Steel Properties Chart

A few disclaimers about this chart are in order. The first is that it is meant to show a steels potential when heat treated at an optimal working hardness (which will vary by steel). So a poorly heat treated blade with CPM S90V may not have the edge retention of a well heat treated AUS 8 blade with optimum blade geometry for your specific needs. These charts should be a reasonable guide to choose a steel the excels in the attributes that are most needed for your particular application. In recent years I have gotten more of my data from Larrin Tomas's great testing work (edge retention and toughness). The resulting charts represent my best effort of compiling a comparative list and framing it in an easy to understand way. Although there are ways in which this chart may fall short given variables beyond the basic potential of the steel I believe this will be a helpfull touch point for understanding the evolving landscape of knife steels. 

It has been my experience that most (not all) knife users care most about edge retention, thus the chart is sorted by that attribute. In most case the edge retention score is based on steel hardened 2-4 hrc points below its as quenched hardness.