What's the best steel for an EDC pocketknife?

everybody Nick here and I've got a couple of viewer requests to talk a little bit about steel for pocket knives and steel is one of those things that's very important obviously because with a pocket knife if the steel doesn't actually hold an edge doesn't actually cut things doesn't keep that edge it's not a very good functional tool but it's also something a lot of people put a little too much weight in so I'd like to talk a little bit about kind of the real role of steel in the knife world a lot of this is going to be old information till you people have been around forever but you know hey whatever um so let's first talk a little bit about what you get when you upgrade and change your Steel's first and foremost you get a change in edge retention and wear resistance so this refers to how long the edge stays sharp if you put a really sharp edge on a knife and you then you know spend the afternoon cutting cardboard or something like that that's gonna be really hard a knife or cutting into cement bags um how long is it gonna stay sharp for on a knife with poor edge retention you know you might get through 30 boxes before it starts dulling up and it's no longer useful for a knife with rune credible edge retention you know you might go the entire day or maybe into the next day or maybe another day after that who knows depending on your use case edge retention can be very important if you're somebody who's using your knife a lot a lot a lot and just to back up for a second any other steels I'm gonna talk about even the bad ones are gonna be just fine for cutting an apple every day or something like that this is really a question of how often you use your knife and for what purposes um now the fact there is toughness I you can get a knife that has incredible edge retention but pays a cost in toughness so you know if you actually you know what a whack on the knife with something you know do your but awning or something else like that the knife might shatter or if you hit something hard instead of deforming the knife might chip out or something like that and so toughness is another important factor for some use cases if you really beat not a knife you want a knife blade that favors toughness over edge retention stain resistance is another factor there are knives that are very easily stained meaning that they corrode and rust very easily I am their knives that are that stainless stainless steel it doesn't mean it won't stain it just means it stains less and that be a very good thing then in fact there are knives that just do not stain at all but a rust-proof but you pay a price there but stain resistance is another factor if you live in a very dry area you're not on water very often you don't really care so much about this but if you're out on a freaking boat in the ocean all the damn time this is going to be top on your list so those are the kinds of things that changing Steel's win you along with one other factor that's not quite in the same category but the ease of difficulty of sharpening if you're brand new to the knife world you've never sharpened the knife you don't have great supplies for sharpening you might be a little more cautious getting one of the modern super Steel's with crazy wear resistance because they're going to be a pain in the neck to sharpen it's not something to keep in mind another thing a lot of people put a lot of information up the chemistry in the knife world and chemistry is important but it's not the only thing that's important so let's talk about a couple of other factors before we go into the Steel's themselves so one really crucial aspect of Steel's is how they're heat treated every different Steel is going to have slightly different methods for heat treatment that's just the nature of the beast then you know some Steel's need to cool in air some are quenched and oil whatever um and actually doing the heat treat is a very complicated process and it takes skill and some factories do it right some companies do it right and some companies do it wrong and a good steel that's poorly heat treated this makes for a really crappy knife and vice versa their Steel's that that way above their pay grade when the heat treat is right but you know a bunch of other people it might be crappy so you can't really talk about just the chemistry of the steel unless the heat treat is right and so that's another fact that you got to keep in mind some guy who set up a custom shop out of the back of his van he might be using em for something fancy but if he's got his heat treat screwed up he's going to be producing crap knives with beautiful steel so that's an important thing and that's a reason that two knives using the same steel might perform very very differently if they've got different kinds of heat treat or different abilities and heat treatment another issue is blade geometry um every different blade is going to cut differently and there are ways that you can make a blade that's got just really crappy geometry that's not going to hold an edge no matter what steel it is and so this is a key aspect of knife design that makes a big difference and in a lot of ways a much bigger difference than steel so blade geometry can be a big factor to knives and 154cm can be entirely different if one of them is designed well and the other is designed poorly that's another huge factor your sharpening skill is also crucial if you get the sharpening right the edge will hold on for a lot longer than if you get the sharpening wrong and some cheap knives come from the factory with a really poor sharpening and as a result you know it seems like the edge goes away instantly maybe the steel is fine but the sharpening wasn't then it broke off the burn so that's another factor here a good sharpening stays around longer even on bad steel than a bad sharpening so the ideal is good sharpening great steel but you know whatever and then choosing the right steel