david weaver
I know you were kidding about orders, but I won't be selling any of these. I may give a few away, though.

I wish I had unlimited riches to have a hired hand to put the commercial iron and the softer mule through a stroke test to estimate how much durability I'm giving up by dropping hardness a little bit.

Based on the sap beech test, it's not enough to worry about, and it makes the iron very workable on a natural finisher. I can't make a comment about washita not cutting chromium (it's likely that it doesn't do much other than rub it) because normally I'd make a comment like that when a surface is subpar compared to carbon steel, but on a similar abrasive basis, the surface is brighter with XHP than it is with any of the carbon steel irons I've used in the tests (O1, Ward, Blue Steel).