Tool Steels


G S Haydon

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I'm hoping someone could help me with this. Up until feb last year I thought a chisel was a chisel! Ahh ignorant bliss. Since then I have soon got to grips with what the pros and cons are of various tool steels. There is just one aspect that I feel I need to know more about.

 

A2 - Happy With That

 

W1 - Happy With That

 

01 - Happy With That

 

Chromium Vanadium - not sure. I don't see head to heads with this kind of steel (that I know of and if there is please direct me :)). Is it 01 but with another name or is it viewed as "inferior" to 01 or is it just not cool enough? 

 

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

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==> Chromium Vanadium - not sure. I don't see head to heads with this kind of steel (that I know of and if there is please direct me  :)). 

 

Kind of mixing apples and oranges... mixing alloys and forging methods....

 

 

The best place for alloy and forging discussions as they apply to woodworking is over on Ron Hock's site: 

 

http://hocktools.com/toolsteel.htm

 

and his sharpening blog:

 

http://hocktools.wordpress.com/

 

 

Essentially, you'll find that some alloys/forging methods are better suited to some applications than others.... Some alloys/forging methods are easier to sharpen and maintain then others and some can hold finer edges than others.  Unfortunately, you can't have all occur at the same time... So you can have the 'perfect' alloy or maybe the 'perfect' forging method for an application, but it may end-up being hard to maintain, hard to sharpen, or both... In other words, it's all a compromise and there is no 'perfect'...

 

 

Then of course, there's the world of Japaneese tools....  It get's even more fun when forging laminations:

 

http://www.japan-tool.com/home.html

 

 

and the Japanese sharpening blog:

 

http://www.thejapanblade.com/blog/

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Thanks guys, Tom, I heard about that wonderful stuff, seems like cheating  :).

 

hhh, thanks for the link to Ron's site. I've heard so much about him but I've not had the time to check in. You prompted that, thanks!

 

I'm hoping someone (calblacksmith) might save some of the trawling. Chromium Van does not seem fashionable and I would like to be better informed about it vs the others on my list.

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I thought chrome vanadium alloy steel was used to make spanners (wrenches in US and Canadian) or pliers rather than cutting tools (I may be wrong) I know it is indeed strong, tough and durable but not generally used for hardened and tempered steels. Tool steel for cutters are normally an alloy of iron, chromium, carbon, manganese and tungsten (and other elements - may be a tiny part vanadium) in varying compositions to produce different properties dependent upon its desired usages. Lee Valley for instance don't tell you what their PMv11steel comprises apart from "it's a powdered metal". Probably it's sintered but who knows and it's currently at version 11 of their development process. Maybe its constituents are a trade secret - very likely. However the composition of a2 and o1 is well known.

It may be that the companies responsible for advertising chisels as CV steel are just exploiting the fact that a lot of people have heard of chromium vanadium or indeed that other one, chrome molybdenium, as you see it stamped into spanners and wrenches a lot.

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Agreed Terry. I have seen it on plenty of spanners etc. The reason I mention it is the standard issue Stanley/Record plane blades often have the CV lettering on the blades as do cheaper entry level chisels. A guy at work bought these http://www.rutlands.co.uk/sp+mhg-set-of-6-bevel-edge-chisels-hornbeam-handles+1310306 and actually it has bit on CV within the blurb 

 

"The blades are premium quality German chrome vanadium; a metal that has a much higher resistance to metal fatigue than other tool steels and is perfect for tools that are designed to be struck with a mallet. Each blade is tempered and hardened to RC-61 along its entire length, giving a blade that will take and hold a razor sharp edge as well at the end of its working life as it did when new. "

 

I'm just curious as to why you don't hear it mentioned much when people discuss chisels or woodworking edge tools?

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O1, A2, happy with either! Trying not to get to hung up on these kinds of details. Graham I would think for joinery, especially in a commercial environment, that something like A2, good edge retention and not too difficult to sharpen with modern stones would be a 'safe' bet. On the other hand I'm not sure i would take LN chisels or similar to a work site. The biggest difference I've found is that my older chisels and planes are much more prone to rust than my newer tools. And I only chose LN chisels because I like the handles!

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I'm hoping someone could help me with this. Up until feb last year I thought a chisel was a chisel! Ahh ignorant bliss. Since then I have soon got to grips with what the pros and cons are of various tool steels. There is just one aspect that I feel I need to know more about.

 

A2 - Happy With That

 

W1 - Happy With That

 

01 - Happy With That

 

Chromium Vanadium - not sure. I don't see head to heads with this kind of steel (that I know of and if there is please direct me :)). Is it 01 but with another name or is it viewed as "inferior" to 01 or is it just not cool enough? 

 

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

 

Now if you only just visited my website every now-and-then you would find all comparisons of these chisel steels - O1, A2, White Steel, PM-V11:

 

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolReviews/FourChiselSteelsCompared.html

 

And if you were interested in how the steels functioned in BU versus BD shooting planes (which is similar to a plane acting as a dovetail chisel chopping end grain): 

 

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolReviews/LVShootingPlane.html

 

.. and .. http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolReviews/MoreAboutShootingPlanesandTheirBlades.html

 

:)

 

There's even more there. 

