This thread got me to thinking and I finally have some time to type those thoughts out.
Why is "vastly superior" hard to answer for me?
Let me start by saying I am an unabashed, shameless, intensely loyal Shawn Houston fanboy. There are some who've felt the need to point this out in the past so I thought I'd just clarify it right up front. If you're unaware, Shawn Houston is aka Triple B Handmade, Big Brown Bear, and
@Deadboxhero.
If you're so inclined, please indulge me...
Why am I such a fan? Shawn isn't a steel guru by birth or familial provenance. He's an ambulance driver who started sharpening knives. His fascination and obsession exploded and before you know it, he's not just pushing steel boundaries and learning from and collaborating with legends, he's developing his own line of abrasives just to make the steels he was obsessing over a viable end-user possibility. And yes folks, he very much wanted those abrasives to come in cheaper to make them more accessible but just couldn't make it work with his strict quality requirements.
For me, this background is important as for the first time, I personally found, and watched, a "regular" guy excelling at all things knives and it was highly relatable to me. Shawn's posts across various forums and his videos broke things down, explained things, but most importantly encouraged everyone to dive in.
He didn't know it but Shawn gave me the confidence to reapproach free hand sharpening. Then, despite my staunch opposition to these "new fangled steels" his work and communications had me trying all manner of steel. "Sharpen because you want to, not because you have to."
Shawn's dedication to the knife community and his unyielding willingness to share his knowledge and his intense, deep study of the craft I strongly believe had a massive impact on the popularity explosion of HS/PM steels and changed, at least in the EDC world, the landscape.
No, I'm not typing all this just to sing Shawn's praises but because it is relevant to a much bigger lesson that Shawn taught me.
One night Shawn and I are talking on the phone about this kinda stuff and I made some type of disparaging comment about all these simple steels like shirogami and such. And the guy who I'd been watching for years promote all these crazy steels reminded me of some things.
He told me there's nothing at all wrong with all those simple steels and if a person is happy sharpening often and likes simplicity then they "...can saddle up to super simple shirogami and ride off into the sunset and it's totally cool." That's a paraphrase but close.
In that comment and yeah, our subsequent conversation, but really in that comment what Shawn did was free my mind to love what I loved. Or, again, maybe better said, to remind me. Once I got hooked and started shunning my simpler steels, I kind of lost the fun and easiness of simple stuff and Shawn reminded me that it's not a popularity contest. Like what you like. Use what you want to use.
The guy who so many of us in the knife community link so strongly to "super steels" also doesn't hate simple steels.
Shawn's real lesson for me was not about "superior" steels but about appreciating all of them and choosing what you like and want and what works best for your application. But be sure to be educated on why you like what you like. Make informed decisions.
As Shawn says, "Fear no steel."