User talk:Ctdunstan/Kitchen knife

high carbon stainless steel

I am skeptical that there is a material known as "high carbon stainless steel". After writing this sentence I did a google search on "high carbon stainless steel", and the first links that came up were for some specialty knife manufacturers. These pages assert their knives are made from unobtainium^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hhigh carbon stainless steel. But, I suspect they were written by the companies' PR departments, not by anyone who knew anything about metallurgy.

Consider this knife manufacturer's page, which says:

"All carbon steel and high carbon stainless steel have the same basic amount of carbon: .45% to .5%. The carbon gives the steel hardness. The more carbon, the harder the knife metal. The difference between two metals is chromium, molybdenum, and vanadium, which give stainless steel its stainless qualities. They also give the steel added compression hardness and tensile strength. Knife stainless steel has 13% to 14% chromium, and about 1% molybdenum and vanadium together."

Well, a carbon content of 0.5 percent is not "high carbon steel". Note: the author refers to the materials as "metals", not "alloys". Judging by these examples, knife manufacturer's pages are not reliable sources of information about the technical details of knife metallurgy. -- Geo Swan 10:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)