Recommendation? Sourcing some Ultra-High Carbon Steel

C

Chang963

Joined
Apr 27, 2017
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Hi all,

Does anyone know where is a good place to source some ultra-high carbon steel?
Specifically, the steel needs to be a plain carbon steel with a carbon content of 1.8% or higher (1.6% is the minimum limit if the higher level are unavailable), with as little amounts of other additives as possible.

For the purpose of this question, I am doing some research on the phase transformation of this type of steel and plan to use this data and apply it to some prototype blades I plan to make using an experimental method of heat treatment.

Currently I am having zero luck in trying to source a sample to test (free or paid samples, it doesn't matter as I just need a small sheet, bar or whatever form to test) and I can't seem to find any official standard for this type of steel either, so making inquiries to steel manufacturers were seemingly pointless, since they always ask for grades of steel. Highest plain carbon steel grade I found was 1095 steel, which was nowhere near the carbon content that I'm looking for...

Maybe I've been contacting/searching the wrong places/people to source it, so if someone can chime in on this, it would be greatly appreciated.
 
The CPM steels are not plain carbon steels. The highest carbon content steel that I know of that is semi-avalaible would be Hitachi White #2 which has around 1.15% carbon. You cannot get White #1, which has up to 1.35 carbon for love or money in the US.
 
adamlau said:
CPM 9V, 10V, 15V.
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jdm61 said:
The CPM steels are not plain carbon steels. The highest carbon content steel that I know of that is semi-avalaible would be Hitachi White #2 which has around 1.15% carbon. You cannot get White #1, which has up to 1.35 carbon for love or money in the US.
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Yeah, looked into the CPM steels, they are one of our last resorts, since it is highly alloyed. And I see, but that isn't high enough for our purpose since our prototype will be loosely based on the ancient Viking blades, thus we need a carbon content of at least 1.6%...

Do you or anyone know of any metallurgist that does custom alloys/carbon steel ingots or stocks? Perhaps a powder metallurgist, since I've seen a few research papers indicating the use of UHCS made from a powdered form?
 
The only UHCS blade steel out there that is regularly made is wootz and maybe carbon pieces of tamahagane. Wit that said, they require so much forging that they would no longer UHC by the time they were finished blades. The old Viking blades, even the handful of crucible steel 'Ulfbert" type blades would not have been 1.6% carbon in their finished form.
 
This paper may be of interest.
 
Wasn't Aldo looking at bringing in a simple carbon steel with carbon content around 1.5%?
 
jdm61 said:
The only UHCS blade steel out there that is regularly made is wootz and maybe carbon pieces of tamahagane. Wit that said, they require so much forging that they would no longer UHC by the time they were finished blades. The old Viking blades, even the handful of crucible steel 'Ulfbert" type blades would not have been 1.6% carbon in their finished form.
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Yeah, I know those exist, but the current wootz is also a loose replica of the ancient steel I believe (please correct if I'm wrong) and saw some being listed, but not many specified the actual carbon content unfortunately. Also, the "Ulfbert" is precisely the basis to our prototype, but it is just loosely based on it, as we just want to see the phase transformation at a very high carbon level, and make a sort of prototype "knife" from our initial proof of concept if successful, but thanks for the information.

barmettlerjosh said:
Cpm-Rex-121hs tool steel has a carbon content of 3.4
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Yeah, CPM steels will be one of our last resorts, since it is highly alloyed...


NJBillK said:
mete mete
Do you know of anyone that can help?
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mete said:
Sorry but I can't help you there.
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It's alright, thanks for chiming in though.

NJBillK said:
This paper may be of interest.
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Yes, I read through that paper, quite fascinating actually, and our research with further the research of UHCS if successful.

kuraki said:
How thick? Couldn't you carburize something like .125 thick 1095?
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Well thickness don't really matter at this point, it can come in any shape or size as long as it meets our specs, but not sure about carburizing 1095, since haven't really thought about it, but now that you mentioned it, it could be interesting. However, that would mean that we can't quantify the exact amount of carbon in the steel and how much has actually diffuse through, but we can look into it as it might be a viable method.

Willie71 said:
Wasn't Aldo looking at bringing in a simple carbon steel with carbon content around 1.5%?
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Rhinoknives1 said:
Aldo may be able to help? Contact him at www.newjerseysteelbaron.com it's worth a phone call.
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I've called them before, but they didn't have any in stock, and not sure about samples. However, not sure if I spoke with Aldo before. Aren't they simply a distributor of metal, or are they also a foundry that fabricates custom metal mixtures?
 
He is a retailer of knife making steel(s) And he tests his steel so we are assured that these are the actual steels that are advertised. I don't think what you want exists? I'm not a metallurgist but have been making knives for 20 years and have never heard of a steel with 1.6% Carbon. currently or even an analysis of ancient swords, Viking or otherwise.

