What is the toughest Stainless Steel today? (Niolox, Elmax, Vanax,s35,cpm154)

What facts do you have? Do you have izod, C notch, V notch, or bend fracture numbers for INFI?

IE, inconel 718 has a room temperature V notch measurement of about 20 lbs. Nickel alloys are not the toughest.
 
hardheart said:
What facts do you have? Do you have izod, C notch, V notch, or bend fracture numbers for INFI?

IE, inconel 718 has a room temperature V notch measurement of about 20 lbs. Nickel alloys are not the toughest.
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Ok. Cliff Stamp. Noss. Busse's torture testing. I am obviously not a scientist, but i can read and observe other people's testing. Busse welcomes all challenges in a live forum. We can set something up. What do you have in mind?
 
ASTM standard size samples tested for impact toughness. The issue with everything you mention is that they are knives, and the impact toughness depends on the length, stock thickness, primary grind, profile, etc.

If you want to say Busse has the toughest knives based on your observations, sure, but both the Striders and CRKs Noss tested were S30V and the results were very different.
 
hardheart said:
What facts do you have? Do you have izod, C notch, V notch, or bend fracture numbers for INFI?

IE, inconel 718 has a room temperature V notch measurement of about 20 lbs. Nickel alloys are not the toughest.
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Who cares? We aren't designing a knife for the first manned flight to Mars. We are just enjoying our knives. It isn't a contest. Put down your books for a second and try using some knives.
 
I use plenty of knives, and I don't care about the toughness when cutting. But I also see no reason to make unfounded statements. I don't know if INFI is the toughest, I would genuinely like to know. Though I am fairly certain Jerry already said S7 was tougher.

The people who care are the ones making knives and selecting steels. Maybe some of them would like to compete in a market with some accurate info available to the public.

Randall made knives for NASA, and they don't use INFI, CPM steels, or anything terribly exotic.

If people make purchase decisions based on statements like 'XXX is the toughest knife steel', then it ought to be true for everyone's benefit. This is off topic, so I'll leave it at that.
 
Busse freely admits that INFI is not as tough as S7 and I suspect that it is not as tough as 1V either. Now I wouldn't make a knife out of either of those steels, but you did claim that INFI was tougher than S7.;)
voracious1 said:
Ok. Cliff Stamp. Noss. Busse's torture testing. I am obviously not a scientist, but i can read and observe other people's testing. Busse welcomes all challenges in a live forum. We can set something up. What do you have in mind?
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hardheart said:
I use plenty of knives, and I don't care about the toughness when cutting. But I also see no reason to make unfounded statements. I don't know if INFI is the toughest, I would genuinely like to know. Though I am fairly certain Jerry already said S7 was tougher.

The people who care are the ones making knives and selecting steels. Maybe some of them would like to compete in a market with some accurate info available to the public.

Randall made knives for NASA, and they don't use INFI, CPM steels, or anything terribly exotic.

If people make purchase decisions based on statements like 'XXX is the toughest knife steel', then it ought to be true for everyone's benefit. This is off topic, so I'll leave it at that.
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Complete agreement. :thumbup:
 
hardheart said:
I use plenty of knives, and I don't care about the toughness when cutting. But I also see no reason to make unfounded statements. I don't know if INFI is the toughest, I would genuinely like to know. Though I am fairly certain Jerry already said S7 was tougher.

The people who care are the ones making knives and selecting steels. Maybe some of them would like to compete in a market with some accurate info available to the public.

Randall made knives for NASA, and they don't use INFI, CPM steels, or anything terribly exotic.

If people make purchase decisions based on statements like 'XXX is the toughest knife steel', then it ought to be true for everyone's benefit. This is off topic, so I'll leave it at that.
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Well said. I agree completely.
 
darkaether said:
Who cares? We aren't designing a knife for the first manned flight to Mars. We are just enjoying our knives. It isn't a contest. Put down your books for a second and try using some knives.
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That a statement like that was directed at hardheart is quite funny. The original poster asked a specific question. The tests mentioned by hh are the ones used to answer that question. The results are published in books.

As to the original question, I'm gonna say the toughest stainless used in knives (we're on bfc after all) is 420 or maybe 12c27M.
 
me2 said:
That a statement like that was directed at hardheart is quite funny. The original poster asked a specific question. The tests mentioned by hh are the ones used to answer that question. The results are published in books.

As to the original question, I'm gonna say the toughest stainless used in knives (we're on bfc after all) is 420 or maybe 12c27M.
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Good one!
 
The OP specifically listed premium blade steels. He isn't looking for an indestructible knife-like object, and knife makers don't ask about steel properties in the general forum. And several of the "facts" in this thread are incorrect. Metallurgy is vastly more complicated than the oversimplified assumptions stated above.

S7 may be technically "tougher" than INFI in a lab, but in real world use, that is definitely not what you would observe about S7 with a mashed or torn out edge when INFI hasn't flinched..
 
I think alot of people confuse toughness with damage resistance. They are not the same thing.

Baton a knife of 5160 at 55 RC through a nail and do the same with an identical INFI blade and INFI will have less damage even though soft 5160 is tougher.

I've noticed that Steels like s7 while uber tough can get badly mangled if you hit things like rocks.

Toughness is Only part of the equation for damage resistance.
 
I bought two elmax last weekend. Not to chop my self out of a fiery auto wreck. Ironically, that one is s7.
 
kevo711 said:
Out of this list (Niolox,Elmax,Vanax,s35vn,cpm154) or to any steel of your knowledge, what is the toughest Stainless steel today?
Also could you compare its toughness to other carbon and stainless steels.
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darkaether said:
The OP specifically listed premium blade steels. He isn't looking for an indestructible knife-like object, and knife makers don't ask about steel properties in the general forum. And several of the "facts" in this thread are incorrect. Metallurgy is vastly more complicated than the oversimplified assumptions stated above.

S7 may be technically "tougher" than INFI in a lab, but in real world use, that is definitely not what you would observe about S7 with a mashed or torn out edge when INFI hasn't flinched..
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S7 is used to make jackhammer bits, so it is interesting how you say it would mash or tear out for much lower impact activities.

55 Rc steel will of course have lower deformation resistance than 60 Rc INFI, Rockwell hardness measures exactly that, resistance to plastic deformation. Being a roughly logarithmic scale, a 3 point difference would mean around an order of magnitude increase.
 
TriviaMonster said:
12c27 is extremely tough. Much tougher than ELMAX from my usage. Its also Mora's pick for their machete. Its tough stuff with the right HT.

But, as far as high wear resistance ELMAX is pretty good, I have heard good things about CTS-XHP also, not sure if someone can confirm this. S30V and S35VN are also on the tough end of the stainless spectrum.
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Good to know. I love my Mora 526 and I believe Opinel stainless is the same.
 
voracious1 said:
I bought two elmax last weekend. Not to chop my self out of a fiery auto wreck. Ironically, that one is s7.
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I got 2 spydies in M390 in the last few weeks. I can't wait to see what else Dan decides to do with that Elmax stash. My go-to auto tool is S7 too, along with a glock shovel.
 
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