- Joined
- Sep 19, 2001
- Messages
- 8,968
I would say absolutely not. There's a reason not every car on the road has a turbocharger or a full carbon fiber body. It's expensive and pointless for the type of driving 99.9% of people do despite the weight savings and efficiency. There's no way to justify the alloy and tooling costs for a steel that isn't going to to be tested in the slightest. There are people praising 440C, S30V, AUS8, etc for not needing to be sharpened more than a couple times a year, what are they going to get from REX 121 in a 'truck stop' knife? It also has pitiful toughness, less than a third of something like S30V. People couldn't sharpen their knives and would be breaking them.Progress always continues. Perhaps 121 is still in the experimental stage as a cutlery steel today, but in 15-20 years, I truly believe that "truck stop" knives will use it.
Diamond grinding would also be a bad idea, since power grinding iron alloys with it causes the carbon in the diamond to be absorbed into the iron at grinding heat. It's one reason we get to play with boron nitride and other super abrasives, diamonds aren't good against steel in fast grinding.
Anyway, if something like this were to be done, MPL-1 would be better as it is stainless. It also has the highest carbon content at 3.75%. If only we could get some sintered. I tried emailing Bodykote, but they never responded about the sintering or sourcing the similar alloy Fe70. You can get Supracor/MPL-1 in powder form, but good luck getting someone to roll it, I've contacted several makers with no luck.