Thread: Metallurgical Question

Can anyone tell me if this composition is similar to Japanese White Steel?

C - 1.00
Mn - .23
P - .010
S - .004
Si - .20
V - .18

Thanks in advance.

Here is a website that discusses the properties of the best Hitachi white steel.

Here is a Japanese straight.

From what I can gather the smith is knowledgeable about his craft and teaches as well as being a part of the metallurgical community.

So then according to the Hitachi Steel page does a difference of .52 in the Molybdenum/Vandium make a huge difference? By huge I mean does it make it a POS something that will not hold an edge or be worth the dirt I walk on?

Thanks for the advice.

May I suggest you send a PM to Mike Blue? He can probably answer your question.

It's the wrong chemistry for a papered steel. White, yellow and two classes of blue paper steels don't have vanadium in them. Only Blue Super Steel has vanadium and a lot more alloys that should show up on this chemistry list, and don't.

It's more like the chemistry for something in between W1 and W2, but not quite either because no chromium is identified on the specs and the vanadium content is not low enough for W1 and not high enough for W2.

I use 10xx series steels with very similar chemistry and love them. I'd say this is a specialty melt of some kind in the 10xx series with a little V added to make it perform like the W1-2 series.

these may be the same ones
http://straightrazorpalace.com/galle...le-razors.html

Originally Posted by singlewedge

... So then according to the Hitachi Steel page does a difference of .52 in the Molybdenum/Vandium make a huge difference? By huge I mean does it make it a POS something that will not hold an edge or be worth the dirt I walk on?

Yes, minor alloying elements in small quantities can make a huge difference. Some of those will be hidden to the owner who shaves with it because they affect grain size and heat treatment and those affect abrasion resistance and hardness and toughness. Manganese in that quantity can make the difference between a beautiful hamon (hardening line) and a through hardened blade with no line. Chromium is an aggressive carbide former, vanadium and tungsten do as well but tend to produce smaller carbides and improve toughness. Molybdenum improves hardenability. The V W and Mo are all very small percents. But chromium can have a large effect in small percentages and all the way up above 12% where stain resistance begins.

These effects are important enough that I set aside my notebook and start a new one when I buy a batch of new steel, even though the numbers or letters I bought from the steel mill were exactly the same. If I can't be sure it came from the same melt, I assume it will require a different heat treatment regimen. Then I have to learn about it all over again.

The end users really never see the broken cracked blades that result. Or the feeling of heartbreak when all that work is tossed in the scrap bucket. It's really tough when it's a sword length piece.

I did not know that the MY razor was produced by a member.

Is it a good razor and will the difference of the steels W1/W2 and the fact that it is between the two have any effect on the edge or ability to shave?


$200 is a lot to drop on a maybe.

IF your razor is similar to WY's, then I'd want to know how much W-series was welded to the iron. And laminating Wx in between two flat pieces of iron would take less W series steel than welding a short slab along what would become the blade edge.

The size of the good steel and how it was welded would help identify how many "generations" the blade was intended to last. The smith I learned this from used a larger piece of good steel so sharpening it would have enough steel to last to the fellow's grandson before running out of useful edge material. That chisel would be a three generation chisel etc. Interestingly he welded the steel then forged in such a way that the good steel followed the diagonal through the tool in the same direction that honing would occur. This way it would last as long as possible since he knew how the tool would be sharpened and planned for that.

As to old methods, using a small bit of steel along the edge saved good steel (which was much harder to get, therefore precious) and used the lesser iron (which didn't need to be hard) for the body of the tool. It's still tradition. For the price of W-series steels these days, the size of a razor, including the tang, is about a dollar. The rest is craftsmanship.