Tool steel or Stainless?

[silver & black]

I'm a big fan of tool steel as a woodworker. All of my woodworking tools are tool steel.... O1 and mostly A2. I have a few plane irons in Magnacut. I'm not overly impressed with Magnacut for Plane irons, but I don't hate it.

I own more knives in tool steel than I do in stainless. It's not that I think stainless is bad.... it's just that "most" of the really cool steels are tools steels. So far, in my return to the knife rabbit hole, I seem to gravitate to the tool steel blades. Maybe because of my familiarity with tool steel???

What do you prefer.... and what draws you to it?

[Brock O Lee]

I like both, but they serve different purposes. In general I prefer stainless steels for everyday carry, and tool steels for work knives.

EDC knives cut food, fruit and gets wet. I like their low maintenance nature.They are my light users for all kinds of small tasks.

Work knives are kept oily, do dirtier work and rarely get wet. They do the bulk of the utility jobs around the house.

[Jesla]

I have no use for tool steels in my knife use. I stopped using tool steels when 154CM became widely available from major manufacturers. For me tool steels offers absolutely no advantages in my use and hasn’t for many decades. These days no steel, stainless or otherwise, offer any advantage over S110V. We will see how magnamax works out, but as of now is S110V and H2 SE are all I need or want.

[kobold]

I mostly think along the high toughness to high edge retention axis. I certainly prefer stainless or semi stainless for food prep (S110v, Magnacut, 3v). For EDC i can go both ways, I love patinas on M4, Maxamet, Rex45, but my K390s are a bit messed up, despite keeping them oiled.

[BeggarSo]

I think that I do not know anything at all.

So you are going to answer this yourself for yourself and it may be expensive to do so, and you cant rely on your answer now to be the same later.

Recently Sal in another post concerning choils and the people who do not want them.

Sal called out a long term forum members of good standing and many contributions of great value to the community.

Sal said I remember when you were all for choils.

And not doing so to be mean but pointed out that what we are engaged in this Knife hobby will over time change for us.

As we gain more and more experience of the many facets our values will become different and maybe change or a new focus will come.

In my personal journey I started with what is the best Stainless Steel and what can take use for years to come I only intended to own 1 knife the perfect knife.

Later I discovered many different edge geometries.

Later what is the best all around steel?

Later discovering as with so many things in life the best all around does not excel at any one thing, like a person that claims they are a great multitasker they generally do not do any thing well.

To the extremes and tool steels, back to the beginning.

I have a great appreciation of all the different steels and models and geometries.

Now I am at a point where I value that which likes to get sharp quick rather than that which pretends at true sharpness for a long time but is time consuming to bring back to sharp even with the best abrasives.

Stainless is okay, toughness is ok, edge retention in the extreme not so okay, as that is wear resistance which equals stubborn and time consuming to maintain.

I would rather a steel that takes to simple sharpening tools and arrives swiftly to sharp cooperativly.

Then again after I explore this for a while it is still subject to change.

When anyone says this is my favorite knife or steel I often smile thinking how often I thought the same.

In the end there are some good things I have learned, Sal is a good teacher but to be a student makes a teacher a teacher.

As a student I say the following to be true.

There is no such thing as a grail knife.

The Edge is a Ghost.

Keep studying and watch how your tastes will change and dont try being stubborn holding onto an old truth when a new one is right around the corner and the gift is waiting for you anew.

School can be expensive.

[hobbyist]

Situational. K390 is my favorite steel: I have a wharncliff dragonfly at the front door for packages and a delica in the garage for breaking down cardboard. Both get daily use and I sharpen them every 4-6 months.

For food, I have a serrated stainless and I find that the serrations are so good it doesn’t matter the steel. Right now I use a vg10 stretch 2 xl and will switch to a bd1n pm2 lightweight because I like using compression locks.

For my edc, unless I’m camping or doing something in the outdoors, it’s a SAK rambler and I use it waaaay more than expected.

And if I am camping or doing something outdoors I carry either an M390 delica or LC200N salt.

I can see magnamax replacing the whole lot (except the SAK) if it comes in the form factors I like.

