Any chemists out there?

[Shotgun]

What is the simplist form of steel that can be made into a knife? Is it Fe3C? Does anyone have a picture of the structure?

 

[knarfeng]

Carbon steel is about as simple as it gets.

Iron, Carbon, Manganese. That's it.

I'd guess 1050 is the lowest carbon content you would want for something that would hold any kind of edge.

 

[Rusty Toyota]

I learned about this in a metallurgy class required for welding majors. Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martensite. Looking at this page, it seems pretty foreign, even for me. Its actually a lot of information to wrap your head around.

 

[knarfeng]

Steel doesn't have a chemical formula such as NaCl for table salt. Metal bonds work differently.

You start with iron, then add carbon. 1050 is 0.5%C by wt in essentially pure iron. The iron and carbon are not bonded to each other. Rather the iron atoms bond to each other and the carbon fits in between the iron atoms without being bonded to them.


here is a good explanation, better than I can give. (You really need to talk to a metallurgist like mete):
http://resources.schoolscience.co.uk/Corus/16plus/index.html

 

[mete]

First you asked for a chemist when you want a metallurgist.Blades were made for a long time with wrought iron ,which is basically pure iron..That can't be heat treated to harden but can be work hardened [cold hammered].
Steel is iron with carbon.With enough carbon you can heat treat to harden. This changes the structure to martensite [from the original ferrite + cementite] Ferrite = iron, cementite = iron carbide.
A 1050 will harden to martensite which is a tetragonal crystal with carbon atoms in between the iron atoms.
If you Google 'martensite' and 'ferrite' you should be able to find drawings of the basic crystal structures .

 

[Shotgun]

My bad, I was thinking of a tattoo for steel and was going to go with the chemical composition. But the crystaline structure of a knife would be cooler. What I've been able to find is
martensite

austenite

Would the one on the left or right in the pic below be the structure of a knife blade?

 

[hardheart]

http://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=319

 

[knarfeng]

That's a cool shirt.

might have to get me one.

 

[xdshooter]

My wife is a metallurgist. Metallurgical Engineer to be exact.

Post a pic if you get a tat. She'd think its cool.