Monosteel workhorses and honyaki

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IMHO clad steel is simply a remnant of a world where fine steel is far - far more expensive than Iron. (edit) of course this is not to suggest that dampening, etc. dont account for anything or that differential HT is a useless feature in kitchen cutlery. Far from it.
 
In terms of thermal expansion I believe pure iron is essentially identical to carbon steel, which in this case is no more really than 1.5% of carbon. On top of that the forgings are aloud to normalize for 3 months before final grinding to shape. I believe they would have to see some very high temps for even slight thermal expansion distortion to take place, and all would likely return to original shape upon cooling as no bend-set would take place at the likely minimal displacements. And after all these knives have been constructed this way for many decades now.
 
@rick alen What if you wanted a stainless but soft material (which does work with stainless-clad carbon knives, which however are almost always double bevel, which would probably have no problems as long as the tensions don't rip it apart - you might even get a beneficial effect from them)?
 
As to Laren's comments here, just let me say that it is not impossible for a Ph.D. student to have a slight misconception over basic principles and concepts, and these misconceptions can carry on until that brick wall finally gets hit. My quick google of the matter I'd say is possibly not 100% reliable either. But in empirical terms my own subjective experience seems to indicate that hardened steels resist bending more so than when annealed. Same subjective experience when comparing full hard 7075 aluminum (right around 100K psi tensile by my actual testing) to full hard 6061 (less than 60K psi tensile), all with my associate's insistence of no resistance to bending difference by his understanding of YM.
 
The thermal expansion properties are really only key for forging etc... its when you are playing with those high heats that the small differences between different steels may have some issue.

As for its young's modulus... pure iron seems to get 211 GPa, structural steel is about 200 GPa, stainless is somewhere in the 180 to 200 range, so basically similar, and not enough to cause any difference.

Probably more to do with historic cost of pure steels.... does make me wonder what the history behind honyaki is.
 
Did I miss something here? Oh yeh, no direct connection to the OP, but indirectly interesting NTL.
 
rick alen said:
In terms of thermal expansion I believe pure iron is essentially identical to carbon steel, which in this case is no more really than 1.5% of carbon. On top of that the forgings are aloud to normalize for 3 months before final grinding to shape. I believe they would have to see some very high temps for even slight thermal expansion distortion to take place, and all would likely return to original shape upon cooling as no bend-set would take place at the likely minimal displacements. And after all these knives have been constructed this way for many decades now.
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Ive had the steel core of a San mai blade tear itself apart during ht because of the rate of expansion/contraction/whatever was so different from the iron cladding.
Somewhere on the internet is a picture of a sanmai knife that pulled itself apart down the middle like a banana split, something to do with cryogenic treatment. Pretty wild.
 
tsuriru said:
IMHO clad steel is simply a remnant of a world where fine steel is far - far more expensive than Iron. (edit) of course this is not to suggest that dampening, etc. dont account for anything or that differential HT is a useless feature in kitchen cutlery. Far from it.
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You're right, that is your opinion.
 
I have two monosteel blades, HD2 and Ginga. I do not feel any difference compared to san-mai. I tried though, I really tried!
 
I haven't used nearly enough knives form any worthwhile generalizations. I can say that the few clad gyutos I've used felt dull and "damped" and the couple of monosteel ones have felt lively. There could certainly be some placebo effect here. And also the effect someone mentioned above of conflating different kinds of sensory information (sound of the knife against the board, etc.).

There are also too many variables in my comparison. The clad gyutos I've used were thicker than the monosteel ones. And cheaper!

So it's not possible for me to draw any important conclusions, but since I like the feel of the monosteel knives, I've developed a bit of a prejudice. I'd be more shy about buying a clad knife without trying it first.

As far as the value of tactile feedback ... that's hard to say, other than I like it and I find that it inspires confidence.
 
Dan P. said:
Ive had the steel core of a San mai blade tear itself apart during ht because of the rate of expansion/contraction/whatever was so different from the iron cladding.
Somewhere on the internet is a picture of a sanmai knife that pulled itself apart down the middle like a banana split, something to do with cryogenic treatment. Pretty wild.
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Dan, that was a knife by Ian Haburn - he mixed the blades up and thought he was treating a monosteel knife, bur it was san-mai. Looked very spectacular indeed.
 
