The Silver Standard of Steel

When it comes to the number of steel grades available, we can understand why people are astonished and bemused by the options available! It does seem that there is a steel grade for every single application you can think of, but each one exists for a specific purpose and has its own capabilities, strengths and weaknesses!

One that always catches the eye of our customers is our Silver Steel Bar if not only because people immediately ask if there’s any silver contained in it! Unfortunately, there isn’t, it’s a historic name from the first half of the 20th Century, as the chromium that was alloyed into this particular steel gave it an extra bright finish, that made it appear like silver.

The good news is that Silver Steel is much stronger and more capable than the silver it’s named after! Silver Steel has a high carbon content, which increases the hardenability during working and allows it to withstand wear much better than other grades. Wear resistance is very important in any number of functions, but the chromium that gives the Silver Steel its lustre also increases the strength.

The actual make up of Silver Steel includes a number of other materials. As well as carbon and chromium, there’s also manganese.

If you need a strong and hard-wearing steel, hardening and tempering achieves a hardness of up to Rockwell C 64. The chromium content means that the material responds very well to treatment that the process is a deep hardening throughout the material.

There are many reasons to choose silver steel bar as your steel of choice, not only for its strength, hardness and machineability, but also because you can tell your clients that you’re using ‘silver steel’ and sound very grand indeed – if you don’t tell, we won’t!