Price of steel during the collapse

Brock Cutlery

Brock Cutlery

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Jan 10, 2015
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I'm curious, for those makers that have been around since 2005 or so: How did the market collapse affect the price and availability of steel?
 
Knifemaking steel? Kind of a weird situation. Crucible went bankrupt yet the specialty supplier network for us small potatoes knife makers grew during that very period. We can now consistently get our hands on stuff in quantities that we need that was hard to find before the crash.
 
That is interesting JM. I also wonder what happened to knife sales after the collapse? Did some types do better than others?
We makers hard hit in general?
 
Believe you are talking about 2008-2012 or so.

I didn't feel any difference during that time in knife sales or buying supplies.

I was also selling tons of W2 around that time. :cool:
 
Price of steel? Iron ore has been at a low for a while now ... Same in 2009. Doesn't seem like the markets have a big effect on knife steel though. funny it's like fuel , about 30 some odd dollars per barrel and still 1.07$ a liter ... The same we where paying 2 years ago.
 
$0.849/L here. You guys are getting ripped off. It was down to $0.689 a month or so back.
 
What's a litre?


Guberment flooded the market with funny money, so thing that use to cost "X" now cost "XX" to make up for the valueless of funny money.
So if steel prices went down, then it really went DOWN.

Gas was $1.879/gal this morning, of which $1.20+ is road usage tax...or just plain tax. Get rid of the guberment, those wallets would be fat.


Scott (hate having a monkey on my back) B
 
cpm154 vanished for me and i caught the XHP wave. forever proclaiming not to trust on a steel supplier that had 80% market share in one market. i keep a diverse market and my suppliers shoudl also as it helps protect ebb and flow of any given market
 
sdb777 said:
What's a litre?


Guberment flooded the market with funny money, so thing that use to cost "X" now cost "XX" to make up for the valueless of funny money.
So if steel prices went down, then it really went DOWN.

Gas was $1.879/gal this morning, of which $1.20+ is road usage tax...or just plain tax. Get rid of the guberment, those wallets would be fat.


Scott (hate having a monkey on my back) B
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No govt, no roads.
 
And perhaps 70% of that is tax, right? Petrol has come back up in the last couple of weeks, but regular unleaded (87 R+M/2) which is like 91-93 RON over there is still around 37-38 p per liter her in Florida.
Shing said:
Petrol is the equivalent of CD1.88/L in the UK.
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Lo/rez prices are always high up here ... Part of living in the isolated North I guess. It was about 1.70$ last year. Cost me 150$ to fill the truck ... I used to get a shiver down my spine just thinking about filling the boat up ...
 
is this about cfuel or steeel
in part the gov regulates the price of crude using the strategic reserve and through adding taxes when the price is low but then never pulling them back with price goes up. sooo can we talk about what steel pricing or shiting from one type of steel or the other you guys did when things got hard
 
jdm61 said:
And perhaps 70% of that is tax, right? Petrol has come back up in the last couple of weeks, but regular unleaded (87 R+M/2) which is like 91-93 RON over there is still around 37-38 p per liter her in Florida.
Click to expand...

Its about 80% tax, cars in the UK have little engines, a 2 ltr is considered big.
 
Butch, our market is a strange one that has little to do with the megatons of "engineering grade" steel that is made is places like India and China today. The cutlery and specialty tool market may have actually helped prop up some smaller producers in the US and other places like Germany or Japan to a tiny degree during the crunch. what we do know is that it apparently made the willing to listen to "small" buyers who wanted product that in some cases was no longer made, like W2. When you lose a lot of business, I guess even the little fish are attractive. It appears that now, those little fish have become a small, but reliable source of revenue for specialty steel folks like Niagra, Zapp, Lohmann, etc. and even some of the bigger guys like Voestalpine. AEB-L is an interesting example. Us poor knife guys are a tiny percentage of the market or that stuff, but that portion of the market is growing and I have the sneaking suspicion that the profit margins on the thicker stock coming out of the new Austrian rolling mill that we like so much are a LOT higher than the tons and tons of rolls of thin strip they sell to Gillette, Schick, etc.. Whatever the case, it has, in the eyes of Voestapline, a market worth pursuing. We may be a market that a number of these firms never considered worthy of pursuing until the bottom fell out and now they realize that we make for a minor, but very nice looking entry on their balance sheet.
butcher_block said:
is this about cfuel or steeel
in part the gov regulates the price of crude using the strategic reserve and through adding taxes when the price is low but then never pulling them back with price goes up. sooo can we talk about what steel pricing or shiting from one type of steel or the other you guys did when things got hard
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Don, the reason you were selling all of that stuff, aside from the fact that it was top notch product, is that nobody was making at the time and you found a batch hidden in some cave in Nepal. :D Even ofter other sources popped up, the reputation of the stuff that you have still made it the most desirable variant of W2 amongst the knife knuts. .
Don Hanson III said:
Believe you are talking about 2008-2012 or so.

I didn't feel any difference during that time in knife sales or buying supplies.

I was also selling tons of W2 around that time. :cool:
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