[Evil D]

Tool, up until I need to prioritize corrosion resistance enough that caring to prevent it becomes impossible or annoying. But I do appreciate stainless and in the past did prioritize it due to the work I did at the time, where having a knife I could outright neglect was very convenient. I'm really looking forward to having MagnaMax in a folder, it'll be one of the closest to having both that we've ever had.

[benben]

Given the choice I'll always take tool steel. I've never owned Maxamet or any of the REX's but I have M4, 3V, K390, Pro-Cut, 80crV2, and plenty of Cru-wear, I'm very pleased with all of them!

[abbazaba]

M4 was the first time I really enjoyed a steel over others. K390 was the second.

[TkoK83Spy]

Absolutely tool steel. I don't really care or worry about corrosion, I've got enough knives that if one gets messed up it isn't the end of the world! Sharpening response on tool steels makes my knees weak haha!

[Coastal]

I don't have a preference for either of those huge categories, but if I could have only one knife I'd want it to be as close to rust-proof as possible. That would be H1/H2. So, back-to-the-wall, I guess it's stainless.

My actual situation is that I can have many knives, and looking at my collection, I don't prioritize tool or stainless.

[M_J87]

I've had a few knives in tool steel that I've all gotten rid of except K390. I thought I'd love the patina on K390 particularly but I found it to patina much too fast for my liking. I use my knives on a lot of fish and game and light food prep and it's paramount to be stainless in those scenarios IMO. Oddly enough I also found K390 to have a strange smell I don't want transferring to said food. I don't think I'll purchase another tool steel but never say never.

[Wandering_About]

I love the edge holding of high alloy non stainless steels like 15V, K390, etc., but for every day carry and use I prefer stainless due to its rather worry free nature in all environments. These days I most commonly carry MagnaCut because although it doesn't have the edge holding of, say, 15V, I never really have to think of it... it just does everything I need it to do without worry and in my use does not corrode. Years ago I did carry non stainless a lot (even on rainy days or on hot summer days where knives got drenched in sweat) and got tired of the maintenance. Not to mention... MagnaCut is more or less a stainless 4V equivalent, so pretty much stainless tool steel... best of both worlds for me.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Stainless guy here. I have some tool steel and carbone. I am horrified that it took man so long to invent stainless.

But steel is only what we Temporals use until we get access to tachyonium ;@)

[Synov]

3V is my favorite in general but MagnaCut is great too if you need super stainless, although I've never had a problem with 3V corroding. For higher hardness: 4V, K390, BBB 15V, and Z-Max. Here is what it looks like when you profile the geometry of each steel to have the same toughness:

[James Y]

I overwhelmingly prefer stainless in my pocket knives.

I also prefer stainless in fixed blades. Kind of depends on the steel type, though.

Of course, my machetes are all tool steel, or at least non-stainless.

Jim

[Fastidiotus]

I like both but during a 50-60hr work week my time is worth more to my laziness than to my knives. Treat your tools well and they will treat you well in return. I don't have the will power to care for an uncoated tool steel during the work week. All a stainless knife ever asks for is to be touched up and occasionally cleaned by being forgotten and sent through the washing machine still clipped in my pants.

For me a coated tool steel offers the best of both worlds. I don't tend buy uncoated tool steels but I seem to be in the minority on that one. The slight grabby feeling of dlc is well worth the tradeoff of making most of the blade essentially stainless. You still have to take care of the pivot area though, so for a work knife I still carry stainless almost exclusively.

[enix311]

Tool steel mainly because I like the patina

[vivi]

I strongly prefer stainless in pretty much every situation.

I typically only buy carbon blades when that's all that's available or they're significantly cheaper than stainless versions (e.g. one fixed blade I like it $28 in the carbon version, $110 in the stainless).

[kobold]

It's worth remembering (what Sal mentioned the other day) about rusting and degrading first and foremost happening at the edge, where there is never any DLC (nor patina).

I still think tool steels are fine for EDC, exactly because if you keep using your knife, there is not much time for corrosion to develop and even if it does, it's easy to catch it early.

Problems happen only when they go unused in humid environments for a period of time unprotected. That's why they are packaged with moisture absorbers which maybe more effective than oil?