 

Perhaps you would be less happy with some of the steels after reading these ...

 

Regards from Perth

 

Derek

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Couldn't flatten them! That steel must be hard, or very bent, or both...... His seem fine although we are joiners rather than cabinet makers so our expectations may vary.

Yeah couldn't flatten them as life is too short. They were bent along their length and cupped on the back side. I would have just tried to flatten the first 25mm as I normally do but with them being bent in multiple planes I just sent them back. They weren't all like that though. I think it was the ones over 20mm wide that suffered.

 

I've read Derek's very interesting article and it is very informative. Thanks for the heads up to your website Derek :)

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check this out it has a good primer on steel.

http://www.bladehq.com/cat--Steel-Types--332

without calling up my bad and picking his brain, I would bet Chromium Vanadium steel is just a high carbon steel like 1095 with Chromium & Vanadium added to it. 1095 is about as high as you can go in carbon content without employing special manufacturing equipment & techniques.

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The above link is a good one!

 

There isn't a one steel is best for all the different uses out there. Every steel is a trade off of hardness, wear resistance or abrasion resistance, shock resistance, the ability to work hot or a combo of all the above!

 

In general the A, O and W are a classification of how the steels are hardened. A is for Air, O is for oil and W is for water.

 

D, S are for Die steel or Shock resistant steel.

 

The old standbys are just that because the offer a good mix of properties that work well for a range of things. A1 D2 etc are good all around steels. In my hot work my tools need to be A series. and or hot working steels. Some tools will soften under heat while different steels will stay hard and hold an edge,much higher in temp, sometimes even into the red hot zone.

 

The A series tools are nice because even though they may have been overheated, just cooling from temp in air they will get hard again, That is a useful feature in a hot work shop.

 

D series tend to be more tough. They take abrasion well but tend to be harder to sharpen for just that reason. Think what it was designed for, dies. Streching and forming metal over them, again and again without wearing out.

 

Laminated metals don't have any magic in them. Yes, I have forged welded and made laminated metals. They are very pretty to look at and I do love the look but modern steels will cut better and hold an edge better unless there are so many folds of the layers that they meld into one solid "new" metal.

 

The reason that laminated metals have such a wonderful reputation is that in their era, they WERE superior to everything else. Steel was VERY expensive and iron or softer metal was not. Add to that labor was VERY cheep. If you are able to extend your supply of true steel (high carbon metal) that was a good thing! You were able to take a high carbon steel and mix it with another lower carbon steel that was softer so you got the combined properties of both, a steel that was not too hard that it broke and cracked under stress and it still held an edge.

 

Today, we can tailor the mix in the steel to get whatever properties we want  and it is all the same throughout the entire billet of metal, no voids, weld faults, thicker or thinner layers ect.

 

`

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OOPS I forgot to answer the question asked!

Chromium adds higher working temp properties, abrasion resistance and corrosion resistance. Vanadium inhibits grain growth during heat treating while improving toughness of hardened and tempered steels.

 

They work together and the reasons are not fully understood yet. Mostly though you see them in tools like wrenches ect, like a poster said above.

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Cal, I too enjoyed Dan's link. I suspect the Knife forums could be very interesting when discussing pros and cons. Thank you also on A O & W! I have truly learnt a very useful fact and taken a great deal on board of what you said.

So, back to my point is Chromium Vanadium not cool enough as it's all about the O1 vs the A2 or the veritas supersteel.

 

Within this review http://www.startwoodworking.com/sites/startwoodworking.com/files/tool-test-bench-chisels.pdf the mhg that terry had gets an average rating for edge retention which is the only one labelled chrome vanadium! Just noticed two more replies while posting so I will take a look at those

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http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ld4JaVB0NgM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dld4JaVB0NgM

He talks like he is talking to eight year olds, who incidentally would not give a rats....well you know.

http://www.onealsteel.com/carbon-and-alloy-steel.html

Indicates that 3% carbon is certainly high.

 

C, I saw that too, google leads us down the same roads  :)

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http://www.onealsteel.com/carbon-and-alloy-steel.html

Indicates that 3% carbon is certainly high.

That's not right then 3% carbon is well into powdered metallurgy territory. I have heard my father complain since childhood that it's hard to keep the carbon in solution at anything over 1%.

The problem with the steel industry is all the trade names and what not.

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As I'm a cheapskate I'm often drawn to cheaper tools and Irwin Blue Chips are within this bracket and when tested in the link I posted they work quite well. To this end I emailed Irwin and they confirmed

 

Hi Graham,

 

Thank you for your recent enquiry. I am pleased to advise that the steel the Chisel is made from is Chrome Vanadium, as per your email below.

 

If I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Seems that Vanadium is used within edge tools with little mention of it. I'm sure everyone else is well bored by know but I feel better informed  :)

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