The two knives above got a polish with green and then with white compound and then a dip anodization to get the rainbow effect.
With the TS51 I played a bit too much though.
The front scale wouldn’t take the colors as well as I’m used to it and even after stonewashing it was a fingerprint magnet.
Now the front has a hazy greyish-green, the lockside has some etching pits from the Whink Rust and Stain Remover and a toxic green color, even though both scales were anodized with the same many 9V batteries.
I think I’ll keep it that way (or I’ll go to the local paint shop and ask if they can sandblast it for me, if I’m lucky they do bead blasting too).
Got myself a RAT-II in AUS-8 recently, nice and light/compact. If I had to compare the value with a light it would be with the BLF A6/S1. Maybe I can now add a knife to my wallet/phone/S1 shorty/car key/pen EDC, given its light weight.
Any thoughts on the RAT-II in AUS-8? My next (and final) knife would be the Delica4 instead of the RAT-II in D2, but that’s a long way from now since I’m not really a knife guy and prefer cheap-o razor blades for boxes.
This is true. However, putting a blanket hardness of 56-58 across all steels (as it seems generally happens with the chinese manufactured blades) is foolish because you miss out on many of the qualities of various steels.
M390, like I used in my example, is best at 60-62. Unless you are being stupid with it, it will not chip out at that hardness and you get a huge (HUGE) increase in edge retention. Even S35Vn is better around the 60 mark. At 58 it is actually pretty soft (for that steel) and the performance suffers because of that.
Rockwell hardness is a complex thing, and the changes made to each steel are varied. But a lot of people think that 58 is only 1 different than 59 so it can’t really matter than much, but that’s not how the scale works. It’s an exponential scale so 1 point of hardness can make a really large difference in toughness and edge retention etc.
56-58 is fine for the low end or softer steels…8Cr, 440C, etc. Some can be taken a bit higher but generally those steels are reaching their best in that 56-58 range. But newer technology, higher end steels, are usually at their best in the low to mid 60s. Of course there are always exceptions and personal preference based on use. For example if I were making a camp chopper out of 3V, I might leave it about 59 to increase the toughness. But there are a few knife makers that put in the the 60-61 range. I’ve seen it at 62 in smaller fixed blades and folders to help increase edge retention where the toughness matters much less.
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Found these on ali. the johnnyjammie gamma and zetta. look pretty good. there are some russian vids on youtube about them.
does anybody know if these are good?
they look interesting at least.