To the OP: Old Hickory makes good carbon steel knives for very reasonable prices. They're don't have the greatest ergos and don't look very good unless you're into the whole rustic mountain man thing. But they can get very sharp, sharpen easily, and are inexpensive to boot. A five piece kitchen set is ~ $25.
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Originally Posted by Davesrose /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Read my above link about carbon content in steel again please!!! Stainless steel that's machined and not forged has lower carbon content so that it's softer
Wusthof stainless steel has a medium carbon content (.5%). Not nearly as high as those Cowry X knives (at 3%, that's insane!!! ).
A steel alloy that has a carbon content of >.3 is considered to have above average carbon content, and need more special treatments when manufacturing. You'll see that all stamped stainless steel metal is well below .3% carbon. High carbon content is stronger, but less malleable and more brittle.
http://www.wusthof.com.au/features_a...30B8C795AC69FC
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Well, 0.5% carbon really isn't that much compared to a whole lot of modern stainless steels. While ZDP189/Cowry X and other powder steels aren't good representatives of your average stainless knife material, stainless steels like VG-10, ATS-34, S30V, and CM-154 are and all have carbon content of ~ 1%.
As for as all stamped blades being low carbon, that isn't completely true either. Sandvik 12C27 is pretty good blade material, can be stamped, and has a carbon content of .6%. Also some excellent carbon steels including 1095 (~ .95% carbon) and the vaunted Japanese white steel (~1.4% carbon) can be stamped. Either way, modern metallurgy (and by modern I mean in the last hundred years or so...) has removed pretty much any advantage forging has over stamping.
Stamped stainless does have a pretty bad rep though, since at the low end, you're messing around with 420 and it's friends or 440A with a crappy heat treat. Compared 1095 (as found in the inexpensive Old Hickory knives mentioned above), stainless performance in that class is pretty dire.
And really, we're running into terminology issues here.
Hardness indicates how well the blade can resist deformation. Wear resistance indicates how fast the blade wears. This is related to hardness as measured by the RC scale, but not exactly the same. Toughness is how well the blade can resist breaking, this attribute generally trades off with hardness.
And of course, the ever elusive edge holding which is a combination of the three factors depending on what you're cutting.
As for the stuff in steel, carbon may be the primary element used to harden steel, but chromium adds to wear resistance. Because of this, while carbon steels can generally be brought up to higher hardness levels than stainless steels, stainless steels are generally more wear resistant. This leads to the general stereotype in the knife using population that while carbon steels take an edge better, but stainless steels hold their edge better.