February 21, 2020 - 11:57 am by Donna Hughes, November 11, 2017 - 4:27 am by Shanel Perez. We’ll help you find the best knife steel for the types of jobs you intend to use your knife for and make the decision easy with charts and explanations that even Marines can understand! Remember that if you happen to get lost somewhere along the line here, just head back to my intro article (Gift Ideas for Hunters) to get up to speed with why exactly I’m covering these topics! What's Your Hunting Knife made of? 1095 is well known for its tensile durability in the low-cost market. In Marine Approved fashion, we suggest opting for higher quality as AUS-6 is typically found on low-end budget knives that maybe you’d buy as a first-time knife gift for a youngster or something in that nature. You’ll usually see the very top tier steels using this to achieve special manufacturing processes that increase hardness without reducing corrosion resistance. I’d stay away from 420 base steel altogether. I don’t agree with this and usually choose 1/8-inch- or 5/32-inch-thick stock for my working-type knives. I’m a novice knife maker, and I was wondering what type of steel would be best for making a sturdy and sharp hunting knife. Am I willing to sacrifice edge retention for blade hardness for edge longevity? Steel type: AUS-8, AUS-10A, 8Cr13MoV, and 440B, Common Use Case: Wide variety, usually in low to mid-range multi-purpose knives, Sharpening Difficulty: Very easy 9/10 Review: 440A is essentially just that good ol’ 420HC with but with even more carbon. One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing Damascus steel is the Benchmade Foray 698-181 Gold Class found here. One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing CPM-S90V steel is the Benchmade Nakamura Axis 484-1 found here. Not all AUS-8 or MoV steel blades are the same and some of them are relatively cheap, meaning they’re also fairly low quality in most cases. Common Use Case: Excellent middle ground between H1 steel and 154CM steel, Sharpening Difficulty: Medium 5/10 CPM steels used in the creation of our favorite blades render some of the highest quality and overall most satisfying blades. Common Use Case: Fixed blade combat and tactical applications, Sharpening Difficulty: Hard 3/10 I make fixed blade hunting knives and Bowies so I would prefer two sizes. Hard blades also create brittleness in the edge allowing for chipping and unevenness. Required fields are marked *. Lower edge retention doesn’t mean the blade is bad for your specific use case as it may excel in things you really need, like resistance to saltwater as you use the knife on a fishing rig, just expect to sharpen more often! Some popular tool steels in this group include D2, O1 and Crucible’s CPM series (i.e. I must also note that companies like Benchmade and Spyderco have much higher quality heat treatment processes for these types of steels than most other companies and as I mentioned in the guide, their blades will perform significantly higher than other brands with the same stamps so please keep that in mind. D2 steel doesn’t exactly stand out in the positive side of attributes but many choose D2 for its low price but relatively high toughness and hardness. D2 isn’t stainless steel because it falls short of the chromium requirement at just 13%. Review: H1 steel is derived from the Japanese Myodo Metals and is the Yang to the D2’s Yin. Essentially, stainless steel blades are made up from several components including iron, nickel, carbon and chromium. Tool Steel – primarily hard steel alloys used in cutting tools. There is no blade that does it all and does it all the best, but more so blades that may excel in something whereas they are giving up something else. Technically, to be considered a stainless steel composition, the steel mixture must contain a minimum of 10.5% of chromium, however, we know that much higher contents of chromium are necessary for resistance against especially corrosive environments such as usage in and near saltwater. 420 steel is pretty basic steel with hardly any corrosion resistance on its own. Having owned and operated a blacksmithing business, I know how much misinformation surrounds the making of a great knife. Corrosion Resistance: Decent 4/10 Generally, a harder steel material used to make a blade means that the blade will be stronger overall and resist damage to the edge and the overall blade. Furthermore, sharpening a blade is only part of the equation when it comes to caring for specific steel-based knives. Toughness: Very good 7/10. Of course, the same attributes that make for excellent aerospace grade steel usually line up decently well for attributes in the knife world and in this case, LC200N sits perfectly between that of H1 and 154CM. These are low-cost inexpensive blades whose