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Showing 1 of 2 conversations about:
reswright
3850
Jul 26, 2019
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It's hard to get information on these knives. I have read from three different sources that they're Chinese, Russian, and made in the US out of Chinese and Taiwanese parts. I've seen a number of positive reviews but I've also seen the exact same 'personalized' ad copy on more than one website pretending to be the knife seller's reaction to these knives, so it's clear that all that was written by the manufacturer/middleman. Evidently from some comments made elsewhere, the brand owner is much more of a sales guy than a knife guy.
There are a couple questionable claims, like D2 having a razor edge. I own a ton of D2 knives so it's not like I think it's terrible stuff. It’s run of the mill good rugged steel -- but its commonality reflects economics much more than it reflects the degree to which D2 is a good fit for pocket knives. D2 is old as hell and cheap as sin to manufacture, and despite a relatively high Rockwell hardness, it doesn't take crazy technology to grind and polish and hone, people have been forging and finishing D2 into blades for a long time, and even a chimp can heat treat D2 to a higher hardness than most common knife steels achieve, so it brings serious wear resistance to the table. Fewer mistakes are made forging and finishing, less waste and scrap being produced by those mistakes, so more cost effective in the round than working with a high vanadium steel like S35VN. Cheap to source, easy to work -- THAT is why manufacturers love D2, and hire so many ad men to butter up its description and make it sound sexier than a hundred year old tool steel. That's the ultimate reason you the consumer end up reading so much tendentious ad copy about D2 knives that make it sound better than just ok.
The truth is people love D2’s strength; the truth also is, a lot of people want a sharper edge on their pocket knife than they can get with D2, especially once that factory grind wears down some. This confuses some who equate sharpenability to the ability to take a keen edge, which it is not. Hardness, toughness, grain size, purity, even the size of some individual molecules in the steel matrix all impacts how sharp of an edge you can get a blade of any given grind and angle to take. At the microscopic level, if a steel’s grain isn’t fine enough and the carbides small and hard enough, you just can’t get as keen an edge as you can with a steel like AEB-L or high carbon non or semi- stainless steel that has those qualities. What presents a thinner leading edge - a ‘blade’ made out of nothing but softballs pressed together, or one where there’s also marbles and ball bearings filling out that edge? The latter. Well, in layman’s terms D2 hasn’t got many bearings and marbles, and something like RWL-34 does.
Of course, you don’t WANT a scalpel edge like that for everything; as they require honing maintenance with use, wider angle edges are more rugged and stand up to heavier use. Many tasks don’t require extremely sharp knives. Sharp edges fold over or fragment with hard use. But I do find that many people want and like as sharp an edge as practicable on their folding pocket knives.
Otherwise? This is a better price on the TX020 than I have seen elsewhere, but it also is reported as heavier. The regular TX020 is something like 6.8 oz, which is chunky as it is -- this one is reported at 7.2 oz. Maybe cheaper heavier liners? Maybe cheaper hardware? Hard to say with Drop, and if major knife sellers like Knife Center are simply using the manufacturer's ad copy to discuss the knives instead of talking about them from personal experience, it's safe to say that the folks at Drop aren't going to have a better line of info, and if they did, the evidence suggests that they'd never bother to update the details in the ad copy. So who knows what it's made of, you won't know how much it weighs unless you order one and put it on a scale when it arrives.
I'm curious about them -- no one says the knives are bad and most of them say they're very well made -- but 7+ oz for a folding knife isn't all that practical as far as I'm concerned, so i haven't pulled the trigger yet. If you like heavy knives, or at least aren't concerned about them either in the pocket or in the hand, there might be a lot to like here based on some of the reviews.
(Edited)
Dane-G-rus
0
Jul 28, 2019
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reswrightDamn good job man...
I appreciate your time that you have put into this knife and also your factually based unbiased description of D2 steel.
I could never say D2 is a "bad" steel...I can beat it up pretty quickly but that's just me being me, that's nothing against the steel....
On that point, this looks like a knife I'd have in my pocket and know that it's ready to take whatever I need it to.
