10 September 2008, 04:24
NaphtaliHow to test wear resistance of blade of unknown HRC?
I have no access to a Rockwell "C" scale hardness tester and am without ability to conduct a Taber Wear Test. Does anyone have an acceptable method to verify a blade's abrasion resistance? I own knives with known hardness range, HRC 58-59 and 62-65. But their blade configuration and thickness is different from one another. These blades are also different from the blade with the unknown wear resistance. So I doubt their information will be useful.
10 September 2008, 13:19
meteThe problem is that hardness and wear resistance are not necessarily related.For example with Talonite the matrix is actually rather low in hardness but the carbides are very wear resistant.Another example is S30V which has vanadium carbides which are much more wear resistant than chromium carbides.Cutting something fairly abrasion resistant such as cardboard boxes gives you a good idea but as you know that depends also on edge configuration.