I don’t know that too many people will make it through my prior discussion about W2. I could sum it up a lot shorter, like “it’s a lot like older steels because it is a current melt/roll of older steels with little alloying, and it results in a suitably hard plain steel chisel that will deal with hardwoods and not tie you up on sharpening stones”.
That’s true.
But wrapped in that whole discussion is that I am a subset. If you are going to hand make things with metal and really strive to do the heat treatment well – like furnace matching well or even see if you can poke past at least the commercially offered tools in a similar alloy, you run into what’s available.
W2 is available from one source that I’ve found at retail. Zknives lists at least 45 or so branded mill products that you could get if you wanted to order it. What’s the minimum size for a melt? no clue. I’ll bet something is being used industrially in great amounts – we just aren’t allowed to tap that supply like a maple tree and get what we want.
And when it comes down to things ideal for quick heat treatment in a forge (and markedly better than something like 1084), that just means what could be available and what is are different.
In this case, LN lost heat treatment of O1. Hock mentioned that he lost his local source. I noticed more than one discussion of heat treaters pulling up the ladder on O1 steels and removing them from their list of what they’ll heat treat.
The only reason that I can get W2 is not for woodworking tools, but because not very hardenable (only gets full hardness with a very fast quench), which allows manipulating the appearance/transition on decorative knives.
Whatever the case is, I’m glad W2 is currently available. It’d be just dandy if the increasing hobby knife market draws more of these oldies back off of the “could get if ordering a melt” list to “stocked by retailer” list.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 