Steel Inflation
You can tell when someone joined the hobby based on what steel they think is “okay.” If AUS-8 and D2 are pretty good steels, you started paying attention to knives in the 80s. If you think that M390 is the baseline, then you started about 5 years ago. We all understand this on an intuitive level and we all fall prey to this. For me, as I have written many times before, most people don’t need something better than M390. But that shouldn’t be the end of the analysis. The reason why is the topic of this article, something that sparked in my brain while snowblowing a driveway once every four hours for two days.
Steel, like almost everything else, is a product and products all come packaged to us by marketing people. Now it is a bit different than, say, Benjamin Moore paint in that its specs are its marketing, but there is marketing associated with it nonetheless. Go look at forum posts and videos from the late 90s. People refer to VG-10 as a super steel. That’s the consumer repeating marketing speak. There is no such thing as a super steel anymore than there is a “best buy” house paint. Its all relative and mostly what the law calls puffery (which is jargon for acceptable levels of deception when engaged in the marketing or sale of a product).
The issue I have is not the idea that steel gets better or that most steel is good enough. Those things are probably not really controversial. What I want to put out there is this—what if we STILL aren’t where we should be? S90V, like on the Monterey Bay Knives Tusk, is pretty darn good as an all around performer. But what if what we think is “good enough” is only because what we have had before has been comparatively terrible? In one sense I think people think of steel like graphics in video games—most games look good enough and while we can make games better looking it is only by small margins. What if, instead, we are a year, five years, or ten years from a HUGE leap in steel technology? Stephen Jay Gould theorized that that smooth diagonal of evolutionary diagrams in the early 20th century are inaccurate because the reality is something more like a staircase ascending from left to right. What if we have been on one tread since the advent of PM technology and we are about to jump up to another tread in a few months?
One problem we have is that marketing people make money selling us new stuff and so they have to tell us that whatever the new stuff is, in fact, some HUGE upgrade or change, when, in fact, it is probably not. For me, there have been a few steels that really seemed and felt special. ZDP-189 felt so different compared to a market flooded with butter knife bullshit like AUS-8. The Caly3 in ZDP-189 was a masterclass in knife making. The Dragonfly II in ZDP-189 was the knife that launched this site. It was hard, an almost mean steel that scared away material instead of actually cutting it (that was the only explanation of its elite edge retention). It’s awful to sharpen and probably only truly stainless in the most liberal sense, but ZDP-189 was (is) fucking cool. I also really like INFI like on the Busse Forsaken Steel Heart pictured below. And yes, I know, it is likely technically a heat treat variant of A8 Modified, but boy is it fun to smash around with and hack off tree limbs. If ZDP-189 is mean, INFI is brutish, as in the Hobbes quote about life. It’s a thug of a steel and fun as all get out to play around with on a knife.
The issue I have is that I don’t know if there is a steel out there in the future that is twice as hard (not just some percentage harder). What if that steel is twice as hard, completely stainproof, and twice as tough? I don’t think this is likely. There is a lot of science in steel production, so I don’t think metallurgists are leaving a ton on the table. But what if there is some huge breakthrough, a quantum computer equivalent leap? We shouldn’t be complacent. We shouldn’t assume what we have is the best or, as often is the case as time passes, good enough.
Here is the other thing—while most steels are good enough for opening packages, what you get when buying a modern folder is much better. Instead of settling for “good enough” steel, think about what you should be getting for the price. If a knife is $300 and comes in D2 something special has to be going on to make it a worthwhile choice in today’s market. Its not impossible for a knife like that to make sense, it is just much more rare. The Krein TK-3 Whitetail still comes across as a great value at $300 for a D2 knife because everything is exceptionally well done, even the D2 itself. Conversely, if you have a knife that is $20 and comes in 14C28N, probably the best non-powder steel on the market, that’s special all on its own. This is why the Ozark Trail Tanto is worth a look. Since most steels are “good enough” you should, instead, look for knives where the steel makes sense for the price. If you are spending real money you should get a knife with special steel.
“Good enough” is an enemy of performance. Victorinox’s steel is probably good enough if all you are doing is opening Amazon packages. But what if your steel was so good that it empowered you to do stuff you’d never do with a knife? What if the steel was so good that, like owning a truck when you didn’t before, you can expand your capabilities significantly? Don’t settle. But don’t believe the hype either. Try new steels, use new steels, and enjoy them. They are some of the best aspects of the hobby.
As a side note, I am going to start rating older steels lower in reviews. Generic M390 is a 1 now instead of a 2. So is S30V, S35VN, and 20CV. It is so widely available, even on relatively inexpensive knives, that it is more the average steel than a great one. Times change and the review scale should change with them.
PS: I have two knives right now with new to me steels (the Spyderco SpyNano in M398 and the Kunwu Compadre in Vanax) and Magnamax came out. Let’s go.
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