anyone tried that one where they welded 2 steels together in a sawlike pattern (non damascus)? is it good?
vg10/vg2 real damascus supposedly or more correctly "pattern welded".
looks kickass to me at least. just look at it!
personally i think most of the bad reporting stems from user inexperience. they simply find a flashy knife in a store and buy it for their accountant husband to replace his 5mm thick 20bux wusthoff.
hubby goes on a can opening and screwdriving spree and hey, who would have guessed it. it chipped out. the horror!!! surprise surprise... then on top of that they might me hardened more chippy than the true premium brands.
just a little story for you guys. a buddy at work just got a jck hattori forum santoku in vg10 on my recommedation. dreaded vg10 right. and he reports no "impossible burrs" to get rid of. instead he reports very good edge holding, and very high max attainable sharpness. and no chippyness/brittleness at all. and also the best fit and finish he has ever seen. I also thought it was very very good FF since i have handled it. but not better then my shiki limited edition (now called the black dragon series). So none of the reported problems with vg10 is existing in his blade. go figure.
So is shuns vg10 HT sh1t or is vg10 sh1t? i'd say some companies HT is sh1t. also my shiki LE is superb. both in use and on the stones. no burrs from hell there! how can this possibly be??????
Sure i think maybe shuns vg10 HT is not up to hattoris forum vg10 standards, judging from all reports of it being crap. and no smoke without fire, you can bet your ass on that! the hattoris at least are made by Ryusen or at least HT'ed by them, but I think most of the vg-10 problems is that people are abusing the blades.
vg10 is not global aus6, or wusthoff krupp at 52hrc. Not even in its softest usable state. its much much more brittle than these other 0,5-0,6C% steels. but if done right its good! probably up there with r2 and other powders to be honest
the other problem i think people are experiencing is that most of these mass produced blades are truly mass produced. big ass belt grinders. high belt speeds, and at the very edge you will get temperatures above 1000C and that means you are now rehardening the blade pretty much. and since all knife SS is "air hardening" its will most definitely re-harden at the very edge at the thinnest point. BUT with the exception that you dont actually TEMPER it again to remove that "as quenched" hardness/brittleness. so its brittle sh1t out of the box. this is phucking rocket science.
A trick i usually do is that i simply completely kill the edge on all my new blades and then remove maybe a mm or so of the edge, and then thin them out and flatten the sides. And none of my knives has been "chippy" nor brittle" sure a beer can took a 5mm bite out of a kuraski AS edge after quite many blows. so i say it shall pass, with the highest stamp of approval actually.
so i say grind off 1-2mm edge of your shun then judge it. I guess they are mostly fine by then. all of them pretty much. or at least ok in the general sense.