Help identifying a piece of metal

[jdlange]

Hello all,

Recently I purchased a piece of steel from a local machine shop as I needed to get a knife made and had no time to wait for mail order and there is no place else around. When I purchased it it came as flat bar stock, no tarnish or rust, shop owner said it was water hardening. With this piece I forged a medium sized hunting blade, heated to crit and quenched in water to harden, tempered in the oven. At first I thought this was D2 but after forging and treating I am not so sure. The blade came out very nice and the hardness on this steel is great (I don't have a rockwell tester but this steel hardened up nicely and after temper is very tough stuff, horrible to grind at all, I would say tougher than anything I have used yet), the thing that gets me is this, I still have another piece of this left and was thinking about using it for stock removal so I anealled it in a wood fire (very hot fire in a coal fireplace for about 10 hours) and afterwards it has laid about for about 4 days and there is still no tarnish, no rust, not even any discoloration aside from that caused by the fire. The blade I forged from it has a rustic finish on the top half of the blade and it is the same, not even a spot of discoloration, holds an awsome edge that is extremly tough. This would lead me to believe that perhaps it is something a bit different than I thought at first, an alloy, perhaps some sort of stainless? Any thoughts on what a common machine shop might have had lying around that would have these characteristics? The owner was not 100% sure on it's compostition as it had been there for a long time left over from another job (as I said when I got it it was spotless, after having laid around in a humid dirty place for perhaps a year).

Any ideas guys? I'm still going the D2 assumption as that was what the owner thought but?.....

[jdlange]

By the way the reason I ask is that I would like to know for sure so I can get some more, this stuff is indestructible, forges well, and takes a nice finish.

[Martyn]

Sounds like kryptonite.

[jdlange]

LOL!!!!!!!!!

[jdlange]

Perhaps indestructible is the wrong word, lets just say it's real tough stuff. hehe. But some kryptonite would be cool too..

[Jerry Hossom]

Likely 440C.

[DimeNickel]

have you tried to air harden the steel..??

- high Cr steels will tend to do this... that maybe a clue





Greg

[jdlange]

It's D2, shop owner found the invoice from when it was purchased, thanks for all the help.