Any Ultimatum m390 reports?

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Ok, good news. One of our fellow members has very kindly offered to give this knife a...makeover?! not sure of the proper name! But anyway the main thing is that hope remains for this blade! This forum is really great.
 
scott6452 said:
Ok, good news. One of our fellow members has very kindly offered to give this knife a...makeover?! not sure of the proper name! But anyway the main thing is that hope remains for this blade! This forum is really great.
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congratulation!! make sure take some pics before send it out for "makeover"; therefore, you can post some "before & after" pics on KKF!:D
 
Just found this thread, sorry I missed it, but I'm glad that it sounds like it will all worked out in the end.

People get really dramatic about how "OMG HORRIBLE THROW IT AWAY!!!!!!" some knives are. I think that Dave actually put it most plainly, logically an free of emotion (did you draw blood biting your tongue?). It's just a knife that's incomplete / not finished to the (very high) standards of the members of this community.

What's in debate here is how much work actually needs to go into it. I'd call it pot of coffee and an album or 2 of tunes worth of work. I reviewed / test drove some of the earlier cm and cpm 154 Lamson "project" knives and found that it really didn't take all that much to get them into shape. This steel is supposedly tougher, and the grind does look a bit thicker, but I really don't think that it would be much of a problem for diamond plate or some emery cloth(if you're worried about hurting your diamond plate...lol).

I would have been happy to do this just for the chance to help out a fellow forum member / knut, play with a new knife /steel and have and excuse to put off other responsibilities and goof around on the stone for and few hours.

A big +1 to Lefty and the few guys that actually tried to offer helpful advise and didn't just use it as a chance to one again air their personal feelings towards a mfg/company via negative comments on a thread by a guy just asking for help.

I hope that the mystery make-over artist and the owner both update with pics and comments on the project.
 
Who knows what brand those belts are in the video? Diamond belts are mega expensive and wont last with out water.

Hoss
 
Lefty said:
I just think that we're going away from the actual issue, which is taking an already purchased Ultimatum and helping the owner get the knife he was hoping to get.

We all know they're fatties, with a one track grind (convex is king), but how do we get the knife to where it should be, performance-wise. The owner bought the knife believing he was getting one thing and upon arrival, discovered it not to meet his standards. The two options are: return it; get it fixed by someone willing to do it. So, who here, in this awesome, giving community will take the project? Don't worry, you won't catch Lamsonitis from doing it.
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I just wanted to say, ^this kind of attitude^ I love love love. This is the attitude that put a man on the moon, broke the sound barrier, made a plane fly etc. Wish I saw more can do spirit and less can't do spirit in this world. As I used to tell some employees, "Stop telling me what you CAN'T do and START telling me what you CAN do!"

-AJ
 
ajhuff said:
I just wanted to say, ^this kind of attitude^ I love love love. This is the attitude that put a man on the moon, broke the sound barrier, made a plane fly etc. Wish I saw more can do spirit and less can't do spirit in this world. As I used to tell some employees, "Stop telling me what you CAN'T do and START telling me what you CAN do!"

-AJ
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Not that Tom isn't a great guy but all he did was ask for volunteers.
 
I little off topic here I have had the 210mm artifex version of the m390. I tell you that steel is beastly. I haven't tried other ultramodern steels. But comapred to the A-type it's way harder to grind. And Dave is right those babies are thick which wasn't what I was expecting. 180 grit ********, 220 grit glassstone, 120 grit DMT doesn't touch this stuff. Only thing I got to thin this stuff is 80 grit norton blaze belt. So moral of the story is: crazy steel needs crazy grinding belt. I got mine as thin as anything and that's the only way I take them. It's not the prettiest job but it cuts like crazy. The edge retention is stupid. But when it comes to doing a heavy resharpening you really have to go there too. So in this steel you really have to go thin or you'll drive yourself nuts just trying to sharpen it when it needs it.
 
looks like this isn't the steel for me. lol. i'll stick with my regular stainless and carbon steels.
 
Yup. Again...getting carried away. To date, the two stainless blades that have made me happiest are S35VN, which is surprisingly sharpenable, and a tie between the regular old Moly steel Misono uses and AEB-L. Both get frighteningly sharp, and I get phenomenal cutting performance with them.

Again, there should be a balance between sharpenability and edge holding. One thing I've never understood with guys like us is, why do we want the best edge retention humanly possible, when we all enjoy pushing the sharpness limits and actually using our stones? If it gets you through a couple shifts, shouldn't that be good enough?
 
