154CM or ATS-34

They are the same thing . ATS 34 is made in Japan and 154CM is made in the USA. From that point it is edge geometry and heattreat.
 
The two are the same though there are different ways to heat treat them which will vary the hardness. They're both excellent steels.
 
They are the same exact steel. BUT the 154CM is better just because it is made in the US. I would always prefer an American made product if available.
 
GarageBoy said:
Hey, but Paul Bos heat treats ATS34 only. Strider uses ATS34. Buck too. BM used to
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Paul Bos heat treats all air hardening steels, unless something has changed recently.

Used to be 154CM was the shizznits, until the quality went downhill and they stopped vacuum melting it here. So, ATS34 came about from Hitachi in Japan, and they did vacuum melt it. Now, I believe it's reversed. 154CM is made in the good old USA, and is vacuum melted, while I think ATS34 quality has slipped(unsure of this though). Anyway, they are both the same alloy.
 
ErikD said:
They are the same exact steel. BUT the 154CM is better just because it is made in the US. I would always prefer an American made product if available.
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Cars made in America are better than cars made in Germany ?

Anyway, I'd prefer 154CM myself, I'd prefer to buy American than Japanese in this case.
 
Technically speaking, 154CM and ATS-34 are different, although every-so-slightly. In practice though, the two are basically identical. Mostly it depends on who made it and when (as said above). For example, an older ATS-34 bladed Benchmade AFCK will be pretty much identical as a newer 154CM one, in terms of blade performance. The difference is that back before, the ATS-34 Hitachi was producing was better than the 154CM Crucible was making. Now, Crucible's 154CM is every bit as good, but you see it more often on American made knives, because Crucible is American.

As for choosing a knife based on the fact that it was made with one steel or the other, you probably don't have to worry. If it's from the time when ATS-34 was better than 154CM, it'll probably be made from ATS-34, for that reason.
 
My understanding is that Crucible developed 154CM for aircraft jet engines in the 1970's,,,,,,Bob Loveless and others discovered it was a great knife steel and it became popular with the custom makers.

Crucible discontinued 154CM due to alloy changes in the jet engine designs. Bob Loveless approached the Hitachi Steel sales dept in CA and convinced them into making a heat (large ladel of steel) with the 154CM chemical composition. At that time Hitachi gave its product a new designation of ATS-34.

About 10-12 years ago, with laser cutting equipment development and lower prices, the mass production factories could now economically use ATS-34 (Benchmade was a leader in that area) and the steel became popular with higher priced factory knives.

Crucible Steel saw the market improve demand for small heats of specialty steels and re-introduced their old alloy 154CM and it is now available from a USA steel mill.

The alloys are identical,,,,,any performance comparisons are due to individual heat treatment processes. Some will speculate the new 154CM is cleaner (less impurities, etc) ,,,,only a metallurgy lab with mass spectrograph equipment could determine that statement.

Regarsds,
FK
 
What FK said. So it is not a rip off. Since rip offs are not so uncommon in this field I think it is important to make this distinction.

I also think that given Japans tradition of swords, knives (kitchen knives in particular) and woodworking tools, which is better preseved there than in any other country, edged tools is one area where they really don't have have to copy anybody. It is something that they do as good or better than anybody else in the world, and have done so for the past...what 1000 years or so. I mean you are not so quick to call "rip off" when you see a knife not made in Japan which has a differential temper or a sandwiched blade not to speak of synthetic waterstones. I just feel that here applies "credit where credit is due".
 
One more important difference: 154CM is cross-rolled to reduce grain orientation, and ATS-34 is not. Related to these two is RWL-34, which is a powder-metallurgy version from Europe.

Crucible is coming out with a CPM version of 154CM that has added vanadium. It should be a nice improvement :cool: .
 
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