what's the problem s35vn ?

[Zenith]

I found this interesting:

Nobody -including Crucible - said that S35VN holds an edge as long as S30V.

They Said that is has more Toughness and holds an edge longer than CPM154.

They specifically said it does NOT have the same Edge Holding as S30V.

Test away gents - it appears you are proving Crucible Correct.

S35VN is far less likely to micro chip and it will ROLL before it Chips.

Again - You Seem to be proving them correct.

You might not want to hear about S30V being hard to sharpen but the Rest of us DO care about that.

A Super Steel knife that is Dull in the Field is just another thing to throw in the weeds.

The problem with S30V is that if you can't get it perfectly sharp - It is a Nightmare for MOST people.

Don't You tell ME about Diamond hones - they just compound the problem.

The introduction of S35VN was to specifically overcome the working - sharpening and chipping problems by having great edge holding and having it easier to sharpen for CUSTOMERS of the knife makers.

They never said S35VN held an edge longer than a properly sharpened S30v Blade. The problem is finding an average customer with a properly sharpened S30V blade.

Mike

I underlined the bit that is the main focus of my post.

CPM-154 was introduced to rival RWL-34. (RWL-34 is the powdered version of ATS-34, that was in its day a great steel IMO) Both of these steels have very fine grain structure, easy to work with and can take a great polish. Mr. Loveless has used RWL-34 for years (if you do not know R.W. Loveless I suggest you research him, he was a great maker IMO for the entire industry and will be missed).

Now if S35VN was introduced to improve upon CPM-154 (thereby providing more competition for RWL-34) then are we not comparing it to S30V wrongly? Fine it does start with the same letters but should it then be put in the same category?

Maybe some stupid questions, but I would like to know a bit more.

[Ankerson]

I found this interesting:



I underlined the bit that is the main focus of my post.

CPM-154 was introduced to rival RWL-34. (RWL-34 is the powdered version of ATS-34, that was in its day a great steel IMO) Both of these steels have very fine grain structure, easy to work with and can take a great polish. Mr. Loveless has used RWL-34 for years (if you do not know R.W. Loveless I suggest you research him, he was a great maker IMO for the entire industry and will be missed).

Now if S35VN was introduced to improve upon CPM-154 (thereby providing more competition for RWL-34) then are we not comparing it to S30V wrongly? Fine it does start with the same letters but should it then be put in the same category?

Maybe some stupid questions, but I would like to know a bit more.

CPM 154 was developed as a replacement for S30V for the Custom knife makers who wanted a steel that was easier to work with at the time.

[sal]

Hi Lychesko,

Welcome to the Spyderco forum. Glad to have you visit. I admire your passion to post even having to use a translator. Ukraine is a good country with good people.

Looks like you post is popular.

I began another thread to discuss the Native 5 question.

If CTS can send his Native to us. We'll be happy to replace it and test it in our lab to see if we can make sense of his results.

CTS, send it to:

Spyderco
Attn: Sal Glesser
820 Spyderco Way
Golden, Colorado 80403

sal

[MIL-DOT]

Apologies if this thread was being "put to bed",so to speak, but I found another s35vn test that i thought interesting. While I can't vouch for anything about this test or the tester (testor?) he didn't strike me as the usual rambling You-tube idiot ( which merely means I could sit through the entire video :D ).
Anyway, he did not use a native 5, but a custom knife, that was (supposedly) hardened to Rc58.5. He did a few sessions of wood cutting, through two different woods/densities, followed each with paper cuts.
He did mention some slight rolling, but quickly stropped the blade back into shape, and it cut paper again without any snags. He seems to give the steel a positive review,so far.
Anyway,I admitedly don't know from Shinola, I'm just posting this for informative purposes, and am happy to hear any critiques,whatsoever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgLW-IIu ... re=related

[JNewell]

But when you start making relatively fine-grained comparisons, testing only gives an indication of how the steel will perform in SIMILAR real life circumstances. Honestly, there isn't a steel used in a knife in the Spyderco line that I wouldn't trust and expect to be completely happy with under just about any circumstances. I remember when ATS-34 was rocket-science stuff. What we are talking about here is not good-better-best, it is best-bester-bestest.

