So sometimes my engineering brain gets to thinking... LOL
And here it is many of the top performing "super steels", (by this I mean highly alloyed steels with large percentages of Vanadium, Tungsten, Molybdenum, etc) have very high tempering temperatures, and are air "hardening" so they don't need to be quenched in any medium, just the act of letting air convect around them cools them fast enough to harden.
Why would this matter? Well we have seen discussions about localized super heating and burning of edges during sharpening for many processes, in fact some studies performed by highly qualified individuals suggest that dry sharpening even by hand can cause very high temperatures in very small (thin) sections such as at the apex of an edge.
With many simpler steels the tempering temperature may be quite low, perhaps 300F... If this is the case with a steel then it is very readily possible to exceed that temperature, even while cooking a meal. This can result in a significant drop in the hardness of the edge steel, and a drop in performance.
However with the high alloy (super) steels used in knives particularly ones currently recognized as top performers the tempering temperatures are in the range of 1000F, much harder to exceed, and if the steel is an air hardening grade there is a good chance that over heating the edge may actually make it harder, rather than softer. So with many super steels even if edge is treated poorly it may actually end up harder rather than softer, but in either case the risk of a performance drop is much smaller than with plainer steels.
Just something that rattled around in my head these past few days.
And here it is many of the top performing "super steels", (by this I mean highly alloyed steels with large percentages of Vanadium, Tungsten, Molybdenum, etc) have very high tempering temperatures, and are air "hardening" so they don't need to be quenched in any medium, just the act of letting air convect around them cools them fast enough to harden.
Why would this matter? Well we have seen discussions about localized super heating and burning of edges during sharpening for many processes, in fact some studies performed by highly qualified individuals suggest that dry sharpening even by hand can cause very high temperatures in very small (thin) sections such as at the apex of an edge.
With many simpler steels the tempering temperature may be quite low, perhaps 300F... If this is the case with a steel then it is very readily possible to exceed that temperature, even while cooking a meal. This can result in a significant drop in the hardness of the edge steel, and a drop in performance.
However with the high alloy (super) steels used in knives particularly ones currently recognized as top performers the tempering temperatures are in the range of 1000F, much harder to exceed, and if the steel is an air hardening grade there is a good chance that over heating the edge may actually make it harder, rather than softer. So with many super steels even if edge is treated poorly it may actually end up harder rather than softer, but in either case the risk of a performance drop is much smaller than with plainer steels.
Just something that rattled around in my head these past few days.
