18/10 and 18/8

[Morkaleb]

at work, we have a number of items, (pots and pans mostly, but also a few knives and cutlery) made out of these two steels, what I'm wondering, is if anyone knows that these are?

 

[etp777]

http://www.twpinc.com/stainless.html

This refers to them by the names T316 and T304 respectively. The names 18/10 and 18/8 refer to the Chromium and Nickel contents.

And near as I can tell, from http://www.aircraftmaterialsuk.com/data/electronic/alstst.html
you can drop the T's in there, and these are standard 300 series stainless steels. As I remember from previous questions, they are a bear to work, will not hold a good edge, but are extremely corrosion resistant. My understanding is that they arne't a huge amount of use to most knifemakers. They don't hold a good edge well enough for use as a blade, and being so hard to work, I was told to use 416 stainless instead for guards/bolsters.

Very low carbon content explains both why they arne't much use for blades and why they are so corrosion resistant(which is why they are used in pots and pans, which most of sites I found when I looked up 18/8 reffered to).

Hope this helps, sure someone else out there will have more information.

 

[Epsilon]

You've pretty much summed it up ept. I can only add, that 18/10 and 18/8 are common in forks, spoons and butter knives as well. Sometimes with or without chrome plate.

 

[RARanney]

SS nuts and bolts are often 18-8. Both would be good for handles for balisongs, but they aren't much fun to machine.