Author: Larrin

Austenitizing, Damascus, My Knife Steels, Nickel-alloyed, Tempering

Pop’s ProCut – A New Carbon Steel for Knives

Larrin

Development

In March 2024 Joey Berry of Pop’s Knife Supply called me and said he wanted to develop a new steel. He said that their most popular steel was 80CrV2 and so he wanted to make “80CrV3.” “You mean 80CrV2 but with a little more vanadium?” He said no but some kind of “sequel” to 80CrV2 that would be more exciting. I told him that doesn’t give me much to go off of but I would think about whether I had any good ideas along those lines. I thought about gaps in the market in the area of low alloy knife steels (“Carbon steel”) that would also be usable by the knifemaker that is buying 80CrV2. It occurred to me that our selection of high nickel steels is very limited; 15N20, L6, and 8670 are pretty much it. These steels are high in toughness and offer good hardness to go with it, but have no real wear resistance to speak of. 80CrV2 is in a similar position just without the nickel. I thought if we added some tungsten and vanadium to a high nickel steel we could make the steel more balanced; give it some wear resistance along with the high toughness. Those carbide pinning elements would mean that the steels are more beginner friendly for forge heat treating. 15N20, for example, already sees grain growth around 1500°F (815°C) and so its toughness drops very rapidly even when only slightly overheated. If the tungsten and vanadium were kept in check the forgeability, grindability, and polishability would remain high. This would also offer an alternative to other tungsten/vanadium steels like Blue #1, V-Toku2, Wolfram Special, 1.2519, and others. Those steels don’t have much toughness to speak of, so we could combine the best of the nickel steels with the best of the tungsten/vanadium steels. Another exciting element with the high nickel is the possibility to use the steel in pattern-welded Damascus as a “bright” layer. This gives an option for a higher wear resistance steel with better edge retention for that component of the Damascus. I told Joey about my idea and we decided to move forward with it. read more

Heat Treating and Processing, Tempering

What is Atlantic 33 Non-Tempering Steel?

Larrin

Atlantic 33 Steel

There are a few places to purchase this Atlantic 33 “non-tempering” steel so I have been getting questions about it over the past couple years. The information is pretty scant and the descriptions are mysterious and confusing to anyone who knows steel [1]. In the advertising it says things like: “Drawing of temper to suit different requirements is unnecessary and completely eliminated.” Also there is no composition listed and the heat treating instructions are very barebones. “Suitable hardness is obtained by merely heating the tool and quenching it in water.” And, “May be heated to almost a melting heat without danger of distortion.” It basically just says to heat treat it however you feel like and skip the tempering. If it’s true that it doesn’t matter how you heat treat that is great, but otherwise it would be nice to know how to best heat treat the steel. read more