[sns2]

Originally Posted by Coiloil37

It’s a pity most if not all of you haven’t experienced a truly great piece of cutlery. From the five pages I’ve read, if we were discussing spotting scopes you would be somewhere between a 1970’s bushnell spacemaster and a tasco. Some would be arguing there’s no way modern alpha glass could be any better. If you were discussing race cars you would be taking about mini vans. If we were talking fish finders they would be 1940’s furuno vs 1950’s lowrance and nobody would believe what chirp, side scan, down scan and 3kw transducers could be capable of. That’s how far from the top of the modern heap you are.


440c was a standard… back in the day and yes, s30v was a quantum leap forward. But that was 20 years ago. S30v is old news and has been far, far surpassed by much better steels for almost every application. There are a few makers I would use s30v from but if I was having those guys build me a knife I would ask for it in something else. Currently I don’t own and won’t own any s30v knives because it’s never impressed me compared to what else is available.

That said, steel choice matters but to get the most from it you need an specific use and a master smith to create a knife with optimised geometry, heat treat and fit/finish and the end user has to know how to properly sharpen it to get the most from it. Use a knife designed to slice as a chopper and you’ll probably break it. Use something with thick blade stock and obtuse grinds and it’ll never slice as well as something that was designed to slice. Factory knives will never get within the same area code as a properly designed custom.

Someone brought up northarm knives. I’ve got two of their knives and imo they missed the boat on the heat treat. It’s very, very chippy and the corrosion resistance is far below what s35vn should be capable of. It’s designed to be a tougher steel then s30v (which is also often chippy) but here is the blade after filleting one fish. If you look closely you can see the chips along the blade.

I had Crotts build me one in a more modern steel (s90v) but took possession of it after I moved to Oz and haven’t bothered to go hunting since so I can’t speak to its performance.


I find a lot of joy using a well designed, sharp knife. Be it a pocket knife, in the boat, cleaning fish or processing an animal. My experience on forums is most guys don’t understand, don’t care or don’t believe what I write which will likely be the same here but you guys are leaving a ton of performance on the table. Anyone who thinks something like a havelon is sharp has never used a sharp knife.

Furthermore, there’s been zero discussion of the things that are applicable to the knives you do have. Primary and secondary bevels, media they’re sharpened on, final grit, how they’re stropped. There was a test I read once and by simply changing the media some steels are sharpened on, edge retention was increased 3X.


Or we can just keep going around in circles discussing how butchers use victorinox and pro fishermen use dexter or rapala so I’ll use my buck or gerber to process my elk because it’s always worked for me.

Thanks, bud. Outta my price range unfortunately. Outstanding write-up. I learn from stuff like this. I'm sure many others do also.