Category: Steels

4 thoughts on “Steels”

  1. Thanks for what you are doing. There is so much misinformation, hyperbole, and exaggeration being presented as fact on the internet regarding knife blade steel. I felt like the skies cleared when I discovered your site. I really appreciate your science-based approach to demystify so many issues.

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Austenitizing, Edge Retention, History - Articles - Books, Steels, Tempering, Toughness

A2 Steel – History and Properties

Larrin

Thanks to Dan Pierson, Steve R. Godfrey, Bryan Fry, and Timothy Becker for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

History

A2 steel is quite old, though determining the exact year it was released is a bit difficult. A2 steel was developed in the early 20th century during the explosion of tool steels that occurred after the discovery of high speed steel which was first presented in 1900. You can read about that history in this article: The History of the First Tool Steel. During the development of the first high speed steel included the switch from manganese to chromium as the primary hardenability element, and most high speed steels had about 4% Cr. That high chromium content was primarily for “hardenability” which is the degree of cooling required to achieve full hardness. A “water quenching” steel has low hardenability and must be quenched very rapidly from high temperature, and an “air hardening” steel can be left in air and it will fully harden. You can read more about hardenability in this article on quenching. The first high speed steel came to be known as T1, which had 4% Cr and 18% W (tungsten). The earliest record I have found of a precursor A2-type steel is in a summary of tool steels in 1925 [1], while summaries of tool steels from 1910 [2] and 1915 [3] do not have any similar steels. Therefore these types of steels probably arose sometime between 1915 and 1925. read more

Austenitizing, Cryo, Hardness, Heat Treating and Processing, Nitrogen-alloyed, Tempering

Heat Treating Vanax – How Hard Does it Get?

Larrin

Thanks to David Suitor, Drakopoulos Stelios, and Maxim Bellehumeur for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

Vanax

Vanax is an interesting steel because of its good combination of toughness, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. I wrote about Vanax along with other nitrogen-alloyed steels in this article, to describe how the steel is designed. While the datasheet shows it being capable of 59-61 Rc, I was curious about how hard the steel can go. The steel may be good for kitchen knives, for example, where very thin edges and high hardness is common. And kitchen knife users may appreciate the excellent corrosion resistance of Vanax in the presence of water, salt, and acidic foods. read more

History - Articles - Books, Steel and Knife Properties, Steels

All About AEB-L

Larrin

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History of AEB-L and 13C26

Tracking down the history of AEB-L was surprisingly difficult. The Uddeholm website claims that AEB-L was patented in 1928 [1]; however, that is not entirely truthful. Uddeholm did patent a stainless steel in 1928 [2], which was named AEB, and later AEB-H to differentiate it from AEB-L. This was a very early stainless steel, so its development and patent needs to be viewed in that historical context. You can read about the development of stainless steels in this article. The AEB patent was for 0.7-1.1% carbon, 10-16% chromium, and 0.75-2.0% manganese. The original Brearley and Haynes stainless steel patents were still in effect; they got around them by using a higher carbon content than the Brearley patent (had a 0.7% max), and by claiming that high Mn led to improved corrosion resistance (it actually doesn’t). The nominal composition of AEB became 1% carbon and 13.5% chromium, which gave it a relatively large carbide structure compared to AEB-L, but it did see some use as a razor blade steel. read more

Sharpness, Steel Alternatives, Toughness

The Sharpest Youtube Channel in the World

Larrin

Thanks to Rusty Craig, Dylan Curtis-Reeve, Brendan Porter, and Ian Cox for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

Kiwami Japan

A popular Youtube channel called “kiwami japan” includes several videos of making knives out of unusual materials such as jello, pasta, chocolate, etc. The video on making a knife out of cardboard has over 20 million views which means that these videos have reached a broader audience than just knife makers or enthusiasts. As a materials engineer I find the videos interesting from a materials perspective, but they are entertaining in other ways as well. The videos are a bit quirky so I decided to take a dive into these videos and try to figure out what is going on. I also e-mailed the person who makes the videos and he answered a few of my questions. I will refer to him as “Kiwami” for the rest of this article though I know that is not his name. Kiwami means extreme in Japanese.  read more

Silicon-Alloyed, Tempering

Silicon Additions for Improving Steel Toughness

Larrin

Thanks to Colin Shannon and Robert Williams for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

High Toughness Steels

There are a series of shock resisting steel designed for high toughness (see this article to learn about toughness). A popular one is S7, an air hardening steel that can reach relatively high hardness. Another steel in the “S” series, S5, is reported to be even tougher [1][2][3][4]: read more

Damascus, Nitrogen-alloyed, Steels

New Steel Analysis – Damasteel N11X and Damacore DC18N

Larrin

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N11X and Damacore DC18N

Last month I released an article about nitrogen-alloyed knife steels. After I posted the article I was informed about a new Damasteel product that includes a nitrogen-alloyed stainless steel as the core in a san-mai damascus steel product. At the time there was no information on the core steel other than its name: Damacore DC18N refers to a product with a core of “N11X” nitrogen steel and has san-mai damascus sides of RWL34 and PMC27 (their standard damascus mix without a core steel). Damasteel has recently released a datasheet for the new product which has provided more information: http://damasteel.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Data-Sheet-Martensitic-Damacore-Final-Version.pdf read more

Edge Retention, History - Articles - Books, Steel and Knife Properties, Steels, Super Steels, Toughness

Super Steels vs Regular Knife Steels

Larrin

Thanks to Daniel Jackson for becoming a Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporter!

Super Steel

I see frequent references to “super steel” online, and I was curious about how long that terminology has been around. I did searches on bladeforums as it is one of the oldest knife forums. The number of references to “super steel” has increased over time, but so have the number of posts on bladeforums. I saw how many references to “super steel” there were in each year, and then as a proxy to how many posts there were on bladeforums I did a search for “154” and saw how many references there were each year. Google tops out at 200 results but at that point the dataset was big enough to get an idea: read more