Wicked_Ridge
14
Jul 28, 2019
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Dane-G-rusIn that regard though, why not just spend a few more $$ on a Cold Steel in S35VN and truly not worry about what you're carrying? I'm no Cold Steel fanboy that's for sure, but hard to beat a Code 4 for outright utility/hard use. These Proelia knives are unproven and if Reswright is correct and the company doesn't even provide information I'm not spending my money or time on them.
reswright
3850
Jul 28, 2019
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Dane-G-rusThere is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that the reason D2, S35VN, and M390 blades are so common in Chinese manufactured knives is that the Chinese government pays to make analogues of those steels en masse.
D2 is old school and if you look at the zknife database entry for D2 at http://zknives.com/knives/steels/d2.shtml there are a jillion roughly equivalent alloys that pass for D2. It’s not even close to proprietary, and it has accumulated trademarks as people tried to rebrand it with new trademarks over time.
S35VN is newer: but it makes use of rare earth metals like niobium that are primarily mined in China and nowadays much more accessible to the Chinese than to the US. The evidence is clear that China’s best knifemakers did pay for and receive some Crucible CPM-S35VN but no sane analyst can conclude that that means every Chinese knife advertised with S35VN is made with Crucible CPM-S35VN. And indeed the ad copy you usually see is just S35VN, no CPM prefix, isn’t it?
The same for Chinese M390: it is almost never marketed within the ad as Bohler Uddeholm M390. Just M390 most of the time. It is shorthand, of course, but how often do ads use shorthand for no reason?
Some of the steel is certainly bought: the Chinese do not lack for buying power. But they seldom consent to pay for what they can duplicate. Do they duplicate exactly? Not always. But spectroscopy measures composition better than it reveals structure. All most labs can tell you is whether the elemental composition matches the formula or not. Crystallography takes xrays and gets REALLY expensive. So the only real proof of the pudding as to whether it is precisely the same, or so close as to make no difference, will come from use. The truth is theirs might be different and yet indistinguishable from ours by someone using it in a pocket knife.
You will know the trade war is real when China grinds rare earth exports to a halt. Short of that it isn’t real; if it happens there will be a couple years of price gouging as Western rare earth stockpiles dwindle before domestic rare earth production ramps up and a supply chain establishes itself. It is dangerous, toxic and messy mining, and hence costs less to do overseas, so we haven’t started it here. Once we do the parties involved will seek to take as much profit as possible, so prices may not drop for a very long time in market terms.
(Edited)
Kizer
116
Jul 29, 2019
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reswrightThey have pretty good reviews, and tough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcSv1IvrUaw. It seems like good value. My preference is 3" and under. I wish I had a reason to get this.
(Edited)
Kizer
116
Jul 31, 2019
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reswrightyes, the steel advertised in chinese knives has been a concern. Some brands have been tested as true; some cheaper knives even have better heat treat (in the higher numbers). Luv them knives does such testing https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC091qIRbrDgeTFKCXw-6vrQ . Also here's a spreadsheet of some of his findings: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OepNr_D4lqbdTFqdqWl1rmAd4bOzPzJe6J0iEWrdJGU/edit#gid=0
reswright
3850
Jul 31, 2019
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KizerNice! Who put the spreadsheet together?
On heat treat the range of hardness is not really surprising. These blades get heat treated in batches and most ovens have hot spots and cold spots, so even if everything is spaced out you can see differences in how much thermal energy is being applied to the metal. You can clearly see which manufacturers prioritize getting it right though.
As far as blade steel -- I knew most of this but not that they had caught out Y-Start -- says the JIN02 isn't D2 after all! That's a pisser... but I guess it isn't a huge surprise considering that they're affiliated with CH and Eafengrow. The build quality differences I was seeing - Y-Starts are generally better built than either CH or Eafengrows -- had me convinced that Y-Start was trying to be the legit arm of that enterprise. Alas.
I like the way the JIN02 is put together but I can see the blade not actually being D2. I'm probably one of the people who would be least upset to discover that a D2 blade isn't D2, at least on a small pocket knife, but it's complete BS that they're doing that anyway. At least he didn't ding the LK5016 -- I think that's my favorite of the lot.
Still, good looking out!
reswright
3850
Jul 31, 2019
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reswrightCuriosity got the best of me, even though the drop didn't go through -- I ordered a TX020 off the Zon and will see what's what when it arrives.
reswright
3850
Aug 3, 2019
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reswrightMine arrived. The ten second roundup is that it's good, the dimensions differ a bit from those listed, I think it's a better knife than a bargain.
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