Yah, but "testing" may give an indication of how a steel will perform in "real life". We may be surprised at what happens in our own use, but generally we can say that S30V holds an edge better than 8cr13Mov in most edc chores. When steels perform very closely, that's when cutting media, use, user's skill and etc. become large factors.

Although, we like to say "not better, just different" there seem to be a consensus on what steels are good for what kind of use, taking into account personal preferences of course. This "consensus" will probably has ranked steels according to desirability.

How this "consensus" came to happen is probably a combination of user's experience and test results(whether complicated or not).

[JNewell]

Yep, the Mules performed fine, but they were a different production run of S35VN than the current knives in S35VN.

I know Kershaw and BRK are running S35VN in the 62 HRC range after their own testing so it seems that there might be some inconsistencies under a certian hardness range in the Current S35VN.

Yeah...according to Sal they were a whole different melt...which, I think, raises the possibility that the different melts (is that the right term for a powder steel? oh well) were actually different from each other, resulting in performance differences. So the differences may be Crucible's responsibility, not Spyderco's (or CRK's).

[matrixone976]

niobium refines grain structure. im not super good with metallergy but i've learned a thing or two from spyderco and from some crappy knives ive bought.

............. Carbon --- Cromium --- Niobium ---- molybdenum
CPM-S30V 1.45 ------ 14.00 -- -- ---------- -- 2.00 -- --
CPM-S35VN 1.38 ----- 14.00 ------- 0.50 -- -- 2.00 -- --

The above came from the steel chart in Edge-U-cation.

I thought S35VN was supposed to be a little tougher and less prone to chipping from what I've read here. That's what I remember anyway. Carbon is a little higher with S35VN. Don't know what Niobium does. All else is the same. I don't know why anyone would think there would be a dramatic difference in the steels but I'm no expert AT ALL. Not having used S30VN I'd expect it to be very close to S30V according to the chart. In my experience S30V is a lot better quality than 8Cr13MoV and 8Cr... is no slouch, just not one of the greats IMO.

Jack

[Cliff Stamp]

... raises the possibility that the different melts (is that the right term for a powder steel? oh well) were actually different from each other, resulting in performance differences.

All melts are difference, when you see a number like 1.2 % carbon, or 0.5% silicon this is either an average amount or a maximum amount. Nothing is every exact and thus every single batch would be expected to be different. However unless there was a problem with the batch, the tolerances you would be expected to see would not produce a significant difference in the final blade as the tolerances are set exactly to prevent that.

This EXACT same thing happened when S30V came out, there was a huge rash of issues reported, usually chipping. All that was happening is that the steel was hyped extremely highly as being tough so whenever it chipped people were being very vocal about it. After time passed this settled and with more experience it became accepted as a solid performer for a high wear stainless that was nicely suited between ATS-34 and S90V.

Thus for the majority of people who liked ATS-34, wanted something a bit more wear resistant but did not want to go all the way to S90V which can be a bit expensive and a bit difficult to sharpen, S30V fit very well and knifemakers liked it as it was much easier to heat treat than S90V and nicer to finish. As S35VN is hyped as the replacement the same thing will happen, any issues with the steel will be very obviously raised, the thing to keep in mind is the reality of the steel and the spectrum of performance.

[angusW]

Apologies if this thread was being "put to bed",so to speak, but I found another s35vn test that i thought interesting. While I can't vouch for anything about this test or the tester (testor?) he didn't strike me as the usual rambling You-tube idiot ( which merely means I could sit through the entire video :D ).
Anyway, he did not use a native 5, but a custom knife, that was (supposedly) hardened to Rc58.5. He did a few sessions of wood cutting, through two different woods/densities, followed each with paper cuts.
He did mention some slight rolling, but quickly stropped the blade back into shape, and it cut paper again without any snags. He seems to give the steel a positive review,so far.
Anyway,I admitedly don't know from Shinola, I'm just posting this for informative purposes, and am happy to hear any critiques,whatsoever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgLW-IIu ... re=related

He possibly had better results as his knife is convex grind but it was interesting to see him cut wood with zero chipping. He finally got the knife to chip, just a tiny bit, when he whacked a piece of titanium multiple times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNHGh8N1 ... re=related

[Ankerson]

He possibly had better results as his knife is convex grind but it was interesting to see him cut wood with zero chipping. He finally got the knife to chip, just a tiny bit, when he whacked a piece of titanium multiple times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNHGh8N1 ... re=related

Cutting wood without chipping isn't really all that hard using proper technique as in keeping the spine of the blade in line with the edge, that's no side loading.

