TO THE POINT PART II
It seems like yesterday but it was years ago. A BLADE® reader called and stated he had a copy of a book on an industry symposium report concerning 52100 steel. It was not available outside the industry but he had acquired a copy and was willing to sell it for $350. I talked to my friend and metallurgist, Rex Walter, and he decided the book could well be of value to me and our High Endurance Performance Knife bladesmiths. I sent the reader a check and soon gained an appreciation for the amount of information in the book.
According to the book, steel type 52100 is the material a significant portion of industry runs on, from tanks to Volkswagens, and precision instruments. It is a steel that has been tested very extensively since the early 1900s, and thus more information is available about its nature than I have found in reading about other steels.
