Different steels

[G S Haydon]

Ha! Our son has been getting up very early recently and this morning I could not get back to sleep. I'll book mark it for next time . While I do find great interest from your chart Derek I would personally value just as much you saying I uses really hard abrasive timbers and I get great results with X & Y.

That chart while interesting has less to do with me understanding how something stacks up in day to day use, the quality of the surface left behind, the level of investment required to use these steels in both purchase price and honing media. Still interesting to read the test though

 

[D_W]

I'd tend to rely on what professionals use, too. When I started, I compared charts, and I drove my various chisels though a stick of maple and counted the number of slices each would take off.

As time has gone on, I don't follow what would pass the stick test for real work. I've set aside my japanese paring chisels for old english chisels, and I've set aside my alloyed steel bench chisels for old english tang style chisels. they're just better in the context of actual work - they don't require a sharpening method that requires babysitting or maintenance on its own, and the issue of poor edge holding with most chisels has more to do with beginners using them.

As a beginner, I would've thought cutting a mortise in a large cocobolo plane would've been out of bounds for something stanley-style (an old pexto socket chisel), I'd have used it at 30 degrees and declared it unfit. As a more experienced user, I added a tiny bevel of a few extra degrees and chopped the entire plane mortise with the chisel and the wear it took in the process was easily removed for a second plane a week later, with 30 seconds of sharpening...on stones that don't require someone to lap them to make them cut or lap them to make them flat.

I stroke counted several A2 irons once for a vendor, too. That told me which iron lasted the longest taking essentially 700-1100 2 thousandth shavings for each iron, but I don't use that now, either.

Derek, your chart would lead someone with a knife to immediately accept that m4 or 10v would make a better knife that was intended for cutting duties, but I certainly would much rather have 1095 for reasons we don't need to go into. 1095 would be somewhere around 52100 on that chart. I'd certainly rather have chisels well made of 1095 (w1) than any of those, either, and i've got plenty of chisels that are alloyed to make that decision - up to and including M4.

(it looks like someone in the comment section bit on the shiny hook "v11 is easier to sharpen than O1". I wonder which one of those two they haven't actually used. Must be one or the other......and $4000 for a chest made by a journalist is eye popping!! the power of a captive uneducated audience...Charlie, you should start a blog. I'd imagine you could work quite comfortably at that rate!!).

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

David, I had a 10V chisel, and it was the worst blade I ever used! It was not just very difficult to sharpen - and I do not think that I ever got it sharp enough to work properly - but it tended to fold when hit into wood. One can read into the chart in many ways. I put it there as industry information, not as a recommendation.

I did state that chisels should not be chosen by steel alone. Steel can be important, but there are a host of other factors that can - and often do - become a priority.

I have a set of Stanley 750s, which I handled. The edge does not last long and they need to be touched up frequently. But I love using them for their balance and touch. I also use a set of Veritas PM-V11 chisels much of the time. These are really excellent, both for edge holding and comfort/balance. These two chisel sets have quite different edge-holding qualities, and if the choice was made on the basis of the steel alone, the Stanleys should not be in the running. But I do not really think too much about that aspect when using the chisels. However, later one reflects on how the session went, and then it dawns upon you that the steel did in fact make a difference.

The other type of chisels I use are Japanese. The Koyamaichi dovetail chisels come out because they will hold an edge when chopping into the hardest wood. There is no substitute for them in this area. This is another example where steel counts. In the first example, it may be a secondary preference. In other situations it is more than this.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Trafalgar]

Griggs, you still strapped in? Beyond the alphabet soup of steels you'd better brush up on your Japanese surnames while you're at it. All the relevant names are in the process of being dropped, mine's bigger than yours and so on....

 

[woodpig]

I am very interested in different steels for kitchen knife making, and this is argued about on chef forums at length. Blade feel, ease of sharpening, longevity etc. Many of us favour Japanese steels: Blue 1 and 2 or White 1 and 2 (for fine knives).

My favourite kitchen knife has a Japanese laminated blade with carbon steel in the middle and stainless steel on the outside. It holds an edge like nothing I've used before.

Also, as a point of interest, some of the best straight razors used to be made from English Silver Steel, irrespective of where the blade was actually shaped. I believe the French in particular liked our steel for this purpose.

 

[bugbear]

My favourite kitchen knife has a Japanese laminated blade with carbon steel in the middle and stainless steel on the outside. It holds an edge like nothing I've used before.

Some Japanese knives (laminated or not) use Swedish steel. It's all fun. :lol:

BugBear

 

[griggs]

Griggs, you still strapped in? Beyond the alphabet soup of steels you'd better brush up on your Japanese surnames while you're at it. All the relevant names are in the process of being dropped, mine's bigger than yours and so on....

