Has carbon steel become redundant

[JaVa]

I have the Tanaka vg10 and it's terrific knife and I love using it and takes a very decent edge. not too difficult to get sharp IMO. The steel is better than on my Mac Pro which in turn is better than my colleagues Tojiros which i test drive occasionally. And his Tojiros are nice, definitely great bang for buck knives.

I have a few carbons and a PM which are better then vg10, but it doesn't mean vg10 isn't good!

 

[JaVa]

...Although I know (from other peoples stories) there's plenty of crap vg10 knives. I just meant to say my personal experiences have been very positive.

 

[Steampunk]

...Although I know (from other peoples stories) there's plenty of crap vg10 knives. I just meant to say my personal experiences have been very positive.

X2

 

[Godslayer]

No on the says vg10 isn't good. It just isn't as good as many other steels. It's like a corvette vs a lamborghini, the corvette by no means is bad, just less good by comparison.

 

[DanHumphrey]

No on the says vg10 isn't good. It just isn't as good as many other steels. It's like a corvette vs a lamborghini, the corvette by no means is bad, just less good by comparison.

I was going to go a different way - sure, VG10 is "good", in the same sense that a Mitsubishi Endeavor is "good". In both cases, once you take a look at the competitors, you tend to prefer the competitors if you can afford them. How many people would take VG10 over R2, price-independent? Probably not many. It's a great steel for a house knife, or a "don't have to worry" knife, but is it what you want?

 

[LifeByA1000Cuts]

Given that I know R2 from thin and delicate stuff like Takamura, and VG2/VG5/VG10 mostly from battleship-thick supermarket-grade damascus, I would *intuitively* and probably mistakenly associate VG10 with sturdiness and resilience

 

[cadberry]

I have made myself a set of steak knives out of aeb-l and I also have a lovely little paring knife made out of 1095. All of them are great cutters. I treasure the parer a little more for some reason. As it forms its patina it seems loved, while the stainless ones are a bit sterile. That being said I intend to make more knives of out 1095 and aeb-l.

 

[havox07]

My ginga is a white 2 monosteel. Absolutely love how it sharpens and now that it has gotten a patina it reacts to nothing. Meanwhile my Tanaka which has soft steel cladding is reactive no matter what I do to it. Point is some carbon is actually pretty great on that front have an aebl dalman on order so will have to see how pure stainless turns out.