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.
Thanks to Lukas Bell, John Miles, Miika Jussila, Johan van Zanten, Dirk Pinkerton, Robert S, and Joseph Albert Padia for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
This article has a moderate amount of background metallurgy information in it. I explain briefly the necessary background information and provide links to earlier articles with more complete explanations. However, to get a full picture of steel metallurgy and heat treating, the easiest way is to read my book Knife Engineering.
Thanks to Joel Sunderland for becoming a Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporter! And thanks to pog for increasing their support.
The steel ratings table from my new book Knife Engineering has now been added as a Patreon-exclusive with M398 added to the table.
Thanks to Aram Compeau, Gordon Olafson, and John Walton for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! I have an update on Patreon about the “rare earth” elements in AR-RPM9 steel.
I completed a minor revision to my new book Knife Engineering to correct a few typos. Some readers outside the USA also asked for more conversions from Fahrenheit than were present originally, so I incorporated both Celsius and Fahrenheit everywhere in the book in the text and tables, though some images and charts still have only one temperature scale or the other. I wouldn’t say that the changes in the revision are big enough to buy a new one if you have it already, this is not a new edition, but if you haven’t purchased one yet this is as good a time as any.
Thanks to Gabe Newell, George Thorpe, Jason, Rogelio Escobedo, Wes Newman, and Wayne Sears for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! On Patreon there is a new article exclusive to supporters about Artisan Cutlery’s exclusive steel AR-RPM9. The composition was recently announced so I analyzed the composition.
Thanks to AJ, Tobias Hangler, Benjamin Whitaker, Mike Latahm, Mike Pini, Jonathon Pye, Allan Benjamin, and Zaur for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
My new book Knife Engineering is now in stock at BladeHQ.
