Carbon Steel or Stainless

[GregLaROCHE]

Which do you prefer for a knife blade and why? I always preferred regular steel to stainless, mainly because they were easier and faster to sharpen. Today with diamond stones it is easier and faster to sharpen stainless than before, but I still like a plain steel blade. What do others think?

[rking22]

I like carbon steel, but top end stainless is ok in a kitchen or pocketknife, well sometimes. I like the easy touch up on carbon steels and Damascus. Actually the quality most recognized for stainless is a turnoff for me. I like the real patina that a good carbon blade takes, at that point it just looks right to me. Bright shiny, especially highly polished blades just don’t appeal to me. Don’t know how to describe it, but I like things that are actually used and near the scars. 5160, A2,O1, 1095 along with D2 are my favorite knife steels. D2 is dang near stainless, but it cuts so good I live with the shiny. Damascus is my most favorite of all time, beautiful and functional. Holds a good edge but is easy and quick to touch up as needed. Most important is a good usable shape, so many goofy designs out there. I was given a really pretty custom made fillet knife. The blade is hollow ground and way too thick in the spine, I never use it. Another good question would what grind you like, flat or convex for my tastes. The Scandi is ok, especially on a 7$ mora! I dislike hollow grinds, even though one of my Damascus blades is ground that way. It would cut better in my experience as a flat grind! Not a show stopper, but not in the plus column for me.

[Bazoo]

I like both carbon and stainless.

For a knife I'm going to primarily whittle with, carbon is preferred. Such as my Old Timer 34OT. It takes a fine edge and holds it well, flat ground, it does well on wood. Problem is, I carry it a lot, and during the sweaty months of summer, if it goes a few days without use it developes rust. So I switched to a Case trapper in hollow ground stainless.

For an all around knife I prefer stainless. In a belt knife either a Buck 110 or a 192 Vanguard. I like Bucks 420HC stainless over all the other stainless steels I've tried, except maybe for Schrades Schrade+ which is reported as 440A. No it doesn't hold an edge like the older Buck 440C or some of that super stainless out there but it makes up for it with ease of resharpening.

Sharpening ease is more important to me than edge holding ability. I'd rather have a knife that needs a touch up every few days than a knife that only needs one sharpening a year but takes a week to sharpen. I prefer DMT diamond stones for quick work and for stainless. Arkansas stones for carbon steel or if I'm in the notion on stainless. I've noticed that stainless doesn't hold a fine edge well. I generally sharpen stainless with my fine DMT stone or a soft Arkansas stone. Where as I use a green extra fine DMT or a hard Arkansas to finish a carbon steel blade.

I like the hollow grind on a buck knife. I use them for all sorts of tasks; whittling, cutting food, rope, opening letters, everything. I also like a flat grind, such as found on my Uncle Henry 153UH Golden Spike. That one is carbon steel.

[Slugster]

Carbon steel, nothing better.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

I have to hide anything I don't want put in the dishwasher, so stainless it is for most everything in the kitchen. I do use a carbon Mora for skinning.

[rking22]

So True on the dishwasher thing, even after 37 years of marriage! It’s the wood handles that I worry about, they look like driftwood on the beach after a trip they the kenmore. Never see rust on my older blades but it dulls the snot out of anything, stainless included. Yep, I hide my good knives and have bought a couple of new Ontario knives to stay in sight. Have to sharpen one whenever I pick it up, but they go dishwasher swimming without concern. Actually decent knives, stainless flat grind and non wood handles, they feel good in the hand and cut well, easy to sharpen(good thing)

[truckjohn]

It's funny... In theory - I like good plain carbon steel a lot better. It's easier to sharpen and it tends to be more well behaved in use. For me I like that it dulls progressively rather than going from hair popping sharp to dull all at once. I really like that I can keep the edge super sharp with a steel....

In practice.... In actual real life - I like the regular cutlery stainless used by Buck, Case, and Victorinox... I don't enjoy having to oil blades all the time. I don't like blood pitting. I don't like that you have to wash carbon steel blades almost instantly after gutting an animal or cutting up stuff.... The quality cutlery stainless has come a long way from the mushy dull unsharpenable stuff that burst onto the scene in the 80's...

I still don't have any real love for the fancy pants super steels.... They are almost always really hard to sharpen, and that's a problem of it's own.... Say you are breaking down a deer in camp... A super steel knife may be able to do the whole job start to finish - but so could an 18/8 dishwasher safe kitchen knife if you had a decent steel close by so you could touch up the edge as cutting slowed.... My brother loves his old cheap 1950's Carbon steel hunting knives and has basically jettisoned all the modern "Super steel" knives for those.... He gutted and butchered his deer this year with his old Remington knife from the 1940's. It worked fine - no problems.... He just had to wash it real good after he was done....

Since I bought a set of diamond stones - I find that Stainless generally sharpens fine rather than being next to impossible to sharpen on conventional stones.

I picked up a D2 hunting/skinning knife last year... Tried it out the 1st time on a deer this fall.... It started the job cutting like a laser - then all of a sudden it just went dull (frustrating!).. It acted like the edge just failed... I am suspicious of factory edge damage - so I will give it the benefit of the doubt for a couple sharpenings to remove any factory damaged steel at the edge... but.. Would a Buck or a Case have done that?

[Rejigger]

Of course Carbon Steel for me, because they hold up well to hard use, can very easily be made extremely sharp, and are just generally strong. And I mostly use it for hunting. And I also pair it with my good old Surefire E2D Defender Ultra. If you're curious my flashlight, you can see its review at https://totalguide.org/best-tactical...-ultra-review/.

[GhostHawk]

I have been a carbon steel guy for several decades.

That being said some of the stainless pocketknives being made these days stand up extremely well. And take nothing more than a touch of a butchers steel and some strop time to return to just short of shaving sharp which is what I prefer.

For EDC it has been stainless for the last 5 years.

However if I was going to process a deer, beef or pig my carbon steel would get the work. Old habits die hard.

[.44 RF Express]

the new stainless steels like Elmax, rwl34 and a few more are really good, they work well, hold a good edge and sharpen rather easily
but most important is the heattreating the blade has... if that is bad it doesn´t matter what steel you have..

/Roger

[KenH]

I've heard about this carbon vs stainless for years. AND for many years I MUCH preferred carbon steel for all the reasons stated above. Since I've been making knives for the last few years I've learned MUCH more, and why the old type stainless was hard to sharpen. 440C and other older SS alloys had very large carbides making it VERY hard to sharpen. The newer SS alloys, especially 12C27, 14C28N, AEB-L and some others have a very small carbide that's evenly distributed. You'll find when heat treated to around 60 Rc these steels will sharpen just about same as a good carbon steel. I've used 1084, 1075, 1095, 5160 steels and they work good.

When I started knife making I was using high carbon steels I found on the farm, rake springs, car springs, coil springs, and stuff like that. The wife didn't like carbon at all due to the patina that develops. Myself, I thought that patina is one of the nice parts. The wife insisted I make her kitchen knives of stainless, so "told me" to order the Heat Treat over to give me the ability to HT SS, and I ordered a Rockwell tester to test the HT'ing.

On the "super steel" alloys out there, I've used S30V and S35V, and they're good steel but I don't think they're worth the extra cost over AEB-L.