I think this observation is very much on point. Imho, there's a bit of what amounts to fetishism in the knife-making community about steels. Truthfully, the primary differences should be in fit, finish, and balance for a knife. It's just as possible to put a fine edge on the cheapest steel in the world as as it is an expensive tool steel like 440C. Jay Fisher, a custom knife-maker, likes to makes the point that a ceramic flint-knapper can put an edge on a stone that will scare any knifemaker alive, as long as the edge doesn't accidentally touch anything too solid and chip.

An AUS8 blade hits a nice balance between corrosion resistance, end-user servicing, decent maximum hardness, and manufacturability, though focusing on "our steel is special" seems to sell blades. Plus, I think it's worth noting that if most manufacturers were to make blades out of more expensive knife making steel like S3OV, not only would they likely corrode, people would be close to incapable of properly caring for those blades properly anyway. It's not an easy task, especially for someone who is only using the knife to achieve their primary goal: cooking.

I don't get the steel fetishism either, and with kitchen knives it's clearly very much about environment: your fancy-pants pocket knife steel may not do well in an environment where it's sat around damp and with food residue on it for hours or days, shoved into a dishwasher, or whatever.

I'm not mad on pocketknives, but I've got a small handful in 440C, a couple in AUS-8, and then one in S35VN. The latter used to be considered fairly high end as a blade steel but now appears to be increasingly commonplace in even relatively inexpensive knives.

From a practical standpoint, and for my use cases, there's no significant difference between any of these, except that the S35VN is harder to sharpen.

I have no complaints with edge retention or sharpness for any of the 440C or AUS-8 knives I own even though they're looked down on as blade steels by the knife community and, in fact, my favourite pocketknife for everyday and DIY use is the very inexpensive Ontario Rat #1 in AUS-8. It fits my hand well, is a great cutting tool, and is incredibly easy to sharpen and maintain.

I own AUS8 knife from another brand and am incredibly satisfied with it. Yes it's not super hard and you probably can't sharpen it to shave your beard smoothly, but it has very good hardness/plasticity trade-off for regular usage. I sharpen it once every one or two years and hone about every other day on cheap honing steel for 5 seconds, and it cuts paper sheet flawlessly all the time. With this little maintenance and performance I can't be happier.

> Your overall point is well taken, but X50CrMoV15 is commodity stainless steel. Those German knives use it because people leave their knives out wet on their counters, not because it's amazing at cutting.

That's fair - I suppose I oversold "truly high quality kitchen knives".

I do think German knives generally tend toward softer steels on purpose to make them more amenable to occasional "abusive" treatment, which seems like a reasonable tradeoff for the average consumer.