Where did you get this info that Viking Swords were 1.6?
 
Rhinoknives1 said:
He is a retailer of knife making steel(s) And he tests his steel so we are assured that these are the actual steels that are advertised. I don't think what you want exists? I'm not a metallurgist but have been making knives for 20 years and have never heard of a steel with 1.6% Carbon. currently or even an analysis of ancient swords, Viking or otherwise.

Where did you get this info that Viking Swords were 1.6?
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To clarify, we are not interested in recreating the Viking sword, but rather borrowing some of the concepts from it and theories that surrounds it. What we are interested is forming a steel with the microstructure that we are looking for, and one of our "proof of concept" test is to source the highest carbon content plain steel available (not pre-hardened) and apply our method and see the outcome. Then, we can move forward to testing other property of this steel once we have a stable method in making the steel. Of course, I'm sure we can probably make our own if it doesn't exist, but that is additional time and effort which we do not have at the moment.

But if what you say is true, then that is rather disappointing, but may explain the difficulty I'm having in trying to source it... But how about for suspension bridges? Don't they use UHCS for their cables? Do you know what grade of steel they use?

Also, have you or anyone else dealt with or heard of O'Neal Steel? They list on their site that they carry very high carbon steel (C content of 0.96-2.1%) amongst other milder steels, but since UHCS has no grade and they are only distributers, when I contacted them, they weren't sure what I was speaking about and don't service the Northeastern area of the US, so if anyone has any idea on what they carry, please do chime in. Link to their site: http://www.onealsteel.com/carbon-and-alloy-steel.html
 
You might want to check what the ACTUAL carbon content of the the Ulfbert sword was. My recollection from watching the documentary about Ricin's Furrer's attempt to recreate the sword was that the steel mill that test the sliver of orginal stuff said it resembled "good quality modern carbon steel." You should also look into what they ACTUAL hardness of these ancient super steel might have been when they were made in to blades. You must also consider the effect that the CARBIDES,particulary the vanadium carbides would have had on the "magical"properties of these steels.
 
It sounds like you are perhaps, way over thinking this?

Is this a School project for a paper? are you trying to make a knife/product to sell? Whats the end game here?
 
Ive seen 1.25% and up to about 1.31% simple carbon steel that's available in recycled form but no bar stock or sheet..
 
I can't find anything other than a paper written in 1984 that cites chemical composition of suspension bridge cabling.

The most common bridge wire used over the past 90 years is made from acid open-hearth high-carbon steel. The steel has approximately 0.9 percent carbon and has limitations on phosphorus and sulphur residuals. Chemical content of typical wire is shown in Table 1. The high carbon content is partially responsible for the high strength of bridge wire. Cold drawing also contributes to the mechanical properties of this type of wire.

Paper is here

 
jdm61 said:
You might want to check what the ACTUAL carbon content of the the Ulfbert sword was. My recollection from watching the documentary about Ricin's Furrer's attempt to recreate the sword was that the steel mill that test the sliver of orginal stuff said it resembled "good quality modern carbon steel." You should also look into what they ACTUAL hardness of these ancient super steel might have been when they were made in to blades. You must also consider the effect that the CARBIDES,particulary the vanadium carbides would have had on the "magical"properties of these steels.
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Again, it's loosely based on that blade, not to the exact specs as we are not trying to replicate it, and yes I saw the documentary of the Nova episode. The end result is he recreated a "Ulfbert" in his opinion, but the episode ended without actually looking into the microstructure of it, and he quenched the blade, which in certain parts in the documentary, they most certainly state that they weren't exactly sure whether or not the ancient blades were actually quenched.

Rhinoknives1 said:
It sounds like you are perhaps, way over thinking this?

Is this a School project for a paper? are you trying to make a knife/product to sell? Whats the end game here?
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At the current point, it is a project for a University for research purposes mostly and our first task is to survey what's available and source it if possible, since we don't have a metallurgist available. Depending on the results, the project can either be dropped or move on to commercialization since we have a incubator program on-site. Hope that answers your question.

Kentucky said:
Ive seen 1.25% and up to about 1.31% simple carbon steel that's available in recycled form but no bar stock or sheet..
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Oh, that's interesting, do you remember where you saw them?

Matthew Gregory said:
I can't find anything other than a paper written in 1984 that cites chemical composition of suspension bridge cabling.

The most common bridge wire used over the past 90 years is made from acid open-hearth high-carbon steel. The steel has approximately 0.9 percent carbon and has limitations on phosphorus and sulphur residuals. Chemical content of typical wire is shown in Table 1. The high carbon content is partially responsible for the high strength of bridge wire. Cold drawing also contributes to the mechanical properties of this type of wire.

Paper is here
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Thanks for the info., but I'm pretty sure I've heard from somewhere that they utilized UHCS, but I could be mistaken.
 
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