Thanks to Dakian Delomast, 四季 浪月, joseph j fonzi, Nicholas Baird, Nick Dombrowski, Douglas Custom Knives, ElementalBreakdown, Daniel Manns, Drew Certain, and Michael Shuey for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! And Jeff Schafer for increasing his contribution.
Thanks to Saptak Dutta, Bill Clancy, Cap Hayes, Electro_Static, Coll Gomila, Kody Ekstrom, Nico, Tom Ewing, Ken Johnson, Brent Stark, Jesse Warren, Malachi Chou-Green, Luke Haag, Bill Harrison, John Geelhoed, and Julian Hamilton for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
Thanks to David Reem, Colton, camilo, Brendan Gildea, Vince Koacz, Monery Custom Cutlery, Curt E, Shannon Sanders, Brazilian Blades, Rory Kelly, Brunhard, Zachary Chumley, Noel, Adam Nolte, Gundam lupus, and Jan Huch for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! I still don’t know when it will be time for the announcement of my new steel so until then you can get all of the data on its properties exclusively on Patreon.
New Steel and New Patreon Supporters
On Patreon we now have a full set of experiments on the new knife steel I designed for Crucible and Niagara Specialty Metals. The results are extremely promising. Those results are only available on Patreon until it is time to do the formal announcement. Thanks to Chester Dussault, Bob Burland, Matt Masuda, Scott Decker, Philip Dempsey, David Heleander, ConvencienceShout, Chris Pregent, Egan, Morgan Noonan, Michal Galovič, Kumar Muthusamy, Eric Divine, Simon Moeskjær Balle, and Ben Horridge for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
Thanks to Scott Larimore, Ryan Davis, David Mullin, Andrew Lutomirski, Nathan Thurman, Brome McCreary, Anthony Smallwood, Leitgeist, and Mike Walton for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! On Patreon we now have four updates about an upcoming new knife steel with very promising results.
Thanks to Mike Strickland, Joe Dickens, Carson Reid Davis, Kenneth, Jordan Danz, Wade Smith, Jeremy Kline, and Ryan Guldbrandsen for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! I have posted initial results of experiments testing my new powder metallurgy knife steel. So come join Patreon if you want to see how the steel is doing before everyone else.
2020 had a lot going on, of course. But a lot of good came in the area of knife steel. Let’s go through some of the highlights.
New Steels
The big announcement in terms of new steels was the Spyderco-exclusive CPM SPY27. This steel was announced in January of this year, and I offered early analysis based on the released composition here: CPM SPY27 Analysis. That wasn’t the end of my SPY27 coverage, however, as I was able to get a bar from Spyderco and Niagara Specialty Metals and perform a range of experiments on it, including hardness, corrosion resistance, toughness, and microstructure evaluation. Read the results of my experiments here: SPY27 Testing.
Thanks to Markus Stark, Nils, and Brent Stubblefield for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters. And Kyle Daily for increasing his contribution amount.
Knifemakers vs Users and What they Care About in Steel
Thanks to Will and Justin Mann for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
My book Knife Engineering is available for Christmas and Hanukkah presents.
History of Vanadis 8
The history of Vanadis 8 goes back a lot further than just the steel itself, really we have to know the history of 10V to know all of the background that is relevant. You can read about CPM-10V in this article. CPM-10V is important because Vanadis 8 is intended as a replacement for CPM-10V, or at least for similar applications. CPM-10V was developed by Crucible in the late 70s, as the first powder metallurgy steel to utilize a microstructure made up of only vanadium carbide, as opposed to chromium and molybdenum/tungsten carbides. This gave 10V a combination of good toughness along with very high wear resistance from the ~10% vanadium and therefore ~17% vanadium carbide.
Thanks to Aaron @ Gough Custom, Aaron McVay, Mark Scott, Jeffrey St. Claire, Grant Seim III, and saiiiiiii1 for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
I’m eventually going to stop plugging my book Knife Engineering in every new article, but that day is not today. Go buy one for yourself, and everyone you know, as a Christmas present.
