Stainless steel or Carbon steel?

Any characteristic you try to generalize as a difference between them will have a counterexample. It would be more fruitful to ask about specific steels.
 
The above is true, however I will say "In General" Carbon steels will of course be more prone to rust, they also as a group seem to be more tough (you see most choppers in carbon steel) part of this is that they are in general a few points lower on the RC scale than Stainless steels and have less carbides, this means greater toughness, easier to sharpen, but less wear resistance than stainless steels (buy stainless I'm thinking more 154cm, s30V, s90V, etc not really 420J2 or 440A of which the only advantage you would get is rust resistance compared to a carbon). Of course there are also tool steels (like D2) or high speed steels (CPM-M4 or M2) which are kind of in between carbon and stainless. Of course a good counter example to all of the above is CPM-10V, can be very hard, full of carbides, extreme edge retention, but not all that tough.
 
Well obviously you're going to choose stainless in food prep and wet environments for ease of maintenance. Remember, Stainless is not rust-proof...just rust and stain resistant. Kind of like a good pair of leather boots being "waterproof"...yeah, as long as you keep them maintained and oiled/waxed. Supposedly the only steel that will not rust at all (not even sure if this is 100% true) is H1 which uses nitrogen in place of carbon. Some stainless steels are better than others at fighting off rust. A steel is made stainless (H1 notwithstanding) usually by the addition of quite a bit of chromium. I believe that for a steel to be officially declared "stainless" it has to be 15% chromium.

The bigger question really is "why choose carbon steel when so much good stainless is available". That's the real question here IMHO. Carbon steel can have some real advantages. Some of the tool steels are extremely tough and wear resistant. Good old fashion 1095 steel will take a rediculously fine razor sharp edge and it heat treats really well.

Probably the simplest answer to you question might be this (and I am postulating here...others will differ): Stainless where corrosion is going to be a problem like a marine environment or canoeing and carbon where ease of resharpening and toughness is paramount.

If everybody who has an opinion chimes in, this thread will go to 50 pages...it is a very good question. When I was a kid I avoided Stainless like the plague because it was so hard. The metals that are alloyed in there form carbides which are very hard crystals. Since then, stainless has been refined and there some really good ones that have small, evenly distributed carbides that are much easier to sharpen than in the 70's. There are bone fide metalurgists on the forum who can, and presumably will, explain this better than I can.

Don't be afraid of carbon steel because it isn't that hard to take care of. 3000 years of history elapsed with no-stainless steel and everybody got through it just fine. Don't be afraid of stainless because they have really perfected it. I probably have an equal number of each.
 
HoosierQ said:
Well obviously you're going to choose stainless in food prep
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That's not obvious and also not correct. Super Blue/White are popular in chef knives and aren't stainless. For another, ZDP189, although stainless by chromium percentage, stains a lot easier than many other stainless steels but is another popular steel for kitchens, so again how stain-proof it is is not a major factor. And finally, take a look in the custom fixed blades for sale here on the forum. The latest kitchen knife, a paring knife, is in L6, which isn't stainless. That's standard; a search for 'chef' shows at least the latest 10 listed are all non-stainless.
 
HoosierQ said:
Well obviously you're going to choose stainless in food prep and wet environments for ease of maintenance. Remember, Stainless is not rust-proof...just rust and stain resistant. Kind of like a good pair of leather boots being "waterproof"...yeah, as long as you keep them maintained and oiled/waxed. Supposedly the only steel that will not rust at all (not even sure if this is 100% true) is H1 which uses nitrogen in place of carbon. Some stainless steels are better than others at fighting off rust. A steel is made stainless (H1 notwithstanding) usually by the addition of quite a bit of chromium. I believe that for a steel to be officially declared "stainless" it has to be 15% chromium.

The bigger question really is "why choose carbon steel when so much good stainless is available". That's the real question here IMHO. Carbon steel can have some real advantages. Some of the tool steels are extremely tough and wear resistant. Good old fashion 1095 steel will take a rediculously fine razor sharp edge and it heat treats really well.

Probably the simplest answer to you question might be this (and I am postulating here...others will differ): Stainless where corrosion is going to be a problem like a marine environment or canoeing and carbon where ease of resharpening and toughness is paramount.

