Why the Kizlyar Supreme Bastardo is a Great Knife.

 Why the Kizlyar Supreme Bastardo is a Great Knife.

In short 420HC ranks extremely high for toughness. What this translates to is total confidence that one is never going to break their precious wilderness knife, a knife which your life and those of others may well depend upon!

420HC does not loose it's corrosion resistance at maximum hardness. 420HC is also easy to sharpen. These features are great for a real working knife. Kizlyar Supreme are heat treating their 420HC to a maximum of HRC 58. Yes this is totally possible.

Here we can see (data provided by the manufacturer, Böhler) that the maximum HRC is around HRC 57.5, ie HRC58 can be obtained with little to no tempering. The toughness is achieved intrinsically from the alloy itself.

This data for Böhler N540 which is the same as AISI 420.

(note: probably not a very good idea to stick a N540/420HC blade in the fire.

YES, this isn't a high end steel but then again this is the steel of choice for a corrosion resistant blade that will be used everyday and must be easily sharpened without diamond tools.

To be honest when i first received this blade I was very sceptical of it's outdoor performance, especially at being able to stay sharp, even over a period of ONE day in the wilds cutting through solid oak logs and solid beech timber. I was super confident it would have a dull edge after a few minutes workout on this dirty (bark on) timber.  I had to swallow my ridiculous and scientifically unfounded prejudices about 420HC.  The thing about 420HC is it is crucial what is in the mix in terms of maximum limits of each batch. By this I mean the top of the bell curve for maximum allowable alloying elements because it has been also shown that the presence of Nitrogen in some variants lends itself to higher quality end products. I don't know what % of N is present in the alloy that Kizlyar Supreme is using but all I can say is that in real life catting tasks, this blade is making my very much more expensive knives look crap! (yes is is 420HC, I haven't made a mistake, as they also produce this blade with Sleipner tool steel).