Unknown Steel

P.Brewster said:
People are often wrong, which is why its also a bad idea to determine the grade by "ask[ing] who their supplier is, and then check with that supplier."
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I contacted the supplier and they refused to tell me what type of steel they use. Apparently it's a big secret.
 
Hathenbruck said:
I contacted the supplier and they refused to tell me what type of steel they use. Apparently it's a big secret.
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Probably for the best.

Since it is already hardened it would be a huge pain in the ass to work with.
 
Hathenbruck said:
I contacted the supplier and they refused to tell me what type of steel they use. Apparently it's a big secret.
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Of course they refused to tell you. You're asking a 3rd party to research and disclose private information. Imagine if I called your local grocery store and said "Hi, I have reason to believe that you sell groceries to someone named Hathenbruck. I'd like to know what kind of cereal you sold him. I'm really not sure when he bought it, so please provide a list of all the cereals he bought in the past decade." They would rightfully tell me to pound sand.
 
If you access to a bunch of it spend the $ to have it analyzed. Ya spend way more in time $$$$$$$$$$$ playing with it and it will still be a mystery steel that may or may not or partially or...............
 
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Hathenbruck said:
I could just anneal it. Either way, I'll just mess around with the stuff. Maybe something will come of it.
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Various steels have to be annealed differently. How would you know what it would take to anneal it properly?
 
AVigil said:
Various steels have to be annealed differently. How would you know what it would take to anneal it properly?
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If the goal is to soften it up so it's easier to work on, if one annealing doesn't soften it up, then another will. Grain structure will also tell a tale.
 
P.Brewster said:
Of course they refused to tell you. You're asking a 3rd party to research and disclose private information. Imagine if I called your local grocery store and said "Hi, I have reason to believe that you sell groceries to someone named Hathenbruck. I'd like to know what kind of cereal you sold him. I'm really not sure when he bought it, so please provide a list of all the cereals he bought in the past decade." They would rightfully tell me to pound sand.
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Except the only way to find out what cereal I bought is to have someone tell you. Spending time researching what steels they've used is one thing, refusing to give information that you have on hand is another. I'm guessing they don't know there are other ways to find out what the steel is.
 
Hathenbruck said:
Except the only way to find out what cereal I bought is to have someone tell you. Spending time researching what steels they've used is one thing, refusing to give information that you have on hand is another. I'm guessing they don't know there are other ways to find out what the steel is.
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No, one could identify mystery cereal (or any substance) in the same or similar manner than one might identify mystery steel.

The 'research' is the process of pulling up old order records and finding the record in question. It might be a 2 minute task, but steel sales offices are a fast-paced and high-pressure work setting, and 2 minutes of a salesperson's time is not insignificant, especially when those 2 minutes aren't leading to present or future sales.

The core issue is privacy. In no way are you entitled to know any details of a sales transaction between two entities. They don't care that you might have another way of learning the steel grade; their duty is to keep the details of their transactions confidential from someone who isn't connected to the transactions.
 
The long and short is you both want and need to know the steel's chemistry. Send a 2X2" piece to a test lab and get it done … that is the answer. Everything you need to make a good knife from the steel will come from that analysis.

A simple search of "Steel Sample Analysis" shows many places.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=steel...-21&sk=&cvid=E59EE068B54C41D5A8F1817C147BE960

A good example of this situation.
I was at an estate sale. One of the folks there noticed my knifemaker shirt and commented that the man who died had made knifes. I asked if he had any equipment or sullies they wanted to sell. They took me out to a nice little shop with lots of machining and grinding tools. However, the equipment was going to the grandson. There was a separate shed of materials that they would sell. I bought a big box of handle wood, some 36X7" sheets of 5160. Then we found a wooden ammo box with around 50 pounds of bars of some type of stainless steel. Each 1.25X18"bar was wrapped in brown paper, but the only ID was a stock number that didn't seem to mean anything. I told them I would probably pay a couple dollars a bar if they had the analysis, but would give $20 for the whole box with it being a mystery (mostly for the cool box). They took the $20. I checked the number to no avail. I send a piece to a lab and got the result back. I had to call the lab to check that there wasn't a mistake. The nickel was 70%, chromium was 20% and the rest was a variety of a dozen or so otter elements. The carbon was .0005%. Evidently, it was some type of high temperature nickel-chrome steel. Probably expensive, but worthless in knives. I ended up trading the batch to my scrap dealer for some large stainless pipe to make forges.
The point is I could have spent many hours trying to figure out a HT and gotten nowhere. The test was done by a fellow here in Shop Talk who worked in the steel industry. Even if I had paid $100, it would have been worth it to save a lot of time. If the test had shown the metal to be a good knife steel, I could have made a hundred knives from it, so that would have worked out to $1 a blade for peace of mind and the ability to say, "This blade is XXXYYY steel."
 
I think Peters heat treating may have a steel analyzer, they could probable tell you exactly what it is. Call them some time and see if you can send them a small piece to analyze. With that being said, with all the great steels available these days, I'm not sure even messing around with an unknown steel would be worth your while.
 
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