Gary, we are talking rusting here, not other applications. A soft ss knife, for instance, does not pose nearly as much of a pain in the rusting ass as a hard one does. Gear steel is not used in salt water. SS spring steel is about as pussy a spring as you can get, but it will NOT rust, and therefor will not break from rusting, making it outlast the "higher quality" carbon-rich ss spring. The other thing is that when dealing with boats, dive gear, and other salt environment applications, you do not want rust running all over everything - it is like having bondage wings or a helmet. GHardigree@ao*.co* wrote: > > In a message dated 7/4/99 8:41:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, > houdini@gr*.xt*.ne* writes: > > << What George said about being magnetic is a good indicator. If > it's magnetic - it's NOT a good grade of stainless >> > > Sorry but this is not so. There are many different grades of stainless to > serve many different purposes. 440C for instance is the hardest form of > stainless. It is used for the making of gears and ball bearings and a magnet > can stick to it and it can corrode. This is the result of it having a higher > carbon content. Where as 304 /304L has a lower carbon content to it give it > more weldability. On the other hand, 316/316L has a higher molybdenum content > so as to have a higher resistance to corrosion and pitting. Each type of > stainless is used to serve different applications, therefore it has different > characteristics. > > Gary
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