properties generally exceed other low-cost materials but still don’t quite stack up to what would be considered a decent knife. You probably don’t have a heating oven yet, so for starters, choose something simple, easy to heat-treat and work with. The Fallkniven NL4 actually comes with one of the best leather sheaths I’ve ever seen in a hunting knife. Many razor blades consist of this steel today and you can still find excellent knives consisting of this steel at ridiculously good prices. It’s a Buck…what can be wrong? )…they’re all competing to be the best hunting blade steel, but the winner is… What is the best steel for hunting knives? Edge Retention: Excellent 9/10 Corrosion Resistance: Bad 2/10 Buck Knives 0110BRS Folding Hunter, Woodgrain. One man will swear by Carbon for its durability and strength while another will stick with Stainless steel because it’s much more rust and corrosion resistant. My opinion is just that…my opinion. Review: VG-10 steel is quickly becoming a top choice for premium blade slinging companies and for good reason, it’s capable of being sharpened ultra-sharp, it has incredible overall strength and durability, and it’s got better corrosion resistance than 154CM and ATS-34 in relatively the same price range. If you’d like to study up on the Rockwell hardness scales intricacies and nuances, check out the AG Russell article on it found here. Edge Retention: Good 7/10 One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing Elmax steel is the Spyderco Lil Lion Spy found here. If you need a blade that you can cut things with but also pry and wrangle within other methods, you might want to sacrifice some edge retaining ability for a steel that is notably strong and durable with some flex to it. Silicon: Present in all steels in small amounts, silicon helps bind the materials together during manufacturing and acts as a deoxidizer. Since your blade is essential to your hunting experience, it has to be pretty darn good, right? They can be used for all the functions of dressing out an animal. Although there are many excellent knife steels available today such as M-390,VG-10, 154CM, ATS34, 440C, D2, and O1, the most popular knife steels by far are 154CM, ATS34, and 440C amongst custom knife makers. Toughness: Good 7/10. Review: Knives that come stamped with unmarked “stainless steel” or “surgical steel” are often the cheapest possible materials and manufacturing processes and are never Marine Approved. When shopping around, taking note of the amount of carbon in the steel used for the blade is very important. Corrosion Resistance: Low and/or undefined Both are excellent steel materials but I’d opt for the 154CM if given the choice. If you’re hard up on looks, the Puma Skinner Stag Handle Blade shouldn’t let you down with its stag handles, brass finger guards and pins, brass lined lanyard holes and an overall sleek look. D2 is infamous for how difficult it is to sharpen. In all reality, literally any steel blade that has even a hint of chromium for corrosion resistance can be dubbed surgical steel, even though to be considered actually corrosion resistant, it has to have over 10.5% of chromium content, which if that were the case, we’d be looking at a higher grade stamp instead of just this silly “surgical grade” or just “stainless steel” nonsense. Review: D2 is the steel you buy if you really enjoy the finer details and time-consuming nature of blade sharpening. Toughness: Medium 5/10. We aren’t super focused on the specific grind in this article, although this is an important attribute to study up on before buying a new knife. It’s one of the lightest hunting knives out there, weighing in at just less than half a pound, and obviously carrying the famous Buck Forever Warranty. Your email address will not be published. It maintains a razor sharp edge for what seems to be forever, It’s a no-frills hunting knife that feels great in your hand and handles amazingly well, The warranty (which isn’t really defined at all) is an issue to me, It’s rather lightweight, coming in at just 6.5 ounces, The overall length (unfolded) measures in at 12 1/4 inches, making it a very versatile hunting knife, It’s a kick-ass strong knife that’s durable, and the price is just a score, The size might be an issue; I mean this knife comes in as one of the largest folding hunting knives out there, The lock is hard to operate in the initial stages. The 5.12 inch plain edge drop point VG10 steel blade gives you all the edge and durability you want and need and the brown leather handle screams out quality in every sense of the word. One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing this material is the Benchmade Adamas found here. Copper: Helps to combat corrosion but usually in trace amounts to avoid that copper-looking patina. Kershaw wasn’t exactly