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.
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.