I have a few other things I have to do first, I have a knife in 304 stainless for example which is an ideal benchmark, and a 1084 custom hardened knife to be compared to a Paul Bos AEB-L.bearfacedkiller wrote: One more thing. Cliff, whenever you get around to doing a write up on the Maxamet mule I will be eager to read your observations.
HSS are not trivial to compare in alloy content because of the complex multi-phases that result during tempering as particular carbides are dissolving while others are forming, the martensite itself is changing phase and then getting effected by the new carbides which precipitate.There was a thread recently where we were curious about the lower carbon content compared to other similar super high alloy steels.
In general about the most you can say is that a significant amount of the hardening isn't due to the actual carbon content in the martensite but rather due to strain hardening of the very fine (sub-micron) secondary precipitates. This is why something like M2 can have a hardness of ~67 HRC with a carbon content of ~0.8%.
Modern HSS also tend to focus on MC carbide production as those carbides are smaller and more wear resistant and thus by focusing on the very hard carbide formers you can minimize the required carbide volume for a given wear resistance. Crucible was the first person to really make a public promotion of this (in their literature) .
All of that being said, there isn't any literature I am aware of which says if you don't want the hot hardness then HSS actually are superior cutting tools. Roman argues they have to be inferior due to the way that hardness is achieved and the effect it has on the properties of very thin films. He has data to support this and his conclusions are well supported in some aspects of cutting tool engineering in general.
