1095 Cro-Van and 50-110B Types of Steel

D

D-weaver

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I've worked with 26c3, O-1 and 1095 making woodworking tools and in some cases knives. I heat treat open atmosphere, but do it well with a limited number of steels. My 1095 samples came back a little harder and less tough than expected (63.1c average with a 400F temper, but hardness probably only 75% of what it should be).

Because of that, I'm looking for a more plain-than-O1 alternative to 26c3 when shooting for lower target hardness and looking for very fine grain. In other words, very fine grain like 1095, willing to give up just a little hardness for better toughness.

I found samples of 50-100 online and am smitten with it so far, but see there is a whole array and used to be a bigger array of steels of this type. I'm guessing from discussions on here that 1095 Cro-Van is similar to 50-100, but with vanadium and maybe some other minor adjustments. I'd like to use steels that are in the 1-1.1% carbon range as edge stability for woodworking and crispness is more important than outright toughness ....at least to a point.

Are there any retailers or options to find these types of steels outside of europe? I'm in the states and see that the Sharon-like variants , Carbon V, 50-110B, etc, all long gone. I've seen other stuff like silver steel rod from Europe, but shipping makes it a no go.

I know there aren't necessarily a lot of guys really into the really plain fine steels now, but they are excellent for woodworking where a fine polished edge is desirable in a lot of what in the knife world would be push cuts.

Since I'm working open atmosphere only, anything that needs a soak due to a quantity of chromium more than just a little, etc - those are out.
 
If you give up some carbon there is 80CrV2.
 
Larrin said:
If you give up some carbon there is 80CrV2.
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that's an option, though I think that will put me around 59/60 hardness.

It might sound crazy, but there's a sweet spot for woodworking tools targeting 62 hardness or so. There are plenty of crap commercial tools that don't fit that, it's just my experience making tools - 62-64 is just dandy. 26c3 fills the latter.

1084 (I need to do some experimenting with that to solve low toughness), 80crv2 both decent options. thanks to a chart you published, I gather than the problem with 1095 is that the carbon stays in solution - or too much of it - and doesn't get assigned to larger carbides?

This is a worn sample of 1095 - the height of this picture is a little less than 2 hundredths of an inch. Nothing to be seen in terms of carbides.
1095 edge wear

50-100 is just abloom with little tiny carbides (slightly higher magnification, but I believe those dots are carbides proud of the lattice - very prominent. Would this be a cue to expect better toughness given the composition is known? As in, can I assume that these carbides are occupying some of the carbon? I think that is what's happening with my outsized 26c3 toughness numbers, but everything for me is just guess and test, and good outcome is good outcome, but I don't need to ever know why for sure.
50-100 edge wear and carbides


all that said, I see spec sheets and DIN rod overseas of 1 or slightly greater than 1% carbon steels with a little vanadium added beyond just the chromium in the 50-100 - and there are gobs of them, but I never find bar stock in the US with anything in this territory other than 1095 and O1. I've experimented with 52100 - it's missing something in the open atmosphere, at least when I heat treat it - it's not on my radar without buying an electric furnace. 52100 edge wear and carbides
 
Larrin's suggestion is spot on for what you described you're after. But I don't understand why 80CrV2 will put you "around 59/60 hardness". You can temper 80CrV2 to 62/63HRC no problem at all, and has great toughness.
 
Stuart Davenport Knives said:
Larrin's suggestion is spot on for what you described you're after. But I don't understand why 80CrV2 will put you "around 59/60 hardness". You can temper 80CrV2 to 62/63HRC no problem at all, and has great toughness.
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Woodworking is a little different than knives. For example, a slicing knife in O1 at 350F temper really at the top of the hardness schedule is pleasant so long as nobody bends it, but the edge is a bit brittle and takes damage in woodworking. 375-425 is a better range for it, right in the middle being ideal.

But I could be discounting 80crv2 too easily. 1084, I sent samples to larrin and they were higher hardness than I expected and not tough at all, but admittedly I just used the same routine I'd use for O1 and 26c3, which are the two steels I use a lot, and those two like it, 1084 didn't. maybe I'm discounting 1084 too soon, too.

Generally, whatever makes a good straight razor, though, is a good starting point for a woodworking tool at high hardness, O1 being a little under that (silver steel makes a much better razor than O1 - no experience with 26c3 as I'm not set up to grind razor hollows).

