In article , says...
"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Ed Huntress says...

Until HSS steel was developed, high-carbon steel (Rc 60 - 65) was used
for
cutting tools. It works OK. You just have to keep speeds 'way down so you
don't wreck the hardness. It doesn't wear as well as HSS, either. So, you
just change or sharpen tools more often.

What about harold's favorite, Stellite? That was around well
before HSS was developed, right? Granted you could not just
cook some up on the kitchen stove...

Assuming you could find the materials and had a way to measure them (alloys
are pretty strict for the Stellites), you'd need the kitchen stove from Hell
to cook it up. g

Which brings up a problem at least as serious as obtaining the raw
materials to make HSS -- the energy required to do metallurgy with
refractory metals in a small isolated place like Nantucket. I'm sure
there'd be higher priority uses for the limited energy available than
making modern metalworking tools.

Ned Simmons