why not more S110V/S90V?

[can't freehand]

I've been reading Cliff Stamp posts and came across a discussion between he and Ankerson about the rarity of S90V and by extension S110V, at least in production knives.

Does this have to do more with Marketing by companies, and so control of their market or is there really a dramatic difference in grindability between S30V and S90V?

I ask because I've been wanting to get some S90V Spyderco but the only options are $300 to bentoboxshop for the military or buy the knifeworks.com Yojimbo, which frankly is a rather useless looking knife. Spyderco because, besides Benchmade, I don't really trust other companies' HT.

If companies reserve steels in order of their performance (wear resistance), then they can keep the lesser steels relevant. If Spyderco suddenly switched the Military/Paramilitary from S30V to S90V as the base steel while changing the price purely based on the increased cost of manufacturing, then its likely that the sales for the S30V and VG-10 models would experience a major slump as there's a perception, perhaps ramified by marketing, that S90V runs laps around, say, VG-10 and S30V. Of course, demand for the Paramilitary would go even higher, which would itself increase cost. Thing is, I can see a noticeable difference in wear resistance between my S30V Manix and ZDP-189 Endura, so is grindability the prime cost concern after all? Is S90V perhaps even a victim of planned obsolescence? It has been around for awhile now.

[Cheddarnut]

Get the Yojimbo.

[Blerv]

Because it's a expensive to produce and many doesn't want to pay for it. If they did I would think. It would be commonplace.

[MCM]

Read more. Get educated. There is more to it than that. Then wait for them to
come out and snag them when there available. There is always something in the works.
You just have to wait for it and recognize it when it shows up. . The Yo2 in S90v is a neat knife.
Under $200.00 and 600 of the 800 have been sold. Your call.

[Liquid Cobra]

Your average user probably can't/doesn't want to sharpen S90V.

And the Yojimbo is not useless. It's an amazing self defense knife as well as an edc/utility knife.

[KevinOubre]

Those steels are really time consuming and expensive to procure and produce compared to more common place steels like VG-10 or 154CM. Also, its not a steel for everyone. Most people cant sharpen them and are too rough on knives for them to see any sort of good performance from them. They are pretty niche steels. I like them, but it makes sense why they aren't that widely used. Spyderco makes the Southfork in S90V, that will probably be my next fixed blade. YOu can also look at the K2 with 10V which, from a functional perspective, is basically a non stainless S90V.

[Chum]

Is wear resistance really how you base whether or not one steel is "inferior" to another? What about toughness, corrosion resistance, ease of sharpening?

If you had two knives with the same geometry, one made of S30V and the other S90V, and both were properly heat treated, you probably wouldn't notice any difference between edge retention... but you probably would notice a difference in how easy they are to sharpen.

[MCM]

"If you had two knives with the same geometry, one made of S30V and the other S90V, and both were properly heat treated, you probably wouldn't notice any difference between edge retention... but you probably would notice a difference in how easy they are to sharpen."

We agree to completly disagree .......... :D

[SpeedHoles]

Lol at calling the Yojimbo useless...

[Holland]

Also there are a lot of people who like the balance s30v provides over s90v. I much prefer steels that are around s30v and lower to sharpen. Overall i'm not a big fan of either of those steels and prefer steels that don't chip as easy like M4 and SuperBlue

[jabba359]

I'd liken it to cars. Sure, we would all love to have a 2-seat sports car with 500hp, so why are there so few cars offered this way? Well, most people have to haul the kids around, load up with groceries, drive in the snow, tow a trailer, etc. So for that reason, you'll see more vans, 4-door sedans, and trucks on the road, even though the 500hp two-seater is technologically superior, much faster, and likely more fun. For the majority of people, all-around usability outweighs a very narrowly defined superiority.

The average Joe, which likely accounts for the vast majority of knives sold, wants something that holds a good edge at the cheapest price possible and is easy to sharpen. S90V and S110V are awesome, but for the common man, the extra cutting performance isn't worth the additional cost in materials, added labor to manufacture (increased grinding time and wear on equipment), and required sharpening time/skill.

My first car was a 1968 Camaro with a 350. So that tells you what side of the debate I fall on... :cool:

[SpeedHoles]

This thread is turning into an echo of one on BF about not seeing more m390... even talking about cars.

[Cliff Stamp]

.... is there really a dramatic difference in grindability between S30V and S90V?