I will buy some 80crv2 and see how it comes out and also simplify the heat treat routine to lower heat before quench and less or no grain refinement - just an anneal and see why I was so far off with it.

From the AKS page, I see 62 hardness tending toward a fairly low tempering temperature.

Just as an aside, white steel #1 sort of follows this. If it's tempered around 300 or 325, it's a boastworthy level of hardness, but it makes a better woodworking tool by a mile when it's 375 or so temper.

I struggle a little with this because there's not much analysis - most boutique woodworking tools are sold with A2, O1 or CTS-XHP and the O1 is a decent choice - the other two are good for the manufacturer as XHP doesn't have great edge stability compared to something like 26c3.

Sort of also waiting for the magic person to come along "if you call ###-#### extension 42 at kabar, they'll sneak you a few square feet of it"
 
oh, I thought of another steel that's kind of blah in woodworking but makes a superb knife.....3V at 61 hardness.

and as one other side thought - the last remaining carving tool makers in europe are using some kind of chrome vanadium steel that feels like it's in my sweet spot hardness, but they call it "proprietary", which I doubt. Secret might be a better term.
 
Jacks_Hacks said:
Maybe something the guy knows what it is? He's obviously not as educated as us. yes devin its me. You do not like me, I do not like what I know about your son but can respect him. I don't know you period. But I would suggest not sticking alloys that they don't understand and he asked for outside of europe - thats a euro alloy as we both know not that your post helped him WHATSOEVER.

Honest question: Why not use antiscale or HT foil? YES in a forge lol. It slows the temp absorption and increases your "room of error" if you are forge HTing which is just. Pointless honestly you can actually make a decent enough kiln with firebrick, a PID, an element, and a k thermocouple yourself and I personally would recommend doing that because in order to get better you just simply do need better equipment. It can be done, but it's just not ideal and for much less than an evenheat you can get similar temp accuracy. But for forge stuff, Id cover it with a decent antiscale that doesn't just fall off and make it thick enough but not so thick that when you quench it it doesn't blow apart. I'd second the 80CrV2 response...and yes they are correct that - well you are not understanding carbon in steel but. There's more room for error with 80CrV2 than 1084 but its a better alloy...

Any direct questions I'm glad to spend the time to explain the carbon stuff and as much as I can. Just ask.
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I have bought 19c5va here in the US directly from Uddeholm. Not sure if you can still get it though.

Hoss
 
Embedded in Devin's quote - but a question not from Devin - why not just make a furnace (or buy one - which is what I will do if I go that route). Because I can do the hand/eye thermal cycling and heat treatment a lot faster, and in the two steels I've specifically snapped samples of and worked up testing against commercial results (O1 and 26c3), I can do it pretty well. The speed and ease and generally hardening only part of a tool is the reason, though.

O1 is a good choice on the surface for what I want to do, but there is a group of people who want some historic reproductions of very thin chisels and I have reservations about O1's toughness for that (hammering something .05" thick into wood on purpose and expecting a lifetime of damage free service). I may make them in 26c3 and just temper them back a little, but my point in coming here was to find far better advice than I can get from woodworking people, who ...don't know much about steel and don't like this kind of talk. If I say I make a better chisel than anything commercially available (I do) and give them away (I do) it causes static with advertisers who are using steels that are convenient.

I know nobody likes hand and eye heat treatment these days, but that's OK - I'm comfortable with results if I have the chance to test/snap a steel and develop a routine. I sent one set of coupons to larrin with steels that I use a lot, and another with steels that I don't. The ones that I had a chance to snap and test (by making tools and judging their performance) did well. The others, especially one, surprisingly poor. But I think those are pretty easy to solve issues.

Stainless or making pencil graphites will eventually drive me to purchase a furnace, I guess. But, I like to work by hand and be involved rather than be an attendant.

An idea of one of the two things I make a lot of (as an amateur, not for profit) might be useful - might not. Only the far bit of the business end makes it into a cut, but the idea is no defects at all so that routine sharpening (which is often in woodworking, sometimes several times an hour) doesn't need to remove more metal than whatever has been marked up/abraded at the apex. I think this is why steels that make good razors also make good woodworking tools to some extent.

Chisels 1

Chisels 2

Chisels 3
 
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Search 50100B barstock and your first hit should be a USA based knife supplier in .145" thick stock. I bought some in 3/32" thick a while back and it makes a nice blade! You need to do the heat treat for the different steels, not use a generic process.
 
