I’ve experience with most of Sandvik’s current 1x steels, except for 14C28 :). That is 12C27, 13C26 and 19C27.
As a sharpener I love these steels: they are all very fine-grained. 13C26 is my all-time favourite steel. There is no stainless steel I have gotten sharper than 13C26. It doesn’t have the best wear-resistance, however.
19C27 has better wear-resistance than 13C26, at a slight cost in its ability to take an edge. 12C27 has a little less carbon and is (I think) the budget variety and/or easier to work with. I haven’t been able to get it as sharp as 13C26.
According to zknives 14C28n has a similar composition as 13C26. It has slightly less carbon and 1% more chromium in it (as well as some nitrogen). This is consistent with reports on the internet that it was developed to be a bit more stainless than 13C26. Apparently 13C28n was developed by Sandvik in cooperation with Kershaw; hence you see it almost exclusively in Kershaw knives.
Here[/url] is an overview of these steels at the Sandvik site.
It’d be great if someone could give us first-hand reports of 14C28n. I’m curious whether it takes and edge like 13C26 and how its edge retention is.
[Edit: there is no *stainless* steel I have gotten sharper than 13C26. There are carbon steels, like Hitachi white and blue, that take an even more wicked edge.]
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