'Sheffcut' and 'Wolfram Special' two 'new' steels from GFS in the UK?

F

FloWolF

Joined
Sep 15, 2017
Messages
70
Anyone taken a look at these or maybe even made with them?

I get my stuff from GFS anyway, so when they decided to have a couple of 'new' (really just tweaks to existing formulas, more or less) steels made over here specially I had to grab a 3mmx50mmx600mm bit of each to play with perfect for me doing stock removal only, but now I'm stumped for what to plunge for - they both look like they'll make great chef knives, or bushcraft knives, or carving/whittling knives depending on HT so I'm having trouble getting my muse to lead me.

Anyhow, basic specs below.

Sheffcut:

The Specs:-

C​
Cr​
Mn​
P​
S​
Si​
Nb​
1.3%​
0.2%​
0.3%​
0.02% Max​
0.015% Max​
0.25%​
0.1%​


Heat Treatment:-

Heat to 800 – 820C Hold for 10 minutes

Water or Oil Quench (Suggested oil is Rye 50)

Temper for two hours at 150C for 65HRc

Temper for two hours at 175C for 64HRc

Wolfram Special:

Exact Chemical Composition:-

C:W:Mn:Cr:Si:P:S:
1.13%2.23%0.24%0.42%0.2%0.012%0.016%




Suggested Heat Treatments:

Heat to 815C and hold for 5 minutes (66HRc as quenched)

Oil Quench (Suggested Oil is Rye 32)

Temper twice for two hours at 200C for 64HRc

----------------------------------------------

Thanks folks, stay well!

Shaun/FloWolF
 
I have both. Haven't made blades with them yet. Will use it for high quality kitchen blades.

Here is a couple good threads on them:

Silver Steel and Sheffcut

Most of you have probably seen the new steels that pops knife supply has started carrying, well I‘d like to know a little more about them before I give em a try, particularly Silver Steel, since it’s in round bar, which is really exciting. So does anyone have any info about these steels outside...
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New steel coming!

So there is a new steel hitting the market soon, to be distributed by GFS called "Sheffcut". It is a kitchen knife steel made by Sheffield and is basically 26c3 with a 0.1% niobium addition. This will give a finer grain structure, better toughness, and better wear resistance over 26c3...
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I haven't used them either, but the Wolfram special is on my short list of steels to try soon. It looks like V-Toku2 or 1.2519. I am a big fan of tungsten alloy steels for kitchen use.
 
I’m getting ready to heat treat a batch of wolfram now and heat treated some Sheffcut blades earlier with hamons so I’m excited to see how those turn out compared to my normal W2. What I like best so far with the wolfram is it’s in a great size for stock removal, it’s about right for more edc and outdoor blade and a touch thick for kitchen knives but manageable to grind down thinner if needed. That was one of my big complaints with ApexUltra when it came out is it was only available in thick bars for forging and is not a great forging steel atleast not without forge welding some non hardening cladding to it so it’s easier to work. I ran into issues with hardenability being really high and if you didn’t anneal immediately after forging it was air hardening to the point it would crack if you let it sit for a few days. So I’m excited for a tungsten steel that’s in a better stock removal size that doesn’t necessarily require forging to get it down to a usable size. I’ll try to remember to post back here next week when I’ve done some testing with both steels.
 
Thanks for the feedback folk, much appreciated. I read a bit on knife nerds too, but I'm not a techy steel-head so I've had to do some distilling. Still no closer to what blades to tackle with them so I may do a couple of kitchen cutters or so and some outdoor/bushcraft with the remainder.

Cheers! :thumbsup:
:cool:
Shaun/FloWolF
 
I could see both styles working well, I think it would be great for kitchen knives and small edc knives.
 
IMG_9291.jpeg
First test blade out of Wolfram, you can see some really cool banding going on when etched. This was stock removal and was just brought up to austenizing temp and hardened. 1500F for 5 minutes and quenched in parks 50 tempered twice at 400F put me right around 63 using relative hardness testing with chisels. Followed GFS recipe minus my temper was a touch higher due to me estimating the C to F conversion on the tempering temp, they recommended 200C which is 392F, if I had bumped my temper down a bit to 375-380 I’m sure it would have been 64+ Rc. I’ll test edge retention and stability after putting a handle on this one. I did all my bevel grinding post HT and it was definitely harder to grind with all the tungsten at least compared to simpler steels but overall didn’t take that much longer. I’d say it’s slightly harder to grinder than simple stainless like Nitro-V/Aeb-L/SF100 I’ll make sure to post back after doing some testing but figured I’d share initial impressions and was excited about the banding pattern that showed up, I might hand sand this one and see if I can bring out the pattern more versus just a belt finish.
 
I've made a handful of kitchen blades with Sheffcut. It works like most carbon steel. Heat treating is nice because you don't have to normalize or thermal cycle. I used 1490 for Aus temp and got RC68 out of quench and 64 with 2 X 325 tempers.
I'm looking forward to getting some Wolfram. The added Tungsten looks very intriguing!

Here's a couple of them.

D2cqOMdl.jpg
 
For us guys who Have to send out our blades for heat treating...... are the heat treaters going to have to have their hands held when new steels come out?
Wolfram definitely caught my eye, but I've been bitten in the past from crappy heat treating from the Pros.
 
