Calculator › Steels › AEB-L
AEB-L was designed for razor blades and behaves like it: very fine carbides, so it takes an extremely keen edge and is far tougher than most stainless at 60–62 HRC. It is also cheap for a stainless and sold thin. That makes it the go-to for kitchen knives, fillet knives and anything ground to a fine edge. Edge retention is modest; it is easy to sharpen, which most cooks prefer.
| Good for | Kitchen knives, fillet knives, paring knives, straight razors. |
|---|---|
| Forging | Forgeable by experienced smiths (1900–2100 °F) but normally stock removal |
| Normalize | Not applicable — buy annealed |
| Austenitize | 1950–1975 °F, 10–15 min soak, in foil (5 min is enough at 1975) |
| Quench | Plates, then cryo or dry ice; freezer helps |
| Temper | 350–400 °F twice → 60–62 HRC; 300 °F with cryo reaches 63–64 |
| Working hardness | 60–63 HRC |
Typical shop values. Confirm against your supplier's datasheet.
Sheet and strip from 0.040 to 0.190 in, 1–24 in wide, 12–36 in lengths. 0.080–0.094 in (about 3/32) is the kitchen-knife size; 0.040–0.062 for fillet and paring.
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 calculationIt is arguably the best value stainless for them: fine edge, tough, easy to sharpen, inexpensive. Its only weakness is edge retention next to high-carbide steels.
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.