Deadboxhero wrote: ↑Mon Feb 02, 2026 9:54 am
@sal
Could you take us back to when VG-10 was coming out and how it compared in your opinion to ATS-34/154-CM?
Here you go Shawn...
Talkin' Story,
The VG-10 story is kinda like the 154Cm / ATS-34 story. "Back in the day", maybe 1998, we were using Gingami 1 (G-2) in most of our knives made in Japan. ATS-34 was our "Higher line" blade steel. I was getting more and more involved in blade steels, edge geometries, and was seeking better performance. ATS-34 was quite expensive and harder to process. We were using Crucible's CPM-440V in out Golden factory.
I was a member of the US Knifemakers Guild and the ABS. Learning a great deal.
Hitachi had come up with a new steel, ATS-55, and offered it to us as an exclusive. Testing went OK, so we signed on, and we were using the steel in most of our Seki made knives. Then another maker told us of a new steel developed by Takefu for Grafting in horticulture. They called it VG-10. Again, testing went OK, so we added VG-10 to our stable of steels. We introduced VG-10 in a fixed blade, the Moran, and began using it for many of our Seki models.
Over the next few years, testing and ELU response was watched carefully and we eventually gave up ATS-55 and continued using VG-10 to this day.
We continued to work with Crucible adding steels and Crucible decided that Blade steels was a potential market and began working knife shows, which worked well for them.
Then Carpenter Steel asked us if we would help them develop blade steels and bring them into the Knife Market. We have a decent testing lab, CATRA, etc., so we worked with them for the next few years. That's how the line of CTS steels came into the knife market. Once they had a working line of Blade steels, their head metallurgist asked me, what can we (Carpenter) do for Spyderco for our efforts.
I told them that there was a Japanese steel made by Hitachi, called Gingami 1, that we were using in Japan and importing to the US to use in our Golden factory. There was no USA equivalent, so I asked them if they could make a powdered version and tweak it for blade steel performance. The result was CTS-BD1N. turned out to be a really good all around steel. I had hoped for an exclusive, but that wasn't going to happen.
A while later, I was speaking with Bob Shabala at Niagara and wondered in Crucible would make a special steel and give it to Spyderco as an exclusive? Bob didn't think it was likely, but as it turned out, Crucible agreed. I was working with Crucible's metallurgist, Mr. Bob Skibitski (I call him Bobski), who is a gifted Metallurgist. I told him that there was a Japanese ingot steel made by Takefu, called VG-10, which is a really good all around steel, for which there is no American equivalent. The president of Takefu told me that he believed that Cobalt added to the alloy helped to enhance the results. I asked him if he could make an equivalent Cobalt based steel, powder it and tweak it for blade steel performance. After a few runs, he/we came up with SPY-27. We had already discussed the exclusive angle and that's how we ended up with the alloy.
Hope that helps.
sal
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A goal in life is to be consistent like the sun and transparent like the air. That's how trust is built... and trust is the true bottom line".
whatever that might look like and VG10 would be just fine as a steel choice 
- none of them super good idea on my part 
. VG10 good with me, great and easy to maintain steel, I love it on my Manbug now.
