You did really good work on that one - D2 is one of my all time favourites and if folks would stop following the latest fashion and fad with the various so-called 'super steels' and just got on with buying and using high performing knives made from readily available steel we'd all be happier.
D2 can chip out at higher hardness but the same can be said for any steel - this is usually down to torsion (sideways) stress. As a slicing knife steel the only strike against it is that many folks just can't sharpen it properly, but that could also be said for most of the stainless steels as well. D2 is not as tough as some steels though, which is possibly where the reputation for chipping comes from.
The only knives I commission from other makers are in 2mm to 3.2mm D2 and provided you can get your sharpening up to muster it's tough to find a better steel for a slicing knife. It just keeps on cutting, and cutting, and...
None of my D2 knives have ever chipped or dinged out, but I only use them for slicing so perhaps that is no surprise.
Bob Dozier's D2 knives are legendary and, as far as I know, his shop does not (or did not) use a cryo cycle. Maybe they do these days but up until a year or so ago I'm pretty sure I heard or read somewhere that they did not use sub-zero - Bob's knives are very thin at the edge though, which is more than half the battle when slicing...
Cons ?
It's a pig to work (tough as hell on grinding belts), tricky to heat treat well (dead easy to heat treat wrong though
) and due to end-user perception it is largely ignored as an option when it should really be at or near the top of the list for many kinds of knives.
Chris Reeve started out making his infamous machined-from-a-bar hollow handled knives in D2 and probably only moved to A2 when his machinery started throwing a wobbly working overtime in the process. A fringe benefit of being more profitable to produce in A2 was the much higher toughness A2 offers over D2. I'm starting to sound like a Star Wars script...
Learn to sharpen it properly and you'll probably never want to use anything else. Fail to learn how to sharpen it properly and you'll never want to try it again.
Operator error never seems to enter discussions on the various merits of blade steels though. Normally all you hear is "it's crap - doesn't take a decent edge"...
I don't give a fig about fads and fashions in steel and there isn't anyone I know who could reliably identify any steels other than perhaps D2, O1, possibly 12C27 and maybe 1090 when using them. The differences would mainly be detectable during sharpening for O1, 12C27 and 1090 and only by someone who knows exactly what they are looking for while the 'bite' of D2 is pretty easy to pick out from the crown in use.
My point is that you could shove a dozen knives from a dozen steels in the hands of the most experienced user and unless you told them what they were made from most folks wouldn't see too many differences.
Now that I've just offended everybody, I'll get my coat.
D2 - I'm a big fan, and I'd confidently put it against many of the currently in vogue steels without hesitation.
Nice job.
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