Interview with Knifemaker Phil Wilson about Performance Blades and His Journey with Knives

Thanks to Andrew Demko, Andre Bassett, and Landon Horne for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! My plans for research are expanding with each new supporter and I’m very excited about the possibilities. Please sign up if you are interested in funding knife steel research. 

Phil Wilson Interview

I talked to Phil Wilson the other day after having not spoken in several years. I was immediately reminded how brilliant he is and how much thought he has given to knifemaking and his knives. I asked him if he would be willing to be interviewed for Knife Steel Nerds and he agreed. Here is the interview:

What sparked your interest in knives?

My Grandfather was a machinist and he made knives back in the 40’s and 50’s with some for my Uncles to take to WW2. They were made with power cut off saw blades and phenolic, Bakelite, and Lexan type clear plastics for handles. I have seen knives of this era and type called “radar knives.” My Grandfather could make “anything” and I wanted to be like him. He let me work in his shop with power tools as early as 8 years old and I basically made knives out of sheet metal and used walnut for handles.  I worked summers as a mechanical technician during college and had access to a machine shop after hours and lunch. I made a couple of knives with 420 blades. They came out ok for looks but would not cut anything. I found out later that the blades had to be heat treated to harden. One of the machinists heat treated a couple of blanks for me and that was the start of my interest in heat treating.

When did you start making knives?

Later in the early 80’s my son brought home a book on knife making by David Boye. I think it is still available and is a very interesting read; it has good instruction on making blades with various saw blade materials. I made a few knives in my small garage shop and caught the bug once again. Later I was trying to sharpen a commercial-made stainless bladed knife for a fishing trip and it was so soft that the edge just bent back and forth. I decided then that I would find good materials and make a knife that would be hard enough to hold an edge and be nice and crisp to sharpen. I found out about 440C and bought some from Jim Sornberger who had a knife supplies shop in the Bay Area back then.  Later I got a copy of “Knife Making” by Bob Loveless which is an excellent reference for anyone just starting out making knives. I have done a bit of genealogy study and found out that my knife making grandfather’s family go back many generations as metal workers and blacksmiths in England. My other Grandfather’s family were hunters and fishermen back to early immigrants from Scotland into Northern Ireland.  The outdoors and metal working are in the blood so I guess I can’t help myself.

What kinds of knives do you make?

I like to make utility-type hunters and fillet knives.  The first fillet knife was an outgrowth of need. I was filleting a box of bottom fish on trip with my Grandfather back about 1976 (yes, the same grandparent knife maker above) and was not paying attention and jammed the blade into the cutting board and my hand slipped forward onto the blade and got a serious cut on my index finger. I went home and made a fillet knife with a good guard and good steel (440C).  Since then fillet knives have been a sort of niche with me and I enjoy making them due to the challenge of grinding and heat treating a long flexible blade.

How did your background in engineering affect your approach to knives?

I am retired from my real job in the engineering field and have always been interested in material science so researching and testing to find the best blade materials for the application is kind of a natural tendency.

Who helped you early on?

I am mostly self-taught from reference materials like the above books by Boye and Loveless.  Bob Engnath, who had a material supply shop, had a great little guide book on grinding and basic knife making which was also a great help.  I got great advice on materials and heat treating from Ed Severson, a metallurgist and good friend who worked at both Crucible Materials and Bohler-Uddeholm. Ed also has hands-on experience on heat treating industrial tools and gave great guidance on working with CPM M4 and other high speed and high alloy grades.

Who are your influences?

I believe I have been influenced by Bob Loveless who has the most beautiful knife designs on this earth. I actually met him at the Pasadena show in the late 80’s. He was sitting alone in the coffee shop at the hotel and I recognized him and decided to go by and say hello. He invited me to sit and we had a long conversation on metallurgy and design. He encouraged me to continue with fillet knives which was very important feedback from a guy like him. I remember him saying he would make all his knives out of CPM 10V except that all his customers want stainless blades. I also admire guys like Ed Schempp, Bill Harsey, and Tom Mayo who are good friends and have the special eye for design.

I also have to include Wayne Goddard who encouraged me to do my own testing and heat treating. He also managed to get me into the Oregon Show one year which started a 15 year attendance run that allowed me to meet and talk to the best in the industry. There was a lot of interest in steels and metallurgy when CPM S90V was introduced. I held a seminar on heat treating some of these steels at the Oregon show a couple of years running. They were held on Friday morning before the show opened for set up. We had large crowds that overflowed the room and had very good interaction with many knife makers and a few knife companies. I remember the Spyderco crew there several times. After a couple of years, we pretty much covered the ground so invited Crucible to do a seminar and I could sit down and listen. Ed Severson, metallurgist from Crucible came and did an excellent slideshow illustrating how CPM steels were made. He got questions and transferred a lot of good information and it went way past time allocated. There have been several seminars since and the last one both Bohler-Uddeholm and Crucible had tech guys there to present. I think this is still a good idea and suggest to Larrin it would be a great opportunity for all if he would resurrect the seminar one year soon.