If everybody who has an opinion chimes in, this thread will go to 50 pages...it is a very good question. When I was a kid I avoided Stainless like the plague because it was so hard. The metals that are alloyed in there form carbides which are very hard crystals. Since then, stainless has been refined and there some really good ones that have small, evenly distributed carbides that are much easier to sharpen than in the 70's. There are bone fide metalurgists on the forum who can, and presumably will, explain this better than I can.

Don't be afraid of carbon steel because it isn't that hard to take care of. 3000 years of history elapsed with no-stainless steel and everybody got through it just fine. Don't be afraid of stainless because they have really perfected it. I probably have an equal number of each.
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WOW great info I couldn't agree more. I have to add one thing though to what Hoosier said the argument of which steel is good is like asking which car/truck tire should I buy. and the answer is the one that will be most usefull to you in a given situation!
 
kreole said:
That's not obvious and also not correct. Super Blue/White are popular in chef knives and aren't stainless. For another, ZDP189, although stainless by chromium percentage, stains a lot easier than many other stainless steels but is another popular steel for kitchens, so again how stain-proof it is is not a major factor. And finally, take a look in the custom fixed blades for sale here on the forum. The latest kitchen knife, a paring knife, is in L6, which isn't stainless. That's standard; a search for 'chef' shows at least the latest 10 listed are all non-stainless.
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Going by the percentages he was correct as most kitchen knives are stainless here in the US.

Non stainless isn't even allowed for use in any kind of food prep in the US Commercially and hasn't been for a very long time.

There are customs and high end production kitchen type knives, but the percentage is small compared to the overall.
 
Ankerson said:
Going by the percentages he was correct as most kitchen knives are stainless here in the US.

Non stainless isn't even allowed for use in any kind of food prep in the US Commercially and hasn't been for a very long time.

There are customs and high end production kitchen type knives, but the percentage is small compared to the overall.
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True, they are not as popular, but to say as he does that it's obvious one would want stainless steel for kitchen work contradicts that people are willing to pay extra for knives not in stainless and buying these customs (assuming such buyers are intelligent and not duped in some fashion, at least :p). If stainless is the obvious choice, paying more for non-stainless isn't rational.
 
kreole said:
True, they are not as popular, but to say as he does that it's obvious one would want stainless steel for kitchen work contradicts that people are willing to pay extra for knives not in stainless (assuming such buyers aren't crazy, at least :p). If stainless was the obvious choice, paying more for non-stainless wouldn't make sense.
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For the masses stainless would be the obvious choice.

The only reason I would go with a non stainless for kitchen work would be if it was a high alloy non stainless so I would get some benefit out of it.

I am talking like CPM 10V edge retention, other than that, no way.
 
HoosierQ said:
Well obviously you're going to choose stainless in food prep and wet environments for ease of maintenance. Remember, Stainless is not rust-proof...just rust and stain resistant. Kind of like a good pair of leather boots being "waterproof"...yeah, as long as you keep them maintained and oiled/waxed. Supposedly the only steel that will not rust at all (not even sure if this is 100% true) is H1 which uses nitrogen in place of carbon. Some stainless steels are better than others at fighting off rust. A steel is made stainless (H1 notwithstanding) usually by the addition of quite a bit of chromium. I believe that for a steel to be officially declared "stainless" it has to be 15% chromium.

The bigger question really is "why choose carbon steel when so much good stainless is available". That's the real question here IMHO. Carbon steel can have some real advantages. Some of the tool steels are extremely tough and wear resistant. Good old fashion 1095 steel will take a rediculously fine razor sharp edge and it heat treats really well.

Probably the simplest answer to you question might be this (and I am postulating here...others will differ): Stainless where corrosion is going to be a problem like a marine environment or canoeing and carbon where ease of resharpening and toughness is paramount.

If everybody who has an opinion chimes in, this thread will go to 50 pages...it is a very good question. When I was a kid I avoided Stainless like the plague because it was so hard. The metals that are alloyed in there form carbides which are very hard crystals. Since then, stainless has been refined and there some really good ones that have small, evenly distributed carbides that are much easier to sharpen than in the 70's. There are bone fide metalurgists on the forum who can, and presumably will, explain this better than I can.

Don't be afraid of carbon steel because it isn't that hard to take care of. 3000 years of history elapsed with no-stainless steel and everybody got through it just fine. Don't be afraid of stainless because they have really perfected it. I probably have an equal number of each.
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It's 13% Chromium that is considered to be stainless.

