Show HN: I built a knife steel comparison tool

Looking at some of the comparisons, the data appears to be (I could be wrong) scraped from this article by Dr Larrin Thomas based on his personal research and testing, possibly also including some of the other articles on his website: https://knifesteelnerds.com/2021/10/19/knife-steels-rated-by...

yes, I will add this info.

thanks for the feedback

Also maybe the steel that Wusthof uses, whatever it is. They don't seem to tell you what is, though.

It's obviously a SEO farm filled with pure AI slop. Can't believe it made it to the front page here.

"In this comprehensive guide, we compare metal A vs metal B" with 100s of similar articles for every unique permutation of metals. Yeah right someone did that comparision... "Best pocket knife", "Best filet knife", Best Chef knife", bla blabla

> All of it looks LLM generated?

Yeah, it's padded out to an absurd degree in the formulaic way that it does.

thanks for sharing, i will check these out... previously was unaware of these

yes I plan to add these

Yep. I see VG10, which some Japanese knives use. But I wanted to compare it to SG2, which is not listed. Nor AUS10.

And also the non-stainless Carbon steels.

It's not hard, just expensive. You need to pay a lab to do it, and the testing is very much destructive most of the time.

"Edge retention" is mostly achieved through high abrasion resistance. Sharpening is removing material by abrasion until the edge has a small radius, so ease of sharpening is mostly achieved through low abrasion resistance.

Being soft or brittle can also make forming a sharp edge difficult, requiring very light pressure in the final phases of sharpening to remove or avoid creating a burr in the case of softness, and to avoid chipping in the case of brittleness.

Of course all of these properties are affected by the heat treatment, which is often more important to the performance of the knife than the composition of the steel.

You don't get to have everything.

The point of a graph like that in this case is merely so that you can choose which aspects you need for a given application.

You decide which aspects you can live without to get the ones you can not live without, for a given application. Because it's either that or have a dull knife, or a broken knife, or a rusty knife, etc.

My favorite kitchen knife is tough and sharp but rusts easily. It's ok since it doesn't live in a tackle box on a boat, or in my leatherman.

At best you can have "good all-season tire" which at least doesn't completely suck to the point of failuire in any dimension but doesn't excell in any either.

that is correct, edge retention, ease of sharpening and toughness usually come at a trade off to one another.

A harder blade is more brittle (less tough) and keeps its edge longer... but is also more difficult to sharpen once it gets dull.... generally speaking.

Cruwear! from my practical testing, it's been the best I've tried. From the tool, it represents quite well.

I went through manually and these appear to have the highest volumes:

H1

H2

CPM Magnacut

Sandvik 12C27

Interestingly they are all weak on Edge Retention.

good idea... i could add that

will add, thanks

Yeah, ceramic knives get a bad rap but they have their uses.

I have a lot of knives (and have made my own) and I love ceramic knives. For those that don't know, ceramic knives are sintered zirconium dioxide; they are super sharp and retain sharpness far better than steel, but are brittle and not practical to resharpen. As a result your average knife enthusiast tries them, sees that they chip easily and can't be fixed, and condemn them as throwaway garbage.

The secret is to use them for an application where they'll never hit something hard or rough. For example, using them where they might hit metal or bone, they'll eventually chip - possibly into your food! Or using them on a cutting board, they'll dull, although slower than steel. But use them on soft objects only and they'll last virtually forever.

They are very useful for cutting cardboard boxes open, or tape, or plastic. You can use the same ceramic knife for 1000+ cardboard boxes and it will cut like a hot knife in butter, while the same steel knife would need to be resharpened several times for the same smoothness.

Oh, and they are non-browning for food like apples or avocados, which is nice. The browning you see in cut foods is caused partly by polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that can be activated by iron and other metals. Steel knives shed tiny amounts of iron into food as they cut, so if you use a ceramic knife, your food will look fresher for longer.

We received a two knife set as a wedding gift many years ago. This was well before they were common, and it was quite a nice gift. I strongly agree with the "don't buy a knife you can't sharpen" point that folks often make, but ceramic knives do have their niche.

They're great for minimizing oxidation along cuts. E.g. cutting iceberg lettuce and avoiding having the edges turn brown. They're also very lightweight, which is nice for some things, while being bad for others. I'd never use them the way I do my workhorse chef's knife, but there are certainly tasks I prefer them for. Dicing lots of hot peppers comes to mind, oddly enough, as does some very precise and relatively tedious knifework like making very even matchstick cuts for carrots/radishes/etc (the large one has a very wide blade, which is great for this, and is lightweight enough to reduce fatigue).

Overall, I can see why folks like them. It's not really the "no need to sharpen" point. It's more the "lightweight and very thin" part, along with a non-oxidizing edge.

I'm still kind of opposed on principle, I suppose, but I do use the set we were gifted fairly often, despite having some very nice steel cutlery that I'm very fond of. I can't blame anyone for buying them now that they're priced more reasonably than they used to be.

I haven't used one for food yet, but I picked up a cheap ($35) kyocera as a workshop knife and it's been great; dropped it on concrete and knocked a 1mm² chunk off of the very tip, but the edge is still great after six months of casual abuse (mostly cardboard, rubber, and plastics.)

Leans too far into disposable culture. Even a solid steel knife and a cheap electric sharpener will last longer.

And you can sharpen all your paring knives etc.

ceramic knives are great, but they are basically disposable because once they chip (they will) its incredibly difficult to sharpen them again.

I would never buy a knife you can’t sharpen. Nothing stays sharp forever.

*knives

Also - paring knife, not pairing knife.

I feel like the prices have gone up for years & years. I thought my Spyderco was a cheaper alternative to Benchmade, but now they're basically all $100+. $65 is now $130 or so.

My guess is collectors that'll buy at almost any price. Some knives from the '80s that used to cost $25 are simply eye-watering today (well past 10x).

> Wasn’t the sharpest knife

Sharpness is a product of sharpening, which should be done regularly for good results.

Benchmade's pricing is based on irrational customers being willing to pay premium prices for knives that really aren't competitive anymore.

If you want a replacement knife that's very similar for a more reasonable price, consider the crossbar lock version of the Vosteed Raccoon.

Benchmade has raised their prices over the years to the point where it's hard to justify most of their knives unless you're a big fan with disposable income.

Look up the Ritter Houge, or something like that. I think it's a less (maybe) expensive version of the griptilian from the same designer. I think. Could be wrong.

Television, survival, bushcraft, social media.

It used to be knowledge based survival skills, but today it is all gear based survival skills. Prices have gone crazy.

amazing, thank you

Shhh, I like those placeholders as dead giveaways that content was AI-produced. Don’t call too much attention to them or we’ll lose this way of identifying slop :)

I thought, maybe OP had it in their draft for long and directly pasted it.

hahah oops, i did use AI to produce this hacker news post :)

(We've edited that bit out from the text above now.)

are you interested in steels? what do you think would be better?