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Post by bluetrain on Jun 16, 2018 14:04:12 GMT
I have a knife with a blade marked "surgical stainless steel" (all caps). It's a nice knife and the blade is also marked "Winchester." Although nice enough as knives go, it's still a very ordinary knife that came from Wal-Mart, if memory serves, no doubt at a low price. The sheath is made of a very stiff nylon material and is rather better than average. The blade is almost 4-inches long with a drop point, I think you call it. It has a full tang and for a small knife, has a nice heft to it. I have no idea where it was made. But there are no knife factories where I live, which makes it imported.
The question is, does "surgical stainless steel" have any real meaning in the context of an outdoor or hunting knife? According to Wikipedia, there is no strict definition and it is therefore liberally applied by manufacturers. It's a longish article, though, and apparently surgical instruments are always made of stainless steel. I have a fair number of knives but none of the others use that term. It just sounds no more informative than "authentic," "tactical" or "genuine." Some say "rostfrei" or "rustfri kroma" but none add surgical. I guess if I need to do surgery, I should use that particular knife if possible.
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christain
Member
It's the steel on the inside that counts.
Posts: 2,835
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Post by christain on Jun 16, 2018 14:12:32 GMT
'Surgical Stainless Steel' is just a hype tag-on. Stainless is just stainless, as far as I know.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Jun 16, 2018 15:18:07 GMT
In Germany it's a cheaper stainless steel with a bit of nickel. It can be polished in a way that's good for sterilizing. It's also used for cheaper knives.
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Post by MOK on Jun 16, 2018 16:15:24 GMT
At least in Finland surgical steel is not only stainless, but also guaranteed to contain no allergens, which makes it a very popular material for piercings and jewelry as well as scalpels and razor blades.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Jun 16, 2018 16:24:12 GMT
Yup, here the same. There was a discussion due to the nickel content but it was proved that it still was antiallergic.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Jun 16, 2018 21:21:22 GMT
The question is, does "surgical stainless steel" have any real meaning in the context of an outdoor or hunting knife? It usually means 420J2. "German stainless steel" usually means 1.4116 AKA X50CrMoV15 AKA 5Cr15MoV. "Japanese stainless steel" usually means AUS6 (or on a bad day, AUS4). These don't have strict definitions. On cheap knives, read them as "we used a low-end steel and we want you to hope we used something better."
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Post by MOK on Jun 16, 2018 21:43:38 GMT
Basically, it might be a meaningful qualifier if you were looking to wear the knife stuck through your septum. Otherwise, makes no difference.
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Post by rjodorizzi on Jun 17, 2018 0:57:55 GMT
General qualifier with no formal definition!
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 17, 2018 1:40:10 GMT
Well, if you are planning on doing surgery with your knife, then I would think you got the right blade for it. For all other purposes, no. In my experience, the "surgical steel" moniker is just an advertising gimmick to increase the perception of quality in lower priced knives. Nothing wrong with advertising it as such, but you aren't getting anything special at the end of the day. Being "surgical" doesn't mean doodly-squat when you are cutting the packing tape on the box for your new sword...
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Post by ember on Jun 17, 2018 7:33:12 GMT
Normally if a blade's marked surgical stainless steel it would be a higher grade of stainless. Some cheap stainless steels can get spots of rust anyway if there exposed to anything corrosive. Often the higher the grade of stainless the more brittle the blade (unless its heat treated well) it's a trade off.
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Post by bluetrain on Jun 17, 2018 10:13:17 GMT
My impression from scanning over the Wikipedia article was that surgical stainless steel is not so much a higher grade as it is a special or different grade. Even if it were a higher grade, you still wouldn't use it to make anvils. But the term certainly doesn't appear much in any advertising for knives, much less swords and I don't read things about surgical instruments. Most of the stuff in the article went over my head anyway.
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Post by bluetrain on Jun 18, 2018 22:50:23 GMT
Here's another one for you, this time on a pair of scissors made in Pakistan: Ice tempered stainless. Again, I imagine it to be a pointless claim, given that it appears on a small, cheap but very handy pair of scissors. It has about 1 1/2-inch blades. Another label that I haven't seen elsewhere.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 19, 2018 0:12:18 GMT
Here's another one for you, this time on a pair of scissors made in Pakistan: Ice tempered stainless. Again, I imagine it to be a pointless claim, given that it appears on a small, cheap but very handy pair of scissors. It has about 1 1/2-inch blades. Another label that I haven't seen elsewhere. Well, that's good enough for me! EVERYBODY knows that Pakistani steel is the best for making knives, swords and scissors.....
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Post by randomnobody on Jun 19, 2018 0:21:50 GMT
I've had a couple knives over the years that claimed surgical stainless, but find it to be pretty much 420, as mentioned already.
Cryo-quenching, or tempering or whatever, is another pretty hot-button topic. I don't know enough about it to comment.
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