Month: April 2018

Steels

Reader Question – O1 vs 80CrV2

Larrin

Larrin,

Someone said austempered o1 would be as tough or tougher then martempered 80crv2. Could you help me wrap my head around that?

I have an affinity for fine grained simple steels, and o1 being precision ground and available in all different sizes is great, but if 80crv2 has a finer grains structure and is tougher I’d be sold. It’s for a run of belt hawks that will be used primarily for woods and hunting duties not destruction tools. But I’d also like to focus on one steel for a while and curious if for small to medium belt knives which you’d recommend? I’ve played with most of the high wear and too steels, but haven’t messed with too many of the high carbon steels as I hated 1095. read more

History - Articles - Books, Steels

The Development of High Vanadium Steels, M4, and the First Tool Steels Book

Larrin

Thanks to Gary Cornell and Devin Thomas for becoming Knife Steel Nerds supporters on Patreon. 

Last Time, in Steel History….

When we last left steel history, the first high speed steels had been developed which had led to an explosion in steel development. I covered all of this in The History of the First Tool Steel. A few highlights of that article: read more

Metallurgy Principles, Quenching

What Makes Quenched Steel so Hard?

Larrin

Update: I have started a Patreon page to fund research projects which you can read about here – http://knifesteelnerds.com/how-you-can-help/

To harden steel you heat it up to high temperature to form a phase called austenite, followed by rapid quenching to make a very strong phase called martensite. Hardness is a measure of strength. I covered the process of austenite formation in the following post: Austenitizing Part 1. To summarize that post: read more

Quizzes

Results of Steel Nerd Quiz

Larrin

This past week I did a quiz on my site to get a feel for the level of knowledge of my readership (or at least the ones that take quizzes) and of course for fun: Take the Quiz Here.

At the time of writing there are more than 900 responses to the quiz (update: 1000!), which I think is a success. I have performed some analysis of the results of the quiz and so I will go over some of the questions that tripped people up and how I might adjust what I write about on this site based on the responses. read more