What were your knife design breakthroughs or ah-ha moments?

One of the breakthroughs for me was when I realized I needed to do my own heat treating. At the time, I was frustrated with not being able to make knives and test them one at a time and be able to real time measure the performance and adjust the process. I still do them one at a time even though it makes for very low production.  Another key to quality control was adding a deep cryogenic treatment and I believe it adds a significant improvement to the heat treat process.

What is the perfect knife?

I don’t think there is a perfect knife. It is more like what is the best knife for the application. For example I would use a stainless CPM grade (like CPM 154) for a fillet knife and a high vanadium CPM tool steel grade (A11) for a hunter if I was looking for maximum edge holding. Stain resistance, and ductility is more important than extreme edge holding on a fillet knife.  We have so many great steels now and as I work with them I find sometimes they are more alike than different. I think it works best to settle on a specific grade, develop the best overall process and optimize for the use.

How do you approach knife testing?

Knife testing is a matter of trying to come up with a process that can be used in the shop to predict the actual field performance. That means you have to cut something be it rope or cardboard or carpet or??  I have found over time and with the help of Wayne Goddard the best test medium is manila rope. This material comes very close to what is encountered in the field both hunting and fishing and everyday use.  I am updating my web site to include the latest test method so will not go into detail here. It is very difficult to do a test that just measures the performance of steels. All the variables come into play when cutting. Edge geometry, blade thickness, sharpening, blade finish, rope differences, ergonomics, push cut or slice.  I have concluded that one can test and put blade materials in categories but without a precise measuring machine like a CATRA and exactly configured blade samples it is not possible to cut by hand and rate one material over another with scientific precision. I cut with each knife I make and expect it to fall with in parameters based on past experience and a whole lot of feel. I think when we are testing we are really testing the performance of the overall knife that day under those test conditions and the steel grade is just part of the package.

Can you give a chart summarizing the approximate edge holding of different steels you have tested?

If we talk about the same general knife with equal sharpening and geometry and optimal heat treating for the grade, based on past experience and the grades I am most familiar with I can put some in categories for edge holding and wear resistance.

Category 1: A11 grades, CPM 10V,  BU K390,  BU K294, Vanadis 10

Category 2: CPM S90V, CPM S110V, M390, CPM M4

Category 3: CPM S30V,  ELMAX, CPM 154,  154 CM,  RWL 34

Category 4: CPM Cru Wear, CPM 3V, CPM 4V,  BD1N

A ranking of stain resistance or ductility would be different of course. Again, choose the best steel grade for the application.

How do you develop a design, select a steel, and fine-tune a heat treatment?

Developing a design depends on the use of course.  An example would be a fillet knife that is going to be used in saltwater.  It makes sense that it would need to be a stain resistant grade. Pitting is the worst corrosion to clean up so we want pitting resistance. It also has to have good ductility (toughness) to take the flexing over time. Hardness equals strength so medium hardness like RC 59 to 60 is good to offset rolling and is not too high to cause chipping on a very thin edge. Category 3 has good candidates and based on experience and testing both CPM 154 and CPM S30V would meet the criteria.

What has led you to try so many different steels and heat treatments?

I have tried almost all the new steels as they have been introduced. Early on with Crucible we were working together to find heat treat process that lent itself to knife blades rather than larger mass and cross section normally used for tools and dies. I was writing tech articles and wanted the “scoop” on the latest grades.

When Bohler Uddeholm decided to introduce ELMAX and M390, K390 and K294 I was fortunate to receive samples to try out.  I was in a position to be able to take the time and had the heat treat equipment required for precision and repeatability. I reported back on results and heat treats that had worked out.  I also had done enough testing in the shop and field to be able to know when I had a process that worked.   Now as mentioned before I am tending to concentrate on maybe 8 grades that I know work for the various applications and relax a bit on trying to be the first to check out a new grade and report on it.

What do you like about the high vanadium steels?

