Forgive me if this has been discussed somewhere else but can anyone comment on the durability and toughness of this steel? Is it on par with SR77 or INFI?

Depends on who does the heat treat.

I'm not really sure how drop forging effects the toughness of 1060, but to give you an idea of it's toughness, it should be tougher than 1095 or similar carbon steels. The "60" and "95" in the 1060 and 1095 designates how much of the composition is carbon. For the 1060, it's 0.60 percent carbon. For the 1095, it's 0.95 percent carbon. In general, the more carbon content, the harder you can make the steel. However, as carbon content goes up, toughness goes down. S7 is 0.55 percent carbon, but has several other alloying elements. You can see the composition here:

http://www.crucibleservice.com/datash/dsS7v6.pdf

1060 has the carbon, as well as molybdenum. As far as I know, molybdenum enhances the effects of the carbon. In general, 1060 doesn't have enough carbon to be used often as a knife steel. 1060 may be good for swords or really big choppers, but as far as I know, for most knives it doesn't hold an edge very well.

I hope this helps you out a bit.

Reason I was asking is I have an AMerican TOmahawk VTAC and it is made from drop-forged 1060... they are supposed to be tough hawks so i was just wondering.

.60 is plenty for a knife steel for an item that will take a good pounding

it would have better edge retention then s7 but I don't know about sr77

Would it have better edge retention? Since S7 has only slightly less (0.05 percent less) carbon than 1060, but more molybdenum and vanadium (which I believe enhance the effects of carbon), I would think S7 may have better edge retention. S7 also has chromium, which makes it capable of being harder. Either way, I'd guess that 1060 would be good for a tomahawk.

i spent somethin like three years readin everything i could about steel and the guys here can tell you what details i've gone into about chemistry and metallurgy.

then i started making knives. carbon content and other junk like that doesn't dictate the blade. it matters, but infi itself has a relatively low carbon content in comparison to other super steels. so does 12c27. two of my favorite steels for production knives. all those fancy steels are made with such complexity for the purpose of mass production.

the quench makes the knife. 1060 is extremely tough and a very capable knife steel.

Thanks for the clarification, Magnum.

I agree that the heat treat/quench are extremely important. I should have stated that I was assuming similar heat treats, because I know different heat treats will cause the steel to behave very differently.

the temperature of the quench is a huge variable and experienced bladesmiths can dial in the hardness they want with it. i just do the most aggressive quench i can without cracking the edge then temper away whatever tension i can.

my steels of choice are 1080 and O1, but i wouldn't mind trying 1060.

by the way, the 'drop forging' shouldn't be compared to other forging methods on knives by smiths, but other mass produced metal products. metal will usually either be machined or cast, neither of which will deliver the strength of drop forging.

what does "drop-forged" mean?