With the right heat treat and cryo process 440C can be a very good steel. It will get pretty close to AUS8 or any of those middle layer blade steels. Maybe not quite as good as CPM154 and so on, but it is definitely an excellent steel. I don't know Wayne's process, but a custom maker will tend to use better practices that will move the performance level up considerably from production knives,. I wouldn't be afraid of Wayne's blade.
