Another consideration that may be worth noting....416 is real easy to work... a pleasure to shape, carve, etc. It's long been the favorite of engravers...I always use 416 for any part of my knives that I intend to embellish with any sort of carving.
The knife in the photo is an "oldie but goodie"...from years ago, back when I was still making kit knives. It came to mind for this thread because it was my first time to use 416 for bolsters.
As always, I had replaced the stock bolsters with my own. Knowing that my customer wanted the knife to be engraved, I had decided to go with 416 for the bolsters, and I purposely made them quite oversized in order to provide the engraver with plenty of "canvas"... Jim Small did a
marvelous job on the engraving (of course) and I specifically recall him commenting afterwards what a pleasure it had been to work with the large, easy-to-engrave, 416 SS bolsters.
That was my first time to use 416 for my bolsters....I've been using it ever since.
BTW- I also made the backspine out of 416. I think the liners may have been 3xx series.
Dennis Greenbaum