Thread: Best Stainless for Razors ?

It could be a ladle contaminant from batches of other steels. As long as the major ingredients "meet spec", the minor ingredients somehow don't count to the metallurgical engineers, or the sales staff.

I guess I can appreciate Niagra's, um, honesty in labelling. But why publish specifications for a material they purchased from the manufacturer that are different? If you advertise another company's steels because they are a good reputable supplier, why say what you are buying from them, then reselling, appears to be a different material? I begin to wonder what I'm not being told by either party.

OTOH, the following skeptical doctrine in my shop practice will always apply. I can say from experience, and from watching/learning from other smiths, that minor alloying elements can make a big difference at the edge of a blade. Some of us have acquired the habit of treating even correctly paint marked, brand new-direct-from-the-company-untouched-by-human-hands-undiluted-provenance-records-paper-trail-and-all, steels as mystery material until we've made something from it and heat treated it ourselves.

That does make sense since they do run enough vanadium and tungsten alloys these days, that if a batch were be contaminationed by either, or both in small amounts, I could see it happening to an alloy like 154cm.

Not to mention, straight 154cm with a tiny little bit of tungsten and vanadium added, I imagine would be a much better knife steel then straight 154cm, so I'm not complaining, but not sure if it would have a positive or negative affect on a straight razor?

Those alloys add toughness and abrasion resistance. 2 properties not very important to a razors edge.
I've used many steels for razors, and I find that tungsten and vanadium only serve to make my life hard without any benefit.
Imo the only good alloy is manganese because it makes heat treatment pretty foolproof.

Knives are a different topic of course. a knife is subject toi impact, shearing forces, stress, etc. All a razor needs otoh is just a very fine edge.

The toughness at higher hardness will make for better edge stability at steeper angles. So potentially you could have a sharper razor... if the carbide volume was lower...

I'll double down on what Bruno has been saying for the past couple pages. Most stainless knife steels are 1. very difficult to work with and 2. are good for knives for reasons they don't need to be for razors. I originally started out as a knife maker, so naturally I wanted to be able to use some of those steels for razors because I figured that it would make a superior razor due to their ability to resist rust and staining. In the end I've made a a handful of stainless razors, and they did perform well, but they come with much more headache. Not only in the process of making them are they more difficult to grind drill etc. but even more importantly they are MUCH more difficult to HT correctly. I strictly use carbon steel now, 01 being my favorite, that and an assortment of damascus steels (for aesthetic reasons obviously).

When it comes to making a good shaver I will go to O1 first (much like I go to 440c for knives), to me they are the best all around steels for the purposes they need to fill. Sure you could use stainless for razors, but kind of like Bruno mentioned, why put yourself through the extra hassle in more abuse to your tools, a more difficult to shape, and like I said a much more complicated HT, and in the end, they are more taxing to hone. And for whatever reason, I have a few thoughts on it, stainless seems to chip out more than carbon. It's a much more difficult balance to hold with stainless than carbon steels.

Originally Posted by AndreGrobler

The toughness at higher hardness will make for better edge stability at steeper angles. So potentially you could have a sharper razor... if the carbide volume was lower...

I make my razors to 15 degree inclusive bevel angles. I don't think I would want a more acute angle than that. There is no problem with edge stability at that angle using 1095 steel.

Appreciated... but you are dealing with cpm154m which has larger carbides which some people knowledgeable people believe go blunt by carbide tearout. Carbide tearout for most large carbide steels start to happen at about 15deg per side... so if you can lessen that you might get a nore stable edge... This will be lessened by a tougher matrix, but mostly smaller carbides...


So yes this is theoretically speaking, and i wouldnt suggest any of the large carbide steels for razors....

Originally Posted by AndreGrobler

Carbide tearout for most large carbide steels start to happen at about 15deg per side... so if you can lessen that you might get a nore stable edge... ..

Razor bevel angles are 15 to 20 degrees inclusive, or 7.5 to 10 degrees per side.

Thats why i am uncertain whether carbide tearout is such an issue if people make cpm154 razors and they work fine...