History - Articles - Books, Toughness

How to Heat Treat 26C3 Steel

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26C3 Steel

26C3 steel is produced by Uddeholmstrip (part of Voestalpine Precision Strip) as a razor and scalpel steel. This steel is also known as 1.2002 using the German designation. I don’t know much about the history of the steel but the marketing literature says, “voestalpine Precision Strip AB has long experience and were the pioneers of both the high carbon (UHB 26C3) and the martensitic stainless steel (UHB AEB-L) razor strip grades” [1]. In the 1927 patent for AEB-H [2], reference is made to “the purest Swedish carbon steel with ‘1.05% C and 0.4% Mn'” and in a 1970 patent for a razor blade steel there is a reference to UHB 26C (the 3 is not on the end) which has the same approximate composition as the current 26C3 [3]. So I think there was probably some evolution of the composition despite the claims of the marketing material. The composition of 26C3 is shown below: read more

Annealing, Austenitizing, Forging, Heat Treating and Processing, Quenching, Tempering

How to Use a Steel Datasheet to Develop a Heat Treatment

Thanks to David Reem, Colton, camilo, Brendan Gildea, Vince Koacz, Monery Custom Cutlery, Curt E, Shannon Sanders, Brazilian Blades, Rory Kelly, Brunhard, Zachary Chumley, Noel, Adam Nolte, Gundam lupus, and Jan Huch for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! I still don’t know when it will be time for the announcement of my new steel so until then you can get all of the data on its properties exclusively on Patreon. read more

History - Articles - Books, Steel and Knife Properties

CruForgeV – The Unfortunate Events that Killed a Forging Knife Steel

New Steel and New Patreon Supporters

On Patreon we now have a full set of experiments on the new knife steel I designed for Crucible and Niagara Specialty Metals. The results are extremely promising. Those results are only available on Patreon until it is time to do the formal announcement. Thanks to Chester Dussault, Bob Burland, Matt Masuda, Scott Decker, Philip Dempsey, David Heleander, ConvencienceShout, Chris Pregent, Egan, Morgan Noonan, Michal Galovič, Kumar Muthusamy, Eric Divine, Simon Moeskjær Balle, and Ben Horridge for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!  read more

Forging, Toughness

Ranking Toughness of Forging Knife Steels

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Low-Alloy Steel Testing

Over the past two years or so we have tested the toughness of many knife steels using a simple charpy impact test. You can read about the specifications of the test on this page. With the samples tested in this article I got a lot of help from Warren Krywko and Devin Thomas as well as donated steel from Alpha Knife Supply, Barmond Special Steels, and Achim Wirtz. This article focuses on the toughness testing performed on “low alloy” and carbon steels that are often used by forging bladesmiths. It is possible to forge high alloy steels, of course, though it does not appear to be very common even today. read more