An EDC Thought Experiment: MABS
I have often wanted to have a blade steel equivalent of WAR. WAR is an advanced statistic in baseball that allows you to compare the value of players, regardless of era, position, or playing time. It is based on a concept called “Replacement Level.” A replacement level player is a player that could be immediately replaced by a freely available player. In knife steels, I have long wanted to find a “replacement level” equivalent and I think I finally have thanks to Pete from Cedric and Ada Outdoors.
In one of his recent videos, Pete asked if people would notice a secret swap out of steels in their knife collections from great, high end steels to some bland middling formulation. That got me thinking about steels, what we need, and what we buy because we like the ideal of the steel. In going through this set of hypotheticals, I realized that I had accidentally stumbled over another thought experiment, one that reveals something kind of important about steel. Here is the modification of Pete’s original hypothetical:
In the swap out scenario Pete described, how cheap a steel would it take for you to notice the difference? And then, how long would it take?
There are really four things being tested here: 1) minimum acceptable steel for you; 2) the practical, everyday uses you have for a knife; 3) how much you use each of your knives; and 4) how you maintain your knives.
In working through this, I realized a few things.
First, folders and fixed blades, for me, have a different threshold, with a fixed blade having a significantly higher threshold. Second, the minimum acceptable blade steel for folders is much lower than I thought. Third, this is a good test for what you actually need in a knife.
For a long time now I have thought of D2 as my minimum acceptable blade steel (“MABS” because I am going to use this phrase a lot). But the reality is I probably would never notice if a high end steel was swapped out for D2 simply because of how I use my folders most of the time, how I maintain them, and how many I have. When I had a smaller collection and the ZDP-189 Dr agonflywas carried much more often, I would probably notice pretty quickly, and by that I mean a month or two. D2 doesn’t hold up as well as ZDP-189 in regular use and it loses that bristling sticky edge quicker. But when you own 20 folders, you don’t use any one of them enough to notice that difference, especially when you religiously strop and maintain your edges.
So D2 is well above my MABS, given my current collection. I would probably notice if my favorite steels were swapped out for AUS 8 or 8Cr13MoV. I know that I would notice the poor edge holding of something like 440B or 440A or something in the murkier shallows of the Cr range as I notice the constant need for sharpening on something like a Victorinox Alox Cadet, which sports the buttery soft 1.4116 steel.
The interesting part of this thought experiment is that a new knife knut will have a much higher MABS because they don’t have as many knives and thus are required to use what few knives they have for everything. They also probably have a less thorough and/or regular maintenance ritual. If you had one folder and it was a ZDP-189 Dragonfly, the step down to something like D2 would be noticeable, and the drop to AUS-8 might be noticeable in one extended cutting session.
For me, with lots of sharpening gear, a love of sharpening, and a collection that struggles to fit in a backpack, my MABS is much much lower. I know how the DF2 performs and so I expect it to do certain things, but that is because I have known and used that folder a lot. For a random knife, with M390 or D2, it would take a long time to notice a change to the steel used on something like the QSP Parrot I have in for review, which sports 440C.
I think my folder MABS is probably 440C.
Fixed blades are a different story for me. I tend to use them very hard and with very specific uses. I don’t for example use them to open packages or do all that much food prep. Instead I tend to use them around the house for yardwork or to bludgeon trees and wood into submissions. I know my MABS for fixed blades is much higher. I have three main fixies I use: the Busse, the Bark River, and a BK16 that I am evaluating. I can tell the difference almost immediately between the 1095 on the BK16 and the other two steels. I can’t really tell the difference between the INFI and the 3V in one session, but over time I would probably figure out that the chippy knife was 3V and the other one was INFI. SK-5 is probably below my fixed blade MABS, as is 1.4116, and possibly VG-10. VG-10 is tough because I can tell the difference on a Spyderco fixed blade, but the convex ground Falkniven in VG-10 seemed to stay sharp forever. Once you get to something like S35VN, then it gets harder to tell. I think I would notice how difficult S30V is to sharpen compared to other steels.
I think my fixie MABS is probably S35VN.
All of this, plus my recent obsession with sharpening (thanks Covid-19 for all the extra time) has made me fundamentally reevaluate steel. I know this is a shocker, but Larrin Thomas is right. Its not the chemistry of steel that matters all that much. You can get your 10V REC Spyderco and carry it around all day, but the reality is you paid for ephemera and not performance. The chance that you max out the 10V compared to say S35VN (yes, PM2OG, I wrote that for you) is probably zero.
At this point the uber exotic steels are like holo foil super signature inserts in the sports card world—they are chase items for the solely because they are chase items. It is a mutuation of knife as tool into knife as collectible. And that is great. Every knife knut benefits from this arrangement. Eventually one of these high end steels will make sense to use in a general use knife and it will appear on a high end version of the Delica. Until then, Spyderco gets to make money on people test marketing steels and crazy collectors pay $500 for a Para3.
But let’s be clear this is definitely NOT about performance.
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