Stainless vs other steels

A

adam britz

Joined
Feb 16, 2017
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Hi Everyone,
Another newb question.:confused:
I am wondering your thoughts on ss vs say w2,1084,52100? Why choose one over the other? For an 'in the field' knife, is stainless better? Obviously, my main concern is rusting, but do the latter steels rust easily?

From a forging, grinding, heat treat position, is ss harder to work with?

I am seeing alot of different posts with a lot of variation. Curious what everyone's thought process is when thinking about their next project on steel choice.

Thanks as always,
 
well, there are a lot of variables but it pretty much comes down to what each individuals priorities are for a given application... if your main concern is rusting, then you either have to go stainless, you have to put some sort of protective coating on your blade or you have to take care of a carbon blade as well as you would an unfinished rifle in the field. all steels have their strengths and weaknesses but you have to decide what the most important characteristic you are looking for.
 
stainless requires more equipment for heat treat then high carbon steels. you need a heat treat oven, aluminum quenching plates, sub zero liquid nitrogen tank. the bars of steel are more expensive than high carbon. you can also send it out to be heat treated and not have to buy the equipment. the rusting also depends on the surface finish. a 400 grit finish will rust faster than an 800 grit finish on high carbon. i am curious how stainless grinds compared to high carbon. easier/harder? i would like try SS someday, i have heard you can just about finish the blade before heat treat which is a big advantage. with high carbon i only go up to 120 grit before heat treat, so there is much grinding and finishing to be done after H/T.
 
You can nearly finish any air quenching steel prior to heat treat. It doesn't necessarily need to be stainless.
 
So why choose a carbon steel over a stainless? is stainless more of an issue with chopping and batoning? or is that all in the heat treat? is it just cost that most choose a high carbon steel.
 
Because the chromium required to make something stainless comes at the expense of something else and isn't incredibly useful in enhancing knife performance. It's a compromise. Will S35VN outperform 1095? Yes, in every practical way. But that's not a fair comparison. Compared to M4, it will have less edge retention and less toughness.

You only get about 21% of the steels composition to play with. When chromium eats up 14-18% of that, something else suffers.
 
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