Spyderco Forums

Synov wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 10, 2025 6:23 am

This sort of explains why 3V is my favorite. Need an unbreakable sword? Make it out of a thick piece of 3V. Need a straight razor with the edge retention of a high speed steel? Make it out of a thin piece of 3V.

Hello!

Was looking at your chart, it is very interesting. Where did the data for cruwear and 3v come from regarding blade thicknesses? Not to start a hoohaa over the data, but 3v and cruwear equal tcc by just making the blade thinner. Yes it makes sense, but then why don't bladesmiths just do that?

Steels of interest to me based on this and other charts would be 3v, 4v, cpm-154, maganamax and 15v.

Naperville wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 01, 2025 2:05 pm

Synov wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 10, 2025 6:23 am

This sort of explains why 3V is my favorite. Need an unbreakable sword? Make it out of a thick piece of 3V. Need a straight razor with the edge retention of a high speed steel? Make it out of a thin piece of 3V.

Hello!

Was looking at your chart, it is very interesting. Where did the data for cruwear and 3v come from regarding blade thicknesses? Not to start a hoohaa over the data, but 3v and cruwear equal tcc by just making the blade thinner. Yes it makes sense, but then why don't bladesmiths just do that?

Steels of interest to me based on this and other charts would be 3v, 4v, cpm-154, maganamax and 15v.

See this post for an explanation of the thickness curves: viewtopic.php?p=1845119#p1845119

Bladesmiths do use all kinds of different edge geometries, so your question kind of answers itself. I think it's helpful to keep in mind that the points on the chart (not dotted line curves) are all comparing the same edge geometry, just in different steels and hardnesses. It doesn't really matter what that geometry is since it still shows the relative differences between the steels. The dotted line curves show that changing that edge geometry can give you better results than just adding more carbides to the steel.

I do agree that there is a dearth of thin edges in high toughness steels. It seems like bladesmiths think that a high toughness steel also needs to be thick to double down on the toughness, when really the opposite is true.

H1/H2, no contest.

Close behind are LC200N and Magnacut.

After that, M390.

For general use I actually prefer a non -steel talonite/stellite

For a blade steel actually made out of steel zdp-189. M390 and magnacut all work great for me

With the caveat that I haven't tried too many steels, I'd say SPY27. I've had the most luck with it for sharpening and general use. After that, 20CV and 154CM for similar reasons.

There are so many excellent steels nowadays, this is a hard question to answer.





I have different favourites for different applications, but as an EDC all-rounder I always feel content with S90V in my pocket.

BOL,

Quite the collection you got there, really nice stuff...

My absolute favourite in a vacuum is Vanax, but in the real world it's CruWear or MagnaCut. i use knives very unkindly and these two are very capable of tolerating it and then easily stropping back.