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

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".