Ranking Toughness of Forging Knife Steels

Willie71 said:
Steel has been heat treated, but getting the samples machined to size has been the bottleneck.
Click to expand...


I see, was curious because I'm getting an another Ztuff big knife. The 1st one is around 59HC, and I could go 61 on this one, like the sample Larrin tested.
To see what kind of difference those different HTs have, could help me decide.

Tho, you guys have already done such an amazing job.

PS: this steel for those applications (big beasts) is so good. I have used infi, 6150, d3v, s7, and some more... Ztuff is my top choice today.
 
I don’t see any reason to go lower in hardness than what we tested. Higher hardness would be interesting. But a combination of high strength (hardness) and toughness is best for avoiding edge damage.
 
Larrin said:
I don’t see any reason to go lower in hardness than what we tested. Higher hardness would be interesting. But a combination of high strength (hardness) and toughness is best for avoiding edge damage.
Click to expand...

That's true.

My only doubt is, can I miss-hit a rock, and dmg much more the edge at 61plus HT?

Yesterday I slipped a log with my axe, and hitted with HIGH force a granite rock. The edge is mushed, luckly no chips, but I need to get it on the grinder and redoo the entire edge anyway.

My goal is to have a knife, that in those bad situations, will suffer as minimal dmg as possible.
I'm not that skilled, or have the right tools to regring a 15inches edge.

I know that an empirical answer is the best one in this case, so I guess I will go with 61+ and see which one will divide the rock :p
 
Larrin said:
I don’t see any reason to go lower in hardness than what we tested. Higher hardness would be interesting. But a combination of high strength (hardness) and toughness is best for avoiding edge damage.
Click to expand...

When I was doing some hardness samples, going to 1950f was as high as I could go before hardness numbers got inconsistent, iirc. It would probably make more sense to try lower tempering temperatures for higher hardness.
 
Was that L6 the crucible version with Moly or the other without like Carpenters version? I think the crucible is tougher than the carpenter version. I can say for sure that it required a higher temper than the non moly version to get the same hardness. your still at around 60rc or a bit over at a 400 temper with champalloy
 
Last edited:
Kentucky said:
Was that L6 the crucible version with Moly or the other without like Carpenters version? I think the crucible is tougher than the carpenter version. I can say for sure that it required a higher temper than the non moly version to get the same hardness. your still at around 60rc or a bit over at a 400 temper with champalloy
Click to expand...

This was Aldo NJSB stock. I don’t think it had moly.
 
This was from March 2019:

“I did some coupons for our charpy testing. Here’s the results:

Z-tuff hardness was:

1900fx40min, cryo 1h, 400f temper, 2hx3. Rc58-60.
1975fx30min, cryo 1h, 400f temper, 2hx3. Rc60-63 (most readings were Rc61/62, but not all were consistent.)
2050fx20min, cryo 1h, 400f temper, 2hx3, Rc58-64.”
 
Kentucky said:
Was that L6 the crucible version with Moly or the other without like Carpenters version? I think the crucible is tougher than the carpenter version. I can say for sure that it required a higher temper than the non moly version to get the same hardness. your still at around 60rc or a bit over at a 400 temper with champalloy
Click to expand...
It would be interesting to see if the Mo improved toughness. However, even Crucible doesn’t show particularly high toughness for a 400F temper.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top