Erasteel in Sweden purchased all of Crucible’s intellectual property, and they left the machinery and equipment sitting on the property in Syracuse. That plant is done. I can’t see anybody in their right mind wanting to buy what is left and putting it back to work. Like Bruce Springsteen said, “These jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back to your hometown”.
I hope that I get a royalty deal too, but that isn’t going to happen without a lot more work on my part to get these steel grades produced and used in the marketplace. Unless you have customers knocking on the steel manufacturer’s doors asking them to produce these grades, the steel producers will have zero interest in them.
I do like the idea of a bank account in the Cayman Islands.
Thanks Jari. I’ve never named an alloy before, and have had no experience with any customers objecting to the name of a steel that they purchased. I want this to be a name that a potential customer would likely remember and that leaves a positive impression on them. The name should highlight or at least be consistent with the characteristics that the steel possesses.
I see your point and it looks like btrueblood was on track with that. The only thing that comes to my mind is since Tungsten was originally Wolfram, maybe MoWo/WoMo could work if MoW is off trademark now?
Or maybe the branding for the alloy has a nice wolf watermark lol
At 70-ish Rc, with decent room temperature toughness…would this make a good knife steel - never mind, dumb question, rephrase: could you sell this as an uber knife steel, capable of cutting through other knives? Lotta knife nuts out there, looking for the latest & greatest blade…and with a wolf logo laser-etched, or pattern welded into the billlet…yeesh, yer gonna be rich, Maui. If you need help spending that loot, call!
Hi Ben, the knife crowd was exactly the group I was thinking of. They would LOVE a wolf logo. And yes, one of the main applications for these grades are industrial knives. So a hunting knife would be an ideal application for practically any of these grades, and their chemical compositions can even be tailored for that specific application. Some of these grades would make for FANTASTIC hand held knives!
Hmm. Can’t remember now, and your page isn’t opening for me. Vanadium content of your alloys is non-zero (a few tenths of a percent or less, but non zero?), and carbon up in the 1.5% range? Sounds like this might be a candidate for a Verhoeven and Pendray style “Wootz damascus” steel, in addition to being a very durable and edge-retaining blade steel.
Without owing allegiance to any language in particular, it comes close - and also sounds a bit like the name of a popular music act.
Having said that, the Spanish/Portuguese “Loba Dura” has a nice solid ring to it and using the Iberian “Loba” rather than the Italianate “Lupa” would give search results for <your name +“alloy”> that aren’t dominated by pictures of VW wheels.
“Yes, I know who John Verhoeven is. He wrote Steel Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist.”
He also wrote a series of papers along with a bladesmith named Pendray, where they worked on the chemistry of ancient Damascus steel blades, and eventually figured out how to duplicate it with modern metallurgy. Basically, you want a high carbon (1.5% or so) with carbide forming elements (Vanadium, Manganese, Moly, some others); it sounds like your alloy falls right in the zone with its chemistry (not sure but Ni might need to be minimized, I’d have to read through his work again). Then you do multiple heat cycles to just below the austenite transition, and I think working the metal at that heat as well. The multiple heats cause Ostwald ripening, which less the dispersed carbides migrate and form bands at a macroscopic scale. The bands then show up visibly when the alloy is ground and etched, thus the “watered” steel pattern of ancient damascus.
I’ve seen the blades from modern smiths who have duplicated the chemistry with crucible melts, and done the heats, and the blades are beautiful.
I could see you selling pre-heat treated blade steel, ready for finish grinding and etching…heck I’d buy some. Especially since it might actually have properties to make it truly hard and tough, not just a pretty pattern.
Thanks for sharing the background Ben. Do you have any links or references for the papers written by Pendray and Verhoeven that you mentioned? I’d love to read them.