I have enough difficulty with "molybdenum" and "vanadium" before I start worrying about the Japanese

Still, I have learnt a lot, so it's all good and everyone playing nicely enough ccasion5:

 

[D_W]

I am very interested in different steels for kitchen knife making, and this is argued about on chef forums at length. Blade feel, ease of sharpening, longevity etc. Many of us favour Japanese steels: Blue 1 and 2 or White 1 and 2 (for fine knives).

My favourite kitchen knife has a Japanese laminated blade with carbon steel in the middle and stainless steel on the outside. It holds an edge like nothing I've used before.

Also, as a point of interest, some of the best straight razors used to be made from English Silver Steel, irrespective of where the blade was actually shaped. I believe the French in particular liked our steel for this purpose.

Any of the plain carbon steels were fine in razors, whether they're from continental europe, the united states, england, etc. They're all about the same in a razor as long as they're plain and the razor is ground well.

The japanese fiddled with some other alloys in razors, but they are generally not what you want when you're shaving, especially given that razors were historically sharpened with natural stones, a linen and a leather strop.

The skill of the cutler pretty much determines how nice a razor will be in a shave, unless the steel is outright defective. It takes an apparently very rare level of skill to fully hollow grind a razor and get it straight and all of the details clean. The last super highly skilled cutlers in razors (there are a couple working now, but not quite as good) were in japan. Tanifuji comes to mind. Unused razors finished by tanifuji cost a lot of money, though.

There was a period of time in germany that there were a lot of cutlers working close to that level, probably 1910s-1950s maybe? Razors are one of the things that improved after tools stopped improving functionally.

 

[D_W]

David, I had a 10V chisel, and it was the worst blade I ever used! It was not just very difficult to sharpen - and I do not think that I ever got it sharp enough to work properly - but it tended to fold when hit into wood. One can read into the chart in many ways. I put it there as industry information, not as a recommendation.

I did state that chisels should not be chosen by steel alone. Steel can be important, but there are a host of other factors that can - and often do - become a priority.

I have a set of Stanley 750s, which I handled. The edge does not last long and they need to be touched up frequently. But I love using them for their balance and touch. I also use a set of Veritas PM-V11 chisels much of the time. These are really excellent, both for edge holding and comfort/balance. These two chisel sets have quite different edge-holding qualities, and if the choice was made on the basis of the steel alone, the Stanleys should not be in the running. But I do not really think too much about that aspect when using the chisels. However, later one reflects on how the session went, and then it dawns upon you that the steel did in fact make a difference.

The other type of chisels I use are Japanese. The Koyamaichi dovetail chisels come out because they will hold an edge when chopping into the hardest wood. There is no substitute for them in this area. This is another example where steel counts. In the first example, it may be a secondary preference. In other situations it is more than this.

Regards from Perth

Derek

We're basically on the same page for chisels. Stanley 750 chisels are construction tools, high quality construction tools, but construction tools. I think (repeating something said before) that you'll find that they hold up very well if given an extra degree or two. It can be tempting to try to get them to match a higher price chisel by cheating on the bevel, but it's purely an issue of hardness.

If hard is on order, it's hard to beat even mid-range white #2 japanese chisels. They're harder and a little harder to sharpen, but they have the same balance of sharpening ease vs. durability that all of the carbon steel chisels have.

I haven't used a V11 chisel, but the need for powder metal is an attempt to replace skill (working carbon steel) with technology (limiting particle size). At this point, skill is still cheaper.

 

[lurcher]

why oh why do so many bother that much about steel whem most of us are hobby woodworkers state what you want from a tool and for my tuppence worth all new steel is yesterday/s ford escort /washing machine the best steel still today is cast sheffeild steel . why well its still here today .

 

[bugbear]

why oh why do so many bother that much about steel whem most of us are hobby woodworkers state what you want from a tool and for my tuppence worth all new steel is yesterday/s ford escort /washing machine the best steel still today is cast sheffeild steel . why well its still here today .

So steel doesn't matter, but Sheffield steel is the best. Got it. :lol:

BugBear

 

[Cheshirechappie]

This caused the carbon in the charcoal to combine with the iron to produce something called 'blister steel', which was then cooled, broken into pieces, piled into bundles and forge-welded into 'shear steel' under a tilt hammer. The result was what we would now call 'carbon steel' - iron with about 1% of carbon in it, which has the capacity to be forged into useful shapes like sheep-shear blades and then hardened and tempered to the point that it'll take a good cutting edge and hold it. The problem was that the distribution of carbon was not very even, which made the tools a bit variable.

