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Select up to 5 steels to compare their performance
Note: All properties are rated on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the highest performance.
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Corrosion Resistance: Higher values indicate better resistance to rust and staining
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Toughness: Higher values indicate better resistance to chippin
19 Comments
kurthr
It seems like the steel data comes from larger database on hardness/toughness/corrosion? Can you say where that data is coming from or if it's your own measurements? If you could show the data (eg HRC) that supports the radar chart it would be easier for a purchaser to know if their steel actually meets the purported performance after purchase.
I guess what confuses me most is that heat treatment/hardening seem crucial to understanding how a knife is going to perform, but that seems left out. It's even possible to have a great treatment on a blank and screw it up (overheat) when doing the initial edge shaping. Furthermore, the sharpening angle of a blade edge seems to greatly affect edge retention especially for softer steels. It would be great to know what angles different (properly hardened) steels could reasonably support. That's something the user can control after purchase.
bberenberg
I would be interested to see all the steel types ranked by total surface area within the polygon.
reconnecting
Impressive work. I've always wondered how it's possible to "decompile" steel types. For example, one of my everyday use knives is a Kabelmesser pocket knife (WW2). It's probably from Solingen, although there's no logo on it.
I really like it because of the high-carbon steel, but I have no idea what specific type of steel was used, as I don't see much of such steel these days.
adamgordonbell
Anyone else like ceramic knives? I have a couple paring knives.
Super sharp but very brittle.
LooseMarmoset
As a knife-maker, may I request 80CRV, 1084, and 1075? They're very commonly-used steel grades in knives.
Also, 440 has a number of grades.
Cool tool!
EDIT: It might also be interesting to point out the manganese levels, and whether the steel is a deep- or shallow-hardening steel. Those factors help indicate whether the steel will form a hamon or not.
Retr0id
> [Maybe attach the screenshot here if HN allows, or link to it]
I think the AI intended for you to edit out this part?
eichin
Hmm, it feels like there'd be some interesting crossover between this and https://seattleultrasonics.com/pages/knife-database but while the "Quantified Knife Project" has a lot of numeric test-result data, it looks like they only have "marketing names" for the steel used (if you click through the links in the "model name" column for each knife.)
(Ah, the raw data is available https://github.com/seattleultrasonics/Quantified-Knife-Proje… has a "Blades" tab which might be enough to correlate.)
keisborg
I looked through most of the charts, and I it seems like you cannot get the best of two worlds. Can you get good edge retention, ease of sharpening and toughness at the same time?
It would be nice with an example on how knife steel properties work. I assume there are balanced tradeoffs.
out-of-ideas
comparison is kind of fun; i'd recommend keeping static colors per selection though (when toggling items, the change to colors of items already in the graph made it a bit annoying to decipher)
dvh
So what do knife people think about outdoors55?
whalesalad
Tangent: I had a decent benchmade griptilian folding knife for the last 10 or so years. Wasn’t the sharpest knife but I loved the form factor, grip, etc.
I left it on the bed cover of my truck the other day while unboxing some towing equipment in a parking lot and took off accidentally.
Looked at Amazon to replace it and they’re going for $200+ now. Is this just Amazon tax? Tarrifs? Something else? No way in hell I paid that for it initially. It was probably $50! It’s listed at $160 on their website right now.
Why?!?! It’s a simple plastic body and a small piece of steel. Make this make sense.
williadc
Sandvik 14c28n is common for budget knives. It would be nice to see it on this list.
antisthenes
Obligatory link to the amazing blog about knife sharpness:
https://scienceofsharp.com/
hunter-gatherer
Cool tool. I recently picked up a White River knife in CPM Magnacut. I could have used this tool when I was shopping around, but it looks like I landed on a good knife steel anyways. I haven't used it enougj yet to work on sharpening it though, so we'll see how that goes.
nntwozz
Nice, requesting boron steel be added.
metalman
more interesting if it included which steels play nice when bieng forge welded together, to which I can suggest plain carbon steel in the form of a used horse shoe, and 5160 in the form of a vdub coil spring.
Used air ride springs yield large bilets of 5160, that I use for tongs and die blanks, stiff stuff
coil springs from trains are another large diameter stock, and torsion bars are also sometimes large, round, AND , pre tapered if someone is dreaming of a claymore to wave around.
the problem with a lot of the more exotic steels is that they are "hot short" meaning that they will litteraly just crumble and fall apart if forged at too high a heat, and at too low a heat, they are impossible to forge, so heat controll must be good, and there is no time to waste either
as each heat does some hurt to the metal, so aprenticing with cheap but good spring steel is the way to go.On the flip side there are some steels that are "cold short" and cant be touched
durring a dull or black heat.
working with strikers is good fun, and you can move a lot of metal with 4 people, one with a 4 pound hand hammer, and three with 12 pound sledges, draw out blanks in a jiffy
abcd_f
Any plans to add Japanese steels?
https://knivescombined.com/pages/steels
L29Ah
where <noscript>??
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7
Where is the data from? How can I trust it? All of it looks LLM generated? Some of the plots and data from the comparisons seem to be missing or jumbled?