Howdy Kevin!

I don't know anything about Nitro-V, but perhaps I can help address the broader component of your question (i.e., "what are some good steels to try out").

It's great that you have access to a ready supply of leaf spring steel. And 5160 would be a good guess for its content. I would recommend that you do some extensive testing on your leaf spring steel, operating under the assumption that it is 5160. Follow a well established heat treating regimen for 5160, and first, see if it will properly harden. After your quench, check to see if a file will bite. If it doesn't, your blade is hard and you can proceed to your next testing phase. Complete the blade and put an edge on it. The first serious test I recommend is the brass rod test. you will get a rod of brass and roll your edge on it. If you get chips on your blade edge, it is too hard. If your edge rolls over, it is too soft. Once you have that dialed in, go chop a bunch of knotty wood or even deer antlers. This will test the durability.

If your leaf spring steel does well in these tests, then count yourself fortunate for having a supply of it!

I would strongly recommend, rather than trying out a bunch of different steels, find just one or two that will work for a variety of applications. For example, almost all my knives are either 1075, or 1084 (1075 for big knives and 1084 for small ones). I expect that it will be a long time before I feel the need to venture away from those. The reason for this is: it is FAR more important to nail your heat treat for any given application, than to try to find an alloy that you wonder might do a better job. The heat treat is the soul of the knife and deserves much more attention than alloy selection.

It would be great if your leaf springs work out. 5160 is great for impact work, but don't count it out for slicing and dicing, either. If you feel the need for a steel with a higher carbon content, it's hard to go wrong with 1084.

Hope this helps!

Tim

Hello Kevin,

Are you forging and heat treating your own blades? I don't know anything about Nitro-V other than I noticed its a stainless steel on Aldo's website which is the reason I started off with a question. There's no doubt in my mind that someone on this forum has extensive knowledge about the steel and may provide a review.

With that being said, my thoughts are similar to what Tim provided above. I'm forging my knives out of Aldo's 1084 exclusively for now. In time, I plan to start learning either 5160 or 80 CRV2 for my Journeyman testing. Please keep in mind that I'm not trying to persuade you into thinking that the path I'm walking would be the right one for you as well. Each to their own.......time in the shop spent making sharp things is fun regardless of what steel one chooses to learn.

Good Luck!

Matt

Hi Kevin you will like the 80crv2! It moves well under the hammer, heat treats fairly easy, finishes well, and it performs!

There's alot of information on it in the heat treat thread! Some of my go to steels are 1075, w2, and 80crv2. 1095 and 15/n20

For Damascus. The Mastersmiths told me to find a steel and test it over and over. And now i know they were right.

So that said if i had one steel to choose from i think the blade smith steels that we have to our access are all good

With proper heat treat and temper

I tel all of my student stick with 1084 or 1075 until you have the equipment and experience to handle more complex steels, 80crv2 is probablely fine as well but it can get fussy in heat treat I have noticed, much more so than 5160.

I think it was Kevin Cashin that said in a demo i attended one time , that what steel you use should be matched fiest to what you have available to heat treat, just a forge canola oil and a kitchen/toaster oven, 1084 all day long, digital oven and quench oil, more doors open, O1 52100 , etc. why use a steel that you have no chance of getting the most out of?

As a case in point I taught a class last weekend, we normalized and hardened in the forge , by eye, quenched in veggie oil (of indeterminate heritage ) and tempered in an oven, I was able to take the knife I demoed in the class and tap the point in to 1/2 steel plate , deep enough that the knife would stand on its own. (no damage to the tip afterwords) to me that is a pretty success full heat treat!!

You have been given some good advice here.

There was only one production run of Cru Forge V. The only material out there to buy is what remains of that one production run. Until someone decides to make more of it - which has been nearly 10 years now - there will be no more available.

With your current capacity to get the most from your steel, 1084 and possibly 80Crv2 are good choices.

I was able to buy Cru V from Kelly Cupples. 1.25" round.

