MY STEEL STORY.

I use a few different grades of steel these days, steel that I get steel shipped in from the US, Germany, and Scandinavia, this includes 'mono' grades and also what people tend to refer to as Damascus, I prefer to use the name Pattern Welded, Damascus is a very different thing.

I also use SF100, which was made right here in Sheffield.

Back in the early 90s, we were aware of a Sheffield-made grade, SF77, made by Avesta-Polarit and marketed through their Precision Strip division in Stocksbridge, it was designed and made for use in razor blades, Gillette, Wilkinson Sword, etc, if it was a razor blade of pedigree it was SF77.

Unfortunately, however dealing with Avesta-Polarit had proved impossible, our initial inquiries about a supply of SF77 were fruitless, unless you were in a position to commission multiple tons of the material and pay upfront for it, you stood no chance of doing any business.

Fortune favoured us though, 1993 was the centenary of Sheffield being granted the City Charter, and to celebrate this we proposed to the then Lord Mayor that we would make and present the city with the City of Sheffield Centenary Sword, this still hangs in the Town Hall today.

At this time, the steel we were using was En56D (or equivalent) and it was being imported from France, now I have nothing against the French but that would never do for the City of Sheffield Centenary Sword, the Lord Mayor put me in touch with a colleague of his a director of Avesta-Polarit.

Overnight we had a man on the inside.

A deal was struck that saw us commission one ton at a time and draw smaller deliveries from that of 250kg as and when required, now even 250kg lasted us a long time, but it was great steel, and it was nice to have the stock sat on the workshop floor, as a result of this, at this time we were solely using the SF77 and with great success.

I know that there are loads of SF77, Pat Mitchell (Cutlers) knives, still in regular use today, knife users loved it and for good reason.

Steel companies at this time were going through difficult days with many a restructuring and takeover, during one of these transitions Avesta-Polarit had become Corus and our contact retired, along with him our deal and steel supply.

By this time the internet had found its way into our workshop and I was able to source steel from the world over in small, manageable, and affordable quantities, it was all a learning curve as they demanded very particular and precise HT processes, but I did it and utilised some great quality steels, I did miss that SF77 though.

2013 then saw another centenary celebration, this one was 100 years since Harry Brearley stumbled upon his much less prone-to-rust steel here in Sheffield, I was contacted by Outokumpu, which was the most recent guise of Avesta-Polarit.

Outokumpu has a museum at their main site here in Sheffield, the Harry Brearley Centre, they wanted to commission a few pieces of my work to display there, to mark the centenary of Harry’s discovery, what grade of their steel would I like, they asked.

I was informed that SF77 had become obsolete years ago, but leave it with them, they'll see what they can do. They came back with the bad news that they couldn't get any 77, but, they had found a bloom, the huge lump of raw steel before any processing at all, of SF100, its bigger, bolder, better edge retention, sibling.

They took that bloom, did what they do, and rolled it to various thicknesses, some appropriate for the knives they had commissioned with me and a quantity suitable for the Harry Brearley knife that I wanted to make, the rest in other knife-friendly thicknesses.

There was a lot of steel as their minimum quantities are eye-watering, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing so I bit the bullet and another deal was struck, I took it all.

I often refer to it as a real-world steel, steel properties, corrosion resistance, edge retention, and re-sharpening are always a trade-off, the harder it is the longer it might keep its edge but that is generally because it is more resistant to wear, that in turn makes it harder to sharpen without specialist gear. Carbon and chromium content has a knock-on to stain resistance, also again to edge retention though

For me, SF100 is the perfect middle ground, sitting smack bang in the middle of all those compromises, it takes a superb edge, it is resistant to corrosion, it holds that edge extremely well, and is not the end of the world when the time comes around to re-sharpen it, hence for me, real-world steel.

Of course, I still use the other grades of steel that my dial-up connection helped me to locate back in the day but I do use a lot of SF100.

I have a good stock of it but that said, if it wasn’t totally functional and dependable, if it didn't do its job exceptionally well for my customers worldwide, I would not use it at all.

All that said, I do and am happy to work in other grades of steel too so please do not be afraid to ask.