N690 is a cobalt stainless steel perfect for making outdoor knives.
Stainless steel with a very high carbon content and added cobalt to make blades that are heavily stressed (tactical, bushcraft, hunting knives etc).Made by the German manufacturer Böhler, the N690 is an essential part ...
N690 is a cobalt stainless steel perfect for making outdoor knives.
Stainless steel with a very high carbon content and added cobalt to make blades that are heavily stressed (tactical, bushcraft, hunting knives etc). Made by the German manufacturer Böhler, the N690 is an essential part of the world of tactical and outdoor knives, the leading names in the industry use it to make their fixed and folding blades: Muela, Fox Knives, Extrema Ratio, Spyderco, Benchmade and the French brand Wildsteer. It can reach hardnesses of over 60Hrc, and the addition of cobalt, a very hard and heat resistant metal allows this grade to achieve excellent wear resisatnce properties. The metal sheets produced by Böhler are hot cross-rolled and alternately undergo rolling operations in transversal directions. The main advantage of this is to reduce the differences in the mechanical properties between the lateral and longitudinal directions. You no longer need to identify the direction of the grain to cut out your parts.
The bars are supplied annealed, hot rolled and sand-blasted. To obtain a better surface finish and good corrosion resistance, the hot rolled steels need to be ground by around 0.15mm on each face.
To help you with the heat treatment stage that is essential to make blades of impeccable quality, Eurotechni has edited for you a technical data sheet for the N690 stainless steel that details every step of the process that needs to be respected. It is strongly recommended to use stainless heat treating foil or to quench in a protected atmosphere.
Standards (approximate equivalences) : W-nr 1.4528, DIN X105CrCoMo18-2 Main properties: High cutting resistance and hardness after quenching.