Crag the Brewer said:
For us guys who Have to send out our blades for heat treating...... are the heat treaters going to have to have their hands held when new steels come out?
Wolfram definitely caught my eye, but I've been bitten in the past from crappy heat treating from the Pros.
Click to expand...
A heat treating oven is one of the best investments in knife making. I’ve seen enough issues with the “pros” to know that regardless of how many knives I’m making I will always handle my own heat treating. Then the only person I have to hold their hand through the process is myself haha. Part of why I make test blades to test edge retention and stability of steels I want to use is so I can see how they perform at a given geometry and given hardness, it lets me make quick adjustments to my tempering and hardening temps. If I find the steel too chippy at a given hardness I can re-temper and adjust and if it’s too soft and could be ran harder I can make another sample to test and it doesn’t take weeks of turn around time and shipping back and forth.
 
Joshua Fisher said:
A heat treating oven is one of the best investments in knife making. I’ve seen enough issues with the “pros” to know that regardless of how many knives I’m making I will always handle my own heat treating. Then the only person I have to hold their hand through the process is myself haha. Part of why I make test blades to test edge retention and stability of steels I want to use is so I can see how they perform at a given geometry and given hardness, it lets me make quick adjustments to my tempering and hardening temps. If I find the steel too chippy at a given hardness I can re-temper and adjust and if it’s too soft and could be ran harder I can make another sample to test and it doesn’t take weeks of turn around time and shipping back and forth.
Click to expand...
Everything you say is True.......

Admittedly, I'm a green maker still. And I'm still learning what I don't know?
With my background, my knife making abilities are coming quickly, but still, everything is a progression.
I'm learning to walk, then Running comes next.
I'm still at the point where I need the experts to be experts. I just want to pick tough, high-performance steels that they have a chance at nailing.

Fortunately, I've been Blessed with having an Actual expert reaching out to me here, and helping me, and a couple other makers.
I know I will need to get an oven eventually, if enough people want my knives.......
I don't want to abuse his generosity with heat treating my higher end steels.
 
That is indeed some very cool banding going on, Joshua!

There should be no issues with "pro" heat treat companies heat treating this steel. It is very simple and straightforward. If a "pro" company botches the HT on simple steels like 52100, Wolfram, Sheffcut, etc, then I would seriously wonder about being "pro".

(Side note: AEB-L is still going to be slightly more wear resistant than Wofram Special)
 
HSC /// said:
Joshua Fisher Joshua Fisher Stuart Davenport Knives Stuart Davenport Knives what exactly is banding?
Click to expand...
From my understanding it’s alloys or carbides that separate or don’t fully mix during the solidification of the steel. For our uses I don’t believe it affects the performance and is just an artifact of the manufacturing process when the steel was first made. I’ve seen people say you can break it up a bit with high heat cycles and refining back down but in my opinion it is a very unique look and if it doesn’t hurt anything I’d rather try to bring it out. If I remember correctly it’s the same phenomenon that gives Wootz its pattern.
 
Stuart Davenport Knives said:
That is indeed some very cool banding going on, Joshua!

There should be no issues with "pro" heat treat companies heat treating this steel. It is very simple and straightforward. If a "pro" company botches the HT on simple steels like 52100, Wolfram, Sheffcut, etc, then I would seriously wonder about being "pro".

(Side note: AEB-L is still going to be slightly more wear resistant than Wofram Special)
Click to expand...
I had a back-door/'nightshift' deal with a buddy of a buddy at an international HT specialists, but that only tided me over for a while as I was getting issues due to my work being piggybacked onto other industrial processes giving some problematic warping and suspect edge retention/wear issues, but for a bit of beer money that was just dandy. I naively got myself a gas forge to play with even though I'm not doing any forging, but all I've done was one batch of foraging knives in 12c27M with the forge and workshop fan oven, and they were fine for purpose, but now I send everything out to a knife HT specialist that I know, knows his stuff - whatever gear I buy and no matter how I practice and study, I'm never going to be able to nail it like they do. The guys hybrid plate quench most stuff, will do a bead blast clean up, even do a hamon to your design and all for relatively little cost.
 
I had some banding that was just about like that knife above in Aldo's batch of Blue 2 he had. That stuff had great looking carbide banding.

Personally, while it does look cool, I would much prefer a more homogeneous structure. I'm not sure having carbides clumped in bands like that is ideal. But, I don't think it will affect edge performance too negatively.
 
Here are a couple of posts where the subject of carbide/alloy banding comes up. Don Hanson and Devin Thomas discuss it a fair amount and don't seem to have reservations about it's effect on the steel or performance.

W2

Don, what difference did you find between the round bar and the square stuff? I still have a bunch of that along with a fair bit of round. The round stock is higher quality, better hamon, cleaner.
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Alloy banding / Carbide segregation

As by request......What is the difference between alloy banding and carbide segregation? I haven't researched this much, but was under the impression they were the same thing. As Mete pointed out in another thread, "Banding is due to the mechanism of solidification of the molten steel !! Very...
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K.B. Knifeworks said:
It seems most people are focusing on kitchen knives with these steels. Any reason that the 26c3, Sheffcut and Wolfram special variants would not make a fantastic outdoors knife?
Click to expand...
I made a small batch of little outdoor/bushcraft knives in 26C3, I kind of love them but I went pretty far with the HT up at 63 HRC and edge angles are a fair bit steeper than usual bushcraft blades to test the metal so the edge is perhaps a little fine and haughty for proper rough work, but so far in my my own tests the blades made mince meat out of a knotty bit of hard seasoned cherry stick without any chipping or edge rolling. I was impressed.
 
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