thrilled about the old 12C27 or 13C26 so they waltz right over to Sandvik and asked them to cut out some carbon and make way for a little chromium and nitrogen. Well, if you’re shopping around and you see something like a high-quality S90V blade being sold by a reputable brand and then also an S90V blade being sold by a budget brand, those knives will likely perform and degrade significantly different despite being labeled as the same high-quality steel. Knives of this material are surely going to cost a pretty penny but they will also likely live longer than you and they won’t shave off years of your life for sharpening, either! Often times, blades that have excellent edge retention are not blades that are exceptionally strong in overall tensile strength. Review: This is yet another powder metallurgy process similar but slightly different to the CPM method. The difference is real but you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two in person. Those little numbers and letters are actually the primary driving force behind the price and performance you can expect out of that particular knife and, as with everything, not all knives and their blades are made the same! Sharpening Difficulty: Very easy 9/10 Review: The Sandvik 12C27 fine grain steel has been around for a very long time and used to be an extremely popular material to craft blades from because it was often seen as a very well rounded and inexpensive material to get decent performance from in the mid tier. While titanium makes for a fantastic blade structure, it fails to hold an edge. SOG - SEAL Strike Hunting Knife If you’re looking for an ultra-tough, modern clip-point hunting knife, you can stop searching now. These were designed in the US with the utmost highest performance in mind for cutlery and pocket knives and when compared with other steel on a cost versus performance basis, CPM steel almost always wins by a fair margin. Toughness: Good 6/10. I really appreciated the thick, extra wide blade, cut from VG-1 San Mai III Steel which is dangerously sharp, and stays that way for a long time. )…they’re all competing to be the best hunting blade steel, but the winner is…. This eliminates segregation among each particle resulting in every single particle consisting of the exact same particulate matter. Corrosion Resistance: Decent 4/10 The hunting knives listed here made the cut, as it were, because they were revolutionary in their time or because they worked so well that they influenced knife design thereafter. Edge Retention: Bad 2/10 Some steel types, notably soft steels, may wear extremely quickly when not oiled properly. Best Knife Steel Treatment. At this point, we’ve actually already hit on corrosion resistance a few times so you should have an idea of what I’m about to tell you. Review: ZDP-189 is designed and created by Hitachi for the sole purpose of being insanely hard, both in physical hardness and sharpening. Edge Retention: Excellent 9/10 As a hunter, being able to make our own knives which we can use for our future hunting activities is not only a very rewarding task but … Corrosion Resistance: Very good 8/10 SOG makes some okay AUS-6 knives but other than that, no notable brands I’d really recommend carries AUS-6 blades. 420J and 420J2 are the middle ground between 420 stainless and 420HC. Extremely prone to rust and discoloration, you’ll need a solid warranty and a love of sharpening if you’re planning on investing in a carbon blade. Edge Retention: Decent 4/10 Common Use Case: Entry level to premium grade blades, Sharpening Difficulty: Medium 5/10 One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing H1 steel is the Spyderco Ladybug 3 found here. Toughness: Decent 4/10. Review: CPM stands for Crucible Particle Metallurgy process and signifies a special process in which starts off similar to regular processes in that they give the steel a good old fashioned bath in molten steel but instead of being cast into molds, a high-pressure jet with that bursts the molten steel into tiny droplets than then dry into a powder in an atomization tower. High carbon blade steel is considered better than other steels for knife making due to its toughness, strength, edge-holding, and corrosion-resistant properties. Corrosion Resistance: Low 2/10 It also comes with a multi-feature sheath that has a tensioner, Paracord lanyard with a lock and an ambidextrous clip plate. You may find custom knives meant to look pretty or some specialty knives such as dive knives made out of titanium but you certainly wouldn’t want one as an EDC. You can think of LC200N as being very similar to 154CM but with some of its carbon being traded out for nitrogen, allowing for the steal to still come in at incredible hardness levels but giving the steel a massive advantage in corrosion resistance over 