The history of the first tool steel

[Larrin]

I wrote a new article! One of these days I need to write an article that doesn't take hours of work to put together. I answer such questions as:

What was the first tool steel?
How was it developed?
How did it lead to the development of all of our awesome knife steels?

http://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/03/22/the-history-of-the-first-tool-steel/

 

[DanF]

You sir, shine light into the dark places and make all bladesmith's, of all experience levels better for having read your articles.
Thank you very much.

 

[Geoff Flato]

Good read! I've actually got an old taper shank twist drill made of mushett steel in my oddities collection. I quite enjoyed researching it at the time.

 

[samuraistuart]

Thanks again Larrin for the time and effort you're putting into these posts/blog.

 

[golfer1]

You sir have done a great service. On the other hand you have done me a disservice as I know I will need to read your article at least 10 times to absorb this information, actually 10 times may not get the job done.
Thanks for your efforts from a steel dummy

 

[Larrin]

You sir have done a great service. On the other hand you have done me a disservice as I know I will need to read your article at least 10 times to absorb this information, actually 10 times may not get the job done.
Thanks for your efforts from a steel dummy

I'm still working on graduating from steel dummy.

 

[mete]

When you retire you quickly drop out of the loop. So I joined up and now have another source to bring me back to the warm and cozy world of metallurgy !
In the past I had read interesting comments of tool steel development comparing tungsten [Europe has more ] and molybdenum [we have more ] .Have you compared the two ?
Thanks

 

[Larrin]

Molybdenum high speed steels became much more common in the US during the tungsten shortage in WWII. It’s probably worth an article by itself.

 

[Larrin]

When you retire you quickly drop out of the loop. So I joined up and now have another source to bring me back to the warm and cozy world of metallurgy !
In the past I had read interesting comments of tool steel development comparing tungsten [Europe has more ] and molybdenum [we have more ] .Have you compared the two ?
Thanks

Wait, are you saying you’ve been out of the loop since before the invention of high speed steel?

 

[Metalhead0483]

Very cool!

 

[mete]

Don't count out us old guys .Archeologists are always finding stuff that wasn't supposed to exist that long ago. Besides we metallurgists have special powers - .In the early days of SMAs I could easily prove we had the power , did it many times !