CPM-20CV Steel.

Two mills, one composition

The question that brings most people here is whether CPM-20CV and Bohler M390 are the same steel. Close enough that it rarely matters. Crucible Industries makes CPM-20CV in the United States, and its composition is licensed from, or matched to, M390. Two mills, one recipe, and both sit in the same super premium tier.

So the choice between them is not really a metallurgy decision. It is a decision about which knife you want, from which brand, at what price. What actually varies from one blade to the next is heat treat and grind geometry, and those belong to the knife maker rather than to the alloy. If you have been trying to work out which of the two is better, the honest answer is that you are choosing a mill and a brand, not a level of performance.

What the carbide load buys, and what it costs

Powder metallurgy is the part of the name doing the work. Rather than pouring a large ingot and letting carbides grow where they like, the steel is built from powder, so the hard carbide particles end up small and evenly spread through the blade. Those particles are what a cutting edge rides on, and this alloy carries a lot of them.

That is the entire edge retention story. Abrasive material (cardboard, dirty wood, salty rope on a boat) wears soft steel away faster than it wears carbide, so the working edge survives long after a simpler stainless has quit. The same fact runs the other direction on the stone. Sharpening CPM-20CV means cutting through carbide, not just the steel around it, so plan on a slower job and plan on patience. Strop it early and often and you almost never face the long job. Let it go fully blunt and you will feel the gap against something like S35VN.

Where it gives ground

Toughness is the honest caveat on this page. CPM-20CV holds up well for a steel run this hard and this wear resistant, but it is not the toughest thing on the shelf, and CPM MagnaCut beats it there. CPM-20CV vs MagnaCut sets the two side by side. Toughness is resistance to chipping and cracking under impact or a sideways load, and it is a separate property from hardness. A blade can be very hard, cut for a week without fading, and still lose a chip out of the edge if you twist it out of a stuck cut.

What that means in the pocket is simple. Slice, do not pry. Do not twist the blade sideways in a deep cut, do not hammer it through anything, and do not use the tip as a screwdriver. Kept to cutting, the edge is the part you will notice, and it lasts. If your real use involves impact or hard field work where a chipped edge would end the day, that is the argument for MagnaCut instead of this.

Corrosion is the part you stop thinking about

Roughly a fifth of this alloy is chromium, which is high even by stainless standards, and it is the reason CPM-20CV shrugs off conditions that stain lesser blades. Pocket sweat, a humid summer, a wet boat deck, cutting fruit and closing the knife on a damp blade: none of that is a problem here.

Stainless is not rust proof, though, because nothing is. Salt water and acidic food residue left on any blade long enough will eventually mark it, and a folder holds moisture in the pivot and behind the liners far longer than it holds it on the flats. Rinse it, dry it, put a drop of oil in the pivot after a coastal trip. That is the whole maintenance routine for this steel, and it is shorter than the one a carbon steel blade demands.

CPM-20CV on our shelf

Ten listings across seven models carry this steel right now, and every one of them is made in the USA. Case accounts for five of the ten, Gerber for four, Kershaw for one.

Prices run from $141.75 to $287.94, a wide spread for a single alloy, and the spread is about the knife rather than the steel. At the bottom, the Kershaw Link in olive aluminum sits in Closeouts and is the least expensive way into the steel here. In the middle, Case's Longhouse pairs a locking clip blade with OD green canvas micarta at $164.99. Toward the top, the Gerber Savvy runs a 3.5 inch Wharncliffe blade in a gray aluminum handle at $219.39. Same steel, three completely different knives. If you want to see where this one lands against the rest of the shelf, start at the Steel Lab.