for the job is really pretty crucial here because there are some Steel's that you would not want to use on a boat there are some Steel's you would not want to use you know bushcrafting and there are some steels you wouldn't you know you wouldn't definitely not want to use if you're breaking down cardboard all day so you need to think about what steel is right for you not just what steel is the best because that's not a thing so let's actually get into some of the Steel's here um first and foremost I'd like to talk about the Steel's that are just bad news and I'm really hoping you can read this I'm sorry about that but yeah um your Steel's that are just bad news are things like just plain unmarked stainless stainless is a problem because well you know it just means stainless steel that could mean pretty much anything same thing with surgical stainless that doesn't mean a damn thing surgeons have the knives too um unlabeled steels if you ask somebody oh well what's the steel they say oh it's stainless steel well they just say oh well it's our top grade aircraft steel that doesn't mean a damn thing they're not willing to give you on some kind of a descriptor of what the Steel's chemical composition is they're probably full of crap and it's probably crappy steel similarly made in Pakistan I have no problems with that as thin as a country um but they're making some really crappy knives and so if you go to a flea market and you see a knife that's marked you know Pakistani steel it's probably not very high quality in terms of that sorry about that Pakistan 420 j420 plane and 420hc for most people just bad news they're not good and nowadays we can do so much better and then finally our six steel just needs to be retired so if somebody walks up to you and wants to sell you a knife with any of these kinds of steel I think that you should just say no thank you flat out it's just not a good idea and you're not gonna you're just probably not going to be happy none of these this is all bad news and that's a deal-breaker for me then there were some Steel's that are either barely adequate or barely inadequate depending on who you talk to um things like us eight or eight CR thirteen MOV you know there are some like this is our steel here this is an Aussie and here's an eight CR thirteen MOV and these knives are okay um this tends to be a budget steel and you know for that it can be fine no it'll hold an edge enough but it's not gonna be great and so I personally I'm enough of a snob at this point that I'm not buying knives in our say iterate through eight CR thirteen unless I'm doing a review or unless I need something that's basically disposable I'm for forty a steel is just kind of it's in that same category yeah for most people's everyday life it'll be fine but it's just barely adequate it we can do so so much better than that and so I think twice before picking up anything in four forty a if you're in love by all means do cts bd1 is just it's very similar to the eights at CR thirteen and again it's just not a great steel um it's maybe a little better than some of those but again no dice uh you 14 C to a ten you'll see this in a lot of like your low-end car shots that's another one of those Steel's that's so I guess it'll work but it's not great and then on Bucks 420hc so I talked about 420hc is being bad news up here but buck actually works with a really good heat treater um for knives like your your buck 110 here and the reviews coming by the way and they're able to get the 420hc to a point where it's pretty decent I mean it's not great but it's good enough and so if you come across a knife that's well there any one of these kinds of Steel's you are say your 440 au be the one your 420hc from buck only then you know okay it's fine for me these are probably deal breakers but I'm a snob so there you go so at this point we've talked about the Steel's that you just should say no to we've talked about the Steel's that are fine in a budget folder but you should probably think twice on and you know are going to be barely adequate for most EDC desks and the rest of them are pretty much all the same and I don't mean they're all the same in terms of qualities each one has their own strengths and weaknesses but for an EDC folder anything on this list over here is going to be just frickin fine so don't freak out too much about it all of these are no problem good to go Steel's that you don't have to worry about they're gonna be fine let's go and do a little bit of detail here the attend 95 carbon steel is really common on slip joints as well as kind of traditional kinds of knives it's big issue is that it rusts pretty readily because it's got a lot of carbon but it's big benefit is that it's really tough and it takes a great edge so it's a great thing on like your survival knives like this kind of thing that you're going to be beating on a lot because it's not going to chip it's not gonna crack it's not it's really really tough but if somebody tries to sell me a modern kind of folder in 1095 I'm just gonna kind of laugh because that's a little weird h1 is another steel that has a very specific application this is a very very stain resistant steel I in fact I don't know that it can rust at all they've done some chemical magic through it which basically makes it so that it's stainless completely and you lose cement retention for that so h1 is not a great choice for walking around every day you know in the city in a dry climate but it's a very good choice if you're on a boat or if you're you know right on the if you walk on the box or something like that um each one can be very good there but it's a specialized steel so these two are both very specialized the others are just plain good the go 440c is just fine especially if the heat treat is done well Viji then is you're stealing your delica here great steel easy to sharpen keeps an edge long enough for them there anything no problems you 154cm are WL 34 ats 34 are