a word about thickness and wondersteels....

by former hater of plastic, Sunday, June 24, 2018, 17:00 (2281 days ago) @ bj

powdered metal may show fine in an engineer designed test for structural elements, as for notch test and etc.

But, that is not knife use, and powdered metals generally chip and break edges and tips when stressed. They are no manner of spring, once the stuff starts to flex, all bets are off. And they are very stiff, and resist that flex...to a point.

So, a hard use knife of the stuff, where its main advantage is edge retention in controlled cutting of abrasive substances, needs to be stout. Stout as in edge and tip, to resist, as well as possible, that flex which leads to failure mode.

So, Rick has the recipe correct, as for powdered stainless use. The best steel for such a hard use knife would be in the 80CrV2 class with salt bath, second choice 5160...
..but everybody wants stainless. So, we are back to square one, and better make it stout and poorer knife, rather than lose edge or tip.