I'm a bit of a knife steel geek and got tired of juggling tabs to compare stats. So, I built this tool: https://new.knife.day/blog/knife-steel-comparisons/all
It lets you pick steels (like the ones in the screenshot) and see a radar chart comparing their edge retention, toughness, corrosion resistance, and ease of sharpening on a simple 1-10 scale.
It's already been super handy for me, and I thought fellow knife/metallurgy enthusiasts here might find it useful too.
Would love to hear your thoughts or any steel requests!
Cheers!
It would be nice with an example on how knife steel properties work. I assume there are balanced tradeoffs.
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.