Heat Treatment & Steels

 Heat Treatment

 

The heat treatment of my blades is extremely important to me. I do all my heat treating in house and utilize  methods such as cryogenic treatment at liquid nitrogen temperatures as well as extended thermic cycling in order to ensure maximum quality.

As you can see on the picture on the left, the microstructure of my steels is significantly more refined compared to what already is considered gold standard on the market.

 

If you want to see how long my knives cut in comparision to other knives on the market, I invite you to refer to the independent edge retention testing done by several Youtubers. The most extensive and thorough testing I am aware of at the time of writing is being done by Outpost 76 on Youtube. He takes into account the most variables; aiming for maximum repeatability. You can find one of several of his tests of my knives via this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQxAa1kd2WM&t=1050s

 

The chart on the left is taken from a conjoint excel sheet where several youtubers gather the results of their edge retention testing.  The numbers represent the amount of feet a one inch section of the respective knife blade was able to cut through a standardized test medium. (Specific, ASTM defined type of corrogated, double walled cardboard, cut at 90°)

 

Link to the data displayed on the left

 

Available Steels

 

Stainless:

  • Vanax Superclean
  • Nitrobe 77
  • AEB-L
  • LC200N           
  • M398 Microclean
  • M390 Microclean
  • RWL34

 

Non / Semi Stainless:

  • Vancron Superclean 
  • CPM Rex 121
  • S390 Microclean
  • K390 Microclean
  •  Z-Wear
  •  Z-Tuff (Tougher than CPM 3V at higher hardness)
  • Uddeholm Caldie (So called "matrix steel"; can hold extremely thin geometries)
  • S7
  • 1.2562 (German version of Aogami Super, but with a little more tungsten)
  • Apex Ultra
  • Aogami Super
  • ZDP-189