Calculator › Steels › 5160
5160 is leaf-spring steel — 0.6% carbon with chromium — and it is what large blades, swords and kukris are made from when toughness matters more than edge retention. It hardens in medium oil, tolerates a sloppy heat treat better than anything else on this list, and takes a beating.
| Good for | Bowies, kukris, camp choppers, swords, tomahawks. Not a kitchen steel. |
|---|---|
| Forging | Up to ~2200 °F; stop at 1600 °F. Forges beautifully |
| Normalize | 1600 °F single cycle (KSN, Cashen) or 1650 / 1500 / 1350 (NJSB) |
| Austenitize | 1500–1525 °F, 15 min soak |
| Quench | Medium oil — Parks AAA or an 11-second oil; Parks 50 also works |
| Temper | 375–400 °F twice → 58.5–59.5 HRC; 350 °F gets just over 60; 450 °F for a sword |
| Working hardness | 56–59 HRC |
Typical shop values. Confirm against your supplier's datasheet.
Flat bar 3/16–3/8 in, wide widths readily available; also, of course, leaf springs.
Suppliers: New Jersey Steel Baron Alpha Knife Supply Jantz
Stock removal: the bar is cut to blade + tang + clean-up, so the tang section and forged thickness below only change the finished-weight estimate. Switch to Forged and they change the stock length too.
Tang dimensions are estimated from the tang style until you change them. Measuring yours is worth doing — a forged blank's length depends on the tang's cross-section, not on what the tang is called.
Stock removal: fill factors only change the finished-weight estimate here. They set the stock length when the method is Forged. Grinding loss has no effect at all in stock removal — the bar is cut straight to the profile, nothing is drawn out.
The fraction of the blade's and tang's bounding box that is actually steel once the bevels are ground. Distal taper is factored in separately now (see "Distal taper" below, under What this assumed) and isn't editable here yet — these two fill factors are the ones worth replacing with your own measurements: weigh a finished blade, then adjust until the finished weight below matches the scale.
Steel is only part of the cost. Add abrasives, handle, heat treat and your time, and see the price that actually pays you.
Copy link to this calculationFor big ones, excellent — tough, cheap, forgiving. For small slicers it is the wrong trade: edge retention is average and it cannot get as hard as 1084 or 52100.
Bar sizes for ten common knife patterns, weight per inch for every standard flat bar, and quick heat-treat numbers for the usual carbon steels. Print it, tape it to the grinder.