Terravantium™ Dendritic Cobalt ?????

[justjohn]

Anyone ever heard of this blade material before? Just saw some knives with this type of blade steel on the Terrain 365 website.

[Accutron]

'Dendritic cobalt' is the trade name of David Boye's ingot process Stellite 6B. It's not a steel, but instead a cobalt-based alloy. Stellite 6B is about 2/3 cobalt and 1/3 chromium, with small amounts of tungsten and carbon. It's extremely wear resistant but very soft compared to blade steel, with a Rockwell down around 40. It holds a mediocre toothy edge forever, and is completely rustproof. If you plan on cutting endura braid for thousands of hours in a salt environment, it has no equal.

'Terravantium' sounds like marketing bullsqueeze, but it may be a different variant of Stellite. Stellite 6K has been used in knives, and there are a number of other popular Stellite alloys used in various applications, such as hardfacing, ball valves in oil extractor pumps, etc.

[JD Spydo]

I remember that stuff being advertised in a couple of the main knife magazines all the way back to the late 90s. And it was on those David Boye knives is where I seen and heard of it first. It seems like for a year or so they were really hyping it up as being ideal for working in extremely corrosive environments. Then after that it seemed like it just fell off the radar screen. Now I don't remember if anyone other than David Boye knives ever did use it.

Now with H-1 and those other non-corrosive steels on the market it would probably be a really hard sell.

[SpyderScout]

I have a Boye Dendritic Cobalt knife and quite like it.
It cuts just fine .... to say the least.
No idea what the Terravantium deal is.
The Boye website is still up - I dont think he has any problems moving knives in spite of other brands put there.
He just sells knives to a smaller group of people than say Spyderco.

I like the 'marine enviroment proof' knives and am tempted by a LC200N Spyderco but find buying one hard to justify, as I have the Boye and a slew of MISSION titanium knives.