In article ,
Jim Stewart wrote:
Ed Huntress wrote:

[ ... ]

Given the difficulties of coming up with anything better, and the relative
ease of carburizing common grades of plain, low-carbon steel, making plain
carburized steel for tools looks like the best solution by far. The
limitation is that, compared to the 1,000F or so maximum operating
temperature of HSS, you have to keep maximum temperature at the cutting edge
to something on the order of 350 or 400F.

At the risk of being redundant, you'd
have to have high-speed machines to really
need high-speed steel. I haven't read
the book, but I'd assume that the isolated
place is no longer on the power grid.

Read the book! It is an excellent read, and I don't want to
give away too much of what is done there.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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