRC. BM really has some consistency problems on some models.

The topic was m390, not spyderco specifically. I brought it up because Spyderco's m390 tends to perform better. Especially the ones with higher HRC But there aren't many outliers to this trend. As a whole, production companies aren't pushing the hardness so a great steel is underperforming.

61-62 range is the max that they will ever be able to get out of M390 in production HT without issues.

Maybe in an aerospace furnace they might be able to get more, but I doubt anyone would want to pay for that.

That seems to be the perfect range honestly (production-wise). Solid performance without much sacrifice.

[sal]

I might add that custom makers that are steel junky's like Phil take it even farther.

sal

[Ankerson]

I might add that custom makers that are steel junky's like Phil take it even farther.

sal

Hi Sal,

I believe Phil got one to 63 if I remember right.

Jim