154CM. This looker of a knife boasting a 5.5 inch blade of cro-van steel and an overall length of 10.5 inches would have aced any ‘looks only’ countdown. Perhaps the most popular first knife scrap metal, the old school steel file is a great way to make a small but incredibly sharp blade that fits in your hand. Fallkniven No 4 Frej Fixed Blade Knife, 5.125in, Stainless Blade, Stacked Leather Handle. Bohler M390 is widely revered as being the best all-around knife steel, which has led top companies to widely utilize it in higher end knives. The tendency today is to make hunting and utility knives out of 1/4-inch-thick steel. Review: 154CM is considered the upgraded version of 440C and it’s upgraded by adding molybdenum in place of some of the chromium 440C has. Knife Blade Materials Steel Specifics (text courtesy of Cold Steel, Inc. and Buck Knives) The Making & Shaping of Steel. Most Common Ingredients Used to Create Steel Blades. So let’s find out options for the best steel for hunting knives. Cold Steel Voyager XL Vaquero Plain Edge Knife. Common Use Case: To create a profile of well balanced high-quality attributes, Sharpening Difficulty: Rather difficult 3/10 This is another powder metallurgy process that uses a bunch of expensive and hard to work with goodies like vanadium, chromium, and molybdenum alloys and smacks them all together, forming what feels and acts like carbon-based steel without the carbon-based steel negatives. Toughness: Very good 7/10. Steel labeled 420HC (high carbon) and 440 are types of stainless steel often found in good-quality hunting knives. Stainless blades are rust resistant. This is the reason that I believe anyone buying a new knife should be studying up on steel types to ensure their money is best spent on a knife that serves the purpose you specifically require! Some people may think edge retention is the most important characteristic because, let’s face it, if your knife doesn’t have a sharp edge when you need it, it’s a paperweight, not a knife. If you liked this article, you’re definitely going to dig what I’ve got coming up. Custom Handmade Tactical Knife- 4116 Stainless Steel Survival Knife for Hunting and Camping- Fixed... No ratings yet: $39.99: Check Today ... link to Top 5 Best Gas Forges for Knife Making | 2021 Review & Buying Guide. Common Use Case: Extremely high-quality knives that face both environmental and user abuse daily, Sharpening Difficulty: Very difficult 2/10 Sounds too good to be true? They are priced competitively against similar steel compositions but provide a slight edge over their competitors with superior heat treatment. Edge Retention: Very good 8/10 The steel does rust easily, however the edge it holds is regarded as one of the best. Manganese: This is used in small amounts to add strength and hardness but with too much and you’ll create brittleness. These are some of the easiest blades to sharpen, though, so like I said, they’re good as a starter blade material. 3. Of course, the methods to create Damascus have changed since then and nowadays, Damascus is used in creating collectors knives as it produces brilliant weld patterns and alluring blade aesthetics. All images on our website are the property of their respective owners. All steels contain certain other elements in small controlled amounts, like Manganese, Sulfur, Silicon, and Phosphorus. One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing CPM-S35VN steel is the Off-Grid Knives Scorpion Elite found here. Edge retention is often reliant on other attributes such as blade hardness and steel composition. They have a pretty cool video on the test actually being performed so check that out as well! ATS-34 is the Japanese equivalent to the US-made 154CM and pretty much sums up the same excellent properties found there with a slight but almost unnoticeable reduction in corrosion resistance. But paying too much for the blade steel when you don't need it may also be a waste. Molybdenum: This material drastically increases the steel’s resistance to heat which allows for more options in machining and forging. Edge retention is not a characteristic by itself. On the flip side, adding more carbon itself will increase the hardness and edge retention. If a knife is ultra-hard, it will have little to no flex which can actually be counter-intuitive towards durability. Grades such as 420 and 440 are frequently used for knife making. Ceramic blades are pretty much impossible to sharpen yourself but typically come with ultra razor sharp edges that hold for a decent period of time. It achieves these very slight advantages by being finer grain steel, but seriously, the two together in the wild are nearly indistinguishable. If you’re having a hard time believing this, check out my friend Mary’s article on The Best Quality Kitchen Knives. How