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Good morning Maas, ATS-34 is the chemical equivalent of 154CM. Bit of history here, 154CM is a high grade of bearing steel made by Crucible Steel in Syracuse NY. The story I have is 154CM was first made use as secondary turbine bearings in the 747 engine. This steel was never used for that application but we got some very good stuff for knifemaking out of this. 154CM was made famous as a knife steel by Bob Loveless. Crucible was bought and wrung out by Colt Industries. Price of 154CM skyrocketed so the very well known knifemaker, Bob Loveless went to Japan and had a sit down meeting with the president of Hitachi Steel and asked him if he would make this alloy. Hitachi did and the steel is called ATS-34. This name does not correspond to standard United States steel designations but neither do many United States made steels when given a market use name to sell the steel without disclosing the chemical makeup or standard United States steel alloy designation. The chemical composition of 154CM is the same as ATS-34 but method of rolling into final dimension is differant. ATS-34 is made into long bar stock (this may have changed) and 154CM is cross rolled into sheet form so it can be laser or water jet cut much easier thus lending it to modern factory production. This cross rolling of 154CM results in a more even distribution of carbides resulting in better edge holding. IMPORTANT NOTE HERE: Crucible is and has been for some time an employee owned company. Colt is out of the picture. Crucible is doing a very good job of making sophisticated specialty tool steels at competitive prices. They are the producer of the CPM S-30V used in the Yarborough knife. I have personally used a lot of ATS-34 and never had a problem with it. This steel will even take a higher polish than 154CM and that is a desirable feature to a custom knifemaker for sporting use knives that are around rain and salt water. This is not the finish we would use on any tactical use knife.
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