Taz said:
Search 50100B barstock and your first hit should be a USA based knife supplier in .145" thick stock. I bought some in 3/32" thick a while back and it makes a nice blade! You need to do the heat treat for the different steels, not use a generic process.
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That's exactly what I found that got me on this kick. I would buy it in 1/4 or 3/8" bar if that was available to forge to make chisels, but it's not made in that. The tang of a chisel needs to be thicker than that to make the chisel work properly (stiff near the tang, more flexible near the tip).

I've been making mules to develop a HT routine and then examine carbides after wear, but I'm smitten with it. It's just not available in the sizes I need to make chisels or I'd be on those, too and probably wouldn't have posted this question - except maybe to find a version with a little bit of vanadium in it.
 
Ah, ok. Cut, stack and forge weld it together to get the thickness you want?
 
D-weaver said:
That's an interesting idea, but I don't have a power hammer.
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I could be wrong, but I wouldn't think you would need a power hammer for forge welding. It will probably be a bit more work to draw it out, but should be fine.
 
Blankblank said:
Also, why not w1 or w2?
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those are also options. At some point, I was warned by an old timer that the W1 and W2 steel quality is a lot more variable than the domestic O-1 offerings from known mills.

Now that I'm further along than I was then, I'm sure I could find a supplier who will actually state the carbon content rather than saying "0.6-1.5%" or some generic spec.
 
Get yourself a furnace, 52100 is king and comes in lots of shapes and sizes.

Hoss
 
DevinT said:
Get yourself a furnace, 52100 is king and comes in lots of shapes and sizes.

Hoss
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It's king for knives, but its toughness is a problem for woodworking tools. In the back of my mind is that when I do finally get a furnace, it's one of the steels that I'll be able to nail, though. My go-to on O1 and 26c3 is sub-critical thermal cycling, and I'm sure that doesn't do great things for free chromium. Since I don't re-normalize, I always get a very very tough steel that I still think something is coming up short in it. I can get it sharpening stone challenging hard out of the quench and temper it back a little and it makes an initially nice woodworking tool, but the edge actually wears in a slightly different shape - a little more rounded.

And then it spanks you in chiseling or planing by holding on to little defects if they occur - it's so tough. 3V does the same thing.

That may not sound believable from a knife man's perspective, but I may be the only person in the world who is experimenting with this stuff - finding out why some things aren't used in tools. For example, O1 is used fairly often. 52100 has about the same edge life through wood if you bear down on a plane, but it's more physical work to keep it in the cut.

here's a picture of the worn edge on a woodworking plane iron, 52100:

52100 carbides

26c3 carbides

O1 carbides - or seemingly visual lack thereof

26c3 has a fairly short wear life - less for me in wood than even 1095, and noticeably less than O1. 52100 is about an even match for me for O1, but the crispness into the cut isn't quite as good as it wears - it's gone in half the time.

This is esoteric for knife folks - what I like is the dry crispness of 1095, but 1095 is just not quite tough enough at high hardness. So, I'm wading into this area of 1% steels that'll temper to about 62 and be a step below 26c3.

I guess 26c3 doesn't have a reputation for great toughness, but larrin tested samples for me and 26c3 averaged about double as tough as O1 and two points harder - I'm chasing that same thing in a steel that will be fine and much like vintage cast steel (the very old stuff) which is likely some kind of ideal ore with a very small amount of helpful alloying. It also shows little to nothing for carbides.

I'm floating around the knife forums because I do make the occasional knife for someone who wants a knife that won't be sold publicly (thin profile slicer for people who don't pry open locked barn doors), but more because there is just about zero depth re:metallurgy and nobody who likes to spend about 10-20% of their time experimenting among the making.

Your suggestion is a good one, though if you're not doing a lot of woodworking - I just assumed that when I started making chisels, they would end up being 52100 to get the same hardness as commercial chisels with much more toughness. I've also learned that Larrin doesn't like forge heat treating that much - at least from a matter of practicality. Neither does the guy at AKS!!!
 
I'm very open to being told what's up (as in what i'm not assuming correctly - like would the edge wear be more even with 52100 if it came out of a furnace. I would guess by scaling those pictures that the 52100 carbides are all no bigger than about 2 or 3 microns, and when I did a poor man's test of toughness (breaking offcuts in a vise), it was very difficult to break a tempered cross section.
 
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