Cardboard Cut-off! aka: rumble in the paper cage!

[Blerv]

It's clear our minds are literally filled with corrugate. I mean, as a topic of cutlery discussion :p

As an advocate for mayhem I would love to see a cardboard cut-off between a high carbide knife and a low carbide one. Maybe even a few rounds to attempt and keep the scatter out of the picture. Realistically though, that might get a bit pricey.

Proposal:

* Two Spydies enter, one knife leaves (not literally, just a bad joke)
* One a high carbide steel like the 110v Manix, the other a comparable knife like the Stretch Super Blue.
* Sharpened by advocates of each to excel in the contest, say Cliff and Jim.
* Shipped to an unbiased trust-worthy bloke to sweat and shred a mountain of paper-stuff.

Does this sound interesting to other people? I assume we could get a Paypal donation going from a few people to cover the cost. I hope it's not against the forum rules (albeit, it's quite grey).

I'm just curious what Super Blue would do at say 4dps to 110v at 15dps. It wouldn't squelch the back-talk and I'm sure there would be a million disclaimers, not to mention shills fighting trolls in the street like the Gangs of New York. Still...for sake of mayhem, it's promising. :D .

[Evil D]

[chuck_roxas45]

It's clear our minds are literally filled with corrugate. I mean, as a topic of cutlery discussion :p

As an advocate for mayhem I would love to see a cardboard cut-off between a high carbide knife and a low carbide one. Maybe even a few rounds to attempt and keep the scatter out of the picture. Realistically though, that might get a bit pricey.

Proposal:

* Two Spydies enter, one knife leaves (not literally, just a bad joke)
* One a high carbide steel like the 110v Manix, the other a comparable knife like the Stretch Super Blue.
* Sharpened by advocates of each to excel in the contest, say Cliff and Jim.
* Shipped to an unbiased trust-worthy bloke to sweat and shred a mountain of paper-stuff.

Does this sound interesting to other people? I assume we could get a Paypal donation going from a few people to cover the cost. I hope it's not against the forum rules (albeit, it's quite grey).

I'm just curious what Super Blue would do at say 4dps to 110v at 15dps. It wouldn't squelch the back-talk and I'm sure there would be a million disclaimers, not to mention shills fighting trolls in the street like the Gangs of New York. Still...for sake of mayhem, it's promising. :D .

Would make for exciting times. :D

[Blerv]

Bah! Evil, you're ruining the fist-pumping with science.

Less numbers, more throttle.

[Trevitrace]

Did you:
Post something stupid funny?

Yes. I almost lost a mouthful.

[Ankerson]

Would be interesting..... LOL

Yeah I am sure there would be more than a little feedback..... :D

[Evil D]

Would be interesting..... LOL

Yeah I am sure there would be more than a little feedback..... :D

I think the only thing that any 2 people on this forum could agree on is that both knives can cut cardboard. Period.

[Ankerson]

I think the only thing that any 2 people on this forum could agree on is that both knives can cut cardboard. Period.

I know what you mean.....

I have a CPM 10V knife coming very soon that I will be testing and will be doing a complete test on it, rope cardboard and wood....

Going to need a lot of cardboard for that one..... Even though I got straight from rope to cardboard on those after stropping the edge a few times..... Still will be thousands of ft..... LOL


I wonder who they will get to do the grunt work, the actual cutting.....?

[Cliff Stamp]

* Two Spydies enter, one knife leaves (not literally, just a bad joke)
* One a high carbide steel like the 110v Manix, the other a comparable knife like the Stretch Super Blue.

Here is a lot more than two Spyderco knives of the type you have noted :

- http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/cardboard.html

I am in the process of updating it to include high mag shots of the edge and typical sharpening times.

If you want to know anything about low vs high carbide you just can't compare two knives, you have to look at a sample of both to be sure you are getting representative behavior.

Comparing two knives and making a generalization would be like looking at one Benchmade and one Spyderco and then concluding that one company had better/worse QC (or whatever).

There have been comparisons of this type for a long time, Alvin and Mike were doing it in the late 90's, the results were consistent with what is in the table in the above as they have to be as it is just physical properties once you remove bias.

[Ankerson]

Here is a lot more than two Spyderco knives of the type you have noted :

- http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/cardboard.html

I am in the process of updating it to include high mag shots of the edge and typical sharpening times.

If you want to know anything about low vs high carbide you just can't compare two knives, you have to look at a sample of both to be sure you are getting representative behavior.

Comparing two knives and making a generalization would be like looking at one Benchmade and one Spyderco and then concluding that one company had better/worse QC (or whatever).

There have been comparisons of this type for a long time, Alvin and Mike were doing it in the late 90's, the results were consistent with what is in the table in the above as they have to be as it is just physical properties once you remove bias.

They could just use 2 Mule teams....

K390 vs Super Blue as they are VERY close in geometries, well close enough anyway for this kind of test, within a few thousands of each other.

I know because I own both......

And the Super Blue is up there pretty good in the 62-63 range....

Not exactly a fair test, but HCV vs LCV is what they want to see....

The difference would be so large the variables wouldn't matter as much so it doesn't have to be THAT accurate...... And the knives are very close.......

Large enough difference percentage wise that even a 100% swing in variables wouldn't change the overall results.... They would have to dull the K390 a lot like cutting concrete before even starting to change the outcome......

So it would be a fun thing to do for someone without getting too serious or overly technical about it.

Now something like Super Blue vs 52100 Mule teams that would be different as they would be much closer in performance percentage wise....

