Quote Originally Posted by Gammaray View Post
Agreed, but you cannot separate the carbides from the alloy.
Somewhere you're getting mixed up with hardness and separability of carbides from a diemaking or toolmaker's steel.

The rockwell test does just that, it tests the hardness of the entire alloy, and not just the hardest part of it.

Back to the original claim, that stainless razors are harder than carbon steel razors - it is not true. Stainless has carbides in it, depending on the alloy, probably different carbides for corrosion resistance. So does high speed steel, for a different reason (to increase the tempering temperature).

In terms of toughness (without regard to knife tests, etc), all you have to do is go to latrobe steel's page and look at their toughness charts for powder and non powder diemaking and high speed steels versus carbon steels. The carbon steels are not the toughest of the bunch. It's not that simple, and you really have to get down to the measured method. D2 is tougher than carbon steel in general, but at 18 degrees, it will not be. Same with A2.

But don't get away from the fundamental issue here, in the steels that are used for razors, a chromium, vanadium or tungsten carbide doesn't make the alloy harder than another alloy that doesn't have them.