Got a bit of an urge to play with Luong’s knife again today and whittle through some Eucalyptus dead fall. I’m fairly hopeless and didn’t check how sharp the knife was before I started but I haven’t sharpened it since I slightly damaged the edge chopping electrical cable as per earlier post.
Anyhow, this is what I did with the knife earlier today.
Push cutting cross grain on that particularly stick sounded a lot like the ping you hear before you find a chip in the blade and I stopped to inspect the blade on several occasions. No Chips (!) and surprisingly enough it still cut newsprint cleanly.
I’m not sure what I’d compare Vanax SC (with Luong’s heat treat) to, but it seems to perform more like a tool steel than other stainless blades I’ve played with and my initial thought when I sharpened it the first time. I avoid burrs as best I can but I found what little burr I did raise cut off fairly clean like ZDP-189 might, for example.
None of this stuff is scientific but Eucalyptus is pretty hard so when you consider you get a blade steel that I certainly can’t rust, a stable edge that sharpens to silly sharp effortlessly and holds that high sharpness the way Vanax SC does and you’d have to think you’re on a winner.
Thanks Heaps, Luong!
This is definitely a steel I’d like to see more of and I’d be interested hearing more and maybe comparing notes with Gringo and Chad’s knife and Shawn with his. :)