Steel comparrison - unfinished

[colonial]

I was hoping that a real discussion would get going on Barry's post but it seemed to stall out when someone brought up the subject of a particular knife of Ed's.
I'm up to about thirty or so blades, all out of O1, 1084, plow tines, 5160 and whatever a particular coil spring was made of that gave me a few blades. But like others, though I've paid great attention to testing samples to make sure the recipients are getting a great tool with the proper heat treat, I still am an amateur regarding the practical differences among the more popular alloys.
So I hope we can pick the subject back up. And for my own interests, I want to add L6 to the list.
Ed

 

[Rick Baum]

Ed,

Thanks for restarting this thread. I too, would like to see some in-depth discussion on some of these steels.

If I could add a request... Please add specific testing proceedures and results so we have a more "Apples to Apples" comparison between the different steels. I know that we can never really have a true "Apples to Apples" comparison without everyone sending their knives to an independent testing facility, but, let's try get as "real" as we can. This should be very interesting.

I wish I had some data to put on the table, but I'm just getting my first home heat treaded blade completed. I'll see if I can add anything in the next day or two.

Thanks,
Rick