blade steel. does it cost a lot more to make the good ones?

[sogflash]

does it cost a lot more to make VG10, 154cm, D2 and other good blade steels, than for those steel types that doesn't do quite as well as blade steel?
are the good steel types harder to make? or else I guess cheaper knives would have them too.

 

[idaho]

Yes. Better steels are more expensive and sometimes much more expensive to machine.

But I am not willing to guess whether this difference is similar to difference in price of finished product.

 

[PaMtnBkr]

Probably one of the biggest driving factors in steel cost is not the raw material, but the cost of actually making the steel! The less you make, the higher the cost on a per Lb basis. It is very expensive to run a steel mill! Not to say that there are some raw materials that are needed that cost more than others in high cost steels, but I suspect volume of material produced plays a bigger factor? Working the higher end steels costs more for the manufacturers too.

 

[res1cue]

does it cost a lot more to make VG10, 154cm, D2 and other good blade steels, than for those steel types that doesn't do quite as well as blade steel?
are the good steel types harder to make? or else I guess cheaper knives would have them too.

Yep, a lot of the cost is the fact that harder steels will put a lot of wear and tear on the machines

 

[legato1]

When turing raw steel into blades, more complicated alloys with lots of carbides eat up more belts and machining bits, and the heat treat is more complicated than the simpler low alloy steels. So the blades of the higher end materials cost more.

 

[hardheart]

High amounts of pricey alloying elements and production method like ESR, PM, VIM-VAR push the price up. Also getting the composition very clean without a lot of the extraneous stuff from recycled steel pushes the cost up.

 

[parbajtor]

I spoke to FARID the other day about his work with CPM REX 121. Although the steel itself is very expensive, the cost in belts to grind it was at least double that of the steel cost and that isn't even accounting for the extra time it takes.

 

[Ankerson]

I spoke to FARID the other day about his work with CPM REX 121. Although the steel itself is very expensive, the cost in belts to grind it was at least double that of the steel cost and that isn't even accounting for the extra time it takes.

Once we get into the high wear resistant steels that have high percentages of hard Vanadium carbides in the upper range like S110V, 10V, S125V, 15V ect things get much more difficult to make knife blades out of.

Also very high alloy content can create issues in making the steels, rolling it out and making it sized to use to knife blades that will raise the cost.

 

[Justin King]

Check the price difference between cpm steels and something more mundane like 5160, to that difference you can add quite a bit of labor and abrasive for any operations done after heat treat. You could also consider the much higher temperatures and longer hold times involved in heat treating very highly alloyed steels, which increases costs as well.

 

[Ankerson]

Check the price difference between cpm steels and something more mundane like 5160, to that difference you can add quite a bit of labor and abrasive for any operations done after heat treat. You could also consider the much higher temperatures and longer hold times involved in heat treating very highly alloyed steels, which increases costs as well.

Also the added cost of better equipment to maintain, monitor and hold those high temps.

Then the cost of cooling those steels fast enough and then deep freezing them along with that time and effort and the added tempering cycles that goes a long with that.

 

[gooeytek]

gavkoo has a contest on youtube, and he's using a piece of CPM-154 that's 7" x 1.5" x .200". It cost $31 for that bar. Factor in the cost of the other materials like pins/tubes, scales, liners, consumables like belts, sawblades, drill bits, grinding bits, and sandpaper, cost for heat treat, time spent, it gets up there.

I'm also on Farid's list for the REX K2, and it's crazy how many belts he will be going though for the batch, something like 3-4 per blade.