the steel is treated and what manufacturing process it undergoes will have a huge impact on corrosion resistance. Let’s now look at the qualities of a good hunting knife. Carbon steel blades definitely have the money in the bag when it comes to the sharpness test. A big contributor as to why these don’t last long is the less than 5% chromium content rendering them open prey to rust and degradation. Corrosion Resistance: Medium 5/10 One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing 12C27 steel is the Morakniv Bushcraft found here. Corrosion Resistance: Medium 5/10 VG-1 is a non-powder steel made by Japanese specialty steelmaker Takefu. This increases the blade’s resistance to heat and also raises the final product’s Toughness. Hard blades are especially difficult to sharpen and may take longer periods of sharpening and special attention to achieve high-quality edges. When reading through the different characteristics of steels, consider your own life and how you might carry and use your knife. To get the best edge retention, you’d want an extremely hard steel composition but being too hard makes the blade brittle and prone to breaking and chipping. Razor sharp straight out of the box, the Ka-Bar Becker BK2 Companion Fixed Blade Knife is ready to get straight to skinning or filleting and won’t let you down. As with many of the products we use, review, and recommend, there are often stark contrasts between characteristics in performance and in almost all cases, there will be tradeoffs that only you can decide between. These files are made to be very hard – which isn’t ideal for knife making – but can be annealed to soften the steel so that it can be better shaped before you reharden it. If a special grind style is a serious purchasing point for you, ensure the type of steel the blade is made of is capable of supporting that style and that you are ready for the required maintenance to keep it sharp and in good shape. Remember, even the best steels with respect to corrosion resistance can still corrode and still necessitates proper care, cleaning, and oiling to ensure they don’t rust away. It has a nice thick blade which gets any job done, It comes with a great warranty and is transferrable, The two-position handle isn’t going to sit well with just anyone, I would have loved some more length on the handle, The addition of the lanyard holes is a great bonus, It’s a rugged knife that comes with a limited lifetime warranty, The glass-filled nylon sheath isn’t really the best out there, The price really justifies the amazing quality you get, It’s great at edge retention and sharpening the blade is seriously effortless, The handle is a little blocky in my opinion, but it should be a great fit for larger hands, The Buck Folding Hunter Knife comes with a high quality leather sheath and boasts a working locking mechanism on the knife itself, The Dymonwood handle with its polished bolsters looks great, It might be a small design, but this knife is capable of small and big tasks alike. It seems like stainless steel and carbon blades are flooding the market, not only in the hunting knife department, they actually battle it out in the kitchen too. For more information about us or joining the team, check out the “About Us” tab. Corrosion Resistance: Good 6/10 Being soft makes these blades very easy to sharpen and that’s great because you’ll be sharpening them often to keep an edge, almost desperately at that. CTS-204P No, it doesn’t, because those are Benchmades lowest tier knives and nowhere near the performance of higher-grade steels but it is something to say for AUS-8 and is pretty cool they’re being used with a premium brand. It’s not bad, it’s just not superb. That’s not to say these don’t have a place, as they are good starter knives and they’re easy to teach someone how to sharpen a blade with, but these are not knives I’d trust my life taking into the wilderness on a dangerous trek with. This American made and engineered steel was created especially for the knife industry. Basically, what you’re getting here is upgraded D2 steel where you get an insanely hard blade with very little flex that is incredibly difficult to sharpen but holds that sharp edge for an incredible length of time. Corrosion Resistance: Very low 1/10 Some knife steels, like VG-10, have carbon and steel mixtures but they also use chromium for corrosion resistance, so these would need far less and perhaps even no oil for longevity. A knife with inferior steel is a waste of money. Benchmade makes a few knives with AUS-8 steel, does that sum this up? When adding chromium to steel or steel and carbon, the edge will become a little softer than what it would be as just steel. Edge Retention: Low 3/10 In this guide, we’ll first have a quick discussion about what different characteristics