Don't be afraid of carbon steel because it isn't that hard to take care of. 3000 years of history elapsed with no-stainless steel and everybody got through it just fine.
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Yes back then they used non stainless because they didn't have anything else to choose from, but as most things do tend to get better as time goes on, improvements, new technology etc.

The Bronze age was around 3,000 years ago......

Sure, before fire and the wheel people lived also.

Same as people got by before electricity, cars, TV, the internet, cell phones and the list goes on.
 
Ankerson said:
For the masses stainless would be the obvious choice.

The only reason I would go with a non stainless for kitchen work would be if it was a high alloy non stainless so I would get some benefit out of it.

I am talking like CPM 10V edge retention, other than that, no way.
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I don't disagree. It's the same thing from different points of view. My initial point was stainless/non-stainless are such general categories that any generalization made (e.g.: use stainless in the kitchen) will have a counterexample (e.g.: cpm 10v for you). The best one can do is reduce the answer to which side is has the bigger percentage of use as you did. There isn't an absolute where one always has the advantage over the other, as the OP asks.
 
kreole said:
I don't disagree. It's the same point of view from different points of view. My initial point was stainless/non-stainless are such general categories that any generalization made (e.g.: use stainless in the kitchen) will have a counterexample (e.g.: cpm 10v for you). The best one can do is reduce the answer to which side is has the bigger percentage of use as you did. There isn't an absolute as one having the advantage over the other, as the OP asks.
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It's all about the percentages. :)
 
Ankerson said:
We are talking about knife blades, if it was 10.5% then D2 would be a stainless steel at around 11.8%.
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You don't have to read the sources I provided, but stainless steel is defined as an alloy with a Chromium content of 10.5%, and D-2 is considered a stainless steel, even by your standard:

"Due to high chromium content, certain D-grade tool steel grades are often considered stainless or semi-stainless tool steels. However their corrosion resistance was very limited due to the precipitation of major amount of chromium and carbon as carbides."


D2 - 1.5% C, 11.0–13.0% Cr; additionally 0.45% Mn, 0.030% P, 0.030% S, 1.0% V, 0.7% Mo, 0.30% S

More sources:

http://www.berkeleypoint.com/learning/stainless.html
http://www.fantes.com/stainless-steel.html
 
somber said:
You don't have to read the sources I provided, but stainless steel is defined as an alloy with a Chromium content of 10.5%, and D-2 is considered a stainless steel, even by your standard:

"Due to high chromium content, certain D-grade tool steel grades are often considered stainless or semi-stainless tool steels. However their corrosion resistance was very limited due to the precipitation of major amount of chromium and carbon as carbides."


D2 - 1.5% C, 11.0–13.0% Cr; additionally 0.45% Mn, 0.030% P, 0.030% S, 1.0% V, 0.7% Mo, 0.30% S

More sources:

http://www.berkeleypoint.com/learning/stainless.html
http://www.fantes.com/stainless-steel.html
Click to expand...

D2 chromium content is a normal 11.8% by AISI standards, or we usually say around 12% Chromium.

Yes it's semi Stainless depending on the HT and tempering process.
 
Ankerson said:
Non stainless isn't even allowed for use in any kind of food prep in the US Commercially and hasn't been for a very long time.
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Also, I hate to say it, but this is complete misinformation. There is no FDA regulation limiting the use of carbon steel knives in industrial/commercial kitchens. Secondly, if there is a restriction it will at a state and local level that governs the guidelines for food preparation, but go into any Sushi restaurant and you'll find the chefs using carbon steel blades. Working in the restaurant industry myself I've never heard of someone having an issue with their carbon steel blades and the health inspectors. As long as you have a clean bucket of chlorine water and clean towels you're good to go.
 
somber said:
Also, I hate to say it, but this is complete misinformation. There is no FDA regulation limiting the use of carbon steel knives in industrial/commercial kitchens. Secondly, if there is a restriction it will at a state and local level that governs the guidelines for food preparation, but go into any Sushi restaurant and you'll find the chefs using carbon steel blades. Working in the restaurant industry myself I've never heard of someone having an issue with their carbon steel blades and the health inspectors. As long as you have a clean bucket of chlorine water and clean towels you're good to go.
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Tell that to the heath inspectors...
 
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