[jnug]

While I think we all recognize that some of these tests stress the material more than would often occur in practical application, accelerated life testing has been an accepted form testing to characterize materials, components and finished products for a long time now. In fact HALT testing is specifically designed to accelerate the time and elevate the stress in order to test to failure as a means of determining what would be required for the material, component or end item to fail in practical application.

[angusW]

Cutting wood without chipping isn't really all that hard using proper technique as in keeping the spine of the blade in line with the edge, that's no side loading.

True, but in the video that MIL-DOT posted, the guy says he is trying not to do the proper technique by "...cutting in and twisting out to simulate making a bad cut". He is trying to get it to chip. Another reason why it might not be chipping is, it's wood as opposed to a synthetic material like rope or cardboard where some of the content might either be unknown or known to be hard on a blade edge.

So basically one guy doing one test. We can't draw any conclusions until this steel gets in more hands.

[Ankerson]

True, but in the video that MIL-DOT posted, the guy says he is trying not to do the proper technique by "...cutting in and twisting out to simulate making a bad cut". He is trying to get it to chip. Another reason why it might not be chipping is, it's wood as opposed to a synthetic material like rope or cardboard where some of the content might either be unknown or known to be hard on a blade edge.

So basically one guy doing one test. We can't draw any conclusions until this steel gets in more hands.

More testng does need to be done, S35VN is still too new to make any conclusions at this point.

There just isn't enough blades out there yet to get a broad enough database of comments and experience.

[jackknifeh]

I don't know much about steel at all. When I look at the steel chart and compare S30V and S35VN there doesn't seem to be enough difference in the recipe to cause an expectation that one would be a whole lot different than the other. Again, I don't know much about it. But when I look at the recipe for ZDP-189 and S30V and see the difference then I'd expect a big difference.

Unless I'm mistaken S35VN isn't performing up to the expectations. I'd like to ask where any high expectations came from. I don't remember anyone claiming S35VN was going to be more than a very good steel. And it seems to be performing like a very good steel but not a super-duper (apologies for the highly technical terms) steel which is no surprise. If I have missed something that wouldn't be a surprise either. :)

Jack

[Slash]

^depends on the hrc, I think most are saying it's to soft.

[jackknifeh]

^depends on the hrc, I think most are saying it's to soft.

If that's the problem maybe it can be corrected with different heat treatment??? Too hard and you get chipping. Too soft, the edge rolls or flattens meaning dull. That's my understanding anyway.

I'm waiting for the steel that the more you use it the sharper it gets. Until that one shows up, all blade steels stink. :D

Jack

[.357 mag]

Soft or not.. If I end up with some birthday/chrismas money, the native 5 is on my short list. The steel will not have a affect on my purchase. i don't know what people use that type of rope for around here but i just don't see it being used in the real world. And if i did see rope like that and had to cut it, i wouldn't have to 100 times.

I guess what im saying is, the steel will perform in real world,everyday cutting tasks. Rope isn't stuff that i cut very often. Opening letters, whittling wood,zipties,fruit, etc.. Is what I cut and i think the steel will hold up fine.

[Ankerson]

Soft or not.. If I end up with some birthday/chrismas money, the native 5 is on my short list. The steel will not have a affect on my purchase. i don't know what people use that type of rope for around here but i just don't see it being used in the real world. And if i did see rope like that and had to cut it, i wouldn't have to 100 times.

I guess what im saying is, the steel will perform in real world,everyday cutting tasks. Rope isn't stuff that i cut very often. Opening letters, whittling wood,zipties,fruit, etc.. Is what I cut and i think the steel will hold up fine.

If an edge rolls like crazy or falls apart on rope (Chips) it won't be good for much else either except for opening mail.

[chuck_roxas45]

If an edge rolls like crazy or falls apart on rope (Chips) it won't be good for much else either except for opening mail.

Hehehe opening mail is all the "real life use" for some people.

[Ankerson]

Hehehe opening mail is all the "real life use" for some people.

Don't get me started. LOL :D