As with many questions on steels, the reality is often very different from the marketing information. There is a very large difference in grindability between S90V and S30V what this means in terms of manufacturing costs depends on a number of factors, chief among them things such as the final blade finish and if the grinders are water cooled or not. If for example the blades have a very high satin or even worse mirror finish, the relative cost would increase vs a very coarse blade grind finish. This is because when the grit gets very large, the cutting ability gets very high even on high carbide steels. There are also modern abrasives such as seeded gel aluminum oxide which are designed to cut those exact steels and self sharpen in the process. Proper coolant and understanding of grinding technology also minimizes the practical effects of low grindability steels on costs.

Now as for are makers/manufacturers manipulating the market - obviously, unless they are extremely incompetent, that is basic retail. As a manufacturer you have to balance out put to sustain a need and create one. This could mean simply using steels because they suddenly are more available and finding a way to promote them, or by creating some kind of artificial demand by hyping the difficulty of a steel to make it seem more rare and/or make the product that much more exclusive as not everyone could/should use it. It could even mean using a steel simply because it is rare/new and no one else has it. The problem is though there is no way to know any of this unless you are the person doing it, thus what you are left with are two choices :

-ask Sal

-engage in gossip/speculation

Now at times some manufacturers and makers are very open about why they use certain steels and they can be very frank that it isn't just simply performance it is about leveraging the biases that the consumers have. The problem with this though is that many consumers can take offense to this when they hear it as they have this odd fantasy that manufacturers don't do any of that and businesses are all non-profit apparently. When then Internet was young and the only people that were on it were hard core computer-geeks, forums were a LOT smaller and manufacturers / sellers were often speaking only to very small audiences, the conversations could and were a lot more frank.

Benchmade for example openly noted at one point they they didn't switch to what was an obviously superior steel from a performance viewpoint simply because they had already invested a lot of money into branding the steel they did use and they didn't want to waste that marketing investment. Another very large retailer noted that even though full flat ground blades performed better, he always stocked sabre ground knives because that straight ridge line was a striking visual attraction to a lot of people who bought knives just to look at and didn't care how they cut, just like some people buy cars based on how they look not how they drive. However now people are a lot more careful with what they say because of the size/connection of the internet and the extremely rapid pace at which information spreads and they don't want to risk offending the customer who has that kind of idolized fantasy of retail.

If you want to see just how fast steels can be ground, this is an example of a specialized grinder :

https://youtu.be/kvlKfzW12d0" target="_blank

Note Ray uses an extremely powerful grinder which can take very heavy torque, he presses very hard, he uses very high speeds and very high end, extremely coarse abrasives. Modern ultra-tough aluminum oxide abrasive are designed to actually run optimally at those pressures and they need them to self-sharpen and retain high cutting ability. They will tear into S90V just as fast, but when you switch to the finishing - well that is when things slow down. In regards to knives, it is often the things which look to be trivial that can have a large effect on cost because they are steps which are not easily automated and would require a person doing them and thus the relative cost would be dramatic. For example why doesn't all the FRN grip material have nicely buffed and rounded edges? This would be a significant improvement to performance but it isn't the thing which is automated as easily as the actual forming of the grips and would add a lot more relative cost.

[Bugout Bill]

There is more to a knife than the blade steel. I'd rather have a knife with a reliable lock, well thought out ergonomics, and a clear purpose to the design than something designed to be pretty in S90V or S110V.

For how I use my knives, edge retention is almost irrelevant as I am going to sharpen it as soon as I start to notice blunting. On really dirty materials, the edge retention between S30V, VG10, 15CM, and 55Si7 carbon steel are unnoticeable. The difference you see is how damage takes place.

Back to the OPs issue at hand, these are expensive steels to produce and process, and tend to be more difficult to finish for the end user, aside from the fact that there might be availability issues.

[Surfingringo]

Spyderco does an excellent job with their s30v. One of my favorite steels overall. It sharpens up easier than their s90v and in my use I can't tell a whole lot of difference in edge retention. YMMV.

To the OP, don't overlook the Yojimbo2! I kind of saw it the same way you do until I finally got one. It is a very well thought out design with some of the best ergonomics of any Spyderco I own (which is saying a lot). It's not as useful as a traditional blade for my chores but it makes a fine edc and excels at many cutting tasks.

[tvenuto]

I've been reading Cliff Stamp posts and came across a discussion between he and Ankerson about the rarity of S90V and by extension S110V, at least in production knives.

