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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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