Stainless steel or Carbon steel?

stainless steel is determined by the amount of chromium left free in the austenite phase, you just aren't going to get a martensitic steel with enough carbon to make a decent blade to be stainless at low percentages of chromium, unless you then throw other alloying elements in.

and carbon steel is only carbon steel, the 10xx series or steels with only carbon and manganese as the alloying elements. Super Blue, L6, 10V, D2, and almost every other steel discussed on BF is not carbon steel.
 
Health inspectors are not employed by the US government or even the states in most cases. I have heard that there are SOME local health departments that do not like you using non-stainless, but that is by no means universal.
Ankerson said:
Tell that to the heath inspectors...
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FDA has materials listed as generally regarded as safe due to low reactivity, so stainless like 316 falls under that. And you often need stainless works surfaces with low rugosity, same with knives so bacteria doesn't take hold in the crannies.
 
The easy answer is Yes! Or all of the above!

It's like asking which are better birthday presents or Christmas presents. The answer is both!

Or what kind of lady is prettiest, blond, brunette, red haired, black haired, Asian, Scandanavian, European, African, Native American, South American.........the answer is all of the above.


They will all bring something to the table. Ease of sharpening, forging, edge retention (resistance to friction wear, micro chipping etc), rust resistance, shock resistance.

All of these things come into play.

I love stainless for some things, carbon for others (and semi stainless too). With the advent of super steels the answer becomes ever more complex also.
 
hardheart said:
FDA has materials listed as generally regarded as safe due to low reactivity, so stainless like 316 falls under that. And you often need stainless works surfaces with low rugosity, same with knives so bacteria doesn't take hold in the crannies.
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Yep and with them cracking down on a lot of different aspects of food safety here in the past 10 years or so.

Cross contamination is a huge issue here lately...
 
jdm61 said:
Health inspectors are not employed by the US government or even the states in most cases. I have heard that there are SOME local health departments that do not like you using non-stainless, but that is by no means universal.
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Haven't seen a non stainless blade used in over 25 years in the places I have lived and worked in the US, that's a few states.

And that includes Sushi bars..
 
I put my Douk-Douk in the washing machine and found it half a day later, no rust, so... I've no problems with carbon. :D
 
Ankerson said:
Haven't seen a non stainless blade used in over 25 years in the places I have lived and worked in the US, that's a few states.

And that includes Sushi bars..
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For the company I work for I've filmed at top rated restaurants in San Francisco and Portland; one off the top of my head we filmed at Perbacco, Michael Blacks Sebo, Okoze in Nob Hill, Oliveto; and in Portland at Clyde Commons, LaurelHurst Market, and Bamboo Sushi; all the chefs there used carbon steel blades (their own, and ours) on film. Your experience may be just that you don't notice their carbon steel kitchen knives, but it's the exception, not the rule.
 
somber said:
For the company I work for I've filmed at top rated restaurants in San Francisco and Portland; one off the top of my head we filmed at Perbacco, Michael Blacks Sebo, Okoze in Nob Hill, Oliveto; and in Portland at Clyde Commons, LaurelHurst Market, and Bamboo Sushi; all the chefs there used carbon steel blades (their own, and ours) on film. Your experience may be just that you don't notice their carbon steel kitchen knives, but it's the exception, not the rule.
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I don't work in a restaurant, but I have been in the food industry since 1989...

They have been very strict in the areas I have lived and worked, but as someone pointed out it might be different in some places.

And then there is ServSafe.
 
Ankerson said:
I don't work in a restaurant, but I have been in the food industry since 1989...

They have been very strict in the areas I have lived and worked, but as someone pointed out it might be different in some places.

And then there is ServSafe.
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Yeah, That's not what you've been saying. Back it up with regulations from your local health department, if that's the case. That should be easy to find, right?

Because not only have I worked in the food industry, you know, actually working in restaurants for years, but I also talk to chefs across the world, let alone the United States, every single day about these 'banned' carbon steel blades that they're using in their kitchen. The Exec Chef at the Tangled Vine in New York just purchased a 'dangerous, banned' carbon blade from us the two days ago to use in the kitchen.

What you've been saying is simply misinformation.

edit: Maybe they have different requirements at retirement centers. Do you work at a retirement center/old-folks home?
 
This pertains to the original question because it's about the use of carbon steel blades. It was said that carbon steel blades are bad for food prep, but right now in the United States Japanese style blades are HUGE, which, by the way are almost all a san-mai with... that's right, carbon steel. The fourth post stated that stainless is the obvious choice in the kitchen, and someone (accurately) refuted that by saying that Shirogami/Aogami steels were popular for kitchen knives and used by chefs. At that point Ankerson came into the conversation acting as though he wrote the (non-existent) law pertaining to the banning of carbon steel knives in commercial kitchens. It's important that that statement is refuted because it's simply not true.
 
somber said:
This pertains to the original question because it's about the use of carbon steel blades. It was said that carbon steel blades are bad for food prep, but right now in the United States Japanese style blades are HUGE, which, by the way are almost all a san-mai with... that's right, carbon steel. The fourth post stated that stainless is the obvious choice in the kitchen, and someone (accurately) refuted that by saying that Shirogami/Aogami steels were popular for kitchen knives and used by chefs. At that point Ankerson came into the conversation acting as though he wrote the (non-existent) law pertaining to the banning of carbon steel knives in commercial kitchens. It's important that that statement is refuted because it's simply not true.
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Were did I say kitchens in this thread?

