>>2077634Here’s a good rundown of the debate, with microscope pictures, so you can see just what the crystal structure of your steels look like.
https://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/09/10/carbon-vs-stainless-steel-in-knives/Also note that in carbon steels, the carbides are not only smaller, but almost exclusively iron carbide, which has a Rockwell hardness around 70 or so. Most any sharpening stone can abrade iron carbide, which is why it’s so easy to sharpen.
The carbides in stainless tend to be Chromium and Vanadium carbides, with a Rockwell hardness of 80-90, and are much bigger than the iron carbides in carbon steel. Being so hard, they cannot be easily sharpened by any but the very hardest natural stones; diamond stones are the preferred way to go here. Even so, those carbides can pop out of the steel matrix during sharpening, leaving only the soft steel behind. This is why some cheaper stainless steels are razor sharp for a very short time, then stay half dull forever after that-the soft steel matrix at the edge wears away very quickly until the next set of round pebble-shaped carbides can expose themselves and lend their abrasion resistance to the edge.