Kelly's contact info: [email protected]

If you email him he will send you a current price list of everything he has to offer.

I tested/experimented with CruForge... it's fairly simple/easy to work with until after heat treat, then it's one of the most difficult steels to finish that I've ever used. Once I learned that only a single run had been made, for me there was no point in going any further with it.... not worth wasting time on if it's going to become extinct.

|quoted:

Howdy Kevin!

I don't know anything about Nitro-V, but perhaps I can help address the broader component of your question (i.e., "what are some good steels to try out").

It's great that you have access to a ready supply of leaf spring steel. And 5160 would be a good guess for its content. I would recommend that you do some extensive testing on your leaf spring steel, operating under the assumption that it is 5160. Follow a well established heat treating regimen for 5160, and first, see if it will properly harden. After your quench, check to see if a file will bite. If it doesn't, your blade is hard and you can proceed to your next testing phase. Complete the blade and put an edge on it. The first serious test I recommend is the brass rod test. you will get a rod of brass and roll your edge on it. If you get chips on your blade edge, it is too hard. If your edge rolls over, it is too soft. Once you have that dialed in, go chop a bunch of knotty wood or even deer antlers. This will test the durability.

If your leaf spring steel does well in these tests, then count yourself fortunate for having a supply of it!

I would strongly recommend, rather than trying out a bunch of different steels, find just one or two that will work for a variety of applications. For example, almost all my knives are either 1075, or 1084 (1075 for big knives and 1084 for small ones). I expect that it will be a long time before I feel the need to venture away from those. The reason for this is: it is FAR more important to nail your heat treat for any given application, than to try to find an alloy that you wonder might do a better job. The heat treat is the soul of the knife and deserves much more attention than alloy selection.

It would be great if your leaf springs work out. 5160 is great for impact work, but don't count it out for slicing and dicing, either. If you feel the need for a steel with a higher carbon content, it's hard to go wrong with 1084.

Hope this helps!

Tim

Thanks for the tips. I agree i enjoy working 5160 and other recycled materiel when i can. However my testing is a bit more brutal i slap it on a steel barrel to see what happens. first the flat to see if it will snap in two, then ill hit the edge on the side of the barrol and then test the tip. I just like trying new things well continuing to work what i like. I have resently found that i enjoy making lamination blades so im starting to move away form Mono-steel blades. I reasonably made a 5 bar lamination blade that kinda scares me as after i sharpened it it almost face shaving sharp.

I like to work 5160,O-1 and W1 along with LAS and 15N20 as i am teaching myself to make Damascus at the moment. These are the 5 types ill be sticking with. However do to my personality i will likely try a new steel every now and again even if its just for prototyping a new blade shape as i keep my prototypes.

|quoted:

I tel all of my student stick with 1084 or 1075 until you have the equipment and experience to handle more complex steels, 80crv2 is probablely fine as well but it can get fussy in heat treat I have noticed, much more so than 5160.

I think it was Kevin Cashin that said in a demo i attended one time , that what steel you use should be matched fiest to what you have available to heat treat, just a forge canola oil and a kitchen/toaster oven, 1084 all day long, digital oven and quench oil, more doors open, O1 52100 , etc. why use a steel that you have no chance of getting the most out of?

As a case in point I taught a class last weekend, we normalized and hardened in the forge , by eye, quenched in veggie oil (of indeterminate heritage ) and tempered in an oven, I was able to take the knife I demoed in the class and tap the point in to 1/2 steel plate , deep enough that the knife would stand on its own. (no damage to the tip afterwords) to me that is a pretty success full heat treat!!

