Metallurgy
What Alloying Elements Do: Carbon, Chromium, Vanadium & More
Every knife steel is iron plus a specific recipe of other elements, and each of those elements pulls the steel’s behavior in a particular direction…
ForgeBrain
Metallurgy
The science behind the steel in plain language: what alloying elements do, how steel categories differ, what carbide size means at the stone, and what happens inside the metal during heat treat.
11 guides in this section · free to read
Browse
Start where the work is
Every guide on this shelf, with the question closest to your bench first.
MetallurgyCarbide Size and Sharpening: Why Some Steels Feel Different
Two steels with similar hardness numbers can feel completely different under a sharpening stone, one glides along smoothly, another feels like it’s…
MetallurgyConventional vs. Powder Metallurgy: How Steel Is Actually Made
Powder metallurgy (PM) comes up constantly as a selling point for modern steels, but the actual manufacturing process behind the label rarely gets…
MetallurgyCryogenic Treatment: What It Does and When It’s Worth It
Cryogenic treatment gets talked about as a mysterious extra step that makes steel better, but what it actually does is straightforward metallurgy…
MetallurgyDifferential Heat Treat and the Hamon: The Science Behind the Line
The wavy line visible along a hamon-bearing blade isn’t decoration applied after the fact, it’s a direct visual record of which parts of the steel…
MetallurgyGrain Structure and Grain Refinement: Why Fine Grain Matters
“Grain” comes up constantly in heat-treat discussions, fine grain is good, coarse grain is bad, normalizing refines it, but it’s rarely explained what…
Everything else in Metallurgy
Keep looking
The rest of ForgeBrain
Free to read, no sign-up, written from the same bench.
Same bench
Put the reference to work
I machine the parts, hand-assemble, track and test Torus grinders in Sterling, Illinois. Most orders ship in seven to ten business days from time of order.
Nova 2×72 Aluminum Belt Grinder
Current dual-axis platform with a fiber-laser-cut 6061 chassis and single-knob tracking.
Starts at$1,295
Nebula 2×72 Steel Belt Grinder
Current dual-axis platform with a steel chassis, more mass and less vibration.
Starts at$1,295
Torus 2×72 Classic Aluminum Belt Grinder
Prior-design aluminum chassis, 90-degree tilt and 1.5-inch tooling arms.
Starts at$995
One-man shop
Ask about a missing topic
I answer my own email. Tell me what you are building and what the steel is doing, and I will tell you what I would try.