5 nanometer edge on a knife made from 1 micron carbide steel "vancron superclean"

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Barmoley said:
I've been wanting to try vancron sc for a while, but it is very expensive and few people use it.
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Mind numbing cost for the steel.

The added Nitriding of the powder before HIP sky rockets the cost but is the way to get past the nitrogen limit and also get the ultra fine Vanadium Carbonitrides.

It unfortunately will always be a rare steel for knives.
 
Deadboxhero said:
Mind numbing cost for the steel.

The added Nitriding of the powder before HIP sky rockets the cost but is the way to get past the nitrogen limit and also get the ultra fine Vanadium Carbonitrides.

It unfortunately will always be a rare steel for knives.
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Yeah, sucks it is so expensive. Should have wear resistance of k390, vanadis 8 class, but higher toughness, smaller carbonitrides and with the hardness you and Roman are getting edge stability should be amazing.
 
Yes Vancron Superclean is amazing. A friend and I currently do forging experiments in order to reduce cost, because the thinnest sheet sold is 12millimeters thick and EDM-cutting is super expensive. First test knife from it (integral chef knife) was tested two days ago and we are very happy so far. But micrographs still need to be made and furher testing. That being said, the price for Vancron Superclean will always be high. But, it is worth it, if you check out this video - it outcut Maxamet. Sure, "only" production Maxamet, but still impressive I think. And that at much higher toughness:
 
Oh and in case Vancron Superclean is too expensive for someone, I always HIGHLY recommend S390 Microclean - some people initially doubted whether the video below is legit, but enough customers now confirm: (The video is cut a little aprupt, but if you pause when I show the edge, you can see it is deformed, but not broken. Of course I don't recommend doing that with ANY knife, but it goes to show that, with proper heat treat, even such high hardness steels don't need to be baby'd. 0.3millimeters behind the edge on this one. At 0.2millimeters it started to chip when doing this test.)
 
What are an almost resonable super steel kitchen knives ?
 
On the downside, Without super accurate sharpening the benefit is really not that big though.
 
Eloh said:
On the downside, Without super accurate sharpening the benefit is really not that big though.
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I am not sure if you refer to the 5 nanometer edge or Vancron Superclean as a steel- but I think you made an universally true statement that applies to every well heat treated, high quality steel knife. In fact, it is a proven statement - in the following video, a fine edge was compared to the coarse edge showed in the first video I linked. It did so much better:


This is why I encourage people to learn sharpening so much and sell all my knives with either a 0.125 or 0.5micron edge. (Vancron Superclean I actually sell with a 0.025micron edge.)
 
It was more of a general statement, yes.
In the German kitchen knife community there has been a lot of quantitative testing with different sharpening methods and different steels. The conclusion was the same as yours.
To really exploit the full potential of these steels a good guided system is almost mandatory.
 
Eloh said:
It was more of a general statement, yes.
In the German kitchen knife community there has been a lot of quantitative testing with different sharpening methods and different steels. The conclusion was the same as yours.
To really exploit the full potential of these steels a good guided system is almost mandatory.
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Either a guided system or very very good sharpening skills, yes. On a good day, I can get the same edge retention with freehand sharpening like I can with my Wicked Edge. But it took me 7 years of very frequent practice to get there. Definitely not for everyone. So it's great that nowadays, decent guided sharpening systems can be bought for less than 100Euros or USD/Swiss Francs. (This doesn't apply to scandi to zero edges of course.)
 
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@Roman - A bit off, topic, but now that I have such a capacity here: What would be your favourite stone and strop/compound progression (free hand) for 62-65 hcr - say blue, white or semi-stainless steel - for use in the kitchen for cutting tomatoes, onions, carrots etc? Grit and brand?

Im just curious what your personal research has concluded when it comes to fx japanese knives for the kitchen and vegetables. :)
 
Nice thread! How much more expensive is the Vancorn Superclean compared to M390 for example?
 
Eloh said:
It was more of a general statement, yes.
In the German kitchen knife community there has been a lot of quantitative testing with different sharpening methods and different steels. The conclusion was the same as yours.
To really exploit the full potential of these steels a good guided system is almost mandatory.
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Was it ever determined what the mechanism behind these claims is? Once the correct abrasive is used and if the edge is formed and is fully deburred, what else comes into play when we talk about precision and noticeable differences among steels? Guided systems allow better angle control and possibly better pressure control, is there anything else that prevents free hand sharpening from exploiting high wear resistance steels? It seems reasonable that if the same person sharpened two steels that were very different in the edge holding potential in the same way, assuming good sharpening in both cases (correct abrasives, no wire edge, etc) that there would be a significant difference between these two steels. In other words, it sounds like there is a difference in how you get there not just the final result.
 
Barmoley said:
Guided systems allow better angle control and possibly better pressure control, is there anything else that prevents free hand sharpening from exploiting high wear resistance steels?
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no

Barmoley said:
that there would be a significant difference between these two steels
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Sure, but the difference increases significantly with a stable angle (and pressure control).
imo with a highly wear resistant steel you need way more 'strokes' to polish the edge. the more strokes you need the more potential to f up your edge.
Also edge retention increases on high wear resistant steels significantly with a higher grit finish, compared to simple carbon steels. That will increase the amount of sharpening even further with more potential for error. jus tmy 'hypothesis' to explain the observations being made though.
 
