Carbon vs Stainlees steel

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Permalink Reply by Halicon on November 19, 2011 at 10:12

Carbon, every single time. It's two completely different creatures and once you get into the top department of hard HRC tools the difference becomes more and more extreme to the point where it's simply impossible to not notice it.

 

There are many factors and this is only a  generalization, but carbon steel can be forged to be incredibly hard as well, the only difference is that the entire steel was thought of for different uses. With carbon you want a trusty and dependable action that removes small chips (guess I could say normal dulling) whereas the stainless has other uses in mind.

 

I'd also like to throw in that we have become far too "stainless" as of late. We trade down to largely inferior alloys because we have simply become used to a steel not staining much if any at all. There are good alloys and smiths that know how to treat them but in comparison to the number of carbon steel smiths out there the number is dwarfed, a bit off-topic but I don't like this trend at all.

 

So anyhow, stainless for 20-40 years ago was actually steel that was meant to tackle rougher tasks, tasks that a carbon steel simply chipped too much at. That kind of steel gives a much larger reward for your sharpening work compared to a "polluted" steel that has compounds which affects it's molecular quality negatively in order to render it almost impregnable to staining.

 

That kind of steel, properly forged and with a normal to harsh heat treatment is as close to a nightmare as I can come when working on the stones. The time spent is doubled or tripled. The tool sticks to the stone making flatness extremely hard to perform especially on large bevel tools like chisels. Even more-so on laminated tools since the tool stick across the bevel yet the wrought iron is many times softer than the steel resulting in a bevel that is convex and inaccurate unless you don't have the training and expertise to work around it (easier said than done).

 

Then again, there's not much that can beat the feeling you get after taking a translucent shaving of a very dense tropical hardwood burl which makes it all worth it.