[tvenuto]

Comparing two knives and making a generalization would be like looking at one Benchmade and one Spyderco and then concluding that one company had better/worse QC (or whatever).

I don't think similarity of geometry is the (only) issue. This analogy would hold even if spyderco and benchmade designed the same exact knife. You couldn't draw (reliable) general conclusions from a single example.

[ManixFan]

I don't think similarity of geometry is the issue. This analogy would hold even if spyderco and benchmade designed the same exact knife. You couldn't draw (reliable) general conclusions from a single example.

...........and the bait has been set, :D

......... wait for it.........

[Ankerson]

I don't think similarity of geometry is the issue. This analogy would hold even if spyderco and benchmade designed the same exact knife. You couldn't draw (reliable) general conclusions from a single example.

The thing with production blades is that with good companies the knives are going to be very close and the so will the HRC hardness between them, same model, same company etc.

That's taking into count quality knives from good companies, they are very consistent.

So you could test 5 Militaries in S30V and they would test out very close to each other.... Basically like testing the same knife over and over again.

Spyderco has very VERY consistent in their HT from what I have seen in testing...

Anyway in a comparison like this people wouldn't have to get all that technical because the difference in performance would be so large it really wouldn't matter if you did 10 knives of each and 10 runs it still wouldn't make any difference in the outcome.

One would really have to slant the variables by a VERY, VERY large percentage as in massive... and even then it would be difficult to change the outcome between the two because the difference in performance is so large.

One would really have to fudge the data by a lot to change anything..... We are talking about very large percentages here...... And it would be very obvious that was done.....

[tvenuto]

Ha not looking for a fight here, just having a discussion. I was stating that there were additional variables beyond geometry, which may significantly affect the outcome of a given test, and I co-opted Cliff's analogy to make this point. I may be wrong about that, but I don' think that I am.

I wish this whole steel selection thing was easy like the rest of you. I wish the variables were easy to control, and the outcomes devoid of subjectivity. I wish we could just make an edge retention vs sharpening time vs ease of sharpening graph (that I think Strong Dog proposed recently) and demystify the whole steel selection thing once and for all. Wishing that confounders weren't there and ignoring them are different things. I believe that the worst mistake you can make is to think you know something when you don't, so I tend to be more cautious than perhaps necessary in things such as this.

[tvenuto]

See? We managed to be civil.

I can see what you're saying here. With those particular examples the differences in composition are large. It gets trickier when you compare steels with very similar compositions, like is Elmax categorically better than S30V.

However Cliff just posted some pictures and questions in another thread that definitely added some wrinkles to how I think about "edge retention" vs "cutting outcomes." And those steels were quite different in composition. However, I do believe that your question of pure "edge retention" was in fact answered soundly one way or the other.

[Ankerson]

Ha not looking for a fight here, just having a discussion. I was stating that there were additional variables beyond geometry, which may significantly affect the outcome of a given test, and I co-opted Cliff's analogy to make this point. I may be wrong about that, but I don' think that I am.

I wish this whole steel selection thing was easy like the rest of you. I wish the variables were easy to control, and the outcomes devoid of subjectivity. I wish we could just make an edge retention vs sharpening time vs ease of sharpening graph (that I think Strong Dog proposed recently) and demystify the whole steel selection thing once and for all. Wishing that confounders weren't there and ignoring them are different things. I believe that the worst mistake you can make is to think you know something when you don't, so I tend to be more cautious than perhaps necessary in things such as this.

I hardly notice any difference between sharpening something like VG-10 and S110V or touching them up, but then I use Hard SIC (Almost zero fillers = almost zero slurry and almost zero stone wear) for sharpening and Ceramics for touch ups so a second or 3 doesn't make much of a difference. So for me the steel really doesn't matter with what I use, I don't use diamonds at all, never saw the need...

Reprofiling is were the large difference can be seen, I use either a 120 Grit or 320 Grit Hard SIC depending on how much steel I have to move.

Steel selection really isn't all that hard, one just has to figure out what is needed performance wise, edge retention, shock resistance etc and factor in the knife and what it will be used for.

Then select the steel, HT and tempering, edge and blade geometry for the intended use and finally once the knife is done the edge finish.

Budget does factor into it all also so some compromises might have to be made.

[Ankerson]

See? We managed to be civil.

I can see what you're saying here. With those particular examples the differences in composition are large. It gets trickier when you compare steels with very similar compositions, like is Elmax categorically better than S30V.

However Cliff just posted some pictures and questions in another thread that definitely added some wrinkles to how I think about "edge retention" vs "cutting outcomes." And those steels were quite different in composition. However, I do believe that your question of pure "edge retention" was in fact answered soundly one way or the other.

Well with any testing we try and be as accurate as we can realistically anyway.

For the above test I just pointed it they wouldn't have to get all that technical about it due to the large difference in performance, so it will make it much more fun for the people doing it. :)

But yeah, ELMAX compared to S30V, that would be a lot closer depending on the hardness ranges of the 2 steels, things would open up if S30V was at normal 60 RC and ELMAX was at 62 though.

[chuck_roxas45]

What bevel angle should the knives be at when tested? What grit finish?

[Ankerson]

What bevel angle should the knives be at when tested? What grit finish?

Factory knives at factory specs so 15 degrees per side and around 400 grit.

Unless they were reground PROFESSIONALLY as in done right, by a good Custom knife maker, not a hack job down to around .010" behind the edge then one could lower it to 10 degrees per side.

[chuck_roxas45]

Gotcha, thanks.