One more loaner knife reviewed, I'm not very happy about it though. My bad, expectations were set too high, based feedback from various users. Herders are unusually thin knives for western maker, and their carbon steel knives have very positive feedback. I mistakenly thought it was a carbon steel knife, but alas, it was just stainless steel. Still, among western knives it does stand out as a better performer, but compared to Japanese knives it's still not quite there, mainly because I was forced to use it with 20 deg per side edge, typical for western kitchen knives, but not so good for performance. On the other hand, what can you do, when the steel won't support thinner edges.
Saturday, April 28, 2012 22:56:44
30" Dell U3011 display arrived after all. Got lost first time somehow, dunno how do you loose 30" monstrosity, but the seller sent another one overnight. All things well in the end, now I have my system almost as I wanted it :) Games do look better on 30 incher...
Saturday, April 7, 2012 00:36:29
Uhmm, where to start. Added about two dozen high speed steels made by Spanish steel maker Rovalma. While I was at it, found out that several steels were in the wrong reference group, so Erasteel ASP2030, Daido DEX40, Forecreu PM30, Hitachi HAP40 and Bohler-Uddeholm Vanadis 30 were moved from AISI M3:1+Co group to AISI M3:2+Co. Biiig change as you can see :) Alright, just pain in the a$$ to move few alloys from one group into another with their composition references and all that. Makers list alloys as equivalents of whatever they feel like at the moment, then dealers add more "equivalents" and in the end I have to spend considerable time comparing compositions and sifting dozen links figuring out the hell is really going on.
Thursday, April 5, 2012 21:42:56
Cr4W2MoV steel is medium alloy tool steel, with a bit of Vanadium(V) Tungsten(W) and Molybdenum(Mo). Officially used for dies, punches, etc. Apparently work swell for knives too. High working hardness and pretty good wear resistance.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 22:10:40
Actually I've posted it before I went out with my comp rebuild, but never remembered to do the entry here. Same as other Shigefusa kitchen knives, superbly well made, excellent cutter and quite demanding knife, not to maintain, but to use, you really have to know how to use those usubas, at least to some degree, otherwise, at best you'll be disappointed, at worst, you'll ruin the edge. I'm not an expert, but at least I can use it safely for myself and the knife too :) Alrighty, details in the review, check it out...
Saturday, March 31, 2012 00:10:14
After 4 days of struggle, replaced all of the watercooling components, including every single bard, tube, reservoir, coolant, rediator, radiator fans... just the pump is old. Stupid Rampage IV won't recognize more than 20GB ram... Too tired, will try to flash bios tomorrow. And then OC, which is why I bought top level hardware anyway...
Saturday, March 17, 2012 02:08:53
I've been sortta out. Not much access to email, no time for that either. Building a new rig, takes a lot of time. Replaced water cooling system completely, new rad, new fans for rad, new tubing, only the pump is old, from last rebuild. Gotta be a monster system once it's up, Sandy Bridge-E, Radeon 7970, 24gb ram, etc. Fingers crossed, for the moment when I first turn it on... And then reinstalling all the soft, sigh...
Thursday, March 15, 2012 09:31:52
Apparently a new alloy from Crucible, at least a year ago it wasn't on their site. Thanks to Neo of BF for heads-up on this one. Might be new for Crucible, but by composition very similar to Bohler-Uddeholm Vanadis 4E steel, which is a very good performer, demonstrated by Fred Haakonsen Custom Utility Knife.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 10:52:24
Rather quick successor, but there was no other way around it, database schema has been changed and I had to update the app so that it could keep up with the central database. Improved aliases in the app as well, plus speed and memory optimization.
Monday, March 12, 2012 18:17:18
New database schema, improved support for aliases(again) and better speeds and reduced load on my server. Have fun exploring all the alloys. Also, steel search trends page now has steel of the day data as well. You can look up what's hot today ;)
Monday, March 12, 2012 18:13:32