Imperial Blade Materials

qncygnnr

qncygnnr

Joined
Aug 6, 2012
Messages
339
I've found two Imperial Frontier large stockman folders from the same widow via a local pawn shop. The black handled one was his EDC (which his sons didn't want) and the other was an unused "ol ivory" version of the same knife. The EDC has some great patina so I assumed that both knives had carbon blades. I offered the white one up in a trade and the other party wanted to know if it was stainless. I put a magnet to both Frontiers, a known 1095 (GEC), and a stainless Buck folder and they were all magnetic. Neither Frontier has any particular markings on the blade so how can you tell?

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Hi from Australia,

I think you will find all or most knives do not have stainless steel blades.
The knives that have "stainless blades" still have carbon in that blade steel, that is why a magnetic will stick to them.
I think the best way to tell is to cut a lemon; the old carbon blade will re-act to the acid from the lemon...Ken
 
well, technically speaking, if it is ferritic stainless which it is it will be magnetic. if the is austenetic stainless then it will be non manegtic. this is due the the inclusion of alloys that make it either way.
 
As a general rule of thumb with the Frontier series, the only stainless ones are the ones with wood scales. All the Delrin scaled ones are high carbon steel blades.
 
Thanks ... this helps.

I was hoping for something less destructive than lemon juice - as delmas2nd stated ferritic vs austenetic is the issue bewteen two classes of "stainless" steel but may not really satisfy the answer of what constitutes stainless from a knifeblade perspective since all steels by defintion are alloys. The bigger question might be - which stainless alloys are the best for knife blades and what type did Imperial use? And why?

I'm keeping the black one - it's got lots of character and I carry it on the weekends. A bit of history on these two folders. The two sons went through their dad's knives and took everything but these two knives (don't know why) so the widow took them to a local pawn shop and sold them. The black one was his EDC ... the son's were clearly not Knife Nuts or they wouldn't have let dad's EDC get out of the family. I really like larger stockman pattern so I bought them both.
 
Here is a tutorial which has some useful information. I suspect that Imperial in its last years as an affiliate of Schrade was unloading the exact same steels from the same railcars as were going to the Schrade buildings. There are a few searchable threads on steels in the archives. Uh.... maybe more than a few.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel
 
tongueriver said:
Here is a tutorial which has some useful information. I suspect that Imperial in its last years as an affiliate of Schrade was unloading the exact same steels from the same railcars as were going to the Schrade buildings. There are a few searchable threads on steels in the archives. Uh.... maybe more than a few.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel
Click to expand...

The U.S. made Imperials were made at Camillus, so mostly used the same steels and processes as Camillus knives. The Taiwan and Ireland knives were something different possibly. And of course in the latter days there were a few boutique steels used, though not in great quantities.
 
I was recently given this one by a good friend here. As far as I can tell, it's the same steel as my Old Timers. It certainly gets as sharp as easily as they do.
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Should have said the whole 44 series stockman knives. There are a few 2 bladed ones also.
 
The "S" card for the Frontier 4431 (top knife) show blade material as 1095. Handle material is listed as Delrin Br. Stag.
 
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