This knife is made with lowly 4116 stainless steel. It is also only $20 and comes with a serviceable sheath, it is sharp out of the box and capable of an extremely fine edge. I cannot attest to the edge holding ability because it has not accompany me into the woods at this point. I cannot stress enough the point of this value based cutting instrument, in my mind, allows those of us on a fixed income to have a nice collection of blades without draining the bank account.