Doug up another doc while researching steels. Luckily contains a lot of French AFNOR steel standard names, which are relatively hard to find, for example I didn't have AFNOR standard names for popular knifemaking alloys like AISI 1070, W1, O7 and few more exitics things like D7 and M36 steel. Overall, about 20 new standard names, plus a few proprietary alloys as well. Total alloy names now well over 4600.
Thursday, May 31, 2012 23:02:04
Yoshikanem Tamamoku yanagiba was a present for my friend, but so far I've had two opportunities to use and sharpen it. Mainly positive impressions, very good looking knife, with relatively high performance compared to many other yanagibas I have used in the past and use it now. Not the top performer, but not the most expensive one either, so one could say somewhat balanced price/performance. Details in the review.
Saturday, May 26, 2012 10:25:31
Added bunch of proprietary tool steel names from about a dozen makers. Including All types of tool steels, O series, L, M, and T series alloys. By now database has over 4500 names :)
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 13:23:47
One more knife from Henckels, fairly good representative of western carvers, had it for some time, loaner to be precise. Sharpened, used, but as a carver, it's not very versatile, although if you really try it could be, but I think not really worth it. I don't like the design too much, but that's just me. Details in the review.
Sunday, May 6, 2012 23:50:13
About a dozen new alloys, including GOST and CSN standards and Poldi Steels.
Friday, May 4, 2012 00:23:39
Added new alloys names to Thyssen-Krupp steel listings, Hitachi steel listings and Nachi Fujikoshi steel listings. MOstly high speed tool steels, although few of the stainless alloy names were added as well. Two proprietary ones, Nachi Fujikoshi HS52R steel and Nachi Fujikoshi HMT12 Steel.
Monday, April 30, 2012 22:14:42
One more loaner knife reviewed, I'm not very happy about it though. My bad, expectations were set too high, based feedback from various users. Herders are unusually thin knives for western maker, and their carbon steel knives have very positive feedback. I mistakenly thought it was a carbon steel knife, but alas, it was just stainless steel. Still, among western knives it does stand out as a better performer, but compared to Japanese knives it's still not quite there, mainly because I was forced to use it with 20 deg per side edge, typical for western kitchen knives, but not so good for performance. On the other hand, what can you do, when the steel won't support thinner edges.
Saturday, April 28, 2012 22:56:44
30" Dell U3011 display arrived after all. Got lost first time somehow, dunno how do you loose 30" monstrosity, but the seller sent another one overnight. All things well in the end, now I have my system almost as I wanted it :) Games do look better on 30 incher...
Saturday, April 7, 2012 00:36:29
Uhmm, where to start. Added about two dozen high speed steels made by Spanish steel maker Rovalma. While I was at it, found out that several steels were in the wrong reference group, so Erasteel ASP2030, Daido DEX40, Forecreu PM30, Hitachi HAP40 and Bohler-Uddeholm Vanadis 30 were moved from AISI M3:1+Co group to AISI M3:2+Co. Biiig change as you can see :) Alright, just pain in the a$$ to move few alloys from one group into another with their composition references and all that. Makers list alloys as equivalents of whatever they feel like at the moment, then dealers add more "equivalents" and in the end I have to spend considerable time comparing compositions and sifting dozen links figuring out the hell is really going on.
Thursday, April 5, 2012 21:42:56
Cr4W2MoV steel is medium alloy tool steel, with a bit of Vanadium(V) Tungsten(W) and Molybdenum(Mo). Officially used for dies, punches, etc. Apparently work swell for knives too. High working hardness and pretty good wear resistance.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 22:10:40