Eloh said:
no



Sure, but the difference increases significantly with a stable angle (and pressure control).
imo with a highly wear resistant steel you need way more 'strokes' to polish the edge. the more strokes you need the more potential to f up your edge.
Also edge retention increases on high wear resistant steels significantly with a higher grit finish, compared to simple carbon steels. That will increase the amount of sharpening even further with more potential for error. jus tmy 'hypothesis' to explain the observations being made though.
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OK, thanks. The potential to mess up the edge due to more difficulties in sharpening and especially if going to higher grit and more passes makes sense.
 
So the 5 nanometers refers to the abrasive size used to finish the edge and not the edge width? I could not imagine a .005 µm edge width with 1 µm carbides.
 
VICTOR J CREAZZI said:
So the 5 nanometers refers to the abrasive size used to finish the edge and not the edge width? I could not imagine a .005 µm edge width with 1 µm carbides.
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Before I answer your question regarding the the edge width: remember that the carbides need to be cut by the sharpening medium-because we need to keep in mind that the vast majority of steels has carbides well over 3-5 microns in size. They wouldn't get sharp at all if our sharpening stones wouldn't be able to cut straight through them. And in fact, high hardness carbides such as Vanadium carbides cannot be cut by non diamond or cbn stones - which is the reason many people have problems sharpening high vanadium content steels or sometimes even chromium (stainless) steels, because they just tear out the carbides. Refer to this document by Böhler Uddeholm (pages 4 and 5) for a very brief overview/source of what I just laid out: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAAegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw1TnRYOYFdHpirb9TIR3wFH

Now, that being out of the way, the 5 nanometers refer to the used last grit. I don't know about you kitchen folks, but we EDC guys state the last grit used. ("6000 grit edge", "1micron grit edge" and so on.) In order to know the actual edge width ("apex diameter") I would need a SEM microscope. Which is very high on my wish list, but a liiiittle pricey. Should I ever own one, we will be able to find out the actual edge width.
 
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Knivperson said:
@Roman - A bit off, topic, but now that I have such a capacity here: What would be your favourite stone and strop/compound progression (free hand) for 62-65 hcr - say blue, white or semi-stainless steel - for use in the kitchen for cutting tomatoes, onions, carrots etc? Grit and brand?

Im just curious what your personal research has concluded when it comes to fx japanese knives for the kitchen and vegetables. :)
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I would need you to be more specific. 😅 Because "semi stainless steel" can be anything from CPM 3V which is still good to sharpen with silicon carbide all the way up to S390 Microclean which features a lot of Vanadium carbides which require either diamond or cbn. (Page 4 and 5 of this link will shed some light on this: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAAegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw1TnRYOYFdHpirb9TIR3wFH)
So to be on the safe side, just go with either resin bound, vitrified or metallic resin bound diamond stones - or CBN, if you don't mind spending extra cash. 400, 1000, 6000 grit, then a few passes on a 1 micron strop for your use case. Send me a DM if you want some product links/brand names.
 
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Barmoley said:
OK, thanks. The potential to mess up the edge due to more difficulties in sharpening and especially if going to higher grit and more passes makes sense.
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One good way to get around this when freehanding is to use very aggressive sharpening stones - the most aggressive type I know are CBN ones. Unfortunately the most expensive type - right next to vitrified Diamond. But it helps a lot!
 
Roman said:
One good way to get around this when freehanding is to use very aggressive sharpening stones - the most aggressive type I know are CBN ones. Unfortunately the most expensive type - right next to vitrified Diamond. But it helps a lot!
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Thank you Roman. I've been suspecting and saying for a while that one of the reasons people don't notice differences in low and high wear resistance steels in kitchen knives, and often prefer edges of simple steels, is at least partially due to the use of "incorrect" stones/abrasives when sharpening high wear resistance steels.
 
Barmoley said:
Thank you Roman. I've been suspecting and saying for a while that one of the reasons people don't notice differences in low and high wear resistance steels in kitchen knives, and often prefer edges of simple steels, is at least partially due to the use of "incorrect" stones/abrasives when sharpening high wear resistance steels.
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I absolutely think that this is the reason. When the abrasive cannot cut the carbides, you might even end up with LESS edge retention than a classic high carbon steel at high hardness. Now there is nothing wrong with classic high carbon steels. But once/If people realize that they just have to use either diamond or cbn stones for these "super steels", the super steels will give the classic high carbon steels a run for their money I think. Personally, I also like old school Steel but definitely prefer modern PM "super steels". Because when it comes to edge retention, even more so when going for a fine, "scary sharp" polished edge finish like on that Vancron Superclean knife the OP posted, super steels are the clear winner. Yet no hamon on those and only very few jnats can cut them. (Yes, some jnats can actually sharpen high vanadium PM steels I found out! Made a video on it ages ago on my Instagram.)
 
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Barmoley said:
I use his vitrified diamond stones. Do you prefer CBN metallic bonded "stones" when sharpening high wear resistant steels?
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Actually, I still cannot decide what I like better and I use both. Cannot go wrong with either of them imo. The metallic ones are easier to dress tho with this little trick I came up with - but then again they wear much faster than the vitrified ones so myeah:
 
I would actually be interested in the metrology used to determine it is truly five nanometer abrasive. I mean, that's extremely small, like several times smaller than a virus. Surely the metrology is out there, of that there is no doubt but I'd still be curious how it was quantified. The reduction method would also be interesting though it may well be proprietary. I mean, you're not getting five nanometer feed material.
 
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