Help picking steels for Gladius sword.

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BrandonEDC

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Aug 12, 2014
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I am having a Gladius sword made, it will have a blade length of 20". The choices are z wear pm, cpm 3v, 5160, and s35vn. I live in WA and may be moving to FL. This will be used on my plate carrier and purpose will be tactical and maybe SHTF uses. Any help picking is great please explain why one steel may be better rather then just stating one if possible but anything is great!
 
That's a huge variation in properties .What's a plate carrier ? Typical swords need toughness first .Wear resistance is not very important Stainless perhaps if you're worried about corrosion.
Of your strange choices the 5160 would work well .Z Wear not a good choice as it's really a tool steel. 3V is excellent as a knife but a sword ? it's tough though it's wear resistance is not very important.S35VN is a great stainless knife steel but more than you need for a sword.
There are better choices but not in your list.
 
5160 is a great sword steel. Tough as hell and holds a good edge. That would be my choice out of the steels you listed.
 
Like mete said, toughness in a sword is far more important than wear resistance. In fact, I'll take it a step further and say wear resistance is not desired, because that just makes it harder to sharpen out damage. My big blade has lost around 1/8"-1/4" of steel from sharpening out nicks & dings from incidental contact with hard stuff. It has never once gotten "dull" in the normal sense from abrasive wear like knives often do.

5160 is a solid performer for this application. 3V also has great toughness, but its claim to fame is achieving that toughness while also having very high wear resistance (usually it's a trade off & ya have to choose one or the other). So the steel stock will cost a buttload more than 5160, and not really offer any practical benefits for your application. Stay away from any high carbide stainless, high carbide tool steels (like D2) or anything with "wear" in the name. They simply do not have the necessary impact resistance, and could snap in half if you ever accidentally hit something you shouldn't. Other good choices would be L6, S5 or S7, the other silicon bearing alloys like 9260, or perhaps some of the "chipper" steels.

Start poking around on this site- the comparagraphs that show relative toughness of various alloys at a given hardness are very handy.
http://customer.cartech.com/technical_datasheets.cfm

One more thing to consider-
Albion makes a couple styles of gladius blades that you can mount yourself:
http://www.albion-swords.com/bareblades.htm They use 5160 and know a thing or two about swords.
 
I was looking into miller blade bros and when i asked then what would be the best for strength and edge retention theu said z wear pm is there best. They have videos of them bashing into metal and it doesnt roll chip or break. They say that 5160 is their cheaper option and for 100ish more i can get z wear or 3v? Obviously i want the best are they wrong?
 
I have to admit I was not familiar with Z Wear and made an assumption that it was a super carbide steel along the lines of Elmax or something. Upon checking out the spec sheets on it, I now see that it's similar to 3V, and has slightly more toughness if you want to go over 60 Rockwell. I can't find a spec sheet comparing it to the others I mentioned yet, but I'm willing to bet that S5 would still be quite a bit tougher at, say, around 59 Rc. One of the charts here shows S7 as more than twice as tough as 3V in their respective working hardnesses.
http://www.titussteel.com/our-products/mould-and-die-steels/dc-53/

I was looking into miller blade bros and when i asked then what would be the best for strength and edge retention theu said z wear pm is there best. ...are they wrong?
Click to expand...

I think I'm done here. Sorry if you haven't been around this place long enough to see it, but shit like this often starts flame wars. Talk numbers; not people.
 
Okay. Sorry if im stepping on my feet. Just trying ti get the right blade. I will be done with this topic on here.
 
S35vn will snap in a second on sword length objects. Z wear and Cpm 3v are very expensive steels but extremely tough, if you want the cheaper route 5160 will do just fine.
 
5160 or 3V would be my picks. I use almost exclusively 3V for my swords, and it's great stuff. HOWEVER. 5160 is FAR easier to heat treat than 3V. I wouldn't get 3V from someone unless I knew that they or their heat treater knows how to treat 3V for swords. Personally, I think the gladius is a terrible weapon to attach to a plate carrier (and I've made a few) due to the weight and manner of use. It's a great weapon in an army setting, but considerably less awesome as a personal weapon for melee or other modern uses, whatever those might be. And if I wanted the bulk and wanted to be able to chop down trees with my sword, I'd get a Dan Keffeler Super Assassin. But, whatever floats your boat. There are very few uses for a sword in a modern setting, after all, and even fewer people with any degree of proficiency.
 
So little room on plate carriers to begin with...but 5160 is your huckleberry unless you're planning on using it on telephone poles. Perhaps a disembiggened gladius with maybe a 10" blade...
 
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