Thread: Carbon or sheffield steel?

As far as I know what is commonly called Sheffield steel IS carbon steel...

as opposed to stainless. Did you want to ask about the difference between stainless and carbon?

Redwoood

I'm no metallurgist but as I recall Carbon Steel is a type of steel while swedish steel and sheffield or silver steel or india steel are just local terms for carbon steel that may or may not have certain trace element differences which may give the steel certain attributes that may enhance shaving characteristics.

all steel has carbon in it. it is the carbon that allows the steel to be made hard. without carbon all you have is iron that is relatively soft. now there are 2 "types" of steel (actually there are 100's of types but 2 major categories) carbon and stainless. Stainless is steel (which has carbon) in which other alloying agents have been added to reduce rusting and staining.
sheffield steel is steel that is produced in sheffield england (it still has carbon) Sheffield has for centuries been considered one of the best places in teh world to get steel for cutlery. their processing has earned them a reputation for quality steel.
as an analogy think of chocolate. you have different chocolate formulations such as white, dark, milk chocolate, etc....
within that you can get chocolate from different countries or comapnaies, such as germaon chocolate, hersheys chocolate, etc.