basically the same steel my favorite knife period is the greens ma Norseman and that's what that's using our WL 34 great steel i'm easy enough to sharpen good at your tension it's not you know the top performer but it's damn good no problems d2 is a tool steel that's very tough and takes a good edge but is a little bit prone to rusting so you got to watch out for that and xhp is a stainless version or at least it stains less it still got some rusting issues at times a version of your d2 and you know i it's less fun to sharpen than i'd like and so i don't know xhp isn't my favorite but it's just fine there's no problem with xhb practically speaking s30v is are really common steel these days in your higher-end knives and even in your lower end that's starting to get down there um and it has great edge retention and the only real issue with us 30v is that it's kind of a pain to sharpen um and it's not very fun to sharpen either i just don't like doing it but that said it's just fine if you get a knife and s30v it's kind of that the edge is going to last forever no problems at all you zdp 189 like here this is yours EDT 189 dragonfly here or your s9 TV s110v are knives that really favor edge retention and wear resistance over your toughness i'm not to say that these are going to shatter at any moment but they're more likely to chip if say you're cutting a cardboard box and you hit a hard staple or a screw or something like that relative to other knives that are more likely to deform or just you know bend over to one side those are easy to fix so if you need really high edge retention but it doesn't need to be particularly tough these are great choices but if you need a little more toughness this is not where you want to go these bottom four are my personal favorite steels um CPM 154 is basically the same chemically as 154cm but it's done with powder metallurgy that's a really fun thing to look up and research that's what the CPM 154 is this guy here the gram raised amid that great great and sharpen great to carry just beautiful um but yeah that's a beautiful steel to me uh your s35vn is what Chris Reeve knives uses a lot I believe he actually had a hand in the development of it and a lot of other modern folders and I just love me some s35 it's beautiful to sharpen got great edge retention it's just nice I'll say that it's a beauty steel um m4 his I don't have anything at m4 at the moment but it's a very very very strong edge retention steel it may be kind of top of a top of the line right now in terms of edge retention and it's also pretty tough it doesn't have the same toughness issues as EDP or 110v um great steel total pain in the neck the sharp and I have nightmares about sharpening m4 I've done it but oh it just takes forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and you know that's good because you don't have to do it very often but hoo boy that's a take some time but I do like m4 if somebody says I like em in the folder an m4 I'm intrigued ok let's talk and then finally this family the m390 cps 204 pcp M 20 CV family great they've got a really good mix of shopping ability edge retention toughness these may end up being my favorite Steel's at a certain point so those are kind of all of these Steel's are no problem so what's the final verdict on steel choice practically speaking the very very best knife steel is any of these and that's kind of a cop-out but at the same time it isn't because for most people's EDC kind of uses your cutting envelopes your cutting paper your tubing opening packages breaking down cardboard that kind of thing you're not gonna really super tax any of these modern steel and any of them will probably be fine especially if you're willing to do a little bit of touch-up sharpening here and there and for some of us we love sharpening so it's like I go I got the sharpen um and you know yeah so it's just not a big deal maybe you and your specific life will run into a limitation realize your edges chipping a lot so you might want to move to something with a bit more toughness maybe your dull at the end of every day so you move to something with better edge retention but practically speaking if you're looking at a new knife and you're thinking to yourself huh is this steel okay if it's on this list is good to go if it's on this list it better be a cheap knife and if it's on this list throw it out and of course there are other Steel's that aren't on this list but probably should be things like your L max your crew where you're at forty all of those kinds of Steel's are good um I just haven't had enough time to play with them and if you do a google search on a new steel you'll find 50 threads on blade forums where a bunch of people who are probably actually metallurgist complaining or talking about discussing the nature of each steel and going back and forth so you know it's yeah it's kind of cool so overall a lot of people really obsess about steel and I'm one of them I got the other than that I got the hedonic adaptation going I'm a steel snob but the steel is not the most important thing if the my functions well if it's of good quality if the heat treats got the blade geometry is good and you can assume that the heat reads good for most high and manufacturers um you're gonna be just fine don't worry too much about it and if you actually come to the limits of any of these you're gonna be you're gonna have to be just as knowledgeable as the rest of us steel snobs and you'll get there anyways so I hope this has been helpful don't worry do though much about steel it's fun to think about but it's not the key to the kingdom it's not the be-all and end-all of the knife world it's just another interesting factor to consider hope this is helpful and I have yourselves a wonderful rest of your day

Channel: Nick Shabazz

Views: 461,450

Rating: 4.7793956 out of 5

Keywords: EDC, Knives, Steel

Id: o_scXk2JAZc

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2016