Question about the cost of knife steel

[thunscher]

Often, the reason given for the expensiveness or cheapness of a knife is better (or worse) steel. I find this puzzling. Given that knives are made from a thin chunk of steel a couple inches (at most) one way and a few inches the other, how expensive can such a small chunk of steel be that it can make the difference between $20 or $30 knife or a knife similar in design costing hundreds of dollars.

Explain please.

 

[Bill Siegle]

You are only looking at the raw material cost. How much time does it take to manufacture the blade? Is the material tougher to grind? Does it require a lot of abrasives? How difficult are the grind lines to achieve? How complicated is the heat treat? Lots of factors beyond just the piece of steel to consider.

 

[Ankerson]

Some of that steel is not cheap just for the raw material.

Then start adding in what Bill said.

 

[strategy9]

Added cost of raw material is one part.
Some being 3-4-5x's the cost of standard stainless steels, definitely affects the mark up, $15 worth of basic stainless steel vs. $45 or $75 worth of some super steel alloy, considering room for a profit margin, you're already looking at a significant mark up on two identical blades.

Now add in cost of materials used in processing; some super (hard) steels eat up grinding and cutting wheels and belts like it's nobodies business. So you're either going through more, and/or going through more expensive ones... Furthering that mark up.

Now add the man hours incorporated into working that extra hard steel... How much would you (expect to) charge an hour to make a custom knife? Consider the avg. skilled craft wages, (plumber, hvac, carpenter, etc) the nat'l avg. being right around $20-25/hr (40-50k a year for a full 52 weeks in a year at 40 hrs/week), for skilled trades, and higher wages for more experienced and seasoned pro's in their respected field, and then consider a super (hard) steel may litterally add multiple hours into the making process; cutting, grinding shaping, hand filing, and the finishing process all taking more time to accomplish with these harder materials that are much harder to work with, and also harder on your equipment (then your typical "standard" steels), and in a nutshell, there's your answer...

 

[bdmicarta]

It is pretty easy to add $50 per knife for a production folding knife such as a Spyderco Para 2 by switching from 154 or S30V to something like M390. But besides material costs, labor costs, tooling costs and the additional overhead of a small production run, some distributors and retailers take this opportunity to add on a nice dose of extra profit. Since we are talking about Spyderco, consider the costs of recent runs of the Para2. Besides the standard models in S30V steel, we have had them made in S35VN, CTS204P, CTS20CP, M390, Elmax and a composite with S90V. I have read that M390 and CTS204P are virtually identical, but look at the difference in cost charged by the 2 different retailers that commissioned these runs.

 

[yepimonfire]

Supply and demand has a huge effect as well.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

Added cost of raw material is one part.
Some being 3-4-5x's the cost of standard stainless steels, definitely affects the mark up, $15 worth of basic stainless steel vs. $45 or $75 worth of some super steel alloy, considering room for a profit margin, you're already looking at a significant mark up on two identical blades.

Now add in cost of materials used in processing; some super (hard) steels eat up grinding and cutting wheels and belts like it's nobodies business. So you're either going through more, and/or going through more expensive ones... Furthering that mark up.

Now add the man hours incorporated into working that extra hard steel... How much would you (expect to) charge an hour to make a custom knife? Consider the avg. skilled craft wages, (plumber, hvac, carpenter, etc) the nat'l avg. being right around $20-25/hr (40-50k a year for a full 52 weeks in a year at 40 hrs/week), for skilled trades, and higher wages for more experienced and seasoned pro's in their respected field, and then consider a super (hard) steel may litterally add multiple hours into the making process; cutting, grinding shaping, hand filing, and the finishing process all taking more time to accomplish with these harder materials that are much harder to work with, and also harder on your equipment (then your typical "standard" steels), and in a nutshell, there's your answer...

Yup. Time is a huge piece of the puzzle and steel with higher resistance to abrasion takes more time to work at almost every stage. Employee wages are almost invariably the largest expense of a business and when more man-hours go into the work costs start increasing very, very quickly. Even if M390 cost the same as 1095 a knife made from M390 would still be much more expensive than a knife from 1095 because it would take so much more time and put so much more wear and tear on equipment.

 

[skyhorse]

Often, the reason given for the expensiveness or cheapness of a knife is better (or worse) steel. I find this puzzling. Given that knives are made from a thin chunk of steel a couple inches (at most) one way and a few inches the other, how expensive can such a small chunk of steel be that it can make the difference between $20 or $30 knife or a knife similar in design costing hundreds of dollars.

Explain please.

If it's just steel you want,they sell knives by the pound on T.V.