Show HN: I built a knife steel comparison tool

I looked through most of the charts, and I it seems like you cannot get the best of two worlds. Can you get good edge retention, ease of sharpening and toughness at the same time?

It would be nice with an example on how knife steel properties work. I assume there are balanced tradeoffs.

that is correct, edge retention, ease of sharpening and toughness usually come at a trade off to one another.

A harder blade is more brittle (less tough) and keeps its edge longer... but is also more difficult to sharpen once it gets dull.... generally speaking.

"Edge retention" is mostly achieved through high abrasion resistance. Sharpening is removing material by abrasion until the edge has a small radius, so ease of sharpening is mostly achieved through low abrasion resistance.

Being soft or brittle can also make forming a sharp edge difficult, requiring very light pressure in the final phases of sharpening to remove or avoid creating a burr in the case of softness, and to avoid chipping in the case of brittleness.

Of course all of these properties are affected by the heat treatment, which is often more important to the performance of the knife than the composition of the steel.

Cruwear! from my practical testing, it's been the best I've tried. From the tool, it represents quite well.

You don't get to have everything.

The point of a graph like that in this case is merely so that you can choose which aspects you need for a given application.

You decide which aspects you can live without to get the ones you can not live without, for a given application. Because it's either that or have a dull knife, or a broken knife, or a rusty knife, etc.

My favorite kitchen knife is tough and sharp but rusts easily. It's ok since it doesn't live in a tackle box on a boat, or in my leatherman.

At best you can have "good all-season tire" which at least doesn't completely suck to the point of failuire in any dimension but doesn't excell in any either.

H1 and H2 seems to fare well on all properties except edge retention.

I would probably be interested in a knife that has high corrosion resistance, toughness, and edge retention; ease of sharpening might not be that much of a concern, personally, but correct me if I am wrong and it actually matters despite toughness.