david weaver
Right, I understand that, but I have an old man preference for the way it's done in the friodurs. Drop it in a die, smash it, heat treat it, and then trim, grind and finish it.

Somewhere in there, Friodur cryo treats it, so it doesn't fail in big bits, and it holds up reasonably well even at 17 degrees or so.

It's probably 59 hardness or so and would make an excellent pocket knife, and could, perhaps be a click harder.

The other thing it does that V11 does not is sharpen pretty easily on natural stones. I think that's why it's a click softer than carbon steel razors (or it probably wouldn't).

I'm not a wonk for super edge holding in a pocket knife. Instead, I'd rather have one that touches up easily on a natural stone (thus the tidioute wharncliffe - once per week or two for 30 seconds). The lower threshhold on hardness is based on the fact that soft steels sharpen well on very fine synthetic media, but they are cut too drastically by natural finishers that are 3-5 micron and they get scratched up, raise a fat wire edge and don't polish well. When the wire edge is removed, the edge itself isn't very fine and the knife has no ability to hold it.

(side note, I don't think the friodur in kitchen knives is as good as the razors, but that may be a hardness issue - the razors are too hard to be steeled. The knives are harder than most current offerings like Wusthoff knives that are 0.5 chromium, but they can still be steeled).