Matus said:
Dan, that was a knife by Ian Haburn - he mixed the blades up and thought he was treating a monosteel knife, bur it was san-mai. Looked very spectacular indeed.
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The force involved must be extraordinary.
I had something much less spectacular happen with W2 and wrought iron, in standard ht.
 
Pre-tensioning/compression is used in other engineering areas to make stuff act harder/stiffer than it is... and forcing things to cool while they are "arguing" allows you to keep compression in a material (isn't that what happens on a microscopic level in hardening?)... is that taken advantage of with cladded blades?
 
LifeByA1000Cuts said:
Pre-tensioning/compression is used in other engineering areas to make stuff act harder/stiffer than it is... and forcing things to cool while they are "arguing" allows you to keep compression in a material (isn't that what happens on a microscopic level in hardening?)... is that taken advantage of with cladded blades?
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Gotta correct you here but pre-tensioning is predominantly used to pre-deflect structures... aka introduce a hog into a beam so that once loaded it becomes flat or a slight sag rather than a large sag... this works because generally modern structures are deflection governed rather than strength governed.
 
what-do-you-guys-do-in-your-club-in-physics-well-we-talk-about-physics-properties-of-physics-so-its-quote-1.jpg


Just making fun of myself here
 
Dan P. said:
To be fair, it is an opinion borne (sp?)out by the evidence.
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Wrong. If you think San Mai still exist because of costs then perhaps you should
Check out the prices kato, shig and others are going for compared to mono super duper retention, edge stability or some other BS.
 
They never said they exist currently for cost. they said their historical use was likely for cost.... now-a-days it is more historic use/practical benefit of softer cladding.

And PS the price of goods for sale doesnt necessarily reflect the cost of materials inputted.
 
malexthekid said:
They never said they exist currently for cost. they said their historical use was likely for cost.... now-a-days it is more historic use/practical benefit of softer cladding.

And PS the price of goods for sale doesnt necessarily reflect the cost of materials inputted.
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Duh. What do you think the cost of making you're own core steel runs ya? Not cheap. Even in modern times San Mai still rules.
 
Ummm aren't you just arguing against yourself.... if the cost of making your own core steel.is so high then the logical answer is that san mai is the cheaper construction... cause you are making less of the expensive steel.... but you know...
 
malexthekid said:
They never said they exist currently for cost. they said their historical use was likely for cost.... now-a-days it is more historic use/practical benefit of softer cladding.

And PS the price of goods for sale doesnt necessarily reflect the cost of materials inputted.
Click to expand...

Also, if you think the same heat treat that creates a nice core steel also creates a terrific stiff stable
Blade then you are just lost. The characteristics of nice core
Steel differ from entire blade integrity(for lack of a better phrase)unless were talking about differential hrc mono is just compromise.
 
San-Mai Go-mai Hachi-mai.....my oh my! It was stimulating while it lasted, alas, it is fast regressing into something I no longer wish to be a part of. I'll see you folks on another thread I guess.
 
Mate I have no idea what you are talking about.... however it seems you wish to ignore ghe information given by people that are knowledgable in this other than just knives... aka basically all steels are equally stiff... plus or minus a few percent...

Meaning in terms of stiffness, mono, clad, honyaki don't make a difference. What would is the geometry of the blade.

I can't see what you are arguing apart from just arguing for the sake of it...

Sorry but it is highly likely than san mai was originally created due to the exceptionally high cost of creating pure steels for using on edges.
 
malexthekid said:
Ummm aren't you just arguing against yourself.... if the cost of making your own core steel.is so high then the logical answer is that san mai is the cheaper construction... cause you are making less of the expensive steel.... but you know...
Click to expand...

If you are unwilling to understand the benefits of diff hardening then I don't know what to tell ya. It's not about economics, it's about creating a favorable blade that doesn't cost $800+ for
Jmakers or whatever suckers are willing to pay for American makers.
 
malexthekid said:
Mate I have no idea what you are talking about.... however it seems you wish to ignore ghe information given by people that are knowledgable in this other than just knives... aka basically all steels are equally stiff... plus or minus a few percent...

Meaning in terms of stiffness, mono, clad, honyaki don't make a difference. What would is the geometry of the blade.

I can't see what you are arguing apart from just arguing for the sake of it...

Sorry but it is highly likely than san mai was originally created due to the exceptionally high cost of creating pure steels for using on edges.
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Stiffness? It's not all about stiffness.
 
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