A-2 steel.

L

LRB

Joined
Feb 28, 2006
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How does it compare overall with 01? In performance, strength, toughness, ect. I know it is quite expensive, but have access to some for free. Will a strong fan give it a decent quench, or do I really need to plate quench? Thankyou for any comments or advise.
 
A2 is great stuff. Some charts show A2 to be tougher, some charts show O1 to be tougher. O1 should be tougher. A2 quenches in still air which makes things easy, but does get more retained austenite from the slower quench.
 
free is a good price for known alloy tool steel! I use a lot of O1 and A2. I've seen charts that show A2 being a bit tougher than O1, but I see more charts showing O1 as being a lot tougher than A2 and that makes sense looking at the composition. You can go pretty much to final edge thickness with A2 before heat treatment; it's delightfully stable in HT; I don't worry about the retained austenite... getting under the pearlite nose is pretty easy with A2 and I get deep cryo too.

http://www.latrobesteel.com/assets/documents/datasheets/LSS_A2.pdf


ack, I was just looking for some more info and found a graph showing A2 as tough as L6 both at rockwell 60, but that was c notch.

http://www.simplytoolsteel.com/steel-comparison-charts.html
 
Wnease's reply is just excellent (hats off, dude). I know it doesn't add much to the conversation, but in my simple "real" experience both steels performed equally well to me, and are among my very favourites. :)
 
thanks Chenko! Just to add, I have my A2 @ 59, O-1 @ 60... why, not that sure, just hours of gazing at the charts, but I'd change if I could find a good reason!
 
A2, properly heat treated, is about as good of a steel as anybody needs. Free makes it even better.
 
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