Yes, I do like the high Vanadium steels.  They are not easy to work with and heat treat or finish and do eat up abrasives grinding belts. On the other hand I am striving as a hunter to make a blade that will hold a good working edge all the way through the field dressing, skinning, quartering and boning out of an animal the size of a bull elk and not have to be re-sharpened in the field. There are times in bad weather and darkness out there when we want to get the job done, not stop for sharpening or change knives and get back to camp. CPM 10V for example at RC 64 with good geometry and the right sharpening will do that.  K390 will also do a fine job and even with a bit more ductility to boot.  I know that since I have done it and feedback from hunters and other testers out there have confirmed what I have found myself. Hardness equals strength and also wear resistance so there are other steel grades that will come close and do the same job but real long wear resistance can only come from the hard VC primary carbides acting at the edge for wear. In the shop if the geometry heat treat and sharpening are right a good utility hunter will cut rope for a long time and you can feel it work on the first cut.

In what capacity have you worked with Crucible and Bohler-Uddeholm?

I think Rade Hawkins and I made the first knife blade with CPM S90V. He had and I think still has a knife supply business and we went together and bought a half sheet from Crucible.  I believe that RJ Martin got some material early on as well.   I had to build a new heat treat furnace since the one I had would only go up to about 2000 F. I now use the original for tempering only. CPM S90V requires 2100 plus and even at that temperature we had trouble getting a good as-quenched hardness per the data sheet. Crucible later changed the chemistry a bit and now it is very nice to heat treat. Later on, CPM S30V was introduced and I think Chris Reeve was the first to experiment and use that grade but I was maybe the second to make a knife and subsequently wrote it up for Knives Illustrated. That article and others are currently on my website under the article section.  I made knives and reported results on heat treating back to Crucible’s tech guys on what I found. Ed Severson was pretty new to the company then and was interested in knives and knife making. They did some photo micrographs of samples I sent and we kind of learned together on how to heat treat the grade for knife blades.  Frank Cox was also there at the time and was the Southern Cal rep for Crucible (still is but for Niagara now). He and I hit it off pretty good and I made an 8-inch chef for him with CPM S90V. I made one other for myself and still use it in the kitchen.  Those blades were a beast to finish. Those are the only two I made and I don’t know of any others out there by other makers.  I know Sal at Spyderco told me that early on they tried to make some CPM S90V blades and they stopped their grinders cold. Since then they have of course worked out the right abrasives and speeds and now have the fabrication of the grade down cold.

Later Bohler-Uddeholm decided to get into the knife blade steel business and I got some samples of ELMAX, K294 and M390 to try out.  I made several knives for them to test and also heat treated some samples for CATRA testing. I wrote up some of my results and they have that currently on their web site.  It has been a pleasure and honor to work with both of these companies over the years and contribute whatever I could to our craft.

How did you approach collaborations with Spyderco?

I have been friends with Sal at Spyderco going back to the early days at the Oregon Show. We had late night get togethers after show hours when the guys from Montana were still attending the show. It was called “psycho knife babble” and we all learned from each other about metallurgy and knife making in general. I remember Sal at some of those. Also, to mention some names, Ed Schempp, Barry Gallagher, Devin Thomas (Hoss), Rick Dunkerley, and Wayne Goddard.

Maybe 20 years ago Sal and I talked about making a fillet knife. I made several prototypes and remember at least one sample from the Japanese maker. I was a bit critical of the grind and geometry and after several iterations it finally kind of faded away. That is all ok and as I remember Sal asked if I had a fixed blade design that I would like to offer up.  The South Fork was born. I think there were at least two production runs on it but it was a very expensive knife to make, the first fixed blade Spyderco made with CPM S90V. The design was discontinued last year. I showed the Sprig to Sal at the SHOT show and he took it as a prototype and it is still in production and available in the last catalog. The Bow River is a fixed blade at a lower price point but with a good geometry and basic blade steel. Spyderco wanted to give it a try and asked me for a design a couple of years ago. Looks now like it is a go and is in the mid-year catalog. It is a very simple little knife and should prove to be useful and we are hoping for a good run.

Collaboration with Spyderco has been an interesting and rewarding experience and I have been honored to have been asked to be included in the group of makers and designers over the last few years.

How has the knife world changed since you started?

Yes, there have been changes in the knife world over the years.  Many new makers, a lot of new steel introductions (too many to keep up with) and some interesting information shared on forums and Youtube. Yes, controversial and sometimes contentious. There is a whole “tactical” world out there that has taken off in the last few years.  I still enjoy making knives but am still making them one at a time and at a slower pace. I am fortunate to be able to try new steels and experiment with heat treating since I don’t have to make knives for a living.  We got caught up in the California fires in 2015 and lost the house but my shop survived. We elected to not rebuild and have a home now about 30 minutes from the shop. As a result commuting and less access and time in the shop has further reduced the amount of knives I make but I anticipate making knives for at least 5 more years (around fishing trips to the ocean). I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some history and to have contributed to the craft over the years.

Phil

Vist Phil Wilson’s website here: http://seamountknifeworks.com/index.html