SURVIVAL EQUIPMENTS

I have been using Vanadis 4 Extra for many years now. It’s a high alloyed non-stainless powder metallurgical steel not to different from a high speed steel, except it is optimized for cold work instead of hot cutting of metal. It has a high content of vanadium giving small, evenly distributed vanadium carbides. Vanadis 4 is one of the toughest powder steels available, and thereby one of the best powder steels suited for knife application. In stainless and higher alloyed powder steels the chromium and other carbide forming elements lead to a very high volume fraction carbides. This reduces toughness (also for powder steels), and in a knife blade this brittleness will lead to wear of the edge by chipping and carbide tear out, and reduced edge retention. Vanadis 4 has a good balance between hardness, wear resistance and toughness where edge retention is the primary goal.
I heat treat this steel up to 66 HRC depending on the use. With more advanced steel, one also need to be more precise in the heat treatment and should have good knowledge about metallurgy before attempting working with them.
Here is an article on this from Knivprat.

A8-mod is a modified version of AISI A8. It’s a conventional cold work tool steel, with a medium carbon content and alloyed with chromium, molybdenum and vanadium. It exceeds most knife steels in toughness. Toughness is a property often overlooked in knife steels, often on behalf of corrosion and wear resistance. The thing is that a sharp edge with a decent edge angle (<35° total angle) needs toughness to avoid breakage of the edge/chipping, especially when working with hard materials like wood. Because of this, edge retention of this steel will be better than higher alloyed steels and even powder steels for many purposes.
Many combat and survival knives are made today in brittle steels like S30V, D2, ATS-34 and 440C. These have very little safety margin and will break without warning when overloaded. A8-mod has, even on a hardness of over 60 HRC, ductility and will bend before fracture. (This doesn’t mean that it is soft.)
All knives can be broken, knives in A8-mod will just give you a much harder time doing so.
A little more on this.