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About Pumaster Steel & New Stainless Super Keen Cutting Steel

Using Pumahunters website, i first noticed New Stainless Super Keen Cutting Steel in the 1960's dealer catalogue.
Going through all the other catalogues i also found that it was a forged steel.
The steel is last mentioned in the 1985 dealer catalogue.

So we have a high carbon, high molybdenum forged steel that dates back to as early as 1960.
154CM was used around that time frame by Bob Loveless, so to me it's still a possible candidate.

I'm also wondering about RWL34, a powdered steel named after Bob Loveless.
This steel is also high in carbon and molybdenum, plus it can quite easily take a very high polish.
Problem so far is that i don't know if this steel was available in 1960.
 
„Bob Loveless began using 154CM in 1972 [25] and selling it in knives soon after [26]. 154CM was reported at the time to have been “originally developed for the high temperature regions of the Boeing 747 jet engine,” and Loveless reported that “It has helped me raise the overall quality of my blades and I expect to use it to the end of my days” [26]. The hype train for 154CM was in full effect. Due to availability issues with 154CM, Bob Loveless later imported ATS-34 produced by Hitachi [27][28], though some in retrospect have claimed that ATS-34 was cleaner than 154CM to justify the switch [29]. ATS-34 stands for “Aichi Tool Steel – 34” [30]. BG-42 began to see use in knives by at least the mid-1990’s [27][31]. 154CM and ATS-34 both became very popular in knives, probably due to the effective marketing of Bob Loveless and its higher working hardness when compared with 440C.“

„Damasteel introduced RWL34 in their stainless damascus in 1995 [33] which was a copy of 154CM/ATS-34 but produced with powder metallurgy by Erasteel, and was later available as “monosteel” rather than in damascus only [27]. RWL34 was named after Loveless, the RWL standing for Robert Waldorf Loveless [34]. The powder metallurgy process refines the carbide structure and improves toughness.“

Knifesteelnerds

R'n'R
 
Thx for the link R'n"R
So RWL34 is obviously not possible.

According to Knifenerds 154CM however was developed by Crucible in 1959.
Could this steel have been available to a German knife manufacturer like Lauterjung/Puma at that time ?
 
Hello,
the first production knife which was made out of 154CM is the Schrade Loveless Drop Point Hunter. This knife was introduced in 1975 and it costs $ 100,-. For comparison, the Randall 1-5 costs $ 85,- at that time.
It is absolutely impossible that Pumaster Steel is 154CM, because it was too expensive and unknown at that time in germany.
The german knife maker Dietmar Kressler who worked together with Bob Loveless uses D2 for his knifes in the late 70th.
So why should Puma take this expensive and (in Germany) unknown steel?
The only knife from Puma which is made out of 154CM is the Cougar (Design Hehn) and it is marked 154CM.
Andreas
 
I was talking about New Stainless Super Keen Cutting Steel, not Pumaster steel, which is already known to be Böhler NWN80.
 
That doesn´t matter, New Stainless Super Keen Cutting Steel can´t also be 154CM.
 
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The Solingen knive makers, especially Puma, are a conservative and traditional lot. They always go the safe way and stay with steels they know the thermal treatment very well. And it was required that such steels would be available withoout any problems, so they usually took the steels already mentioned. If there were other steels employed it would have been stated and a lot of advertising would have been started.
Too many "woulds" etc.? Well, it took decades to convince them that there are also other stainless steels than 1.4034.
The best guess for super keen cutting steel should be 1.4116.
 
This is true. Depends on what "high Mo" really means.
All steels of the type 1.41.. contain Mo to a certain degree, and whether this was marketed as "high Molybdenum" is unclear to me. CPM-ATS-RWL 34 have indeed higher Mo-contents (aboout 4 per cent).
Keep in mind that the factor of effectivity of Mo is 10 as compared to Cr (4), so even numerically small amounts have strong effects.

to clarifiy this one would have to sacrifice a blade.......
 
In relation to Böhler NWN80 with no molybdenum, a steel like 1.4116 with up to 0.8 % Mo might look like high molybdenum steel ;) …

R’n‘R
 
Hallo R´n´R
das ist Erbsenzählerei, da das Defender und das Catamount nur limitierte Sonderserien des Cougar sind.
Grüße
Andreas
 
herbert said:
The Solingen knive makers, especially Puma, are a conservative and traditional lot. They always go the safe way and stay with steels they know the thermal treatment very well. And it was required that such steels would be available withoout any problems, so they usually took the steels already mentioned. If there were other steels employed it would have been stated and a lot of advertising would have been started.
Too many "woulds" etc.? Well, it took decades to convince them that there are also other stainless steels than 1.4034.
The best guess for super keen cutting steel should be 1.4116.
Click to expand...

I agree herbert's statement.

In order to fulfill the requirements of the "Solingen" Trade Marks' / Brandname's Law all Solingen cutlers co-operated with local blade forges at least prior to the 1990s. The forges, the competing cutlers and the Chambre of Commerce supervised avidly the cutlery business.

Solingen blade forges were supplied with the raw material by one leading wholesaler for steel, located in Solingen.
I learned during the early 1980s that Puma at least at that time was supplied by Carl August Hartkopf forge with fixed bladed knife blanks and by Rudolf Broch forge with pocket knife blanks.
Both forges stated, that they were using "standard supplied steel" for Puma blanks, identical to raw material being used for all their other local customers.

It is a fact that some Solingen cutlers used their own created steel names which were no special alloys but normal, standard steels.

cut
 
Thank you, cut. I was not aware of the strict regulations, this is new to me. I think it served as sort of guarantee that all Solingen cutlery was always good quality, and, moreover, it supported local industry a lot. Solingen did not melt their own steels, but there were forging industries as well as heat treaters, and the cutlery business was in earlier times subdivided into a lot of home work branches.
 
I guess the last Steel produced in Solingen was around the 1960s.
Maybe next time in Solingen we should ask the owners of the flower pots in the streets, when the got them.
 
Das freundlicherweise von Rock’n’Roll verlinkte Puma-Datenblatt aus dem Jahr 1998
ist weitgehend identisch mit einer mir vorliegenden früheren Veröffentlichung von Puma („BLANKE WAFFEN UND VERSORGEN VON WILD“, undatiert, jedoch zweifelsfrei dem Zeitraum 1989-1993 zuzuordnen).
Beide Veröffentlichungen benennen für Jagd- und Taschenmesser einzig die Stahlsorte DIN 1.4110.
Diese PUMA-Aussage ist jedoch offensichtlich nicht ausnahmslos gültig. Bekannterweise gab es vor 1989 bereits Taschenmesser mit Karbonstahl-Klingen, z.B. aus „GENUINE PUMASTER STEEL“ (s. z.B. herberts post # 20).
 
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