Thread: Any way to understand if a straight is stainless steel?

A little funny story that applies here... Others with a machine shop background I'm sure can relate.

Folks would often walk into our shop with a piece of material that they wanted to identify. Some of them engineers, some techs, some just regular folks.
They would hand over the material... I'd perform some useless tests, depending upon how far I wanted to "reel them in." I often had a good idea what the material was from looking at it, but i never let on.. After I was done with the "Show" testing, I'd put the material to my nose and take a good whiff. They often looked at me as if I had two heads! Sometimes other guys would be looking on in amusement. Sometimes they would come over, and I'd hand them the material to sniff also.
Then I would declare the material to be so and so, and ask my compadres who also sniffed if they concurred... They always did!

The engineers often walked away in amazement, or just shaking their heads...

I wish I had a nickle for every time it worked...

Originally Posted by BlacknTan

A little funny story that applies here... Others with a machine shop background I'm sure can relate.

Folks would often walk into our shop with a piece of material that they wanted to identify. Some of them engineers, some techs, some just regular folks.
They would hand over the material... I'd perform some useless tests, depending upon how far I wanted to "reel them in." I often had a good idea what the material was from looking at it, but i never let on.. After I was done with the "Show" testing, I'd put the material to my nose and take a good whiff. They often looked at me as if I had two heads! Sometimes other guys would be looking on in amusement. Sometimes they would come over, and I'd hand them the material to sniff also.
Then I would declare the material to be so and so, and ask my compadres who also sniffed if they concurred... They always did!

The engineers often walked away in amazement, or just shaking their heads...

I wish I had a nickle for every time it worked...

No doubt about it. The smell of 440c and L1 are impossible to mistakenly confuse. But that's probably something only metalheads truly know and understand. Holding a piece up to your ear and tapping on it with your fingernail is another sure method of alloy identification to the trained ear.

Originally Posted by BlacknTan

A little funny story that applies here... Others with a machine shop background I'm sure can relate.
....snip....

For a second I thought you were going to give it a spark test.

I like your test much better.

Btw steel is carbon plus iron already. Maybe we should not use the name carbon steel

Originally Posted by ferroburak

Btw steel is carbon plus iron already. Maybe we should not use the name carbon steel

carbon and iron = steel. Yep. But not all steel is high carbon steel. There are steels with less than 0.6% carbon, which don't really "cut it" when people think of <high> carbon steel, (because it's not) no pun intended.

"Carbon steel", semantically speaking, is "not stainless" and "not highly alloyed" and "not low carbon". Of course, we could be much more throrough in our designations, but I digress. I think everyone pretty much gets the right idea from just "carbon steel".