Lefty said:
Again, there should be a balance between sharpenability and edge holding. One thing I've never understood with guys like us is, why do we want the best edge retention humanly possible, when we all enjoy pushing the sharpness limits and actually using our stones? If it gets you through a couple shifts, shouldn't that be good enough?
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Well I wouldn't say everyone likes sharpening and a lot of pro guys have very little free time. I'd happily sacrifice a bit of sharpness for edge retention, 3 weeks is usually how often I sharpen. To me it sounds like the M390 is a little too far. After this mystery man with too many diamond plates has finished his work, it will also be interesting to see how easily maintained the knife is for a long period of time.
 
stevenStefano said:
Well I wouldn't say everyone likes sharpening and a lot of pro guys have very little free time. I'd happily sacrifice a bit of sharpness for edge retention, 3 weeks is usually how often I sharpen. To me it sounds like the M390 is a little too far. After this mystery man with too many diamond plates has finished his work, it will also be interesting to see how easily maintained the knife is for a long period of time.
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+1

-AJ
 
What's M390 comparable to? I've actually never seen it used any where else before.
 
M390 is just supposed to be really wear resistant, pm "stainless" steel. Lot's of chromium and about 2% carbon and prob a bunch of other carbide formers. I've only used/sharpened it once in a limited way and I didn't think there was anything amazing about it.
 
i just don't wanna get to the point where i'd have to get a platen just to sharpen up a blade coz stones can't cut anymore. i should try s35vn and aebl soon. if only money, cost of shipping, and exorbitant taxation wasn't a problem.

my first carbon knife was an aritsugu (main house, not the branch from tokyo), and i loved it then it's a vintage old hickory 10" chef knife, a little soft but very nice to play around with.

if lefty says s35vn is pretty good then that convinces me further to wanna try it out. i know aeb-l is awesome.
 
Lefty said:
Yup. Again...getting carried away. To date, the two stainless blades that have made me happiest are S35VN, which is surprisingly sharpenable, and a tie between the regular old Moly steel Misono uses and AEB-L. Both get frighteningly sharp, and I get phenomenal cutting performance with them.

Again, there should be a balance between sharpenability and edge holding. One thing I've never understood with guys like us is, why do we want the best edge retention humanly possible, when we all enjoy pushing the sharpness limits and actually using our stones? If it gets you through a couple shifts, shouldn't that be good enough?
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I agree so far my favorite stainless(In my limited experience)are S35VN & AEB-L.I must admit I have not tried some of the quality semi stainlesss out there.To me ease of sharpening is a big factor,thats why I like white steel carbon so much,OK I like blue steel alot as well.

I repect some persons who can sharpen M-390 & like it's edge retention.I found it kind of a pain in the a@! to put a polished convex edge on my spyderco I had to go to my diamond plates.Looking at that thick M-390 Gyuto no thanks
 
M390 is an alloy made by several PM producers. Bohler makes M390, Carpenter makes 204P, Crucible makes 20CV, all are very close in composition. The alloy has 20% chrome and 4% vanadium, 1.9%C, 1% moly, .60 W and a splash of Si and Mn. This is a proven knife steel even though it can be hard to sharpen.

Hoss
 
Would you say perhaps the issue here is that the M390 is usually used in smaller non-kitchen knives which are quicker to sharpen so they are worth the hassle of them being hard to sharpen?
 
Just a little update on the artifex. Since I've been using this blade I had one incident where I was in a pinch cutting something frozen and got a huge chip out of the blade unlike anything I've seen. So very very thin and very very hard blade cutting something very hard is definately not good. Since then I fixed the chip on the grinder and had a fun time re-thinning the knife and in the end put more belly on the blade which I'm not happy about. Anyway this steel is the first that I've tried even with bad sharpening has virtually NO edge rolling, but it's also brittle if you abuse it. Just to give you an idea how the steel works. I think a thin nakiri chopping through tons of veggies would be phenomenal in this steel.
 
you could have talked to mark about it and maybe he could have it replaced or something.
 
cutting frozen food with a gyuto is generally going to be a bad idea.
 
I just wanted to give my 2 cents, as I've recently had some experience thinning an m390 artifex. I used a cheap diamond plate and a bester 500; the bester 500 is definitely (somehow) the faster route. The steel itself isn't too terrible to grind down; it feels just slightly more wear resistant than zdp189. Sharpening wise, it's interesting. I set the bevels with the bester and then went to my togiharu combo stone (1k/4k) and up to my takenoko 8k. On the stones (even diamond) besides the bester, the steel feels very much like glass. It'll slide across the stone without losing much steel. Quite a time investment sharpening the stuff, but if it lives up to its reputation, I shouldn't have to go through sharpening very often.
 
I sharpened M390 on a Gesshin 1k, 5k and 1 micron diamond with no problems. The edge is relatively poor in terms of refinement but it is suitably toothy and aggressive. Unfortunately, I can't bear to use the knife enough to really get a feel for the edge retention.
 
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