Thanks for reminding me, i need to upgrade my Heat treatment oven. as i am getting some SSD back pay next month i plan on doing some upgrades and I almost forgot about getting a better heat treatment oven. then again im one of the guys dumb enough to do water quenching every now and then. i do know my gas powered kitchen oven is fairly consistent as i had done a second tempering (after cleaning off the blade) on a blade, it got to the right yellow color for 405 F.(small rant) I kinda prefer to shy away from using Low alloy steel's as im quite close to a few lakes and rivers so it gets very humid around my home. i have had a nice clean piece of steel rust just from the moisture in the air. at times I have had a clean piece of steel it has happened just a few days of them being in my shop/garage. Good point about getting the most out of steels, and well ya i may not get the most hardness wise out of them, I can still learn the feel of the different steel feel and move under the blows of my hammer.

1084 is not more or less prone to rusting then O1 5160 w1 or 15n20 , none of those have enough chrome or nickel to form chromium or Nickel oxides on the surface, if i remember right the cut off for that is 18% chrome 8% nickel you might start to see some changes at 12-15% chrome or 5-6% nickel but it would depend a lot on how the steel was heat treated last. MP

|quoted:

1084 is not more or less prone to rusting then O1 5160 w1 or 15n20 , none of those have enough chrome or nickel to form chromium or Nickel oxides on the surface, if i remember right the cut off for that is 18% chrome 8% nickel you might start to see some changes at 12-15% chrome or 5-6% nickel but it would depend a lot on how the steel was heat treated last. MP

I looked it up and its a minimum of 13% Chromium to have a stainless steels. However, Chromium does help with corrosion resistance. As my blue print reading for welders textbook does not go in-depth when it comes to alloying, I have to go off wikipieda so i dont have a cross fact checked sheet. nickle also helps resist corrosion

I looked it up and its a minimum of 13% Chromium to have a stainless steels.

That's where industry draws the line to consider a steel "stainless", but don't take it literally. Steels with even 14-15% Cr will rust/tarnish.... it just takes them a bit longer.

If you're teaching yourself damascus, then do yourself a favor and go with 1080 or 1084 & 15N20 for your mix. You'll have far less issues, and much better chances for early success. Those two steel types offer the best "compatibility" of currently available steels. By compatibility, I mean the expansion and contraction properties. Steel always expands when heated, and contracts when cooled.... if you don't take that into consideration when choosing the steels to combine in damascus, bad things often happen. On the lesser side you'll fight warping the entire way.... in worst case scenarios, the damascus will literally tear itself apart when quenched/hardened if the expansion/contraction properties of the steels you choose are widely different.

|quoted:

That's where industry draws the line to consider a steel "stainless", but don't take it literally. Steels with even 14-15% Cr will rust/tarnish.... it just takes them a bit longer.

If you're teaching yourself damascus, then do yourself a favor and go with 1080 or 1084 & 15N20 for your mix. You'll have far less issues, and much better chances for early success. Those two steel types offer the best "compatibility" of currently available steels. By compatibility, I mean the expansion and contraction properties. Steel always expands when heated, and contracts when cooled.... if you don't take that into consideration when choosing the steels to combine in damascus, bad things often happen. On the lesser side you'll fight warping the entire way.... in worst case scenarios, the damascus will literally tear itself apart when quenched/hardened if the expansion/contraction properties of the steels you choose are widely different.

ya stainless does not mean will not rust, i learned this when i left a swiss army knife out side for i think it was around 6 months when i was 11.

I have done some successful forge welding bits of scrap steel from some leftover bits of steel scrap i have laying around, and made a 20 or so lair little hobby knife with it. However I am sticking to 1084 and 15N20 mix for now. although i have made so far 2 san mai buillets from a mild steel and 80CRV2. i ordered bar stock at 1/8th of an inch, instead of the 1/4th inch im used to working from leaf springs. i made a blade from one of them allready and it survived the quench, however i did not get good results from a file test... then again it may just be that i did not remove enough of the soft steel to expose the hard steel core.

hmm i do admit i now want to try making a blade rip itself apart as i think it would look cool. However, if i did intentionally try to do it i would do it using scrap steel... man I really want to see it happen now <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//sleep.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='-_-' />"

I desided well stocking up for the first Knife show i will sell stuff at to pick up a piece of this to try it out.