Steel Chart draft 1

First off, how are you defining toughness? By any definition I'm used to, the steels seem to be placed randomly. A rough general guide is the carbon content and carbide volume. As both go up, toughness goes down. Again, none of this can be considered without heat treatment. What information leads you to put Maxamet at the top rank for toughness?
 
I took a brief look at your website, I think you would be far better off creating the chart around only the blade steels you currently use. Using only those steels you can get to a more accurate chart based on your own geometries, heat treats, etc.. Your website is the window to your shop for anyone interested in your knives, so why clutter up your website with stuff your customers might question? If the information you have posted is questionable, what else is questionable about your business? Just food for thought...
 
hangmanshammer said:
I took a brief look at your website, I think you would be far better off creating the chart around only the blade steels you currently use. Using only those steels you can get to a more accurate chart based on your own geometries, heat treats, etc.. Your website is the window to your shop for anyone interested in your knives, so why clutter up your website with stuff your customers might question? If the information you have posted is questionable, what else is questionable about your business? Just food for thought...
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That is a good point and thought. It is my hope to get this list dial-in in such a way that it would not raise such questions, perhaps that is an impossible task. Interestingly many of the issues have surrounded the toughness chart, maybe I should just omit that.
 
me2 said:
First off, how are you defining toughness? By any definition I'm used to, the steels seem to be placed randomly. A rough general guide is the carbon content and carbide volume. As both go up, toughness goes down. Again, none of this can be considered without heat treatment. What information leads you to put Maxamet at the top rank for toughness?
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Maxamelt is in the wrong spot, it as well as hap 40 should probably land around CPM D2.
 
Toughness chart is still a tad wonky. For starters, you don't have several of the more commonly used "tough" steels, like L6, A2, 80CrV2 or S7. You also left off steels like W2 and the slightly lower carbon 10xx steels like 1084 and 1075. Also, depend got heat treatment, some of the ones that you do have will move around the list, like 1095 at a reasonable hardens of 60+ compared to the "soft" condition that you seen some factory knives or the simple Swedish steels from B-U and Sandvik which can be found at varying levels of hardness.
 
I don't think it will clutter a page to have some charts on it. It is good for people that do not know. There are two steels that I know very well and have been using for well over 15 years and have had easily 30-50 knives of each in that time. One is ATS34/154cm and cpmS30V, From a users point of view of someone who used those knives hard. If anyone had asked me which was tougher based on years of hard use, there is no doubt in my mind that ATS34 blew the doors off of S30V. There was no comparison. According to the charts ATS is the lesser steel. But according to my real use and many others who I have talked to on these forums, ATS is the better steel. In fact if someone even today offered me the same exact knife in ATS or BG42, I would take either over S30V. Supposed better manufacturing and better performance on paper sure doesn't show in reality. In fact I would take 440C over it as well. Unfortunately I have more S30V blades because so many manufacturers jumped on the band wagon. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't better to just have charts that show groups or classes of metals.
 
gscreely said:
Ok, So it seemed like the toughness chart had the most issues. Here is the updated version. I dug into a lot of crucibles data sheets and moved things around, as well as adding a few of the suggested steels. In general it seems toughness is the most difficult attribute to pin down.

I also broke out the CPM steels because of the substantial variation in toughness specifically.

My questions: is maxamelt too high on the chart? Are 1095 and 5160 in the right spot (the most common steels seem to be the most difficult to get comparative data on).

How does the stainless order look?



14330169_10154480063619491_1730713029925549831_n.jpg
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I'd put H1 higher in the toughness chart, and CTS-XHP much lower, but that's just me.
As far as edge retention, maybe you should specify the values for H1 as being Plain edge, as we all know it triplicates or more its edge retention when in serrated edge, as it is commonly found.

just my $0.02
 
jdm61 said:
Toughness chart is still a tad wonky. For starters, you don't have several of the more commonly used "tough" steels, like L6, A2, 80CrV2 or S7. You also left off steels like W2 and the slightly lower carbon 10xx steels like 1084 and 1075. Also, depend got heat treatment, some of the ones that you do have will move around the list, like 1095 at a reasonable hardens of 60+ compared to the "soft" condition that you seen some factory knives or the simple Swedish steels from B-U and Sandvik which can be found at varying levels of hardness.
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It would be cool to have an interactive chart that could alow for changing the RC and observing the effect on its attributes. The base line assumption here is that HT was done right, and the RC target is central in its working hardness range.

PS- I added A2, and am thinking about W2.
 
ThePeacent said:
and CTS-XHP much lower, but that's just me.
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So XHP is essentially CPM-D2 with additional chrome. CPM-D2 is very tough, I suspect the extra chrome will bring that down some, but below regular D2?
 
Cobalt said:
I don't think it will clutter a page to have some charts on it. It is good for people that do not know. There are two steels that I know very well and have been using for well over 15 years and have had easily 30-50 knives of each in that time. One is ATS34/154cm and cpmS30V, From a users point of view of someone who used those knives hard. If anyone had asked me which was tougher based on years of hard use, there is no doubt in my mind that ATS34 blew the doors off of S30V. There was no comparison. According to the charts ATS is the lesser steel. But according to my real use and many others who I have talked to on these forums, ATS is the better steel. In fact if someone even today offered me the same exact knife in ATS or BG42, I would take either over S30V. Supposed better manufacturing and better performance on paper sure doesn't show in reality. In fact I would take 440C over it as well. Unfortunately I have more S30V blades because so many manufacturers jumped on the band wagon. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't better to just have charts that show groups or classes of metals.
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I am not nuts about CPM S30V myself, in my experience it comes with much of the difficulty of work as S90V with fraction of the edge retention. It costs almost the same as S90V (a few bucks difference per pound)

However where it is sitting on the chart is consistance with where CPM puts it on paper, but in my experience the CPM data sheet is a bit optimistic.
 
gscreely said:
I am not nuts about CPM S30V myself, in my experience it comes with much of the difficulty of work as S90V with fraction of the edge retention. It costs almost the same as S90V (a few bucks difference per pound)

However where it is sitting on the chart is consistance with where CPM puts it on paper, but in my experience the CPM data sheet is a bit optimistic.
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I wish that cpm had started out with S35VN first. Would have changed my original outlook on cpm as a whole.
 
Revolverrodger said:
I had no idea that cpm D2 was tougher than 5160...
How come sword makers never use it ?
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Do sword makers use CPM anything much at all? That's outside my circles, but that could be $300 for the steel alone.
 
I have seen cpm3v swords, but if I were Looking I would want S7 or better yet S5. Toughness wise nothing compares.
 
IMO you will save yourself a lot of time and wrk by listing only the steel you work with with a few common steels for comparison.
Or just include links to manufacturs info.
 
LG&M said:
IMO you will save yourself a lot of time and wrk by listing only the steel you work with with a few common steels for comparison.
Or just include links to manufacturs info.
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True, and a fair amount of criticism. I know when I was starting out I found these charts really helpful, and I enjoyed looking over them. As much of a pain as these are to assemble, and how limited they are in many ways, they are still pretty helpful to match steel types to applications.
 
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