W2

Elegantly simple, yet wonderfully enhanced with a shot of vanadium, W2 is a serious cutting steel. It is hypereutectoid enough to give plenty of carbon to the vanadium in addition to the martensite and thus being able to retain one of the scariest sharp edges going. Vanadium can only be topped by titanium for the hardness of its carbides so abrasion resistance is no problem and grain size will be kept small to boot. The drawbacks of this steel are the slight stiffness under the hammer that the high carbon content and vanadium will give, the shallow hardening aspects of a W series steel, although it will harden nicely in a fast oil with a most striking natural hamon (hardening line), but most problematic of all is availability. As good as this stuff can be for knives, heavy industry is using it less and less, so sources for it are getting scarce. Due to this I am sorry to say that I have no link to a supplier for this steel at this time.