I'm not sure why you say "by extension" as these are two different steels just as S30V and S90V are two different steels. Spyderco has production offerings in S110V (manix LW) and S90V (Southfork), and I believe more planned in S110V at least.

Does this have to do more with Marketing by companies, and so control of their market or is there really a dramatic difference in grindability between S30V and S90V?

I ask because I've been wanting to get some S90V Spyderco but the only options are $300 to bentoboxshop for the military or buy the knifeworks.com Yojimbo, which frankly is a rather useless looking knife. Spyderco because, besides Benchmade, I don't really trust other companies' HT.

Of course a certain amount of everything is marketing, but I do think processing costs are a factor, which include more than just grindability. It has been pointed out many times that knife manufacture is a very very small drop in the bucket when it comes to the steel industry, and spyderco is often somewhat at the whim of what the steel companies make available to them. In this way, the choices that other manufacturers make on which steel to use affect the steel produciton environment. A discussion about this is going on in Cliff's thread about steel properties.

Also, always better to say: "the Yojimbo doesn't appear it'll fit my needs very well." This is merely a statement of preference, as the Yo2 is most certainly not useless.

If companies reserve steels in order of their performance (wear resistance), then they can keep the lesser steels relevant. If Spyderco suddenly switched the Military/Paramilitary from S30V to S90V as the base steel while changing the price purely based on the increased cost of manufacturing, then its likely that the sales for the S30V and VG-10 models would experience a major slump as there's a perception, perhaps ramified by marketing, that S90V runs laps around, say, VG-10 and S30V. Of course, demand for the Paramilitary would go even higher, which would itself increase cost. Thing is, I can see a noticeable difference in wear resistance between my S30V Manix and ZDP-189 Endura, so is grindability the prime cost concern after all? Is S90V perhaps even a victim of planned obsolescence? It has been around for awhile now.

As has been mentioned increases in wear resistance are only one factor of many, and I think you're falling into the trap of "greater carbide volume = higher performance." It's clearly not this simple, and I would say that the verdict is still out on what carbide volume makes the most sense for a "general use" pocket knife. This is not the same as a computer company including a certain amount of RAM this year in its high end model so that it can include more next year.

Also, as a grammar snob I have to thank you for introducing me to a new meaning of the word ramify, meaning to spread out into branchlike parts, or make complex. However, I don't think it's appropriately used here. Good options would have been: perpetuated, bolstered, or fueled.

[farnorthdan]

Best bang for the buck out there right now is the Manix2 LW S110V, for around $100 just cant be beat. The YO2 in S90V is a must have for any :spyder: collector, very versatile knife in my book, wicked cool blade made out of a great steel and it carries quit well. If you haven't tried either of these, you need to before making any judgments.

[MacLaren]

I saw the title, and couldn't help think, why not more M4, CTS-204P/M390
Not that I don't like S90v & S110V. They're great.

[TomAiello]

I have been rotating my Manix 2 in s90v with my PM2 in M390 recently.

More s90v and s110v would be fantastic.

But honestly, I think Spyderco is moving in that direction with the Manix and Native S110v. How long until we see a regular production s110v PM2?

[bdblue]

I've been wanting to get some S90V Spyderco but the only options are $300 to bentoboxshop for the military or buy the knifeworks.com Yojimbo

The Manix 2 XL in S90V is fairly easy to find on the forum, sometimes for less than they cost new! (And I don't understand why.) The Manix 2 LWT S110V is very good and very inexpensive, and I understand S110V to be a step above S90V.

I'd liken it to cars. Sure, we would all love to have a 2-seat sports car with 500hp, so why are there so few cars offered this way?

I'm plenty happy with my 400hp 4-door, 6-speed, although I would like it more if it had the 500hp LS7.


My EDC rotation has knives with 154, S30V, M4, 204P and S110V. I like the better steels, at least knowing that I have them, but I'm not sure I can tell the difference in my normal use. I'll buy them if I have the opportunity, but I don't want to pay a lot extra for that. Tomorrow I'm carrying my Manix 2 LWT S110V. I cut a bunch of cardboard with it as a test, until it got pretty dull, and I didn't have any problem reprofiling and sharpening it.

There was a proposal to update the steel and charge more to cover the manufacturing cost. Well I see that the S110V Manix 2 is about $30 more than the standard LWT version. That's a pretty low price for a big upgrade in steel. One of the PM2 sprints was about a $40 upgrade to go from S30V to 204P. OTOH The Manix 2 Xl was about a $120 upgrade to go from S30V to S90V (and CF scales).