You assumed I ment kitchens......... ;)
 
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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What did you mean by 'US Commercially'? Commercial Gyms? Commercial Offices? Or Commercial Kitchens, where they use food prep knives? Now you're coming in saying that you weren't talking about kitchens this whole time? Dude, just admit you're wrong. Is that so hard?
 
On a food forum I read periodically many chefs state they use non-stainless knives at their workplace. A few years back I worked in a sushi restaurant and the chefs used non-stainless knives. I tried to find laws about it on google and couldn't come up with anything in the first couple pages of results.

To the OP, it's better to compare specific types of steel in particular designs that will suit whatever tasks you are going to do. A very generic explanation is that many "carbon" (non-stainless) steels are fairly easy to sharpen and will hold their edge fairly well. You can also find some non-stainless knives for fairly cheap (Opinel chefs knife for example) compared to knives with CPM-154, VG-10 or another good stainless for the kitchen (Shun with VG-10 comes to mind) that will cost more for various reasons. The problem is there are too many variables to give a concise definitive answer. Custom knives in non-stainless steels can be very expensive just like high end knives in stainless steels.

In general people on here say they like non-stainless steels in mainstream brands like Case because of their ease of sharpening and good edge retention. People say the same things about stainless steels like Buck's 420HC. Head over to the traditional subforum and you'll find that many people enjoy natural handle scales and non-stainless steels so the knife ages and changes over time, developing "character".

In the end you have to weigh many variables to decide what knife will suit you. There's no easy, set answer.
 
this has been the most useless waste of 2 pages i have ever read on this topic. i kept hoping someone would bring it back on track and a few tried, but it just never happened. My condolences to the OP on this one... i bet you are sorry you asked. On the bright side, we all have learned a little bit about the restaurant kitchens of america... big win for everyone.
 
rustyrazor said:
this has been the most useless waste of 2 pages i have ever read on this topic. i kept hoping someone would bring it back on track and a few tried, but it just never happened. My condolences to the OP on this one... i bet you are sorry you asked. On the bright side, we all have learned a little bit about the restaurant kitchens of america... big win for everyone.
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THANK YOU. This thread was hijacked like 3 posts into it. I can guarantee you he didn't intend for the post to be shifted directly into a petty argument about which works better and is more legal in more places for food prep.
 
demoteamone said:
Something good to read

http://www.bestexcompany.com/parks/knives/paper_from_journal.pdf
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That was a really interesting read. It was surprising that the stainless steel performed more cuts than the 3 carbon steels, but the authors noted that it could have been attributed to the thinness of the stainless blade vs. the thicker stock on the carbon blades. It would have been more apples to apples comparison if they were all the same thickness, but interesting none the less.

Personally I feel that the decision to go with stainless steel or carbon steel is simply a personal preference. With modern stainless steels you get great performance, and with carbon steels you still get great performance (with a little bit more care). If it came down to ease of sharpening, I would go with carbon, but if it came down to ease of maintenance (preventing rust, thinning, or keeping a blade looking nice and polished) I'd go with stainless.
 
somber said:
It was surprising that the stainless steel performed more cuts than the 3 carbon steels, but the authors noted that it could have been attributed to the thinness of the stainless blade vs. the thicker stock on the carbon blades. It would have been more apples to apples comparison if they were all the same thickness, but interesting none the less.
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Well, the difference in thickness was 0.07 mm, so the effect was probably minimal. The blades I had tested had the same stock thickness, but were ground to a thickness above the edge bevel with a difference about 4 times that large. Actually, the stock thickness may or may not be the same, it is another measurement I have to take, as a difference of three thousandths is possible even with surface grinding. There was a measured difference in performance between the two hollow grinding depths, but it was about 1/20th the impact of changing edge angles. For Verhoeven's paper, the stainless had 50% more carbides per square micron as the 52100. AEB-L has less carbon for carbide formation (~60% of 52100), but 52100 has less chromium (~10% of AEB-L) and both were at the same hardness and sharpening angle.

The CATRA test measures wear, and none of the steels tested hand;es wear very well compared to 'super' steels. As well, Verhoeven chose to focus on the initial loss of cutting ability, which is extremely rapid for all steels. That's where the idea of holding a 'working' edge comes in, the steel will plateau on the CATRA, and the consistent cut depth will be higher for some steels, though still maybe 1/10th or far less than the cut depth of the first stroke. There is a test of a T15 planer blade where it is still cutting at ~10mm at the end of the standard CATRA test, 60 strokes, and we see in Verhoeven's paper that all these steels drop below that level at 3 strokes.
 
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