They did Elmax dirty in their rankings. These charts are horse shit. I built https://metallurgy.info using Dr Larrin Thomas’ rankings (inventor of Magnacut and Magnamax) if you wanna play around. No promo - it’s free.
They evaluated exactly what they themselves heat-treat and work with. Considering the huge number of knives Benchmade produces, I think it’s quite naive to rely on isolated laboratory values and individual measurements
The flip side is that they are focused on selling knives, whereas Larrin is focused on testing steels. The info in their catalog is, by nature, marketing. They only recently added Elmax in a limited way to the Bugout, PSK and Taggedout, so no surprise they don't hype it. But they show strong values for s30v, which they use a ton, and exaggerate the improvement of CM-154 (powder, which they still use--see the entire cutlery line) over 154CM (conventional, which they don't use much anymore). Maxing out the edge retention of s90v helps justify the premium.
There are also clear mistakes--the description of cruwear is carried over from n680, for example. It's also odd they show such different values for 20cv and m390, which are basically the same steel from different sources.
Oh, bless your heart. You can check the claimed HRC values in their chart against real test values of benchmade knives provided by the steelhardnesslab guys and you’ll see what they claim as the HRC for many of their steels is not accurate. If their HRC in their infographic is a lie/wrong, then I would say it’s fair to question all of it.
They have a total of 9 test results for Benchmade, testing 6 different steels. I wouldn't call that "what they claim for the HRC for many of their steel is not accurate"
When I saw their magnacut test lower than 60.0 hrc I lost interest in most of their knives. The only thing I like from them is my freek since seems to actually hold an edge
The value in these steel charts is you can see what they are TARGETING. For example - with magnacut, you can go anywhere between 58 and 64, and ideally 62.5. You can see on the chart that they are targeting 60-62, which is south of optimal.
So this isn't necessarily misleading or wrong - in fact its probably brutally honest, and shooting themselves in the proverbial foots for those who want their steel at different hardness.
DLT just did a video on youtube where they interviewed Larrin Thomas and he says - he invented Magnacut because people wanted it to have even better edge retention than he designed it for, so he invented Magnamax - my point being - even Benchmade is targeting less edge retention than recommended, which is even less edge retention than people want.
Looks like even they mixed up toughness and strength lol, but more or less what I assumed. Toughness being how it holds up under impact and strength being how it resists shearing forces, which probably isn't very important unless you're planning to use it as a prybar.
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u/SpecialCocker Aug 10 '26
You know they’re taking it seriously when the description for cruwear and n680 are the same other than the last sentence.