I noticed crucible steel just went bankrupt again. They made the best particle metallurgy steel for knives so if anyone wants that ultimate survival knife better buy up that 3V and Magnacut quick while bars are still floating around. Last time crucible went bankrupt I made some money hoarding some new old stock carbon V knives which was just coldsteels marketing name for a decent but primitive Sharon steel that was just a small chromium and vanadium addition to 1095. Hopefully European company that does advanced steels will buy crucible and start it up again or take on the production of advanced formulas that depend on particle metallurgy in their own plants. Though I suspect the steel industry in Europe is going to be struggling equally or moreso if they don't have economic energy supply.
If we lose this third generation particle metallurgy tech it will be interesting example of collapse . I had thought about just buying these steels by the ton in case of such a scenario and becoming the knife baron but it hit out of nowhere, makes more sense than hoarding gold in a crazy collapse scenario. The knife business is just a drop in the bucket so the industry won't operate around making these things available to consumers, the fancy steel is just a side thing they do, but the meat and potatoes of their business is for automotive and other industrial applications .
China doesn't have replacement for this as far as I know. So if USA and Europe lose the tech it's just a lower level of complexity.. if the price for the auctioning in bankruptcy goes low enough it could make sense to purchase crucible just for the specialty metal production and you would have some semi monopoly , if bohler uddelholm also succumbs to the European deindustrialization.
Worst case scenario I think we will still have 14C28N available which is a decent formula that works as a regular ingot steel, though it doesn't have any vanadium or niobium carbides so it tops out in wear resistance earlier than the good CPM grades.
Some stunning numbers
Results We analyzed 3 392 364 deaths among the full US population aged 25-44 years from 1999 to 2023. Mortality increases across most causes of death produced substantial excess deaths compared with extrapolations of pre-2011 trends (Figure). Early adult excess mortality was 34.6% higher than expected in 2019 and then further accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, all-cause excess mortality was nearly 3 times what it had been in 2019 (116.2 vs 41.7 deaths per 100 000 population). In 2023, excess mortality decreased, but only to approximately midway between its 2019 and 2021 levels (79.1 deaths per 100 000 population). As a result, early adult mortality was 70.0% higher in 2023 than it would have been had pre-2011 trends continued, reflecting 71 124 excess deaths (Table).
The 5 causes of death that collectively accounted for almost three-quarters of the early adult excess mortality in 2023 were drug poisoning (31.8% of excess mortality), the residual natural-cause category (16.0%), transport-related deaths (14.1%), alcohol-related deaths (8.5%), and homicide (8.2%). Additionally, the combined contribution of cardiometabolic conditions, including circulatory and endocrine, metabolic, and nutritional, was substantial (9.2%).