VandymanG wrote: ↑Sun Oct 01, 2023 11:17 am
Hmm
personal mod project possibly? Might have to look for an Endura/Delica with an FRN handle. Also anyone know which hardened steel would be easiest to shape? Been modifying my mule Spy27 version 2 by hand sanding and it’s been a pain. So that’s why I ask. Thanks for the inspiration on a new project.
This is an interesting aspect of performance that virtually nobody even considers. Grindability matters but if you reference something like Larrin's profile of any given steel then what you'll find is a very short sentence or two which more or less glosses over this issue and almost gives the impression that this only matters to knife-makers who finish knives by hand sanding, etc.
The reality is far more unfortunate as this always affects resharpening as it will both take longer to grind away enough material to get an apex formed AND often requires special (reads : expensive and/or problematic) abrasives. If you wanted a steel that is the exact opposite of the common higher carbide powder metal steels then something like H1/H2 steel is almost ideal as you can grind it easily even on something like natural sandstone (quartz based abrasives).
If anything were ever guilty of being glossed over it's this casual 'Oh just stop being poor and/or lame and buy a diamond hone'. This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of addressing the 1000 lb. elephant in the room. Strangely, this is often worn as a badge of honor by those willing to work with such steels. As in, they are proud that they are capable of grinding the steel in production.... as a knifemaker who does this for a living. They also expect the user to do the same.
Me personally, I'd make blades with a steel anybody can grind with a $2 hardware store stone. This is what Victorinox does and they've obviously been wildly successful. Case in point, it seems from looking at the cross-section of Spyderco knife edges that they assume their target market doesn't really understand much about knife use and is expected to damage the edge and return it for repair fairly regularly. No fault there, this is likely what happens very commonly in actual reality.
With the types of steels that Spyderco uses by and large, if I didn't have a grinder I would send the knife in as well if I found some heavy chips, etc. I do, in fact, have a very solid grinder and have taken out heavy damage and even changed edge profiles from combo edge to plain edge, etc. That said, it is a great deal harder to accomplish even with the grinder and used up far more abrasive in the process as all the carbide volume simply wore the abrasive quickly and needing refreshing.
I've seen Larrin mention the Toughness/Wear Resistance ratio of steels and this is often enough referenced here. For folding knives of heavy cross section at the edge, this is almost irrelevant IMO as nobody seems to go around smacking folders into trees, etc. A ratio that affects everybody in a folding knife is the grindability/wear resistance ratio. Something has been said about Magnacut having high (relative to other higher carbide steel) grind-ability for it's given wear resistance.
This may be true, if so it would put that steel in a higher scoring rank compared to some steel with similar perceived wear resistance but much lower grindability. Who in their right mind would choose a steel that had the same expected wear resistance and was also much harder to grind? When you frame it like that it's an obvious, duh, I'll take the easier to grind steel. The problem with this, of course, is that 9/10 times wear resistance is almost directly inverse to grindability!
's in 10 different steels
personal mod project possibly? Might have to look for an Endura/Delica with an FRN handle. Also anyone know which hardened steel would be easiest to shape? Been modifying my mule Spy27 version 2 by hand sanding and it’s been a pain. So that’s why I ask. Thanks for the inspiration on a new project.
