SM-35M50 Micromelt Steel looks amazing!

[Jay_Ev]

Sounds interesting. Hopefully a mule team will be in the works in the future.

[Bags14]

This posting was forwarded over to me earlier in the week. I am the Commercial Manager for Knife Blades at Carpenter Technology.

I passed the chemistry around to a number of folks here. After the groaning subsided (as their first fear was I was going to ask them to make it!), CPP (our powder products division) said they were not familar with it. We have 4-500 specific alloys current in our processing cookbook, but this was not one of them.

Based upon the info I looked to find someone who was around here in the late 60's and 70's, and chained to his desk, in R&D is one our most experienced metallurgists. He has no recollection of this specific alloy but he did remember us working on carbide reinforced tool steels in that era. The chemistry would be consistent with that kind of product

Other side comments were that the material would have no workability (but that has not seemed to slow some of you guys down in the past) and TedP above is correct that it would be expensive. "No workability" means high scrap rate for us processing the material. The elemental costs are quite high (11.5%V, 8% W, 5% Co!!). Would like to see the face of the grind belt vendor when you ask him what he as to grind it with.

Interesting material, but........

[CarbonFiberNut]

Don't worry, this was a troll posting. The "interesting material" is either completely made up, or never had anybody actually interested in using it for knives in the real world. This is purely someone trying to have fun at others' expense.

[Cliff Stamp]

There are actually alloys of that nature, for example

121 REX :

Carbon 3.4%
Tungsten 10.0%
Chromium 4.0%
Molybdenum 5.0%
Vanadium 9.5%
Cobalt 9.0%

And yes people do make knives out of it, Farid for example. There are even more extreme (higher carbide) materials available but at some point these stop being steels in the conventional sense and are just carbide in a binder and that is what they are used for, carbide replacements.

The alloy suggested is basically 121 REX with a large addition of Chromium.

[CarbonFiberNut]

There are actually alloys of that nature

I don't doubt that there are - I was just pointing out that the original post was a troll post, from a troll account, which is now suspended for trolling. The most effective of trolls are the ones that make things just believable enough to snag people, and this one certainly seems to have been successful.

[Orangeneck]

I cannot believe i just wasted 3 minutes reading this thread. :mad:

[Cliff Stamp]

I don't doubt that there are - I was just pointing out that the original post was a troll post...

I would hope people understood that my original response should have made that clear :

"Does it also have :

-the toughness of solid sintered pure ceramic
-the grindability of nanotwinned cubic boron nitride
-the hardenability of white paper steel
-the ease of sharpening of as-cast 121 REX
-the ductility of annealed S125V"

All of these are the exact opposite of what you would want, they are all very low end performance.

While he posted basically 121 REX his claims were actually fairly low in terms of what that was supposed to achieve.

I even sited 121 REX to make that satire a little obvious.

[Buck Knives I Like]

Snap crackle and...

[CarbonFiberNut]

I would hope people understood that my original response should have made that clear :

The satire was clear to me - but some of the responses have seemed to me like they weren't catching the satire, or were perhaps only reading the first post before replying, because it sure seemed like some of the responses have been serious.

[Kev83]

Chuck Norris actually invented this steel. :)

[The Mastiff]

Bags, thanks for stepping in and officially clearing that up. We like getting perspective from your side even when it lets the air out of our fantasies. :)

Thanks!

joe

[Cliff Stamp]

... it sure seemed like some of the responses have been serious.

I prefer to think they were satire as well, however the fact that they likely were not is why hype is so rampant in the industry. As a curious example or test of this, Kyley Harris is putting out a new blade, going to test it, show the results but not say what the steel is how how it was hardened and see what people think of the material. It is going to be a curious test of how much of what people say is bias vs actual information.

[chuck_roxas45]

I prefer to think they were satire as well, however the fact that they likely were not is why hype is so rampant in the industry. As a curious example or test of this, Kyley Harris is putting out a new blade, going to test it, show the results but not say what the steel is how how it was hardened and see what people think of the material. It is going to be a curious test of how much of what people say is bias vs actual information.

Now that would be a good demonstration BUT only if Kyley Harris is not biased and has no hidden agenda.

[Strong-Dog]

This steel does look amazing!

[Holland]

This steel does look amazing!

lol

[Stuart Ackerman]

Now that would be a good demonstration BUT only if Kyley Harris is not biased and has no hidden agenda.

I will be one of the testers...and I insisted that Kyley did NOT tell me what the steel is...

[D1omedes]

Da best steel mon

LMAO. :D

On a more serious note, is there any knowledge of new, stainless, Japanese powdered-metallurgical steels? We constantly hear of new offerings from Carpenter and there's a number from Crucible and Bohler.

[chuck_roxas45]

I will be one of the testers...and I insisted that Kyley did NOT tell me what the steel is...

Fair enough. Let's see how far off the mainstream steel knowledge this one will fall into.

[Cliff Stamp]

I will be one of the testers...and I insisted that Kyley did NOT tell me what the steel is...

It seems to be about 50/50 on people who want to know and people who are curious to see what they can determine without knowing the nature of the steel as you don't have your expectations to filter the results so there is no way to know if a result is indicative or not aside from confidence in the method directly. Normally most people will readily throw out / modify observations to make them fit. If they use a knife and the edge chips or just goes dull early but the steel is "supposed" to behave otherwise they just excuse the performance and ignore it. But if the exact same thing happened with the same method on a steel which was "supposed" to behave like that then it is reported and proof of the steels performance.

I will be sending out the knife after Christmas and it should be interesting to see what people come up with.

[kbuzbee]

I will be sending out the knife after Christmas and it should be interesting to see what people come up with.

Yeah, it really will!

Ken