New forge steel, ApexUltra

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dirc

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Jan 31, 2018
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our good friend Larrin Larrin has been busy again

knifesteelnerds.com

Laboratory Development of ApexUltra Forging Knife Steel - Knife Steel Nerds

A new knife steel is coming, designed for forging bladesmiths. It has excellent toughness, wear resistance, and forgeability.
knifesteelnerds.com knifesteelnerds.com

I love the sound of this steel & am really looking forward to expanded toughness tests
it looks like it will be a forgers dream

(I'm a bit curious why the carbon was pumped to 1.25% instead of just keeping it at 1%... I guess for the higher hardness?)
Would like to see what sort of trade off in hardness/catra testing it might exhibit with just 1% carbon, and what sort of toughness boost it might get


if anyone has forged with it, please share experiences here, thanks

(thanks to Larrin, Marco & Tobias for creating this new steel)
 
52100 is essentially the same steel without the tungsten and vanadium. If carbon hadn’t been raised with those extra carbide formers then you would need to austenitize at higher temperatures to get the same hardness as 52100.
 
with the new heat made using ESR (Electro-Slag Remelting) being even cleaner with really low levels of phosphorus, sulfur, oxygen...
I can't wait to hear if toughness improves significantly over your initial testing. :)

seems like there isn't any availability yet, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks?
 
dirc said:
with the new heat made using ESR (Electro-Slag Remelting) being even cleaner with really low levels of phosphorus, sulfur, oxygen...
I can't wait to hear if toughness improves significantly over your initial testing. :)

seems like there isn't any availability yet, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks?
Click to expand...
Updates on status are being made to the ApexUltra Instagram: https://instagram.com/apexultrasteel?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

We are getting closer for sure.
 
dirc said:
our good friend Larrin Larrin has been busy again

knifesteelnerds.com

Laboratory Development of ApexUltra Forging Knife Steel - Knife Steel Nerds

A new knife steel is coming, designed for forging bladesmiths. It has excellent toughness, wear resistance, and forgeability.
knifesteelnerds.com knifesteelnerds.com

I love the sound of this steel & am really looking forward to expanded toughness tests
it looks like it will be a forgers dream

(I'm a bit curious why the carbon was pumped to 1.25% instead of just keeping it at 1%... I guess for the higher hardness?)
Would like to see what sort of trade off in hardness/catra testing it might exhibit with just 1% carbon, and what sort of toughness boost it might get


if anyone has forged with it, please share experiences here, thanks

(thanks to Larrin, Marco & Tobias for creating this new steel)
Click to expand...
As with all ultra high carbon steels, forging temperature is low, around 2050’f. This material is very red short. I would keep it between 1750’f and 2050’f for best results. Great material. Can’t wait to get more.

Hoss
 
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Diego_B said:
So what existing steel is a close relative to this new stuff?
Click to expand...
1.2562, blue super, are probably the closest. It is a cross between 52100 and blue super.

They used to make F1,F2,F3 and O7 which were replaced by high speed steels. Europe still produces some tungsten finishing steels like 1.2562, 1.2519, and 1.2419. All excellent steels. ApexUltra has increased toughness and wear resistance over all low alloy steels.

Hoss
 
DevinT said:
1.2562, blue super, are probably the closest. It is a cross between 52100 and blue super.

They used to make F1,F2,F3 and O7 which were replaced by high speed steels. Europe still produces some tungsten finishing steels like 1.2562, 1.2519, and 1.2419. All excellent steels. ApexUltra has increased toughness and wear resistance over all low alloy steels.

Hoss
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It sounds like it will support fantastically fine edges at that high hardness. There are a lot of high carbide steels that don't dull easily. What really attracts me are steels that are usable with fine edges without chipping out or folding over. I am ok with sharpening if the steels are ok with normal kitchen use. The Z-Wear to M4 spectrum has been the sweet spot for me since they perform well at a high hardness and support that fine edge. This stuff looks like it might be a step up even and thats pretty exciting. How have you found the edge stability to be?
 
Storm W said:
It sounds like it will support fantastically fine edges at that high hardness. There are a lot of high carbide steels that don't dull easily. What really attracts me are steels that are usable with fine edges without chipping out or folding over. I am ok with sharpening if the steels are ok with normal kitchen use. The Z-Wear to M4 spectrum has been the sweet spot for me since they perform well at a high hardness and support that fine edge. This stuff looks like it might be a step up even and thats pretty exciting. How have you found the edge stability to be?
Click to expand...
As you’d expect, ApexUltra has excellent edge stability. That’s why they named it ApexUltra.

Some steels just make me happy when using and sharpening like 52100, AEB-L, ApexUltra, MagnaCut cru-wear, etc…

Some steels seem to frustrate me, like S30V.

Hoss
 
I read about this steel a little while back on knifesteelnerds.com, I've been looking forward to seeing it come out. Congratulations again on what looks like an amazing steel! I'm surely loving MagnaCut so far.
 
Apex Ultra sword when?

Larrin is this steel like a simple steel that's conducive to being heat treated by eyeball in a forge? Or does it require a controlled kiln?
 
Larrin said:
It is as easy (or as difficult) to heat treat as 52100.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. The reason I ask is that people who make sword blades often need to use a forge, because getting a furnace long enough can be expensive and difficult. I also find that heat treating a sword-sized blade in a forge is a lot easier than a knife, because the much greater thermal mass drastically helps stabilize temperature fluctuations in the billet, helping to avoid overheating.

Sword blade makers also more often need to forge the billet itself, just to form the curves and dimensions needed. I suspect people will be making sword blades out of this new steel.
 
you're probably right mecha... but imho, a sword made from this would be prone to failure... a sword needs toughness above all else for actual use & abuse. I'd be using 80crv2 (or 3v if you wanted to get expensive)... both of which should have triple the toughness
 
dirc said:
you're probably right mecha... but imho, a sword made from this would be prone to failure... a sword needs toughness above all else for actual use & abuse. I'd be using 80crv2 (or 3v if you wanted to get expensive)... both of which should have triple the toughness
Click to expand...

The article says it has high toughness even when it’s very hard, and that at a somewhat lower hardness it should be really tough (close to 80crv2 on the graph). I guess we’ll see!
 
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