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| Pouring Steel (Library of Congress) |
I’m not a big premium steel guy
and I don’t spend a lot on my knives. I see people out there calling two-hundred-dollar knives “budget.” To me, a Rough Ryder is a standard priced
knife, Rosecraft is a premium brand and budget knives come from the thrift
shop. I noticed the other day that Rosecraft Blades has switched from D2 steel
to 14C28N. My first thought was, “well I’ll never remember that.” My second
thought was, “let’s look it up.” So, I perused a bunch of web pages and watched
a bunch of videos and discovered what I needed to know. I then looked through
the few oddball knives in my collection to see if I had any of this alphabet soup
steel.
I
have to confess that every once in a while, under the cover of darkness, I will sneak out and buy a modern knife, and that’s where I found some 14C28N, in my
Vosteed Corgi. Even better, I had recently done something stupid with it. I had
to cut a security cable and moronically thought
I’d use the Corgi. It didn’t work and the whole time I was trying to cut the
cable I was thinking “I’m ruining my knife edge.” Why do I do such things?
Anyway, the Corgi was sitting in a drawer, ruined for all I knew. I took it out
and did the old paper test and it was pretty dull. I pulled out my trusty Work Sharp
Guided Field Sharpener and ran the edges over the ceramic hone and the leather
strop. I was sure it wouldn’t be enough, but that Corgi was sharp again and
that’s what I know about 14C28N.
My
research bears this out (and yes, I’m aware of confirmation bias). Rosecraft
says, “First and foremost, our customers asked for a stainless steel, and
14C28N fit that bill perfectly. It’s a stainless steel with high corrosion
resistance which means you don’t have to be as careful about getting it
completely dry like you might with D2. It also takes a very sharp edge and is
easier to sharpen than other steels like D2.” Which is all true. They left out
the part about how D2 keeps an edge significantly longer than 14C28N. However,
I’m not sure that it will be a big issue with many knife users. The guy over at
Neeves Knives cut cardboard 185 times with a Civivi sporting 14C28N before it
got dull and the guy over at Cedric and Ada got 225 cuts through rope.
I do
wonder, why do people have so many rusty knives that they need stainless steel?
Growing up near the very humid Chesapeake Bay, with no AC, we never had any of our knives rust.
Maybe it was all the antioxidants we ate, or our dry wit. Don’t get me wrong, I
like stainless, mostly because I’m not crazy about patinas.
To answer the question: No, you shouldn’t be worried. It may even be fun to compare the
two steels over time and wear. If you are interested in doing a little more
research, there’s a good number of videos and articles out there on both steels.
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