I can add a little to that, although it's really an aside. Later on, the very lack of uniformity that razor, chisel and plane makers deplore was recognised as a very desirable feature in butcher's knives. The (by now carefully managed) non-uniformity, when sharpened with a butcher's steel, became micro serrations, which excel at cutting meat.

Hence, long after Huntsman and his crucible, "shear steel", and "double-shear steel" were marks seen and sought after on butchers knives, certainly into the 1930's.

BugBear

Thanks for that snippet BB - that's a new one on me! I have to admit to being a bit of a 'history of metallurgy' geek, given the impact it has had on civilisation; these last two centuries especially. But often, it's the little byways of history that are the most fascinating.

By the way, BB knows this, but for anybody wondering about the term 'double shear steel', this was an attempt to improve the uniformity of shear steel by taking the forged-welded bundle, working it into thinner strips, then piling them and forge-welding them together a second time. The result was more uniform than single shear steel, but not in the same league (for most purposes) as 'cast steel'.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

In my first mini-thesis on steels used in woodworking tools, I mentioned that several 'other' grades of steel have been used in tool making over the years. Given that they crop up from time to time, I thought I'd mention a couple I've come across.

The first is SILVER STEEL. During the second half of the 19th century, quite a few experiments were made adding alloying elements to steel, some more successful than others. One result of this experimentation was a straight carbon steel with a very small proportion of Chromium added. This had some benefits to heat treatment, but also gave the finished steel a more silvery appearance when polished up. It was taken up by several saw makers, and their etches sometimes contain the words 'silver steel' - Tyzack Sons and Turner were one such user, and they used it for many, many years. I have two Tyzack saws I bought new in the 1980s, and one of them is so marked.

Silver steel also came to be marketed in the form of drawn or ground rods (usually round, sometimes square) accurate to diametrical dimension, and about 13" long, in many sizes from very small to 2" (50mm) diameter. This can still be bought from engineer's merchants (it's known as 'drill rod' in North America, which reveals one of it's intended purposes), and is a fine starting point for anybody wanting to make their own tools. It's supplied in the annealed condition, and can be worked fairly easily, though it's much harder than mild steel! It hardens and tempers in water, and is about as close to 'straight' carbon steel as anything currently easily commercially available. It has it's own British Standard - BS1407 of 1970, which states that it shall contain Carbon 1.1 - 1.2%, Silicon 0.1 - 0.25%, Manganese 0.3 - 0.4% and Chromium 0.4 - 0.5%. I assume that the North American spec. is very similar.

The second is BALL BEARING STEEL. This is quite similar to silver steel, but has Carbon 0.95 - 1.1%, Manganese 0.4 - 0.7%, and Chromium 1.2 - 1.6%. In the UK, it is known as EN31 or 535/A99 (the British Standards Institution keep changing the way the specify steels - very confusing!), and in America as AISI/SAE 52100. This one has been around for a long time, it's major use being for the making of rolling element bearings. The chromium content helps it get a bit harder than straight carbon steel, and gives a deeper hard case. In days gone by, people used to use old bearing races to make such things as engineer's scrapers, since the steel could be annealed, worked, hardened and tempered pretty well exactly the same as straight carbon steel (not so wise these days - many other grades of steel are used to make rolling element bearings now, and some of these won't respond to simple heat treatments). Some tool makers adopted it, it's most recent use being by Stanley in their recent Sweetheart socket chisel range.

The third is SPRING STEEL. There are several grades, the ones most used these days being (UK) CS80 and CS95 - the North American exact equivalents being AISI/SAE 1080 and 1095. Most often used in saw making, these are also pretty close to being straight carbon steels, with only small additions of silicon. They are useful to tool makers because they respond to oil hardening, which is a slower process than water hardening and thus less likely to case internal stresses in the finished item. These steels have also been used in heavier blades - I gather that Robert Sorby use a spring steel for their long, thin paring chisels. I've had a couple of these for years, and can confirm that the steel is quite similar to O1 in the way it behaves; the chisels also have a slight degree of flexibility that makes them quite sensitive to use for fine paring.

Lastly, I'll just mention water-hardening steels, grades W1 and W2, which do get mentioned from time to time. These are effectively the grade designations of straight carbon steel of 1% carbon, having virtually no alloying elements added (W1 has 0.2% Silicon, W2 has the same plus 0.2% vanadium). They are virtually unobtainable commercially, since every practical use they ever had is better served by other steels, the sole exception being custom blade-making. The nearest available equivalents are the Japanese blade steels, sometimes called 'white steel' and 'blue steel'. They are about the nearest to the old Sheffield 'cast steel' still available.

Hope that's not 'too much information' - thought it might answer a few questions for a few readers when some of the regular posters start spraying specification numbers around!