Thread: Dovo Carbon Steel Difference?

420 HC is a stainless steel. It is the steel used in many of the Buck knives. Buck used to use 440C steel. That is sometimes called surgical stainless. It is a very hard steel, but many customers complained of the knife blades being too hard to sharpen, so they switched to a high carbon variant of 420 steel.

I have no idea which steel is used in stainless steel razors. To be called stainless, it has to have a minimum of 16% chromium. It is probably a variant of 420 or 440 steel.

Many carbon steel blades are 1095 steel or similar with very low chromium content and about 0.95% carbon.

Some blades are made of C100 or the equivalent 52100 steel. The carbon content is about 1%. There is no chromium, but a small amount of manganese.

Thiers Issard uses C135 steel. It is similar to C100, but has 1.35% carbon.

Silver steel contains no silver. It is a tool steel that has a small amount of chromium and manganese. It takes a high polish, this the name.

O1 steel which is used by many current USA razor craftsmen has a small amount of chromium, nickel, and manganese.

Then there is D2 steel that has more chromium than most carbon steels. While there is not enough chromium to be a stainless steel, it is sometimes characterized as semi-stainless. I do not have one, but I have heard that D2 is a bear to hone.

When steel is called Solingen steel or Sheffield steel, that does not denote the type of steel used, only the place where the steel was forged.

The composition of the steel is only one factor. How the blade is tempered is critical to the development of a great edge.

Ray, you're amazing! How did you find all this out?

Henckels use 440c & were granted a patent in 1939 for their cryo treatment process.

I don't know for a fact but you could bet Dovo tried to copy for their Inox blades.