you should consider and how to choose between the plethora of available blade materials to best suit your situation and then we’ll review the most popular and highest performing steel types on the market thus far. Review: M390 was created by Bohler-Uddeholm and is a powder metallurgy tool steel similar to the CPM style steels. Why is CPM so good? Toughness: Low 2/10. Review: Anything with a 420 stamped on it is probably of relatively low quality and on the budget end of the spectrum. You can’t have steel without carbon as it is the most crucial hardening element. Well, it is more expensive and it is better in some areas but there are glaring tradeoffs that cannot be ignored. Review: A2 isn’t very common for something like an EDC pocket knife but it is common for when you need something insanely tough and durable to drag with you through combat. Oiling the steel ensures water runs off of it and does not penetrate the pores in the steel, creating rust. Any steel with a content of 10.5% of chromium or more is considered to be stainless steel. We are currently looking for former Marines to join the team who are interested in writing about tactical gear, survival gear, hiking supplies, etc. When many knife manufacturers buy steel for their knives, it is ‘untreated.’ This means without heat treatment, a process that can have a decisive effect on the molecular structure and therefore the characteristics of the steel, especially hardness, … We have had to trust our blades with our lives so we know a thing or two about choosing a quality blade! More carbon sounds like a good thing, I mean it’s more expensive, right? Corrosion Resistance: Medium 5/10 The SOG – Seal Strike Hunting Knife takes its design inspiration from the knives used by the Navy Seals. Most be treated to prevent corrosion but keeps an edge extremely well 1095 Cro-Van Steel: A very durable and tough steel that is hard to work, making machining it more expensive. Ceramic knives absolutely cannot rust and thus have superior corrosion resistance to pretty much everything on this list. Blades consisting of this steel usually don’t last very long in terms of overall longevity but they can endure massive amounts of abuse without snapping or shattering. Ceramic: These aren’t your typical EDC blades as they are far too brittle but they do make amazing purpose-built applications such as use for dive knives and knives aboard fishing vessels. He started this website while transitioning out of the Marines, and since has recruited several other Marines to help him work on the Marine Approved website. I’ve been telling you that you always have to trade something off for excellence in one category or another and I suppose that doesn’t ring so true here, at least not anymore. Many brands might be manufactured in house if you’re looking at high-end blades, however, most low and mid tier knives are manufactured by a parent company or outsourced to another company that may or may not treat their steel in the best manner. Don't overlook A2 for your next knife. Toughness: Very low 1/10. Toughness: Very low 1/10. For those of you who want to jump straight to a particular section of this article, we put a quick navigation menu below. Just follow these simple steps and you'll be on your way. Stainless Steel and Carbon (Ceramic too! Edge Retention: Good 7/10 Edge retention seems to be all the rage when talking about a blade. Best Seller in Steel Bars. Better in what way, you might ask? Features of a Good Hunting Knife Toughness: Medium 5/10. Edge Retention: Good 6/10 With a whole lot of chromium and an insanely hard blade, these are excellent all-around blades meant to withstand both nature and you with the obvious tradeoff of being insanely hard to sharpen and manufacture. One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing LC200N is the Spyderco Spydiechef found here. Steel type: More expensive CPM Family (20CV, S90V, and CPM S110V), Common Use Case: The ultimate all-around tough and sharp blade, Sharpening Difficulty: Extremely difficult 1/10 Home » Knives » Best Knife Steels and How to Choose The Right Type (with Comparison Charts). Before I just give you the answer there’s something you need to keep in mind. Corrosion Resistance: Good 7/10 Steel is essentially a combination of iron and carbon. Boasting a blade thickness of 4mm and one of the coolest hunting knife names out there, the Cold Steel Voyager XL Vaquero is one of the strongest folding knives I’ve ever tried out. One of the Marine Approved top recommendations for a knife encompassing A2 steel is the Bark River Gunny Hunter found here. Corrosion Resistance: Maximum performance 10/10 440C has a much higher composition of chromium and carbon than the lower tier 420HC giving it the edge when it comes to edge retention and corrosion resistance.