Is 1045 steel pretty good for a knife blade?

I’m looking to buy the Milano Stiletto, and it uses 1045 steel. I was just wondering whether this will hold up and keep an edge.

Unfortunately, how the steel performs in a gear box or even in the industrial cutter, doesn’t tell anything about its performance in a knife blade.

That aside, AISI 1045 steel will be a better performer than your average low budget stainless steel knife. Other than that compared to other carbon steels form the AISI 10xx series 1045 is the lowest carbon content steel I have see in in the knives. This actually is the first time I’ve heard of 1045 being used in a knife. 1085, 1095 are much better steels for the knives and a lot more popular too.

I don’t have 1045 in the knife steel database yet, but 1050 is pretty much the same, and compare that with 1095 – http://zknives.com/knives/steels/steelgraph.shtml?nm=1050%2C1095

In other words, 0.45% Carbon that 1045 has is very low for a decent knife blade. It’s not even high carbon steel based on the rather lax knife marketing definition(metallurgical 0.8% Carbon or more is high carbon).

So, in the end, compared to other more popular steels from 10xx series, 1045 is one of the worst. If you compare to junkers like 420 stainless steel then it’s better than those. So, you have to decide based on that.

Other than that checking out knife steel faq would help too – http://zknives.com/knives/articles/knifesteelfaq.shtml

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