Knife Steel Comparison: What D2, 14C28N, VG-10 and M390 Actually Do

Ask five people which knife steel is best and you will get five answers, most of them confident and several of them wrong. The honest answer is that there is no best steel. There are trade-offs, and the right steel depends on what you cut, how often you sharpen, and whether your knife lives in a dry pocket or a wet one.

We stock most of the steels below, so this is written from handling them rather than from a spec sheet. Here is what each one actually does.

The short version

The same table in text

Steel	Edge holding	Toughness	Rust resistance	Ease of sharpening	Typical price
3Cr13	Low	Very good	Very good	Very easy	$15–30
14C28N	Good	Very good	Excellent	Easy	$50–90
D2	Very good	Fair	Fair	Moderate	$30–90
VG-10	Good	Good	Excellent	Easy with a strop	$85–130
10Cr15CoMoV	Good	Good	Very good	Easy	$50–70
M390 / Elmax	Excellent	Low	Very good	Hard	$150+

3Cr13 — the honest budget steel

Roughly 0.3% carbon and 13% chromium, usually run soft, around 55 HRC. It will not hold an edge through a day of cardboard and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What it is genuinely good at: being cheap, resisting rust, and sharpening back to keen in about a minute on almost any stone. For a knife that lives in a tackle box, a glovebox or a kitchen drawer — or a first knife for someone who is going to lose it — 3Cr13 is the sensible choice. Buying premium steel for a knife you will misplace is just an expensive way to misplace steel.

In stock: the Mtech Linerlock in blue at $17.95.

14C28N — the one people underrate

Sandvik’s stainless, about 0.62% carbon and 14% chromium with nitrogen added, typically hardened to around 59 HRC. On paper it sits in the middle. In the pocket it punches well above where its price suggests.

The fine grain structure means it takes a genuinely keen edge — sharper than D2 will get without real effort — and the nitrogen gives it corrosion resistance that shrugs off sweat and damp. It does not hold that edge as long as a powder steel, but it comes back in a few minutes on a stone rather than a session.

If you carry daily, sharpen occasionally, and do not want to think about your knife much, this is the steel we would point you at first.

In stock: the Bear & Son Nekama I in gray at $68.

D2 — the workhorse with one catch

High carbon, around 1.5%, with about 12% chromium. That last number matters: below roughly 13% free chromium, a steel is not truly stainless. D2 is semi-stainless, and the distinction is not academic.

It holds an edge notably longer than 14C28N and cuts aggressively through rope and cardboard. The trade is that it will spot and patina if you leave it wet, and it takes more work to sharpen because the same carbides that hold the edge resist your stone.

Wipe it dry and it will serve you for years. Leave it in a damp pocket after a fishing trip and you will find orange freckles. Our own C&S Field Pocketknife runs D2 for exactly this reason — it is the best cutting-per-dollar steel we know for someone who will look after it.

Also in stock: the Dreamtech Linerlock in black and red micarta at $60.

VG-10 — fine edge, treat it as a slicer

Japanese stainless, roughly 1% carbon and 15% chromium with cobalt and vanadium, usually around 60 HRC. It takes a very fine edge, holds it well through cardboard and rope, and resists rust better than most steels people worry about.

The catch is that VG-10 is a touch brittle right at the apex. Pry with the tip or baton with it and you will chip it — not because it is soft, but because it is hard and fine-grained. Treat it as a slicer and it will outlast you.

Sharpening is where VG-10 rewards you. It responds beautifully to a strop. Most people reach for a stone when the edge needs fifteen passes on leather with a little compound. Save the stone for when it stops biting entirely.

In stock: the C&S Copper Damascus with a VG-10 core in sheepsfoot at $95.

10Cr15CoMoV — the close cousin

A Chinese steel built to a similar recipe to VG-10, and it behaves much the same way: fine edge, good corrosion resistance, easy to bring back. It shows up in mid-priced folders and represents good value in the $50–70 band.

If you like how VG-10 cuts but not what it costs, this is where to look.

M390 and Elmax — the premium end

Both are Böhler powder-metallurgy steels. M390 runs around 1.9% carbon and 20% chromium; Elmax is close behind. Powder metallurgy means the carbides are smaller and more evenly distributed, which is why they hold an edge far longer than anything else here — published metallurgical ratings put M390 and Elmax at roughly double the edge retention of 14C28N. The trade is toughness. On the same ratings M390 scores near the bottom where 14C28N scores near the top, which in the pocket means it chips where a softer steel would roll. Their corrosion resistance is good but not the best on this page; 14C28N and VG-10 both rate higher, because chromium locked into carbides is chromium that is not protecting the blade.

They are genuinely excellent. They are also expensive, and when they finally do go dull, a stone will take a while and diamond helps. Whether that matters depends on you: if you sharpen once a season and want the knife to simply keep cutting in between, this is what you are paying for. If you enjoy sharpening, you are paying a premium for a chore you like doing anyway.

In stock: the Microtech MSI Ram-Lok in frag blue at $328.

A word on Damascus

Damascus is a pattern, not a performance category, and there are two different things sold under the name.

Traditional pattern-welded Damascus is layers of different steels forge-welded together and etched to show the pattern — the whole blade is Damascus, and how it cuts depends on which steels went into it.

What you will more often see today, including on our copper Damascus knives, is a Damascus-clad blade with a different steel forming the cutting core. On ours that core is VG-10. The Damascus is what makes people ask about the knife; the VG-10 is what does the cutting. Both facts are worth knowing before you buy, because a Damascus exterior tells you nothing at all about edge retention.

So which should you buy?

If it is your first decent knife: 14C28N. Enough performance to show you what a good knife feels like, forgiving enough to learn sharpening on, cheap enough that losing it is annoying rather than painful.

If you cut a lot and will maintain it: D2. More working edge per dollar than anything else here, provided you wipe it dry.

If it will get wet: 14C28N or VG-10. Both shrug off damp in a way D2 will not.

If you want to sharpen as rarely as possible: M390 or Elmax, and buy a diamond stone while you are at it.

If it is a knock-about knife: 3Cr13, and spend the difference on something else.

Whatever you land on, the thing that makes the biggest difference to how a knife cuts is not the steel on the box. Heat treatment and edge geometry move real-world performance more than the name stamped on the blade — the same steel run soft or sharpened badly will lose to a cheaper one done right. It is whether the edge has been touched in the last month. A stropped 3Cr13 will out-cut a neglected M390 every single time.

If what you actually want to know is how much to spend rather than which steel to pick, we wrote that one too: what a good pocket knife actually costs, with the knives we stock in each price band.

Our own C&S blades in the higher-end steels carry a limited lifetime guarantee; our entry-level blades carry a one-year limited warranty. The cover for any individual knife is stated on its product page. If you would like one email a month covering this sort of thing, along with what is new and what is on sale, you can sign up here.