Powder Metallurgy Steel Knife Blade Blanks
Powder metallurgy changes what a steel can do. Conventional steel is cast, and as it cools the carbides — the hard particles that resist wear — grow large and clump unevenly. Large carbides make the steel more brittle than its hardness suggests, and they tear out at the edge during sharpening.
Powder steel is made by atomising molten steel into fine powder, each particle cooling almost instantly, then consolidating it under heat and pressure. The carbides end up small and evenly spread. You can alloy more heavily, run harder, and still keep toughness and a clean edge.
The cryogenic step
All four of our powder steels receive a cryogenic stage during heat treatment: after quenching, the blades are cooled far below freezing before tempering. This converts retained austenite — the soft, unstable phase that would otherwise convert later in use, causing dimensional change and an edge that degrades unpredictably. Our non-powder steels do not need this step and do not get it.
The four steels
Elmax at 60–61 HRC — edge retention and corrosion resistance together. The balanced choice.
M390 at 60–61 HRC — the benchmark for edge retention.
Vanax at 60 HRC — nitrogen alloyed, the best corrosion resistance we offer.
Vanadis 4 Extra at 63–64 HRC — the hardest blade we make.
Full comparison in powder metallurgy steels explained.
Browse powder steels
Related reading: why we send blades back to the steel mill — including the cryogenic step powder steels need — and what HRC really means.