I'm Thinking Stretch in Super Blue - Good Choice??

[adam569]

I have a caly 3 sb, stretch and a manbug, the steel reminds me of cv from case and where I live old timers swear by a knife that patinas.

[Bile Bob]

Blah blah

In this case, pics would help a lot.

Been using SB ever since it came out and it has developed a heavy patina but has been fine otherwise.

[Knutty]

SB is now on my "junk steel" list. Oh, I know it's great if you prefer wiping and cleaning your blades rather than using them, but for me, it's crap.

LOL... Let's see, you bought a carbon steel knife, you used it near harsh acid fumes, it did not rust but instead developed a patina. Now it's crap.

I would say your expectations are too high. Right tool for the job man... :D

You left out the part about me having vodka before posting. :)

Yep, I of course knew it was carbon steel, but my feeling is that ... this is a Stretch. It's a user. And I'm going to use it. Plenty of people discover they can't split 100 cinder blocks with VG-10 and have a perfect edge afterward, thus making it a "crap steel," so I figured I'd be consistent with that approach.

SB is not a steel I hold in high regard anymore. I'm not a complete idiot and I do know it has its strengths, but for cooking or on a user knife, I think it's a joke. The key word there is "I." If you don't mind being careful how you use it and wiping it constantly, fine. I'm not making an absolute statement. It's just my preference. Yeah I bought it knowing it was not stainless, but I wanted to give it a shot. Just like I gave ZDP-189 a shot and now I don't like that steel at all, either.

It took forever for me to get around to it, but here are pics. All of these knives have been used to remove the seal of my HCl containers. This involves sticking the tip into the top of the gallon container just long enough to cut away ~3/4 of the seal.

From right to left, we have a S90V Native5 forum knife, a VG-10 Emerson Endura, an S35VN Native5, and of course the Super Blue Stretch. I ordered them from least damage on the left to "Holy ****!" on the right. Below is a picture of the SB Stretch's spine, and you can clearly see that the discoloration has gone all the way through and all the way down; literally every square millimeter of SB. I'd be interested in what made this happen, because as I mentioned, only the very tip had any contact with the HCl container.

Each of these was wiped with a Tuff Cloth prior to taking the photos...

The S35VN is highly discolored but functionally fine. The VG-10 is slightly (but clearly) discolored. The S90V shows no signs whatsoever of being used on anything but paper envelopes. In terms of corrosion resistance, this leaves me quite impressed with S90V.