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Maxamet-68 to 72 HRC..
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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Hardest steel available today?? (highest HRC)
- Thread starter troller
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diamonds are not the hardest metal...asteroids are
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Being old myself, I like seeing old threads arise now and then.
For all you knifesmiths i have a question ( I ain't high). How hot
does your forge need to be to work diamonds into blade shape?
Is a plastic hammer required to keep from making the material turn to dust??
For all you knifesmiths i have a question ( I ain't high). How hot
does your forge need to be to work diamonds into blade shape?
Is a plastic hammer required to keep from making the material turn to dust??
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Diamond is actually flammable.
NJBillK
Custom Leather and Fixed Blade modifications.
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Look at ordinary charcoal or coke.
It is pure carbon - all hydrogen was driven away in charring it. What was left behind was small crystals of graphite and some pores between them. On heating in air, charcoal will neither melt nor evaporate. Instead, the oxygen in air reacts directly with the surface of graphite releasing heat and carbon oxides.
If any flames issue from coals of fire, they are caused by carbon monoxide reacting with more oxygen. If charcoal is heated in inert environment like argon, then even below melting point it is annealed - the small graphite crystals grow and distort, closing the pores. But at 1 bar, graphite will not melt at all - sharing that property with substances like carbon dioxide (dry ice) and arsenic.
The sublimation temperature of graphite at 1 bar is estimated as about 3700 Celsius. Diamonds in air burn much like pieces of charcoal or graphite - though note they are not porous as charcoal. Diamond does not melt or sublime at 1 bar either.
On heating in inert atmosphere between 1500 and 2500 Celsius, diamond converts into graphite.
Diamond simply burns to give CO2 at 973 K, way lower than its melting point. One doesn't simply burns a substance by making it in gaseous form.
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Regarding the OP, what is the hardest commonly available steel? This would be used in nothing aside from a slicing role.
The highest I have seen was 67-68 from rockstead.
It is pure carbon - all hydrogen was driven away in charring it. What was left behind was small crystals of graphite and some pores between them. On heating in air, charcoal will neither melt nor evaporate. Instead, the oxygen in air reacts directly with the surface of graphite releasing heat and carbon oxides.
If any flames issue from coals of fire, they are caused by carbon monoxide reacting with more oxygen. If charcoal is heated in inert environment like argon, then even below melting point it is annealed - the small graphite crystals grow and distort, closing the pores. But at 1 bar, graphite will not melt at all - sharing that property with substances like carbon dioxide (dry ice) and arsenic.
The sublimation temperature of graphite at 1 bar is estimated as about 3700 Celsius. Diamonds in air burn much like pieces of charcoal or graphite - though note they are not porous as charcoal. Diamond does not melt or sublime at 1 bar either.
On heating in inert atmosphere between 1500 and 2500 Celsius, diamond converts into graphite.
Diamond simply burns to give CO2 at 973 K, way lower than its melting point. One doesn't simply burns a substance by making it in gaseous form.
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Regarding the OP, what is the hardest commonly available steel? This would be used in nothing aside from a slicing role.
The highest I have seen was 67-68 from rockstead.
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I agree, however Rockstead has done their homework when it comes to steels. Their ZDP is more suitable for slicing, while their YXR7 is way tougher and can stand up to chopping wood without chipping (something their ZDP will never withstand). Rocky's ZDP is typically around 67 while their YXR7 is around 65; not quite as hard, but still really hard!
If I could only get knives in one type of steel, I'd want it to be YXR7 @ 65 hrc.
Diamond is simply one of a few natural forms of carbon, which is an element whose type is specifically referred to as a "nonmetal"
It is still carbon, just another form. My guess is there may still be more yet undiscovered allotropes of carbon, but basically what it comes down to is that carbon in one form or another (yet of course not all of its forms i.e. graphite) are the hardest known naturally occurring elements.
Diamond is a nonmetal
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